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2014/04/17 | 1,195 | 5,231 | <issue_start>username_0: I applied to graduate schools this year, and at the tail end of February, my first pick school sent me an email that to me, sounded like they had filled all the available TA positions. So naturally I chose my second pick school (that did offer me a TAship).
Today (April 16th), I receive an email from my first choice school saying they would like to offer me a TAship (apparently somebody declined their offer).
The graduate adviser at my second choice school had told me before that sometime she made offers to candidates in the summer, so I am thinking if I were to contact her and ask to be released from my agreement, she might be OK with that. (I realize there are formal rules that apply)
Would it be such a bad thing to ask my second choice school to release me (if they say no it will be somewhat awkward for me and if I just walk out on them, I am not sure what they can do).
TIA,
GB<issue_comment>username_1: Absolutely not. If you meet the full requirements set up by your University, it is perfectly ethical to use all of the resources made available to you. ADHD is a real medical condition and medical experts and policy makers have decided that special test accommodations are the fairest solution. Accommodations like this are based on medical decisions, not whether you are doing well in the course. Take the extra time if you want it. There is no need to feel guilty about doing so.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_2: I would say it is definitely not unethical. Those are the rules, there is nothing wrong with taking full advantage of them.
I am dyslexic and would never think of not taking my extra time (fortunately no more exams for me!). There have been some cases where I didn't need it (school level maths mainly) I either asked if I could leave with everyone else or sat for 15 mins and reread my answers/twiddled by thumbs.
It is important to remember most exams aim to test your understanding not reading/writing speed (or why ever else people need extra time).
I agree giving people extra time is a pretty blunt tool and not ideal in that pretty much everyone gets the same amount extra irrespective of their particular needs but I think that is a more logistical issue with how the system is setup and would be quite hard to fix and assess.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: The purpose of an exam is to measure how well you understand the material. Giving you extra time should make this measurement more precise, so you should take it. Keep in mind that if you really didn't know the material, more time wouldn't help, anyway.
I say this as someone who got extra time throughout school because of a physical disability and now does curriculum development at the college level.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: I have dyspraxia sometimes known as developmental coordination disorder. Most of the problems I have extra time cannot make up for, but I do get extra time if I want it. The reason I get extra time is I write extremely slow it takes me much much longer to write things out and even then my handwriting is barely legible this is due to the small motor skill problems that are a part of my particular brand of dyspraxia. I believe that in cases where you would genuinely struggle or you might not do as well as you could have because of your condition that's when it's ethical to take your time.
In my case this means on any exam that requires short answer questions or essay questions, but not for example a multiple choice exam. I actually did an experiment this term I tried to take my midterms without extra time in both of my classes, because of the nature of the first exam which did not require long answers I was barely able to finish. However, the second exam required longer answers and by half way through my hands were screaming from the pain of trying to write fast enough to finish. I did not do as well in this exam. I have decided for the second one to ask for extra time for the final exam mostly due to the pain from trying to write fast enough, but not ask for extra time on the final exam for the first class.
Each class is different the decision of whether to take your extra time to compensate for having ADHD in order to be ethical should be made on a class by class basis taking into consideration how much you believe your ADHD will effect you on the exams for that particular class. No one can make these decisions for you they are personal judgement calls.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: It depends on the subject matter. In math and physics, you are typically given way more time than you need. Most 3 hour exams can be completed in one hour or less, if you have mastered the subject perfectly. The reason why some exams are 3 hours is to minimize the failure rate due to trivial problems, like making a mistake somewhere, and then having to backtrack and start the exercise anew, causing you to not finish on time and possibly failing the exam. Only the students who don't study well will experience the time pressure during an exam.
This is why I would not ask for extra time, unless I had an handicap that causes me to to take way more time to read the problems and/or write up answers.
Upvotes: -1 |
2014/04/17 | 1,317 | 5,823 | <issue_start>username_0: Should a full professor apply for an associate professor position if it's the only way s/he might be able to continue his or her career?
The situation in question involves a person recently promoted to full professor (after 5 years as associate prof. and 5 years as assistant before that, all at the same institution). At the time of application for the assistant/associate level position, the person will have held the rank of full professor for 1 year. The person's current position entails living 2500 miles apart from spouse and elderly parents for 8-9 months each year.<issue_comment>username_1: Contact the department/institution. If a department is hiring an "Assistant Professor", they have been granted a tenure-track slot (by the Dean or Provost depending on institution). In some cases they may be willing to hire at a higher rank than advertised if the applicant already has tenure elsewhere. Some advertisements are explicit in this offer, but the possibility may be there even if it is not explicitly mentioned.
Otherwise, the person needs to do what makes them happier. If moving closer to family is more important, then the person should apply. If the option to be hired at higher rank is not possible, then the person should probably indicate that he or she is willing to be hired at a lower rank/salary for personal reasons (however, it is unethical for the potential employer to ask what these might be).
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: In Europe I have seen this multiple times. For instance, I know one assistant professor at my old university who was already a full professor at a different (granted, much lower ranked) university. I can only speculate over the reasons for this career move, but it certainly happens at least on occasion.
As for one "should" apply to a lower-ranked position - likely not for career reasons alone. However, oftentimes private reasons are at least as important as career development, and most people understand that. So if a person thinks that moving "down" one or two ranks for private reasons is the right move, he should do it.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: Of course the answer to whether you should do this depends on what "should" means, and only you can judge whether it makes sense in your own circumstances. I see two potential difficulties with getting hired into a lower rank:
1. The department may not believe you'll be OK with the demotion. For example, you might try to negotiate for a full professorship after they make a lower offer, which could slow things down and cause them to lose other candidates, or you might accept the associate professorship but feel bitter about it and keep fussing until they promote you. So you've got a tricky balancing act: you need to make it clear that a demotion is acceptable to you, without seeming desperate or inferior.
2. Nobody wants to feel like they're exploiting someone by giving them less than they deserve. In practice, the way people rationalize exploitation is by convincing themselves that it's actually justified (for example, that all people in low-paid adjunct positions are inferior scholars who don't deserve tenure-track jobs), and this rationalization doesn't necessarily have anything to do with actual facts. If you are hired from a full professorship into an associate professorship, some of your new colleagues will probably tell themselves that your promotion at your previous school was premature or based on low standards, and that now you're at the rank you should have had all along. It can be painful to go down in rank and be told it's what you deserve rather than a sacrifice you are making for personal reasons. You may decide you're OK with this reaction, but you should be prepared for it.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: Since the title of the question is general, I will mention some other cases in which people apply to academic positions below their current rank:
1. In some countries, universities hire individuals with only a Masters degree as lecturers (they may even be called professors). Those individuals may later apply to be doctoral students at a research university (often in another country with a stronger scientific background).
2. At some universities, assistant professors (who hold a Ph.D.) are given essentially no time to research, due to heavy teaching loads. It is not unusual for them to apply for postdoctoral positions at research universities, in order to have the opportunity to do more research.
In the second case, I think there is usually some prejudice against the candidate (if you're a good researcher, why didn't you get a research position already?) But I have hired one extremely good postdoc this way. In the first case, there is sometimes some prejudice, especially if it has been a long time since you got your MS degree. But I've seen many excellent students who went this route.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: I think, this just does not work in Europe, while I am not sure if they have unwritten rules or maybe even written rules. I know several people who tried to stay in science as post docs because they time-limited position of the "senior researcher" has expired, and I know post docs that were desperate enough to apply for a PhD second time - would be kind of a "dream PhD student", but such applications seem never accepted, same as applications for laboratory technicians where no degree is required.
The European scientific system is one way only. Student, PhD student, post doc, researcher, professor (head of laboratory/department). Each level is progressively more difficult to achieve with many people dropping out to industry rather than making the second step up. It may be exceptions, but I have never seen anybody making a successful step down.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/04/17 | 3,675 | 15,810 | <issue_start>username_0: This question was raised in discussion of answers on [Is it better to submit a paper to an important journal without the supervisor name or to a less important journal with the supervisor name?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/19319/is-it-better-to-submit-a-paper-to-an-important-journal-without-the-supervisor-na/19322?noredirect=1#comment40219_19322) There seemed to be a significant difference of opinion, so I'm asking it here as its own question. I'll phrase it as a hypothetical.
Suppose that researchers X, Y and Z have collaborated on a project. Each has made major contributions which were essential to its success, and would ordinarily be entitled to co-authorship on the resulting paper. However, X decides, for some reason, that she does not wish her name to appear on the paper, but she is willing for Y and Z to publish it under their names alone.
May Y and Z ethically do so?
Of course it seems clear that X must consent to have a paper published with her name on it, and she has the right to withhold that consent. It's less clear whether Y and Z may publish anyway, effectively claiming credit for X's work, even though she consents to them doing so. It could be argued in this case that Y and Z may not publish the paper at all.
Another possible concern is that, if X has the right to decline credit for her work, she could be pressured or coerced or bribed into doing so, effectively reducing her to a ghost writer.<issue_comment>username_1: I think that you need to distinguish between the case when everyone agrees that X's work requires acknowledgement as a co-author, but X is being difficult, and the case where X is uncertain or dismissive of the level of their contribution.
I was recently added, at the invitation of the primary authors, to the author list of an article in preparation based on my very last-minute contributions. I felt obliged to have a discussion with the primary authors as to whether I really should be added or should simply be acknowledged. In the end, I deferred to their judgment about the importance of my contribution and accepted their invitation. This is a perfectly natural and appropriate conversation to have.
However, if X thinks that the paper is bad as written and *refuses* to have their name associated with the work, then the remaining authors have some harder choices. They should first consider the objections or criticisms of X and see if the article can be improved. If it cannot for time or space reasons, then they should consider either offering X an acknowledgement credit at the end of the paper or whether or not they can remove X's contribution and their name from the work entirely. It's entirely possible that this may scuttle the paper submission.
I don't think that the remaining authors should submit X's work as their own if X refuses to be associated with the article in any way.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: It seems to me that if authors B and C write in the acknowledgment section that the contribution of person A was sufficiently important that they think A should be listed as an author but that A declined and especially if authors B and C provide a description of the reasons leading to A's refusal which is satisfying to A, in other words if B and C report accurately what has been happening, then no one is behaving unethically.
For a real life example, one can look at the acknowledgment section of S.Bloch and K.Kato's work on p-adic étale cohomology, the third author being in that case O.Gabber and the reason invoked (if I recall correctly) being that Gabber did not think the work was ready for publication (I'm unable to track the precise reference at the moment, it is not Bloch and Kato's article at the IHES in 1986).
UPDATE: Because I haven't been able to track the reference of Bloch-Kato, let me point out Beilinson-Bernstein-Deligne which starts with
>
> Il avait d'abord été prévu que O.Gabber soit coauteur du présent article. Il a préféré s'en abstenir, pour ne pas être coresponsable des erreurs ou imprécisions qui s'y trouvent. Il n'en est pas moins responsable de bien des idées que nous exploitons et le lecteur lui est redevable de nombreuses critiques qui, nous l'espérons, ont permis d'améliorer le manuscrit.
>
>
>
which roughly translates as
>
> It was first planned that O.Gabber would be coauthor of the present article. He chose to abstain, so as not to share the responsibility of the mistakes or imprecisions to be found in it. He is nonetheless responsible of many an idea we exploit here and the reader owes him numerous criticisms which, we hope, allowed for improvements of the manuscript.
>
>
>
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: Declining coauthorship is actually quite common behavior in my field (mathematics). It is so common that not lightly do I question its ethics. In most instances I have seen it appears rather borderline, or the ethical questions that it raises are accounted for in other ways by the profession. However, *taken to the extreme* I think it would certainly result in unethical behavior. Thus my comment questioning another comment made on <NAME>'s answer:
>
> An author **always** retains the right not to receive credit for his or her work.
>
>
>
I think this statement is clearly too strong. If you systematically pass off your work to others, you are participating in a form of plagiarism and giving (assuming that your work is good, which I will since this is the version of the practice I am familiar with) an unfair advantage to your should-be coauthors in what is now an extremely competitive academic environment.
**Stage 1**: Let's start at the extreme point: if you do all the work on a paper (or project, or thesis) and then pass it off to someone else who puts their name on the paper, I hope we can all agree that not just they but also *you* have done something deeply unethical. As I have before, I will point to [this excellent short story](http://www.all-story.com/issues.cgi?action=show_story&story_id=118&part=all) which describes an especially interesting case of this. The story describes realistically how the discovery that the main character has written the PhD thesis of his ex-girlfriend would get not just her but also him in trouble.
In this extreme case there is another ethical violation occurring: someone's name is being put on something which they did not have intellectual involvement with.
**Stage 2**: Let's imagine that a more senior author really did the work of the paper and explained it to someone more junior: possibly their own student, but it happens in another cases as well. And let's say the junior person writes up the work in the formal sense but not without a lot of help from the senior person, to the extent to which that without substantial guidance from the senior person the junior person probably would not have been able to write up the work in an acceptable way. The junior person has in some superficial sense "contributed to the work", but I would argue that really he has not. And to focus ideas let's imagine that this in a field like mathematics (or TCS, theoretical physics...) in which the idea of "valuable routine work" is largely or completely absent: e.g. the junior person did not do any interesting or independent calculations, coding and so forth.
*I* still feel that this is a serious ethical violation. If it results in the junior person getting a PhD thesis, then I feel bad about that. If this is a larger pattern of behavior and results in the junior person getting several publications which advance his career, then I feel terrible about this: I think the senior person is doing something really reprehensible.
**Stage 3**: Now imagine that the senior person had the idea for the project, had some of it worked out in advance (but not shown to the junior person), had ideas about how the implementation was to take place, but left at least some substantial part of the implementation to the junior person. Let's say the junior person did at least a substantial part of the work independently, and let's say that he did some things in a way different from what the senior person would have thought to do which is not obviously worse.
This stage is an accurate description of the relation between many thesis advisors and their students in mathematics. In mathematics this type of interaction probably most commonly results in a solo paper by the student, and the likelihood that this will occur is positively correlated with the research strength of the advisor and the department. I grew up watching this practice and therefore got used to it. Once I saw how differently other fields operate I started to wonder whether this was really ethical behavior. I think in practice it is not such a serious problem because in mathematics **who your advisor is** is known to everyone who knows you: when you meet someone new or talk about them with a colleague, "Who was his advisor?" is one of the first questions that gets asked. It is quite common for someone who got their PhD at a top mathematics department to have their first publication in a truly excellent journal on the topic of their thesis -- deep, cutting edge stuff in their advisor's field -- then a short gap, followed by other papers which are minor variants of previous work or are interesting and valuable but in a different, lower-to-the-ground field. When potential employers see this type of CV, we largely tend to think "I get it: the advisor really did much of their thesis work, and without her the candidate cannot continue doing work of the same quality." Unfortunately this might be unfair in the other direction: for instance some advisors *really don't give much direct help* to their students. That was the case for me, and luckily various people told me that my advisor has a reputation in the community for *not* doing his students' theses for them, with the result that some of his students have written much better theses than others (mine was somewhere in the middle). So it's not clear how to arrive at a "standard advisor discount". Taken the other way, sometimes you do see an eminent advisor writing a paper jointly with their student on the topic of their thesis work, and all of a sudden it becomes less clear what this means: there needs to be an explanation of this in the letter of recommendation (but the explanation is not always absolutely clear or convincing either: every student everywhere always did "at least half of the work" according to recommendation letters).
Most eminent thesis advisors regard the help that they give their student to write an excellent thesis as a one time gift, at which point they leave their former student largely alone to sink or swim. However in a small number of cases there are eminent advisors who just have that many good ideas and that generous a nature. Maybe they feel that the way to function as a leader in their field is to feed their former students the ideas they need to do first-rate work. I cannot imagine trying to tell these eminent people not to do this, but nevertheless the practice seems unfair in a competitive job market. It contributes to feelings that the top departments form a kind of elite club that, if admission is not granted by the age of 24 or so, will be almost impossible to join later in life. This is not good for the profession.
There are further stages. To be clear, starting with Stage 4 I would myself be a participant in the process (and sometimes I think I would be a better advisor if I were more onboard with Stage 3). If you're a senior person and you feel like you made what was really only an offhand remark to someone, then even if that offhand remark was crucial in the writing of their paper you are relatively unlikely to want to be a coauthor. I respect that very well and I have to: that kind of expertise and generosity is part of being a senior academic (in my field at least; I assume it's not so different elsewhere). At my relatively middling career stage I have already made plenty of remarks to others that have resulted in acknowledgments in their paper, and I have already turned down at least one offer of coauthorship. And there was one relatively recent case where I offered coauthorship to a very senior person: he declined, roughly because he had almost forgotten the remarks he had made to me about five years (!!) before. I hadn't, and they were crucial to writing what for me is a very good paper. So there is a continuum here and many judgment calls to make; I want to be clear about that. But I also think that we should draw the line somewhere before "An author **always** retains the right not to receive credit for his or her work."
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: The purpose of publishing a paper should be the dissemination of knowledge and not merely the attribution of credit to the right persons for its discovery. If the authors Y and Z believe that the work is of any importance whatsoever to the scientific community, it would be unethical for them to NOT find a way to publish it. Such considerations could override some of the considerations of fairness of attribution that many here seem to be concerned about.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: This is exactly the reason why care must be taken when inviting some other researcher into team for collaboration. If he has once been written as a co-author, he has a certain right to block the publication of the shared work. This may or may not be fair.
As a result, it is better to invite additional researchers only if they can contribute some substantial new results or perhaps some type of analysis that is difficult to do without they help (writing and evaluating some complex mathematical model about results, for instance). In such cases, the contributed part can be identified and removed, publishing without it.
Differently, if the invited researcher contributed in general discussions and planning over all project, there is no clear way to get rid of such contribution easily. Then all that remains is to negotiate, if all sides agree to publish with the fewer authors, maybe that is ok.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_6: In a comment on the earlier thread, I claimed that a co-author always has the right not to receive credit for work done with respect to a particular paper. I believe this is because there are certain rights and responsibilities that researchers have with respect to publications. Particularly relevant here is the right to receive appropriate credit for their work.
However, associated with any right is also the option **not to exercise** said right. For instance, author X may believe that co-worker Y has contributed enough to merit co-authorship. If Y chooses to decline co-authorship, this does not prevent author X from publishing the paper.
At the same time, by exercising the right to co-authorship comes additional responsibilities. Among those is the responsibility to participate actively and constructively in the preparation of the manuscript. It is unethical to insist on co-authorship for the purposes of scuttling a manuscript through inaction.
In general, though, none of the above places the restriction on authors *voluntarily* relinquishing intellectual property rights to the paper (that is, not have their names appear as co-authors, but still allowing the manuscript to proceed). They also have the right to "take their marbles and go home"—essentially withdraw from the complete process, which can of course be much more difficult in collaborative projects involving multiple groups.
In short: authors have the right to accept credit, and the right **not** to accept credit, but must accept the consequences of that decision.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/04/17 | 941 | 3,553 | <issue_start>username_0: I have a research problem in an area of Mathematics. There is mathematician whose domain of expertise is very near to the subject of my problem.
I read frequently his works, he probably doesn't know me. But it is possible that he has seen some of my works. He is a senior mathematician. I am junior.
Anyway we don't know each other and because of geographical and other considerations, I don't think we have the occasion to meet each other in a conference or workshop in new future. I am scientifically isolated in my country as nobody works in my area, finding funds for participating in conferences and workshops is also very difficult. So the only possibility of a collaboration that I envisage is doing by email.
I am very optimistic that my problem interests him and if we collaborate, the result would be very fruitful. I have had some experiences to do scientific collaboration with some people that I knew by email. But the story with this mathematician is different because we don't know each other personally.
I feel that sending an email saying that my name is X and I am interested in the question Y, I would be glad if you are interested to work on this problem is not perhaps the best approach.
What is the best strategy to maximize the chance of starting a scientific collaboration with him? How I can formulate my request of doing a scientific collaboration with him? Is it wise to 'reveal' my problem while I don't know if there is a chance of collaboration?<issue_comment>username_1: **Be specific and brief, with a clear action item.**
* bad:
>
> My name is X and I'm interested in Y, and I'm hoping you'd be interested in working with me.
>
>
>
* slightly better:
>
> My name is X, and I'm interested in Y. I read your recent papers on Foo1, foo2, and foo3, and I was wondering whether you thought Theorem eleventy-seven in your paper on foo2 could apply to the problem of Y''.
>
>
>
* much better:
>
> My name is X, and I'm interested in Y. I read your recent papers on Foo1, foo2, and foo3. I had an idea about how to apply theorem eleventy-seven in your foo2 paper to Y'', by inserting the well known lemma Bar1, and Bar2. I was wondering if you were aware of approaches that have tried this? I looked at refs 1–157 and didn't see anything relevant.
>
>
> I'd love to chat more about this if you're interested.
>
>
>
Again, your mileage may vary. There are cultural variations, personal variations and so on. But I’ve had success with emails of this kind.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_2: Could I suggest:
>
> My name is *X* and I am a\the junior mathematician at the *University
> of Somewhere*. My credentials available at
> *www.some-academic-site.ac.xz*. I am researching *numbers* and have some of your papers, *foo*, *bar* and *baz*.
>
>
> I think that your work on *special numbers* would greatly helpful and
> hoped you would be willing to correspond with my on how this relates
> to my own work on *some different numbers*. I have enclosed a brief
> summary of my work, and how it relates to your own.
>
>
> Any help would be greatly appreciated.
>
>
> Yours Faithfully
>
>
> *my name*
>
>
>
Unsolicited mail needs to be interesting to the participant, and it's integrity verifiable, hence the inclusion of your academic credentials, work you have done and proof that it does indeed correlate\support etc your own work. (You also show that you have actually done work, and this isn't some attempt to get someone else to do work for you)
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/04/17 | 1,229 | 5,345 | <issue_start>username_0: I am a Math PhD student at a US university. I have made a decision on who I want to work with for my PhD, but I was made aware that the professor in question is going on a sabbatical next year, to be spent in a different university (not in close proximity). What is the best way to approach a potential advisor in such a situation? I have not yet asked the "question", but have met with the professor in question multiple times on research related issues.<issue_comment>username_1: I think the situation is volatile, depending on the communication skills/inclinations of the faculty person. I.e., do they do email often-and-effectively? If so, there's scant obstacle. But, on the opposite hand, if the only way they communicate effectively is face-to-face, then this would be a bad situation.
And it depends of course equally on your own capacity to communicate effectively by a medium where there're no facial expressions, no body language, and... many people seem to be slow to see this... committing questions or comments to email disallows remarks like "Oh, I don' get it" that seem ok in conversation. Thus, one must exert more effort to compose an email than to make a vague verbal remark in person. This is not at all a bad thing... unless the net effect is significant inhibition of communication, in which case one should re-consider one's mode of operation.
On the whole, some risk here, but, if both parties' communications chops are good, it could be as productive as any.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: It's not uncommon for professors on sabbatical leave to bring their graduate advisees who are at the thesis writing stage with them for the sabbatical leave. I've seen this particularly at some of the NSF funded research centers that I've visited. However, if you haven't yet started working with this professor, and especially if you have significant course work left to complete, then it probably makes more sense for you to stay where you are, take course work and perhaps get started working with your advisor via email, internet teleconferences, etc.
I think you should meet with your prospective advisor and ask him/her whether they would like to take you on as an advisee or not. If they're willing to take you as an advisee, then they'll probably have some plan for you.
You haven't discussed your funding situation. If you're currently working as a TA, then you obviously couldn't expect this funding to continue at another university. If your advisor will fund you as an RA, then it may well be possible to take this funding with you to the other university. Another possibility is that your advisor might be able to arrange for you to get funding from the other institution.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: Adding to what has already been said about communication and funding, from experience, it will strongly depend on at what stage your PhD project is. In my case, my advisor was away during the last 12 months preceding my graduation and it made the collaboration a lot harder resulting in some frustration and delays.
If this situation happens at the beginning of your work, it might be less of an issue. Unless your work includes laboratory experiments for which it's usually critical to have close supervision.
Some of the points you could discuss when you bring up the subject:
* is the supervisor willing and capable of using a videoconference software, securing a decent connection and decent hardware to run the thing (don't laugh, you'd be surprised how many highly educated people are clueless when it comes to this)?
* is she/he ready to schedule regular calls (eg. once every two weeks)?
* Are plans to visit an option? if yes, can funding be secured for that?
One thing I did was to send updates in the form of screencasts, or videos with slides and audio describing the work, or videos of me in front of a white board. That seemed to be appreciated by my supervisor and triggered the most fruitful feedbacks.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: Here is a possibility to consider: ask for a coadvisor, or ask for someone on your thesis committee to take a slightly more active role in mentoring your research while your advisor is on sabbatical. Even if the coadvisor is not strong in your area, they should be able to read the signs of what progress you are making and advise you generally on what to change, even if they cannot make technical comments. Further, it will prepare them for giving a better critical evaluation of your thesis as you will have spent some time talking to them about it. (If you do follow this route, it is incumbent on you to make things transparent and as easy as possible for all involved. In particular let both advisors know what meetings you had, what you discussed, etc. Having a semi-private blog to record this may be useful.)
Of course, this is very situation dependent, and may not be the best answer for you. The point is that the doctorate is your responsibility, and if you can't or don't follow your advisor physically, you need to do what you need to do to finish the degree, which can involve a lot of creative thinking and work on your part (and hopefully not much extra on the part of the system: you can't expect the world to change for you as much as you should expect to change the world).
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/04/18 | 2,154 | 8,824 | <issue_start>username_0: I am asking because I work for a **non-for-profit academic hospital** where the vast majority of the funding comes, one way or another, from the taxpayer. It is certainly possible, actually encouraged, for us to file for patents should we find some new way to diagnose or predict disease progression.
But, I will mention this again, we are funded by the taxpayer so we are already getting a salary and resources to do our work from them. Is it filing a patent and consequently delaying the publication of our research in order to find out a way to commercialise the work something that could be considered ethical?<issue_comment>username_1: Yes it is ethical.
The patent will typically be owned by the institute and it will get most of the revenues (this is why they encourage it). The inventors usually get some form of compensation. Revenues from commercialization is partially how your salaries can be payed and could in fact *save* tax-payers money.
More importantly, developing a new diagnostic or therapy will in the end improve the lives of the general public (and even save lives in many cases). Currently, due to the immense costs involved, the only way to get a new therapy to the public is in a commercial setting.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I understand the answer above, but a follow on question I'd ask is: is it ethical to keep this 'good idea' away from other scientists, who indeed might be able to make better progress on it than only the idea generator themselves?
It seems to me that the end goal of all of this should be patient care, and to best benefit this, my opinion is that publication in an open access forum is the first, and most important way forward. I understand that without the protection of a patent, businesses can't be built, and indeed, that our whole society is based on this concept of capitalism. But, it doesn't jive with my sensibilities as a physician.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Thinking more on this, I have come to agree that patenting things - devices, or drugs - is necessary. However, I wonder if this question would be answered differently if the thing being patented is, instead, a model? For example, would it have been appropriate for Krebs to patent the eponymously named Krebs cycle as a way to think about energy metabolism in a cell? Or the cell cycle? Or, could the inventor of the SIR model of infectious disease spread have ethically patented that method of tracking infectious diseases?
Upvotes: 2 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: Yes, definitely patent it else if you publish and if idea is good other companies will develop and make product out of it and will patent all the process around it, and later charge for their product based on their market position. In the end the tax payers money would generate profits for companies which could be anywhere in world. If its patented and the hospital holds ownership/shares, and later licenses it you would have generated extra revenue for public institution a return to society instead of companies.
On other extreme considering similar idea comes to other person working in big company and if they file it before you, you loose everything you may still publish it but you are not the first, and the worst case you/society will have to pay for it. So secure with patent as soon you are in stage you can defend the patent application. See it as way of getting money back to government for their investment in research.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_4: This is actually a very tough question to answer (what is appropriate, that is what is just). You can even go back and wonder about patents themselves and some of the misbehavior associated with them (patent trolls, submarine patents, "business process" patents, etc.) Then there are copyrights and the (literal) Mickey Mouse extension in duration. However, this is a real rathole to dive down (moral justice).
Instead of dwelling on justice question may advice is to reframe a little and think about what is legal and what is customary. ***Basically our society has decided to allow these patenting behaviors. The rationale (not saying if I agree or not, just sharing the concept) is that by $$ incentivizing researchers (even those already getting state funding) that the benefit is worth the cost.***
However, there are obvious differences where the research is in areas of national security (and even publication may be limited). Also industry almost always makes paid researchers sign over their rights for discoveries as part of the employment contract. So obviously other models are possible. [However, these researchers generally have higher salaries. And higher job security, at least versus grad students.] So, obviously other models are possible.
My advice is not to get too flustered by the moral issues here and just deal with the system as is (in your institution). Also, note that the VAST majority of patents don't earn any money. If anything there is a little bit of a game with more senior researches (in academia and industry) being better able to get the IP department to spend more time/money pushing their patents through the system. The reason for this is prestige, not economic value.
For a practical example, the institution I worked in (academia) had a policy that some fraction of the value accrued to the school and some to the researchers. BUT if they decided not to spend the money on a patent filing, than you could do it on your own and get all the value. This created possibility of perverse behavior where if you really discover lighting in a bottle, you would want to DOWNPLAY it, but disclose it.
I did push one patent through the system, described above. It was not lighting in a bottle but I felt like it was closer to a real innovation and had greater likelihood of $$ earnings than some of the stuff the senior faculty was pushing through [one name professor was the husband of the head of the IP department...surprise, surprise, he was the leading patenter on campus!] Or at least that was the story I told myself when dressing up my research and convincing the IP department to spend the money. ;-)
Some final related practical advice.
1. If you push a patent, get a copy of Patent it Yourself (Nolo Press). Don't actually patent it yourself...use an agent (preferably on someone else's dime). But it will give you the basics of how things work.
2. Read a few (include them in your lit searches).
3. Learn how to write one. The patent agent will still "write it" but they do a lot better job when a researcher has done the meat of the work ahead of time. Better patents are sort of like lab reports with description of examples, materials of construction, testing, etc.
I actually just gave the agent a draft. I see bad things happen when people just dump some drawings or figures onto an agent. He knows some things you don't about patent law but he can mess up the science/engineering logic and this can cause issues during the patent office examination or if the patent is ever litigated. [This could be a personal thing though...I take the same attitude with publications...write them myself so it is the way I want it.]
4. Also, there is a sort of way of justifying things. "It is well known in the literature that technique A can be used to get effect B but at the cost of issues C. Issue C is a serious hindrance in trade (cite). We present a new method by mixing some D in with the A to get effect B, with a 50% decrease in C."
5. Buy and read the book Laser: [https://www.amazon.com/Laser-Inventor-Laureate-Thirty-Year-Patent/dp/0595465285](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0595465285) The book describes a grad student who had a 30 year patent battle over who invented the laser. He "won" (perhaps it was settle, but I think he prevailed) because he had gotten his lab notebook notarized by a drugstore clerk! Few practical lessons from that: use your notebook, know when you have lightning in a bottle (almost literally in his case) and be prepared for some fight if the thing is actually worth something.
6. I have had a patent fail because it was a year after publication. (I misjudged the time because I didn't realize Chem Abstracts was considered publication and was just thinking about the "real journal". So don't cut things too close. [That said, in all likelihood, you are just an academic trying to get prestige, so figure out how to get both a publication and a patent out of the research.]
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_5: Most patents loose money. You should not use taxpayer money to fund a patent that will loose money.
<https://www.allbusiness.com/97-percent-of-all-patents-never-make-any-money-15258080-1.html>
<https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2014/06/18/13633/#3cf5de626f1c>
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/04/18 | 1,535 | 5,899 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm an undergraduate mathematics student finishing my degree. I plan to go to grad school, and ultimately aspire to become a professor. I really like tattoos, but I'm hesitant to get one because it could affect my future job.
Of course, if I did get one, it would be discrete and innocent. What I really want is the axioms from ZFC wrapped around my upper arm.
I'm very interested in hearing people's thoughts on tattoos in the workplace, particularly from people who work in mathematics. Do you think it is acceptable? How would you judge someone based on their tattoos? Do any of you have tattoos? What are your experiences?<issue_comment>username_1: I don't have any tattoos, and I work in CS, which may be a little more relaxed than mathematics. I would have no negative reaction to seeing someone with a tattoo, and would merely be somewhat envious :).
I've had colleagues who wandered barefoot in the hallways, and others who rarely showed up in anything other t-shirts and shorts.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: Tattoos that can be easily concealed in sensitive times (during interviewing, etc.) should never be a problem. Further, academia is in general a pretty tolerant place when it comes to looks. As username_1 says, we are used to much weirder things in terms of look than a small tattoo. You'll be fine.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: You cannot live your life according to other people's illogical rules, as to what you are going to do with your body, hair, clothes, skin. Standing out from the rest of the crowd, either being prettier, cooler, having long-hair, tattoos, working-out is always a double edged sword for all work environments. Some people will like you more and respond to you positively, other will hate your guts. As other answers have stated, Academia is one of the most tolerant workspace you may encounter. So, you probably will not have a problem either way.
"Raising a flag" by showing hints of your real personality (besides your academic achievements) may also make other (academic or not) people approach you easier. In this way, it might also help in some cases. As for the others who respond negatively, who would really want to collaborate with someone, who judges people strictly by their looks?
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_4: In this day and age in America, I think most people are so accustomed to seeing tattoos in different settings - including academia and the workplace - that it's not an issue at all. In your case, especially something that shows your passion for math, I don't see it being a problem. I got my undergrad in Math. My career is a Unix sysadmin. I work in Silicon Valley at a large internet company, and quite a number of engineers and programmers here have tattoos. I personally have tattoos but they are mostly on my upper arms and get hidden by my shirts.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: The answer is, unfortunately: It Depends. There are indeed people who will judge you on a tat or piercing or other body mod, just as there are people who will judge you if you come to work in ripped jeans and a T-shirt with three different colors of housepaint and a layer of cat fur. This tends to be less of an issue in places where you either aren't dealing with customers who might react badly, or are expected to be a bit eccentric; academia and "research" types can get away with more than folks in the main line of business can, and sales personnel are generally expected to be well-turned-out but otherwise non-distracting so the customer can concentrate on the transaction.
If it isn't something that's displayed during the interview or at work, it's unlikely to ever be an issue. If you want it more visible, you are gambling. It's not a major risk, but don't assume it's 100% harmless.
And of course a tat which implies you're involved with anything resembling a violent or hateful group is likely to get you invited to interview elsewhere.
Basically: Don't be stupid. If you do it, get something tasteful, don't shove it in people's faces and force them to react when they'd really rather not deal with it, and for gods' sake don't get a tat until you've wanted the same design for at least a full year. (If in any doubt, friends who do skin art tell me, consider a temporary and see if you keep buying and re-applying it.)
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: I believe Tattoos are a great way for self expression and shouldn't be restricted,having said a person with visible tattoos are frowned upon in the academia/ business circles. I am a PhD Student in the US and my professor has a small tattoo on his hand. I guess small tattoos are ok, but bigger graphic ones maynot be a good idea.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_7: I think that many here have made great points, but having worked in academia (administrative) for many years, currently it would be ill advised for you to get a tattoo (small or big, classy or otherwise, provocative or mundane) that is visible or has the potential to be visible. Most search committee are still old fashioned today; I hope that once you are on one, you'll work to change this bias, but in my opinion, as for now, it still stands.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_8: Like this one (not mine)? I guess it won't make you any problems.
In most places in academia people do not care that much how you look (~~as long as you dress decently~~). But it may depend on the culture of a particular place.
However, the aesthetics, size and content of the tattoo may matter.
You referred to a geeky tattoo, but if the tattoo associates you with a group that is (even subconsciously) looked down in academia (e.g. that is which is, or is perceived as, expressing unpopular views, being less or anti-intellectual, etc) - it might be a different story.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/04/18 | 1,581 | 6,974 | <issue_start>username_0: In general, you can find the past exams for the past 15 years or so at my school. However I had one prof in Calculus III who chose to withhold his exams. This was the only instance in which a prof has chosen to do so in my two years at university studying engineering. His justification was that he didn't want students studying exams rather than the actual course material which I find to be interesting.
As a student, I notice that solving past exams from the same instructor as practice can be helpful for a couple of reasons:
* it helps you get accustomed to the instructor's style of exam so you're less nervous when you're writing the actual exam. I find that even seeing the familiar cover page helps in calming me down just before an exam starts.
* it helps you figure out what type of questions the instructor likes to put the focus on (i.e instructor A prefers to put conceptual questions, instructor B hasn't put a question on the laplace transform in 5 years so maybe I'll study that later if I have time, instructor C always has a 2nd-order circuit as question 1, etc...)
Of course, the 2nd point is exacly why my calculus instructor chose to withhold his exams. But at the same time, some students may benefit if they use them responsibly as challenging practice problems without jeopardizing their learning experience (i.e someone with the mentality of "I know instructor B hasn't put a question on the laplace transform in 5 years, but I need to study it anyway because it's important"). Most of my other instructors release their past final exams, but do not post full solutions (or full solutions to just last year's exam). A few have chosen to release just the final answers to the questions without the full solution.
*Is it better for the students if the instructors released the past final exams? What about full solutions (or just final answers) to the finals exams? Are there studies that show if one strategy is better than another?*
I understand that the answers and arguments may vary depending on the field so I should add that I am particularly interested in an answer for the fields of mathematics, science, and engineering.<issue_comment>username_1: Availability of worked answers/past papers etc should ideally be consistent across all sections of all courses within a given degree program, be it a pure STEM subject or a dual award/tripos structure. Anything else risks the level playing field that supposedly exists. In practice the only way to ensure fairness is to let all the information be freely available.
E.g. I went to a collegiate university, and found that the availability of past papers, worked solutions, already completed lecture notes (my courses typically had handouts that had gaps to be filled in at the lecture) varied between the colleges. The variation was most prominent in engineering, where some colleges had access to past students notes and solutions to problems as well as past papers, all of which had been scanned and uploaded to the intranet, some had access only to past papers, and some had no such access.
Obviously this creates quite a disparity in the amount of material one has to look over to understand a concept or problem and furthermore, with access to such material crucially one learns how to best layout an answer for maximum marks, something that wasn't otherwise shown. If papers/worked solutions are formally withheld, you can almost guarantee that some will be available informally to some small part of the student group through connections to higher years (in this case collegiate). This results in an advantage unrelated to your actual ability in comprehension and implementation which is the supposed testing target of university exams.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: I don't have an opinion on releasing solutions, but the exams should definitely be released. Some students will have access to them through previous students, one way or another. Making them officially available makes sure everyone has the same access.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: I would strongly say *yes*.
Personally, I am very unconvinced by this argument:
>
> His justification was that he didn't want students studying exams rather than the actual course material which I find to be interesting.
>
>
>
Why is there a mismatch between the course material and the exams? This angers students and doesn't accomplish anything. Well-designed exams don't admit shortcuts, but rather force the students to learn the material which the instructor wants to teach.
It is human nature to respond to carrots and sticks --- ask anyone employed as a personal trainer. These carrots and sticks can be lined up with whatever intrinsic goals the instructor wants to promote.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: The question seems to assume that all professors write completely new exams every semester and never reuse an exam question. That's not the case for me, and I don't know of any colleague who does so. In fact, many people at my school use the same stack of photocopied exams over and over, because they don't want to be bothered with the extra work of making fresh copies. I usually write some new questions every time, but I also recycle a lot of questions -- the recycled questions usually constitute the majority of the questions.
Aside from laziness, there are positive educational advantages to reusing questions. Sometimes it is difficult to predict how students will do on a particular question, and most teachers find that they systematically underestimate difficulty. If I've used a question before, I have some idea of how students will do on it.
If any questions are being reused, then it doesn't make sense to release 100% of old exams. Some students will acquire third-party solutions to the problems. (There are sophisticated for-profit web sites that do this sort of thing worldwide.) The students who do this will have an unfair advantage over those who don't.
In a STEM subject that focuses on problem-solving, such as physics or math, it's not necessary to make old exams available so that students can see what kind of questions are likely to be asked. They can tell this from the problem sets that were assigned.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: Since you cannot prevent students from writing down from memory the questions they just got on an exam -
### Yes, the only coherent choice is to fully release these exams
Otherwise, you're just putting an artificial barrier before this release: The barrier of someone coming to the exam and wasting some of his/her time copying its contents. Or of having a student with eidetic memory simply take the exam as usual, then reproduce it later. Any half-decent student union would get these exams (re)produced and publish them, possibly with solutions, as a service to its members. That's what happens in my Alma Mater, anyway - they had a nice store of printed exam booklets.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/04/18 | 960 | 3,961 | <issue_start>username_0: I have some continuing misunderstandings with my advisor. For some time I am actually doing my research as a one man show, but due to my faults and a lot of work I still did not finish my PhD. I am paid by him, so I still need to have good relations with him.
However, he often gets some real and spam "invitations" to journals and conferences and he always tends to send my work there (he doesn't have more or less anything else). The problems is these journals are often fake journals like from the SCIRP publishing. I managed once persuade him not to send the payment a year ago, but now they wrote him again and he sent them the money and came to me to say that they accepted our article. I do not particularly like to have my name in these "journals".
A similar problems is with conferences. Maybe this one is not that bad– I am even not able to google this random conference about everything in Gdansk now, but they promise publications indexed by ISI or SCOPUS – but I already submitted the paper to two conferences (two disjunct parts of it) I chose and I want to publish it in a good journal from one of them or some other one. I don't know if the extended paper from that conference my boss wants to visit might spoil the better publication.
I also forgot to say he puts himself as a first author. But actually, he writes the complete article himself, but he doesn't have full access to my data, just a couple of graphs and images, so the quality of the articles is not that good, and I prefer not to waste my time to edit articles to these strange places, so it is probably better I am not the first author.
How can I persuade my advisor NOT to publish my work in these 'fake' conferences?<issue_comment>username_1: You can easily argument that you opt to publish in A1 journal papers and P1 indexed proceedings and thus only the connected conferences. If your work is good enough though, or if you are willing to invest the time to make the effort.
Take a look at the impact factor of the journal and see if they (as well as proceedings btw) are in the [ISI web of knowledge/science list](http://webofknowledge.com).
You can also use this tool: [publish or perish](http://www.harzing.com/pop.htm) to check the impact of journals/proceedings (it works in win, osx and with wine in linux).
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: I've heard similar tales. The realistic side: you can fret, tell your advisor he should try for a better journal, change advisors, or bring it up as an ethics violation.
Yet none of those will get your thesis finished.
You need to concentrate on finishing your thesis. & if that means you need to stop all other projects, then that's what you do. Apparently, you're sidetracking...writing other papers, in addition to your thesis? Or, is it that your advisor has a lot of paper ideas (or you get enthusiastic about new ideas and present the ideas to your advisor?) and you've been very willing to work on more projects? (This can be a double-edged sword...tempting to get involved in several papers/studies, but it keeps you away from your thesis)
You should have a list of journals that are acceptable to you (starting from the best, elite journals to good solid B journals), why are you waiting for your advisor to send YOUR work to a conference or a publication ? Based on your description of the issue, these papers are actually coauthored (with your advisor)- your advisor did the writing, with some of your data.
Now that creates a slightly different problem,
-- and it is one you will have to resolve (maybe repeatedly) for your entire career. Some coauthors will send a paper anywhere..because some schools don't care where the paper is presented or published (oh, those schools will prefer elite journals, but at many schools, quantity is more important than quality).
My suggestion: finish the thesis. Don't show any other work to your advisor.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer] |
2014/04/18 | 803 | 3,428 | <issue_start>username_0: While most European doctoral courses require its applicants to hold master's degree, many doctoral courses in US often do not. In these graduate schools, by satisfying conditions set by the schools, students advance to candidacy, when the school may or may not grant them master's degree.
Suppose the school does not. Then, can a Ph.D. candidate at the school be admitted to a European doctoral course, which usually require its applicants to have master's degree?<issue_comment>username_1: Although the term "PhD candidate" is used in both continents, a Ph.D program in the USA comprises of: Master (2 years) + Doctorate (3 years), meaning it takes at least 5 years, whereas in Europe comprises of just the latter: Doctorate (3 years). This means that yes, a Master's degree *or something deemed equivalent or superior* is required to enter the doctoral course in Europe. The fact that it's "not required" in the US is an illusion, it's just because the Master's is (sort of) included IN the Ph. D program. In the end you will get your Ph. D degree at around the same age than students in Europe.
If your University in the USA does not deliver a Master's degree per se, you will have to check with the prospective university in Europe to see whether they will count your research experience (preferably 1-2 years of lab research after your 4-year Bachelor's, which you could sum up in something that looks like a Master's thesis) as being *equivalent or superior* to a Master's degree. I believe it is case by case.
Also, please keep in mind that some countries like France require you to have a scholarship or to secure some kind of funding prior to admission to cover your living expenses for the entirety of the Doctorate (3 years) since Ph.D candidates have a status similar to paid staff.
The UK is probably one of the only countries in the world where it's OK to do just a Doctorate (3 years) right after your Bachelor's (=if you compare to other countries, you could say it means skipping the 2 years of Master's), however, I don't think this is highly valued on the international market, unless you managed to end up with the same amount of work and publications than the people who did Master (2 years) + Doctorate (3 years).
//Speaking for science majors//
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: One should note that the reason why there's such a big difference between the US and the European systems is the way master's degrees are handled. In the US, the master's degree is viewed as a "graduate" degree, to be completed after the bachelor's study, which is effectively independent. In Europe, however, the bachelor's degree is largely considered a precursor to the master's degree, which is normally done in succession after the bachelor's degree is complete. Doctoral candidates (post-master's) in Europe do not normally have significant coursework requirements associated with the degree.
Consequently, for most PhD positions in Europe, a master's degree is considered a prerequisite. The exception to this are programs that are more or less patterned after the US model, in which a master's degree is acquired as part of a larger PhD program. However, even in these programs, the acquisition of the master's degree is not merely "an option," as it is in many US programs. Instead, it is a necessary component of what amounts to a dual-degree program.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/04/18 | 2,435 | 10,305 | <issue_start>username_0: This year I have decided to take a Computer Science course on FLVS, an online learning institution.
Throughout the whole year, I worked well, and I had a lot of fun with the course. I was close to finishing the second semester of it, and I randomly lost access to the course. I was surprised to find out that they took a some of my assignments (about 6~7), and they flagged me for academic integrity, claiming that I used the answers from an online answer source. Another problem is that because it's so many assignments, they have kicked me out of the course, without me even communicating with them the issue.
My teacher had no idea about this, and she can't do anything about it. She told me to talk to academic integrity themselves. I now have a 0 for the course, and I'm very angry, and I have no idea what to do. I can show them I didn't cheat by answering on the phone any questions they have, and I've already studied for the exam and I plan on taking it, and I'm very confident I can get a good grade. I've also used the knowledge I've learned from the course, and I've created iPhone applications as well as games and other software.
I've left the academic integrity team a message stating that I need to speak with them ASAP, but how can I communicate to them that I didn't plagiarize the work?
---
**UPDATE:** I have done some research as to how I present my case, and I found a couple things regarding appeals. FLVS claims that its so called "academic integrity" team is fair and not biased and they utilize a lot of technology to ensure that their claims are as factual as possible, such as [www.turnitin.com](http://www.turnitin.com). I have found a Customer Support number that I can voice my concerns to, so I'm going to present my case to them.
**UPDATE #2:** After speaking with customer support (see update above), the person on the other line wrote down my grievance in an email, and she sent it to the academic integrity people. I also received a copy of the email. She told me she's sorry for my problem and that I should expect a call in the next 48-72 business hours. Hopefully I will fix this.
**UPDATE #3:** We had a long talk with the academic integrity team yesterday, and apparently (I had no knowledge of this) they claim I have copied work from my twin brother Varun from about 20 assignments. Going through these assignments, there seems to be evidence of similar code, but that's because certain instance variables and functions had to be created as per the assignment's instructions, but the overall design of the program is different. They also say that we had the same typesetting (meaning me and him had the same spacing and tabs and white space), although we're both very experienced programmers, and we follow the conventional format of tabbing and spacing. I'm most likely going to court :D.
**UPDATE #4:** This is the best part. After talking we academic integrity before (see above update), we decided to check all of the assignments she flagged and come up with legitimate reasons as to why I didn't cheat on them. After coming up with a long list, we sent an email to the academic integrity people and told them that we came up with a lot of reasons as to why we didn't copy, so she said that she would call us in a couple of days. After 2 days, she sends another email stating that her reasons are legitimate, according to her "boss", and that she won't discuss the issue any further. I am now super angry about this, and I have legitimate reasons as to how I didn't cheat. She won't tell me anything, and my teachers haven't returned any of my calls. I really hate FLVS.<issue_comment>username_1: There are a few steps you can take, but the specifics depend on the individual institution and its procedures:
1. **Find out what evidence is behind this accusation.** Presumably when you talk to this "academic integrity team," they will tell you more specifically why they think you cheated. Once you have a chance to find out what their evidence for this accusation is, you will be in a position to show them how they made a mistake.
2. **Find out what the institution's official policy is for appealing accusations of academic integrity.** This depends on the individual institution's policies. When you speak to the "academic integrity team," you can ask them directly what the appeal procedure is.
3. **Find out what the general grievance procedure is.** If you don't have a good experience with the "academic integrity team" (e.g. they did not give you a fair chance to appeal the accusation), you should find out what procedures your institution has in place for voicing grievances in general, and you can pursue these if necessary.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: One main aspect of the law is "innocent until proven otherwise". That said it is them who need to proof that you plagiarized. First thing I would do would be to speak to them, explain that you strongly disagree with their decision, and that you want to see their proof to analyze it.
Once you have that proof try to figure out how good it is. If it only contains partial similarities, point out to them that given the amount of articles on the Internet, it is actually very likely that parts of your work look similar to the work of someone else, even though you never read it. That would not be a proof that you copied something, only a hint at best.
If large passages of your text are similar or identical to what someone else wrote, you have a problem. At this point you can only hope that they believe you or you have to take a lawyer and hope for the best.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: People seem confused between criminal law and rules and regulations of an institution.The universities can do whatever the hell they want because they make their own rules, and the law allows them to do that. So **learn the rules**:
1. You need to get the assessment regulations and all the related policies you find and then read them
2. See if your uni has an advice place and see what they have to tell you.
3. If the Country of your Uni have any Freedom of Information laws. Request everything related to this problem formally and in writing that is, meeting minutes, emails related regulations and rules etc. Your brother may wish to do the same.
4. Learn the appeals process and be prepared to use it.
5. You may wish to counter with something offensive like a complaint - Get a copy of the complaint policy from your uni...
6. Find out what happens when the internal process is exhausted - that is, when you either hand over your case to an advocate or go to court if your issue still has not been resolved and the two parties (you and the uni) still disagree.
I don't think they have a leg to stand on if it's white space or coding style, but if I were you I would get a `git diff` of the related assignments of yours and your brother's to see for yourself what you are up against. Moreover, if the `git diff` does support your story by suggesting the content of the assignments are different in every regard but style as suggested, then that is evidence right there.
Aside: the uni should not really be reusing assignments used in previous years for assessed work, so many people cheat when that happens by getting the answers off someone else who has already taken that class.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: I had to deal with a misconduct case involving twins once. I did not consider it odd that twins should have the same handwriting and approach things similarly. Even though they deserved the benefit of the doubt, the instructor was ready to die on this hill and had their HoD's backing (this was a cross-departmental case, spare you the messy intricacies). I advised the twins to just stomach the very possibly unfair accusation and made sure that the other department involved would know to treat this condemnation as the nonsense it was. It was a bad compromise and I regret not having been firmer.
Twins, work harder to avoid any semblance of wrong-doing! Do not always have to team up with your twin sub on every assignment! It is not fair but our world is twin-ignorant!
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_5: #### Before worrying about evidence, focus first on due process
The primary issue here ---before you get to any evidentiary matters--- is basic due process. Universities should have misconduct procedures that provide due process to the person accused of wrong-doing, and that should generally entail that you are informed of what you are accused of doing and given an opportunity to respond prior to any findings of fact and resulting punishment.
Legal requirements for due process differ depending on what country/jurisdiction you are in and the legal status of the university (i.e., is it public, private, etc.). Nevertheless, most jurisdictions impose some kind of legal requirement for due process on universities in regard to their internal disciplinary procedures. (Other answers here suggesting that universities can do whatever they want are false.) In particular, public universities are subject to administrative law rules in regard to their internal decision-making, including rules on due process. To give an example of this legal position, in US public universities a person who is subject to a university disciplinary procedure is generally entitled to notice of the allegations against them and a description of the evidence for those allegations (see e.g., *Dixon v. Alabama State Board of Education* 294 F.2d 150 and later legal cases elaborating on that).
Now, as to what to do, here is some [general advice for dealing with a complaint of cheating/misconduct](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/159148/w159149#159149). The main thing to note in the present case is that you are getting ahead of yourself by worrying about evidentiary matters prior to knowing exactly what the allegations are. The first thing you need to do is to put your university on notice that you expect due process in this matter, and that you would like them to inform you (in writing) of the allegations against you and the nature of the evidence for those allegations. As others have pointed out, "proving your innocence" is nowhere near the first step of this process.
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/04/18 | 1,513 | 5,738 | <issue_start>username_0: I have very little formal training, but I believe I have some ideas to share. I have surveyed the terrain of ideas I need and have the complete picture in some haphazard form in my head. It is seeming quite impossible for me to write anything that looks good, complete and coherent. In attempting to do this I have read my previous draft and it seems hopeless... I am not sure what I can do, at this point. I'm not in a hurry, I can spend a month on the text to get the technique right. More specifically:
* Is there a text that trains you on how to write a mathematical physics paper?
* Is it possible to acquire such skills informally?<issue_comment>username_1: Some resources on writing mathematics, which I assume will be useful in mathematical physics, are:
<NAME>, <NAME>, and <NAME>, *Mathematical Writing*, (Washington, D.C.: Mathematical Association of America, 1989), ii+115pp. ISBN 0-88385-063-X. [You can download this (minus illustrations) from Knuth's website: <http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/klr.html> ]
<NAME>, "How to write mathematics". *Enseignement Math.* (2) 16 1970 123–152. [There are copies of this floating around online; I'm not linking because I'm not sure of their copyright status.]
However, in my own experience, guides like these are useful because they point out (1) a lot of things to avoid, and (2) a relatively small number of useful tips and tricks. Developing a good writing style is best accomplished by reading as much good writing as you can (including both scientific and other scholarly writing), writing as best you can, and seeking as much good feedback on your work as you can.
See also <NAME>'s lecture "[How to write mathematics badly](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJZpdXWm4Gg)", which is informative, funny, and (since his examples are taken from experience) tragic. Look out for the instance he highlights of "without" being abbreviated to "with."
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Most journals have the "instructions to contributors" section somewhere near the end, and it may be the link on their website. Such sections often contain many useful hints that are more general than just formatting the paper for the particular journal, and you can read instructions of several journals even if you do not plan to submit a paper to them now.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: My personal favourite is [this paper](http://www.ee.ucr.edu/~rlake/Whitesides_writing_res_paper.pdf) by <NAME>, one of the most significant contributors from the organic chemistry field. Some of his main points:
* The importance of outlining, i.e. having a good plan for the structure of the paper
* Start writing early! Your thoughts on how to prepare the final paper could provide useful direction on how to efficiently gather key bits of data
* Tables, equations and figures are key - someone skim-reading your paper later on may just end up reading the intro, conclusion and the captions on your data, so make sure you can get your point across without blocks of texts
* The word "this" requires an explicit reference
* Stick to past tense when describing your experimental work
* Pay attention to the formatting requirements of your chosen journal to avoid delays upon submission
None of the points made in the guide are field-specific. Good luck!
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: Yep, it may take a while until you are producing texts that you're happy with. Writing is hard! I'll let others advise on mathematical physics, but will recommend two general texts on scientific writing which might be helpful:
A useful book for writing articles in scientific fields is <NAME>-Deal's "[Science Research Writing for Non-native Speakers of English](http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=5a6Y9G0FsxQC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false)". Although it focuses on scientific writing for non-native speakers, there is also a wealth of information on how to structure an article and make the argument clear. I found it to be full of useful gems, such as, starting on page 1, tackling the introduction after having drafted the report sections.
Another fantastic general book on writing is <NAME>'s "[Writing for Social Scientists: How to start and finish your thesis, book or article](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Writing-Social-Scientists-Chicago-Publishing/dp/0226041085/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397948859&sr=1-2&keywords=writing%20for%20social%20scientists)". Although it's targeted at the social science community, much of the book is relevant for any scholar wishing to write well. Becker emphasizes how perfect prose does not flow from the pen of the genius scientist; rather, prose that looks effortless is (always?) the result of lengthy and repeated redrafting. He also explains how effective the act of writing can be for helping to clarify thinking.
Have a look at some related questions here on Academia StackExchange too: [How to write a strong introduction to a research paper?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/15276/how-to-write-a-strong-introduction-into-a-research-paper) [Any place for people with fear of writing?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/18079/any-place-for-people-with-fear-of-writing) [How to improve technical writing?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/731/how-to-improve-technical-writing)
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: In my own personal quest of writing the first article, I found [this freely available article](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20358146). While it's of most use for writing a medical technical note, it outlines the structure of the article very clearly.
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/04/18 | 787 | 3,332 | <issue_start>username_0: What are the differences in responsibilities among them? Can anybody give me an example to elucidate that. Also why are non-tenured faculty more interested in a co-adviser role than a committee member role?<issue_comment>username_1: The advisor is the person who is formally recognized as the person most responsible for supervising the student's thesis research. A co-advisor is a person who also works with the doctoral candidate, but often in a secondary role (perhaps providing scientific but not financial support, for instance).
In my own case, for instance, I had two advisors who were fully equal in both supervising the research and supporting it financially. However, formally one of them had to be in charge of the thesis research—I believe they decided it by a coin flip.
The thesis committee is a body that convenes only sporadically (although sometimes on a regular schedule) to ensure that a doctoral candidate is progressing according to expectations. The committee—which usually includes the advisor and several other faculty members (or other advisors)—is also usually responsible for deciding when a candidate is ready to schedule a defense of the thesis and graduate.
As you can see, this is a very different role than a co-advisor, who takes on a much more active role in supervising and guiding the doctoral candidate's work. While a thesis committee member rarely is a co-author on a paper with the candidate, a co-advisor often will be. Consequently, it's much more useful for a faculty member to be a co-advisor than simply a committee member. (The latter role will not carry anywhere near as much "credit" toward a tenure case as being an advisor or a co-advisor.)
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: [This breakdown](http://gradresearch.unimelb.edu.au/handbooks/phd/supervision.html) of the different roles comes from the University of Melbourne:
* **Principal supervisor** (i.e. advisor)
An appropriately qualified person who takes primary responsibility for the academic supervision of a candidate’s research and candidature
* **Co-supervisor** (co-advisor)
An appropriately qualified person designated to assist in the academic supervision of a candidate's research and candidature
* **Advisory committee chair** (committee member)
A registered principal supervisor in the administrative department of the candidate who is neither a supervisor of the candidate nor associated with the research project and who is appointed to oversee the advisory committee
In committee meetings (12 month confirmation, 2 year review, etc.) the chair organises the paperwork, basically. They are also there if the candidate needs to confide about their supervisors and potentially make a complaint if one of the supervisors' actions is unethical, or if there is some kind of professional or personal issue between them and the candidate.
As to your second question, I would suggest that non-tenured staff/faculty would push to be a co-adviser rather than committee member, because it raises their supervisory profile whereas being a committee member is really just a bureaucratic position. When applying for tenure-track positions, employers will look at the theses that the person has supervised or co-supervised, in addition to a range of other things, obviously.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/04/19 | 1,478 | 6,680 | <issue_start>username_0: I have been in the computer science academic community for at least five years, and I noticed that there are several so called *summer schools* organized every year everywhere.
I have been knowing just few people attend them.
These summer schools are addressed mainy to MS and PhD students, last around 3-7 days, and may include a final exam. They often include important international speakers coming from overseas.
I have been thinking about them, and there are two issues that concerns them, in my opinion.
The first problem I notice is that is very very hard to make students learn something important in just 3-7 days. They should have more time to re-process all the things that they learned, do some practice, and think about. They include a hipe of subjects that is sometimes very large.
The second issue is that, since the students are studying their own courses, why should they spend their time and money to go to a summer school instead of attending a course at their own university? It's not clear to me.
So, in the end, **why do some people organize summer school?
Is it just teaching passion?
Or is it a way to advertise the organizers and their university?
Or is an occasion for networking?**
**Or, is it something that I am missing?**<issue_comment>username_1: A summer school is usually a way to have a focused series of lectures on a specific topic. The best analogy I can think of is that of a master class for musicians. The audience are students who are usually sufficiently adept that they can handle the intensity and focus of a short program taught at a high level. For example, if you're just starting out in grad school in computer science, a summer school in specialized aspects of (say) deep learning might not be very useful. This at least partially answers your first question.
Summer schools are useful because they can bring a set of experts on a topic together in one location, at a venue where this expertise might not otherwise exist. In computer science, this might also be part of the explanation of why there are so many summer schools in Europe: since many topics in the field are dominated by the US, it makes sense to have summer schools in Europe for the reason above.
The speakers of course get the opportunity to travel and teach a focused group. It's a prestigious thing to be invited to such an event. The organizers make their mark (and benefit their institution) by organizing such an event. The students learn about a topic that they might not otherwise get exposure to, from the experts in the field. And that is an answer to your second question.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: There are similar summer schools in mathematics, though there are some differences from what you describe. I've helped organize a summer school so I'll try to answer some of these questions.
The math summer schools I know about are somewhat longer, usually 2-4 weeks. They don't provide formal academic credit and there are no exams. They are aimed at PhD students who are at least a couple of years in, though often postdocs and junior faculty are also welcome. Usually there are several lecturers, each of whom is a well-known expert on a particular topic, and their lectures are tightly focused on that topic. The lecturers may come from all over the world; they are not just faculty at the institution hosting the summer school. Sometimes there is also time set aside for students to give short talks on their own research.
As to your first question, it is true that this is a short amount of time; it's an intensive learning experience. (I'd agree that 3-7 days would seem too short; that's more like what mathematicians call a "short course", which is usually organized in conjunction with a conference rather than as a standalone event.)
I don't think it's expected that the students will absorb all the material right away. Rather, they will gain exposure to the topic and its main ideas. For an in-depth understanding, they'd be expected to study related books and papers on their own over months or years, but the summer school will give them a place to start and some preparation for the task. There would certainly be advantages to a longer program, but the logistics would become prohibitive.
For your second question, you must realize that a summer school course fulfills a very different purpose than a regular graduate course. Regular courses typically give you a broad view of a subject (e.g. probability theory) and focus mainly on its basic techniques and classical results. They provide a foundation for research on any topic in the subject. A summer school course covers only a specific topic (say, random walk in random environment), which is usually the focus of active research, and tries to acquaint the student with the state of the art. Very few universities would offer a regular course like that. (At best, if they happened to have an expert on that topic on their faculty, they might occasionally give a one-time "topics course".) At the summer schools I knew, students were expected to *already* have taken 2-3 semesters of standard graduate probability theory, which is all that most universities would offer.
As to money, summer schools often have their own funding. Students do not pay tuition and usually receive free housing, and may also have some of their travel expenses reimbursed by the summer school (and hopefully their home institution provides some travel funding as well). So students usually pay little or nothing out of their own pockets. And regarding "time", these are *summer* schools. At least in the US, most graduate programs don't offer regular courses in the summer, so the student isn't sacrificing regular coursework to attend. They may be sacrificing research time, but the hope is that the summer school provides new ideas that will ultimately make them more productive.
Networking is a consideration as well. A summer school gives students the opportunity to meet renowned experts who they might otherwise never come in contact with. Just as importantly, they get to make connections with other students with similar interests from around the world, with whom they may someday form collaborations.
Finally, they are fun! You get to travel to a new part of the world and meet interesting people. There are usually social events, outings, hikes, etc.
I think the main motivation for summer school organizers is to create a program that will ultimately benefit and build the research community in a discipline. Exposure for the institution, networking opportunities for the organizers, funding, etc, are also nice, but secondary.
Upvotes: 4 |
2014/04/19 | 352 | 1,683 | <issue_start>username_0: I knew a foreigner in the astronomy department at the university here who was a "post-postdoc" independent researcher. How could she have her own office in the astronomy department as an independent researcher?<issue_comment>username_1: Many universities offer positions with titles such as "research professor" or "staff scientist" or other similar titles. These all indicate the same basic phenomenon: a researcher who is generally supported by "soft money" (In other words, a position subject to sufficient funding), but who is otherwise more or less "permanent" staff. Such scientists may or may not have their own dedicated office space, depending upon overall space constraints within the department and within their boss's research group.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Such possibilities depend a lot on recommendations and past achievements of such a researcher.
If one is a real scientist with good publications and good, interesting project, not only office space, but also laboratory access and resources like access to the supercomputing facility may be provided.
Most obvious, a researcher may be supported by his home institution (industrial or educational) and would not require also salary for the project.
The similar situation may also result from various funding schemes that allow to obtain the initial grant for a position easily, but make progressively difficult to *extend* it over time, regardless of achievements like publications. In such cases some researchers actually work for free for a limited time in institutions that are no longer able to employ them, to finish everything properly.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/04/19 | 585 | 2,512 | <issue_start>username_0: I have seen that some universities give postdoctoral fellows an official certificate (similar to the PhD diploma) after finishing their postdoctoral job. On the other hand, some of postdoctoral positions are just simple research (or even academic) jobs. I have even seen that some professors pay the postdoctoral fellows without contract (from their grants).
My question is: How common is a **certificate of postdoctoral studies**? Do future employers expect applicants to give them certificate of postdoctoral studies as well as PhD diploma?<issue_comment>username_1: Certainly not in the US. I never got any kind of certificate for the postdoc I did, and in fact I'd never heard of such a thing until your question.
My current employer never asked for any formal verification of my postdoc. They received letters of recommendation from my postdoc supervisor and other colleagues at that institution, and I think most US academic employers would consider that sufficient.
Then again, they never asked for my PhD diploma either. In the US, we don't use the diploma for official purposes; it's just a decorative piece of paper. The official document of choice is a transcript sent directly from the university (and my employer did ask for one of those).
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: You are expected to have publications while working as a post doc. These publications document your institution, topic and success while working as a post doc.
You can also ask for recommendation. I do not think it is a separate "diploma" because unlike PhD, post doc is already more work than studies.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: I'm in the UK. I've never heard of a "certificate of postdoctoral studies", not least because postdocs aren't studying towards a qualification: they're working. I've also never heard of a postdoc not having a formal contract of employment. In fact, I suspect it would be illegal to do so in the UK (and probably most western countries).
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: In general, the only "certificates" of post-doctoral research that I am familiar with would better be classified as *certifications*: that is, they indicate the dates for which the postdoctoral associate worked at the given university, and the kinds of duties performed. I know that some universities also give certifications for particular courses taken, but otherwise, I am not actively familiar with "certificates" in the style of a diploma.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/04/19 | 860 | 3,982 | <issue_start>username_0: I am writing my undergrad Bachelor's thesis in computational physics where I do C++ programming. In some C++ books, I read some things that were quite useful during programming, but they do not have a direct connection to the physics.
Since I was proficient with LaTeX before I started the thesis, I do not see a point in adding anything about that in the references. That is rather a skill than specific facts, and I did not really read about it during my research.
Another thing are resources that I consult for an introduction into a topic when I do not understand something in a paper. After reading that introduction material, I often understand the paper to a sufficient extent. When I then write the text, I think I could get by by only referencing the paper since it contains virtually everything needed. But it also seems wrong to omit that I read introduction material.
* Should I cite sources like the C++ book?
* Should I cite introduction material like Wikipedia, websites or easy books?<issue_comment>username_1: You don't typically cite material that helps you understand a topic. You cite material that you explicitly use in a paper. So source books like a C++ book don't need to be cited unless you're using an unusual and explicit construction mentioned in one of those books. For example, there's a technique to draw a geometric object using GPUs that was first mentioned in an graphics programming textbook: people using the technique will cite that textbook.
Wikipedia is not supposed to be a repository of original material, so if you found something on wikipedia then there's likely to be an original source that Wikipedia should cite and that you should as well (once you verify it).
For a website it's a similar principle. If the website contains code that you're using, then cite it (or better yet, cite the associated material that the code authors might suggest you cite instead). But if the website merely contains expository material that helps understanding, then you don't cite it.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: To add to username_1's answer, I agree that it is not *necessary* to cite books, etc, that gave you background information but weren't directly used in your work. There's no general rule that "you must cite everything you read". However, if you found a source particularly helpful, it might be nice to give a citation to share it with the reader. This is often phrased like "A useful introduction to this topic can be found in [3]."
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: My university gives students a document of guidelines for planning, organising and formatting their dissertation. It addresses this question, and I think their answer is pretty good. This is basically what it says:
Your **references and citations** should contain anything you've quoted directly, anything you've used a figure or diagram from, and anything you've referred in the text to for a fact, assertion, statistic, etc. Any time you state something that's not blindingly obvious from first principles or the product of your own work, cite where you got it from. (I had a lecturer tell us to imagine we're being followed around by one of those Wikipedia users who goes around sticking [citation needed] on everything.)
If there are other sources that you haven't used *directly* but still feel would be valuable to anyone attempting to understand or replicate your work, anything you made significant use of while doing the work that didn't make it into your citations for some reason, or anything you read to help your understanding of the topic in order to carry out the work, you can add a separate **bibliography** section, which lists those works.
As far as I'm aware, the distinction between "references" and "bibliography" is well-understood in the academic community, but you could always drop in a line or two at the top of each to explain if you feel it would help your audience.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/04/19 | 1,169 | 5,077 | <issue_start>username_0: I am interviewing over Skype, for a research position at German university. So far my interviewer and I communicated via email, and he sounded formal but pleasant.
I have no clue how interviews are conducted at German universities. Is it subject-based or do they just want to know the student's skills and motivations?
Also, since i am interviewing for a position in machine learning, should i expect questions about the current trends and research?<issue_comment>username_1: I currently work in Germany, and have exactly the situation xLeitix mentions in his comments: I have positions which I am able to choose directly who I want to hire, independent of any admissions committee.
In such interviews, I want to have a sense of the student's technical prowess, as well as a sense of their motivation and interest in the position itself. Since such positions are usually directly associated with particular projects, I want to make sure that the candidate is reasonably qualified to tackle the specific project (rather than just being generally competent in the field).
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: I would say there is no general rule. You should ask the interviewer if you can prepare something - so you will get more information in which direction the interview will go. You can also directly ask about the length of the talk.
Typically I would except a talk about your past projects, i.e. your Master's thesis. Since this is a research PhD position in Germany it is very likely that it is part of a externally funded project. So questions about the project can be expected.
The main reason for the interview is that the interviewer wants to get a picture of you - on a scientific but also on a personal level. Typically there wont be a hiring committee, but you have to convince the professor that you are the right person for this position.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: To add to other ansers, an interview in Germany is often only a opptortunity for the applicant for becoming asked to finally visit the group a half/full day and for the employer to filter out interesting students, when too much good ones apply. In my field, physics, >100 applicants for good PhD positions will be normal. Maybe 3-4 will be invited to visit the group actually and then the professor or a committee makes the decision. If you're living in Germany, they will often simply invite you to make a presentation at the face.
It's a fast and important opportunity to check if you can fluently speak the language (at least English) or rule out eventual contradictions/gaps in your CV or ask some informal questions (scientific/engineering family, hobbies,...). But, from my experience phone interviews are not very common in Germany for STEM PhD positions, also not in non-academia job world.
I don't have so much experience how overseas applicants are treated here as we don't have many and master degree is often necessary (you didn't say how far away you're from this group), if interesting candidates are even invited to visit groups and traveling costs are paid (at least partly). But traveling within Europe via train to visit the group is common and costs paid. Mostly after 1-2 mails without a pre-phone-interview, because a well written CV is often enough to invite then 3-4 good applicants and fill the position. If you are applying for a very specialized topic from overseas where it's unlikely that there are many good candidates, then I would take this much more seriously and prepare really some text to present your master work in a short and pregnant way. Some interviewer will expect this or tell you explicitly, **but in any case it is your fault to be not prepared** :)
So I would check and was checked myself language proficiency, short descprition of master's work, relation/motivation to/for this PhD work and country, other applications I filed and what I plan to do after finishing PhD. You will maybe also face some hidden questions. There was one position I was interested in where it became known to me after interview and visiting the group (but finally not offered) that the professor searched somebody spending also some post-doc years at this group (a small young group that was just build up) and not ruling this out completely. Such questions some professors will ask you explicitly, some indirect, as it is hard nowadays to forecast your life 5-10 years. But showing the professor that I just wanted to do PhD in his group and city and then move on finally cost me this position.
Formally it's an interview of you, nonetheless you should also ask some questions at the end of the interview that are not mentioned in the job description (salary, teaching duties (language demands, master students), advisor, overall time frame, attending conferences, vacation...). It's not a good strategy to bombard employer in mails with such questions before it is not clear that they are really interested in you. Show that you're are thinking determined self-confident curious guy, a bit like a good flirt ;)
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/04/19 | 1,301 | 5,567 | <issue_start>username_0: I am an MSc Student of Computer Science at a department that is considered to be in the top ten CS departments in the world ([QS Rankings here](http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/university-subject-rankings/2014/computer-science-information-systems#sorting=rank+region=+country=+faculty=+stars=false+search=)). I am telling this, just to let you know, that I have some good enough (I guess) general background in Computer Science. However, I am just an MSc student, not somebody who is a specialist, knows a lot of things including the current research conducted in a specific field.
I was asked today, from an editor of a journal, to review a paper. I would loved to do that, but I will probably respond negatively, as I can understand the danger of saying yes to a paper that does not actually show a good amount of research just because I am unaware of the current research and/or expertise on that field.
However, I can *understand* most of the papers in Computer Science and I found mistakes some times that were reported to their authors, who admitted that their papers had some mistakes. Therefore, I may be able to find some errors, but I am afraid that I may be unable to say whether a paper fully justifies and in a correct way what the authors want to show.
My question is: What should I respond to the editor provided the above?<issue_comment>username_1: This is a good question: at what point in one's academic career should one begin refereeing papers?
I think the first order of business is to make sure that the editor knows you are an MSc student. In fact, inquiring into why you were chosen to referee the paper seems reasonable to me: the answer may help you determine whether you are qualified. Perhaps for instance your thesis advisor got the request and passed it along to you. That's a good situation for you: you can read the paper for correctness (in my experience, assuming the requisite base level of competence and understanding, the younger the referee, the more likely she is to conscientiously read and check a paper for correctness) and then solicit your advisor's help in determining the appropriateness for the journal.
In fact, no matter what this is a good opportunity to talk to your advisor: she will be the best person (aside from you) to help you determine whether or not you are "ready" to competently referee the paper. If she says no, you should probably turn down the request. If she says yes, see if you can get her help on the higher level issues that you are rightly concerned about.
Let me also say that you have to start refereeing papers sometime (or you become someone who never referees papers even into the later stages of their career: I know such people, and although so far as I know they landed in that situation through no fault of their own, it is clearly an undesirable state of affairs for the community at large), and no matter what age or rank you start, you will still have to wrestle with the issues of knowing what standards to impose. (For that matter, sometimes I get a referee request from a journal that I have never read or even heard of before. I try to ask the editor for more information but have sometimes just been told things which amount to "Use your best judgment." So I did.) There is a lot of subjectivity in the refereeing process, and though you may feel less confident about your opinion as a very junior academic, in reality it is far from clear that what you do will be worse than what some more experienced person would do!
**Shorter Version**: You need to get a sense of whether this is a job that you can handle competently in a reasonable amount of time. Don't be afraid to ask for guidance in determining the answer to this. Being a master's student does not disqualify you in any obvious way. If you can do it -- without interfering too much with your other responsibilities, of course -- then you probably should. It will be a valuable learning experience.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I don't think it directly matters what point you are in your education or what university you are studying at. It is more important that you have written and published some papers yourself in the field. You need to have had the experience of having your own papers reviewed before you can review someone else's, just so that you know first hand what is expected of you. It is not common for someone at MSc level to have that experience but if you have then that's fine.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: (Just to add a point that’s not yet been mentioned.)
One thing you can do is to explicitly mention you your own level of knowledge in the review. I recently began one review something like "This work is correct and interesting, and as far as I know it's new, but I don't know the literature on the topic thoroughly enough to be certain of that."
Indeed, in my field, most reviews come with a field on the score-sheet to give your own level of confidence, usually on a scale of 0 (null) to 4 (expert). I would be uncomfortable reviewing anything where I’d rate myself 0 or 1, and for a 2, I would want to check with the editor before accepting the review, and see if they would prefer to ask another reviewer. But from an editor's point of view, a well-thought out review from someone inexperienced but conscientious — especially when that inexperience is known, and can be allowed for — may well be better than a hurried review from an expert, and is certainly better than no review at all.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/04/19 | 305 | 1,245 | <issue_start>username_0: In the USA, many universities enroll PhD students with BSc degree. I think this is the classical scheme, which remained in the US universities. In many countries, it is almost impossible to enroll in a PhD program without MSc degree.
I am curious how is the trend for MSc programs?
At least in the USA, do more universities allow PhD enrollment with BSc degree or those allowing are shifting to MSc requirement?<issue_comment>username_1: At least in my field (mathematics), every US PhD program I know of accepts students with a bachelor's degree. I see no sign of this changing.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: In the field of biology they don't require a Master's. When I interviewed with top Universities, it was pretty uncommon for the candidates to have a Master's degree. Everyone did have a Bachelor's though.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: In physics, doctoral programs typically admit students with bachelor's degrees. Some programs will award a master's degree partway through, usually upon completion of coursework and successful defense of a research proposal. A master's degree is also a graceful way for a student who wants to leave a PhD program early to do so.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/04/20 | 883 | 3,988 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm currently writing a paper on analysing miRNA targeting in animals. It's principally a statistical analysis involving many graphs.
However, to explain the creation of one of the graphs, I've resorted to using set theory notation, as this, to me, seemed the most efficient way of explaining how the graph was produced.
However, this may potentially have some issues:
1) Will the use of terminology that is outside the theme of papers in this field detract from the description? Such that few people who read this paper will understand set theory and therefore many will not understand the mathematical notation? The description, I hasten to add, will be a tenth of the length when using set theory notation.
2) Evidently, concepts should always be written as clearly as possible, but where is the line formed between explaining concepts in words, as opposed to mathematical notation? Why would one choose one way over another?
3) Should you make assumption of the mathematical understanding of a person reading the paper?<issue_comment>username_1: An author should always be careful when using mathematical notation that is "outside the theme of papers in this field," especially if the papers typically have little math notation. I have personally found that running into a cryptic (at first glance) equation makes me put the brakes on and engage some deeper thought to decipher what's trying to be said. Oftentimes, the notation is required, or at least useful, but when I end up thinking, "Couldn't they have just said 'such-and-such' in plain English'", I get a bit cranky.
Sometimes, though, you do need the space savings to stay within page limits, so if you really will shave off 90% of the space, and you need that space to fit in something else that is key to the paper, AND in your best judgement that the audience won't be derailed by the notation, you might be OK. Otherwise, because you have stated that you can describe it clearly in words, you should consider perhaps rewriting that description to be more concise and precise, rather than potentially obfuscating the details of your graph production.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: By and large, I would say **avoid using non-standard presentation techniques in your paper**. This includes using non-trivial mathematical notation in a field that generally does not use maths.
Consider that simply by choosing your way of presenting your techniques / results you (a) already lose most *casual* readers of your paper (i.e., those that don't *have* to study your paper for some reason, but were just interested in its content), and (b) presumably significantly increase the chance of your paper being falsely rejected by a reviewer who was inexperienced in the used notation, and hence misunderstood some details. Of course, this is not supposed to happen in an ideal world, but we don't necessarily live in such a world.
That being said, I should add that (especially for lower-ranked venues), the opposite of (b) may also happen - you may get a reviewer who does not fully understand your notation, but decides that it looks "sciency" enough and hence accepts the paper (even though, maybe, the content was actually weak). I have certainly seen paper submissions that tried to ride the train of camouflaging weak content with complex notation.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: So far, I'm missing the option of giving the 110% version of set notation plus explanation in plain English. That way, readers familiar with the set notation can skip the written explanation, and others can either skip the formula or learn what it means from your explanation.
(As you think whether you should give the long explanation, I assume that there are no particular length restrictions.)
I may add that I (chemist/chemometrician) was actually taught that a formula should preferrably be accompanied by a plain text explanation of the idea behind this formula.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/04/21 | 3,248 | 13,823 | <issue_start>username_0: Why are linguistics and law considered as part of the "sciences" rather than "non-science" academic disciplines like say philosophy, history or engineering?
Seeing how both linguistics and law only study what has been created by mankind to begin with, or how there is virtually no room for scientists to actually test out various theories and models, it would seem, to me, that both of these fields fail to meet the criteria for being a "science", which is enlarging humanity's pool of verified/easily-testable knowledge.
Or to perhaps phrase the question in a less abstract way, how do the linguists' methods for reaching consensus differ from the methods of historians, which basically is "just" some majority of people agreeing on something based, ultimately, on their intuition. (In contrast to something like math where one can provide formal proofs, or sociology where one can run experiments and tests that meet certain criteria for validity and significance). Similarly, isn't law "merely" applying the knowledge provided by sociology (and others) and thus more of an engineering discipline rather than a science?
Or is it perhaps like with computer science (and various other examples) where the field is just called a science for practical (political/economical/etc.) reasons, but actually fails to formally meet the criteria upon closer examination?
I hope no one is be offended by this. It is a serious question and I'm genuinely interested in objective answers.<issue_comment>username_1: I disagree with several of the assertions in your question regarding linguistics specifically, as well as more generally.
Firstly, there is no universally agreed upon criteria for something to be classified as a science. The division between science and non-science is a false dichotomy whose only purpose is to elevate some fields and denigrate others as less 'worthy'. This is a cultural distinction. Source: degree in history and philosophy of science.
Secondly, linguistics does in fact display the classic hallmarks that many would say are indicative of science-hood. When you document an otherwise undescribed language, you have to demonstrate correspondences that are repeatable, e.g., a noun phrase in language X consists of a determiner phrase followed by an adjectival phrase, followed by a noun, and this generalisation should hold across the phrase structure of the language. If you find a counterexample, you need to account for it by modifying your theory or disregarding it as an aberrant case. Moreover, your results are repeatable in that if someone goes back and asks for the same sentences, they should get the same, or comparable, responses.
Then you start deriving hypotheses about things like the structure of the language, on the basis of empirical data; a corpus of collected examples. These are subject to peer review and criticism, and if you survive something that this language does that others do not, or that current theory does not predict then you have to back up your claims with extensive empirical data.
This is a short description of the workflow of just one field of linguistics, and does not even encroach upon phonetics, which even has numbers and graphs! Source: a bachelors and a masters in linguistics.
Finally I would disagree that something is not a 'science' (or is less sciency) if it studies something that is a human invention. Language, yes, is a human invention, but each language is a system, and has its own rules that can be teased out by induction and deduction from the data. People don't just decide 'let's start using plural inflection'; its part of the independently testable system. Just like a game of pool is similarly invented by humans, but is analysable as a system. In fact game theory is a perfect analogue to language sciences in this respect; invented by humans, but analysable as a system.
Can't speak about law, however.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: >
> Or is it perhaps like with Computer Science (and various other examples) where the field is just called a science for practical (political/economical/etc.) reasons, but actually fails to formally meet the criteria upon closer examination?
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Computer science is a science by any reasonable definition. Academic computer science is not about learning how to program. It is the theoretical study of computation as a mathematical subject.
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> In contrast to something like math where one can provide formal proofs,[...]
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Formal proofs are extremely common in computer science.
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> Seeing how both Linguistics and Law only study what has been created by mankind to begin with[...]
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Sciences are generally divided into the natural sciences and the social sciences. The latter includes fields like sociology and economics. Just because societies and economies are human-created, that doesn't mean that these fields aren't sciences.
Also, although languages are created by humans, many of the phenomena of language are naturally occurring. For example, certain combinations of sounds are easier to articulate than others, which is a physiological fact. Certain aspects of grammar are hard-wired into the human brain; for example, it is possible to construct artificial grammars that a linguist can tell could never have occurred naturally.
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> there is virtually no room for scientists to actually test out various theories and models
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This is completely untrue for both computer science and linguistics.
Law is completely different. I have never heard of law being referred to as a science. However, the academic study of law may draw upon evidence from the social sciences.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: Since most people understand "science" as "good" and "not science" as "a system of mystical thinking akin to Zoroastrianism", just questioning whether something that's called a science is "really" science is guaranteed to offend the people who practice it, contrary to your hope that no one will be offended by your question.
I somewhat sense that you don't know much about linguistics, and your image is of prescriptive linguistics, i.e. a bunch of guys sitting in an ivory tower and making pronouncements forbidding prepositions at the ends of sentences. This is not what linguists do; that sort of thing is usually found in English and modern languages departments. You similarly misunderstood computer science, as <NAME> addresses in his answer. If you look into things a little, you'll find that modern linguistics is "scientific" in lots of ways.
Many linguists do field research. This involves living among the speakers of unrecorded languages, learning and describing these languages, and helping to analyze the impact these languages have on currently held theories. This is fully as scientific as what cultural anthropologists, sociologists, and behaviorists of all kinds do.
But where do linguistic theories come from? Linguistic theories, for the most part, are either psychological theories, attempting to make sense of human language as an activity of the human mind, or mathematical theories, developing formalisms that describe the structure of language. Noam Chomsky's formal language hierarchy and generative grammar are mathematical formalisms that are also used in computer science, which you also malign as not a science. More recent theories, like lexical-functional grammar, are even more mathematical in character. These mathematical formalisms describe the syntax of human language, and books on them contain proofs, as do most books on computer science per se, and not programming. Set theory is also used in some corners of semantics.
Statistics is frequently applied in linguistics; see for example [this paper](http://linguistics.ucdavis.edu/People/raranovi/papers-and-manuscripts/hdt_sht.pdf/view). The answer to your question "how do linguists' methods for reaching consensus differ from historians'?" is that linguists make use of statistical data, try to explain things within existing theories, and apply mathematical formalisms, similar to the way economists and physicists reach consensus. And linguistics continues to get more mathematical, by incorporating statistics, probability, and computer science into its theory and practice.
Finally, have a look at historical linguistics and comparative linguistics. Modern linguists' painstaking reconstruction of the Proto-Indo European language, the common ancestor of languages as widely sundered as English, Latin, Armenian, Persian, and Hindi, cannot, in my opinion, be called anything other than a work of science. There were judgment calls; there were ambiguities to resolve; there are competing models; and there are some things we'll probably never know. But that's also true of paleontology, geology, and astronomy, and no one disputes that those are sciences.
As username_1 says, there is no sharp dividing line between "science" and "system of mystical thinking". Entire books have been written on this question. You can read them, and decide for yourself on the question of law. But if you believe that a field's methods and intentions make it scientific, and if you accept that cultural anthropology, economics, sociology, statistics, mathematics, computer science, paleontology, geology, wildlife biology, and physics are sciences, then linguistics is a science.
(I tried not to be offended, but as a computer science major / linguistics minor who considered law school, your apparent ignorance of computer science and linguistics touched a nerve.)
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: >
> Seeing how both Linguistics and Law only study what has been created by mankind to begin with,
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History, big part of philosophy, engineering, large part of chemistry deals with artificial/men created events and items
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> how there is virtually no room for scientists to actually test out various theories and models
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Not less than in history, astronomy, many parts of biology, archeology, anthropology, literary sciences..
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> Or to perhaps phrase the question in a less abstract way, how do the Linguists' methods for reaching consensus differ from the methods of historians, which basically is "just" some majority of people agreeing on something based, ultimately, on their intuition.
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Historians and linguists are actually creating models based on their intuitions and discuss the findings, proof or disproof, argue and counter argue, just like other scientists.
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> In contrast to something like math where one can provide formal proofs,
> Such formal proofs exist only in mathematics and related subjects (CS and such), but not in sciences like Physics or Chemistry. Proof in "natural sciences" are different in nature from Mathematics.
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> Or is it perhaps like with Computer Science (and various other examples) where the field is just called a science for practical (political/economical/etc.) reasons
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This remark, being rather belittling and offensive is not based on actual argument or knowledge about CS. Real CS is pretty much mathematics in most part.
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> I hope no one is be offended by this. It is a serious question and I'm genuinely interested in objective answers.
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Unloaded questions and actual knowledge about the subjects could greatly improve the quality of this discussion.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: As a professional linguist, I have nothing to add to the above explanations of the nature of linguistics as a science. Instead, I will explain why law can credibly be considered a science (though isn't actually called one). As noted, it is incorrect to think that science does not deal with the man-made. Also, note that veterinary medicine, dentistry and many other sciences could be called "not sciences" in particular application, e.g. your dentist is not formulating a scientific hypothesis and testing it when he fills a cavity. You can't generalize from what the guy in the strip mall does, to what scientific researchers in the field do.
Law studies the nature of legal systems. It extends beyond rote memorization of specific pieces of code or judicial decisions -- it in fact *emphasizes* the construction of abstract principles that predict the behavior of the system. In common with social sciences, the theories of law make testable claims which can be refuted (though hardly by a single observation). A theory that predicts the outcome of a proceeding given a set of facts is validated, and one that repeatedly fails to predict that outcome is falsified.
There is, in fact, some significant intertwining between law and linguistics, since many legal facts are linguistic in nature (that is, the wording of the law matters, and legal interpretation often requires appeal to linguistic scientific knowledge).
Indeed, legal research also runs experiments, especially psychology experiments, to test theories. An example is how the wording of jury instructions affects the outcome of a trial; it has in fact been shown that the standard burden of proof instruction stated in terms of "beyond a shadow of a doubt" is understood to creates an (unintended) requirement on the defendant to create doubt, where a "firmly convinced of guilt" standard does not impose that burden on the defendant.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: Science is anything with a set of observable constants, a philosophy is something subject to interpretations. Meaning no matter who you are or your feelings, murder is always against the law (science) and also wrong (philosophy.)
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_7: Linguistics and law are merely science since they all fall under the observable set of rules and principles when someone else is interesting to get study on either both of them.
Upvotes: -1 |
2014/04/21 | 561 | 2,430 | <issue_start>username_0: I am currently getting ready to finish my first semester of a graduate program (was on track for Ph.D but that does not matter anymore). I made the decision to quit half way through the semester due to some family issues that came up. Anyway, ever since that, I pretty much lost all motivation to study with the persistence that I had before - up to the point where on a subconscious level my brain refuses to absorb any more information. I will likely be receiving at least 1 F for the semester. My question is this - after I leave the program I will be looking for job in industry - I am a Civil Engineer as an undergraduate. How will having an F on a 1 semester transcript in graduate school affect my job prospects?<issue_comment>username_1: Did you try seeing if you could formally withdraw, rather than do so "de facto"? A withdrawal means that you normally don't receive grades for courses (although some schools note a withdrawal while having a failing grade in a course).
The likelihood that a future employer will overlook this depends largely on who's doing the applicant screening. If your "direct boss" is handling the process, you have a chance of convincing them that the grades aren't reflective of your true abilities. On the other hand, if a human resources "specialist" is handling the screening process, a grade of F will unfortunately mean your application will probably end up in the "circular file."
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: You will be looking for a job in industry. I don't think your job prospects are completely determined by the F's on the transcript of your first semester of the graduate program. Of course, those F's hurt your chances. Your resume could be filtered out by the human resources when they see the F's on your graduate school transcript if they ask to see that transcript. But, they usually pay attention to your undergraduate transcript and your skills set. If your undergrad transcript is fine and you have the skills/experience they are looking for, you still have reasonably good job prospects.
On the other hand, if it is not too late to withdraw from the class, do it to avoid the permanent bad record. If it's too late, try your best to not to fail the class. I know it's hard after you have gone through the personal issues. But, you don't want to ask yourself the question "What if I tried?" years later.
Wish you good luck!
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/04/21 | 1,988 | 8,495 | <issue_start>username_0: Suppose you have two libraries that use the same classification system and have not merged their respective databases. Could it be possible that the exact same book could be assigned different call numbers if taken from one library and added to the other?
I am asking this question because I am drawing up a home-library database application, and the client would like the ability to assign call numbers (even multiple ones). I have not been able to find an answer online, and I hope that I do not have to travel to the next state over to find a library not connected to the ones around I live.
I imagine the book would most likely be assigned to the same top-tier category and most likely the same second subcategory in the respective system, but, for example, the Library of Congress system incorporates the author's name and a quasi-decimal number which fine-tunes the book's location. And it seems without any external reference the assignment of this part of the call number is made on the fly for any particular library.
So, I have a couple questions. First, the title's sake. Second, is the way I'm thinking about this correct? And if I'm wrong, why?<issue_comment>username_1: Normally, when already available, Library of Congress classifications are usually found after the title page, and should thus be constant across different libraries. For publishers.
In any case, this should be a fairly easy hypothesis to test (at least to a certain degree). Most university library catalogues are on-line and freely available. You could sample a cross-section of titles from different subjects and see what happens: my suspicion after a few cursory checks of my own is that call numbers **do** vary somewhat, but primarily at the "secondary level" (in identifying the author, rather than the subject).
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: A call number is meant to be a unique identifier for a particular book (or other work); that is, a particular *physical object*, typically found on a shelf somewhere. These identifiers are often structured, containing encoded information about the subject, author, publication date, etc. If a library has multiple copies of the same text, then they will typically have different call numbers - say, via a suffix "(copy 1)", "(copy 2)", etc. They are different physical objects. They are tracked separately: one copy was purchased, and another was donated; one is on loan and another is having its spine repaired; and so forth.
It is *devoutly to be wished* that different libraries, following the same standard, will assign their identifiers in the same way. Reality being what it is, we can't guarantee that this will always happen, even if it is the common case. However, your question is about something different: when a book is moved from one library to another, what happens to the call number? There are two things going on here:
1. **Assigning a new number.** Since you have a new physical object, it needs an identifying number. The multiple copy example above shows one instance where the least-significant part of the call number would have to change. Ideally, other changes would not be needed in order to make the number conform to the new library's system. So the question is: how much do you trust the old library to get it right? If the answer is anything less than 100% then there should be some way to assign a new number.
2. **Keeping track of the old number.** Even after renumbering, it might be useful to record the book's former call number. Provenance information is generally felt to be a Good Thing to have - certainly, in the case of items with any value, or which are externally indexed. (For example, bibliographies of the works contained in a particular library will often include the shelfmarks.) This may not be a concern for your database, or it might not have to be part of the main database system - perhaps "how I obtained this book" information could be retained elsewhere.
If you are dealing with MARC, then you can look up how it handles coding of former locations, multiple call numbers, and so on, as there are standard ways of recording this information.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: I took @username_1 suggestion literally and tried to find an older geodesy textbook. <NAME>'s Lehrbuch der Geodäsie that was published in 1948. I checked [MELVYL](http://melvyl.worldcat.org/title/lehrbuch-der-geodasie/oclc/8104772&referer=brief_results), the University of California's system, which is now connected with WorldCat. They listed all copies as QB283.B2 for the Libary of Congress (LC) system, but had other identifiers including an OCLC number. I then checked Ohio State's library catalog which listed their copies as [QB283.B33](http://library.ohio-state.edu/record=b4437046~S7). Both systems do have the same OCLC number.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: A bit late to answer the OPs question, but for the record... the answer is "usually they will be the same, but there is no requirement and there are often good reasons to vary".
Factors which may cause a different number to be used by different libraries:
1. **Different classification systems**. Usually, different branches of a given library will use the same classification system, but this is not guaranteed, especially when different institutions have merged.
2. **Different *versions* of the classification system**. Classification systems are frequently revised, and not all libraries update their existing shelfmarks when an updated edition is issued. [This paper](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.22686/full) discusses the example of the "eugenics" subject, which has been assigned to 18(!) different locations in Dewey at various times.
3. **Different local focus**. If individual libraries have a specialised focus, they may choose to classify books in a different way. For example, I used to deal with a small departmental library focused on classical studies. A book on, say, the military of the Roman Empire would be shelved under 937 as a particular subset of ancient history in the main library, but the second copy in the specialist library would be shelved under 355 as a book on military history - this was the most convenient approach for that particular site.
4. **Different local practice**. There are a number of aspects of the classification system that are effectively optional. For example, a smaller library may decide to use shortened numbers rather than the longer, more "correct", ones. "Cutter codes" (the quasi-decimal bit based on author name) are often assigned in an idiosyncratic way, and some libraries will use a local or arbitrary system for these. Fiction/literature also causes problems, as using the "pure" classification system for this is relatively rare outside large libraries; many will use a much simpler system, and it is very likely this will be inconsistent between individual libraries.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: I'm really late here, but I just ran into this issue. In particular, I've found a book that is regularly given one of two LOC numbers that differ in the second letter.
I noticed the book [Innovations in nondestructive testing of concrete](https://www.worldcat.org/title/innovations-in-nondestructive-testing-of-concrete/oclc/637380766&referer=brief_results) in my library with a call number starting with TK7874. This was strange to me, since those call numbers are mostly about microelectronics and VLSI design. I asked a librarian, and the best we could come up with was that there's some electronic testing discussed in the book (which wasn't that satisfying to me, since there were no other concrete testing books nearby, and the electronics didn't seem related to VLSI).
However, if you go through the different libraries that have that book in the link (click on "book" under "Held formats"), many of them have that same TK7874 number, but many of them instead have a TA440 number. That range includes many other books on concrete testing.
I'm inclined to think that the TA440 number is the the "right" one (not that I know anything about concrete), but it's interesting to me that this isn't just an issue with a single library. Perhaps they all copied each others' databases, or perhaps there really is some reason for classifying this book either way.
In short, I'm not sure if this *should* happen, but it certainly does, and occasionally at a fairly high level in the call number.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/04/21 | 532 | 2,116 | <issue_start>username_0: Do universities offer relocation assistance to a newly employed postdoc who comes from another country? Is it appropriate for the postdoc to ask for relocation assistance if it is not already offered?<issue_comment>username_1: In disciplines that I'm familiar with, postdoc money comes from a grant obtained by a PI. So the university has little-to-no role in the hiring and compensation process. I imagine the postdoc would have to discuss this issue with the PI.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: It varies. In my experience some of the more prestigious postdoctoral fellowships sponsored by universities might have some amount of moving expenses built into the budget, and more typical postdoc positions funded out of grants probably won't. But it might be possible to get a professor to help you out, perhaps out of startup or some other funds that aren't earmarked for a particular purpose. You should try to negotiate it with the person who offers you the job *before* you accept the offer.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: In the early 90's, when I did a postdoc for a U.S. National Laboratory, full relocation expenses were included, which involved moving my household clear across the country, and staying in a hotel for a bit at the other end while I looked for a new home. I doubt such generous deals are readily available today.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: In the Netherlands, relocation reimbursement for post-docs, both a lump sum and a refund for transporting your possessions, is *mandated* by the collective employment agreements. For the non-university research institutes, [Chapter 10 of the the 2018 CAO agreement](https://www.wvoi.nl/media/1154/chapter-10-2018.pdf) spells this out. The amount is about 2,000 EUR for a fixed-term employment contract.
I have no experience elsewhere, (un?)fortunately.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: Some Australian universities offer very generous relocation packages as a matter of institutional policy. Most other places do not seem to offer it, but it is definitely okay to ask.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/04/21 | 743 | 3,038 | <issue_start>username_0: I had the impression that obtaining written permission before including someone in acknowledgements was required. Therefore, I just wrote to someone asking for written permission to include him in the acknowledgements of a paper, and he said he didn't think it was necessary. I don't recall where I got this notion from - perhaps the rules of a specific journal? So, I was wondering if there are any general rules about this or not, or are they perhaps journal specific?<issue_comment>username_1: When you list someone in the acknowledgments, you're just thanking them, as opposed to speaking on their behalf or assigning them responsibility (the way authorship does), so I don't see why permission should be required. I've never asked for permission or been asked myself, so it's certainly not standard in mathematics. I haven't heard of it in other fields, but of course I can't say from personal experience.
Of course it depends on what you say. "I am grateful to Alice for her steadfast support of my research" suggests Alice endorses your research, and you should certainly ask for permission before saying something like that. "The determinant calculation in Section 2 was supplied by Bob" suggests Bob is responsible if it's wrong or clumsy, so you should make sure he is OK with being thanked (but in this case you presumably already discussed with him your plans to include his calculation in your paper and attribute it to him without making him a coauthor). And of course if your topic is really controversial, then you should be extra careful about everything. However, if you had helpful background discussions with Carl and write "We thank Carl for helpful discussions about functional analysis", I don't think you need to ask his permission.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_2: I've never come across any rules about this. But I do often write to people to let them know I'd like to include them in the acknowledgements, particularly if I know them less well, and enclose a copy of the draft paper. It's a way of thanking them, especially as they might never come across the published paper, and it gives them a chance to escape if, for whatever reason, they wish to.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: While [username_1’s answer](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/19605/7734) holds for most fields I am aware of, [this question and answer](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/63105/7734) made me aware that some journals in the field of medicine and some mega-journals **require consent** for being mentioned in the acknowledgements, for example:
* [The Lancet](https://www.thelancet.com/pb/assets/raw/Lancet/authors/tln-info-for-authors.pdf):
>
> Please include written consent of any cited individual(s) noted in
> acknowledgments or personal communications
>
>
>
* [Plos One](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-acknowledgments):
>
> Authors are responsible for ensuring that anyone named in the Acknowledgments agrees to be named.
>
>
>
Upvotes: 4 |
2014/04/21 | 1,048 | 4,473 | <issue_start>username_0: One thing that I have noted come up a few times in presentations in the US in the last few years has been that some speakers—usually graduate students and postdocs, rather than more established career professionals—have included religious invocations at the end of presentations in entirely secular venues. One presenter went so far as to have an entire slide devoted to it, complete with quotations to spiritual texts and illustration.
Is there any sort of protocol about when such sorts of invocations are considered appropriate? (For instance, at a student's doctoral defense, but not at a public seminar?)<issue_comment>username_1: I think this is a good question.
Let me propose some guidelines:
1) A religious invocation should occur at the beginning of the talk or the end of the talk, but not in the middle of the talk.
People often begin talks with material that is unrelated to the topic of the talk itself, e.g. thanks to various organizers; comments about the weather, the venue or the town; jokes; and so forth. It seems to be clearly asking too much for someone to speak only about their scientific field during the entirety of their talk. However, at a certain point you get down to business and the "talk itself" in the narrower sense begins. One should not (of course this is an opinion, but a strongly held and easily defensible one) mix religion with the material of the talk itself.
2) A scientific talk is not an occasion for proselytization.
To me whether religious material is appropriate depends a lot on the purpose one has in bringing it up. If you include religious material as an attempt to convert audience members to your religion, I think that is really problematic and unethical. If you include religious material for other promotional reasons, then I still have a problem with it, just as I would be with someone promoting their not wholly scientific company or product. (Even wholly scientific promotion might not be so great, but that's a different answer.)
On the other hand, it is a totally standard thing to have the last slide of a talk give thanks to various people and institutions. If you feel deeply grateful or thankful in the religious sense, then it seems natural to want to express those feelings, given that other speakers are thanking people and things (e.g. the US government) that, in your sincere opinion, have not helped you out as deeply or fundamentally. At any rate, it does not bother me if someone ends a talk by thanking some theological entity.
3) One should not express religious sentiments in a scientific talk in a way that encroaches on anyone else's religious sentiments or lack thereof, nor which implicitly or explicitly invites or requires participation or complicity from the audience.
Thus "Alhamdulillah" is probably okay; "Now Thank We All Our God" is probably not.
In general, in (e.g.!) an academic context, one should be respectful of others' beliefs and views, and one should not be controversial or exclusionary in anything without a specific intellectual purpose for doing so. One should also be respectful of others' time and realize that speaking in front of a group is a privilege. On the other hand, academics are human beings and can choose to say things which are not strictly necessary. In my calculus class last week, I had students identify a quote about mathematics being someone's worst subject followed by a careful and insightful consideration of the reasons for this. The quote turned out to be from Malcolm X. What *calculus reason* could I possibly have to quote Malcolm X? None. But I thought it was interesting and perhaps important in its own way. I enjoy my freedom to do that, so it is not a hard sell for me to give leeway to those who want to make some kinds of religious statements, so long as they are in line with the above guidelines.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: As evidence that it's not appropriate, note the comment by xLeitix stating that s/he has never seen such a thing, and several upvotes agreeing. The reason we don't see it happen is because it's inappropriate.
However, it's not inappropriate behavior of the greatest magnitude. It's probably comparable to wearing shorts and sandals, or to lighting up an e-cigarette during the talk. Most people are going to care more about the content of the talk than about about such minor issues, but some people will choose to be annoyed.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/04/21 | 976 | 4,220 | <issue_start>username_0: Should one disclose his/her family information (i.e. whether he/she is married and have children) in an academic job interview, including postdoc interviews and interviews for PhD, if any? In what situations would disclosing family information in such interviews be considered advantageous or necessary for the candidate? If not appropriate during interviews, then when would be the best time for one to disclose his/her family information?<issue_comment>username_1: It's probably best not to bring up family information at all during an interview. The committee wants to focus on your professional qualifications. They've probably been given strict instructions from HR *not* to take into account things like the applicant's sex or age, which are not professional qualifications. Different people may have different expectations about how formal a job interview should be, but in general it's not a casual get-together where we get to know each other.
Often a committee will want to understand why you are leaving your current position. Basically they want to make sure you didn't leave your current position because you did a bad job there and got fired. This becomes particularly relevant if the job you're applying for is at a professional level less than or equal to the level of the job you're leaving. In this context, it may be OK to mention your family if they're the reason you wanted to change jobs. E.g., you needed to move from Indiana back home to California in order to care for your father, who is old and unable to live independently anymore.
Another common situation would be the "two-body problem," where you and your partner are trying to find jobs in the same city. I would not bring this up at the interview stage. It's not relevant at that stage, because they haven't even offered you the job yet.
If you have young children, I wouldn't mention that at all. Many people in academia have very old-fashioned expectations about the academic lifestyle, e.g., that a high-powered academic must not be distracted by child-rearing, or must have a "faculty wife."
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I heard the following advice from several people; I have not been involved enough in hiring to know if it is right, but it sounded right to me:
>
> If you would not accept a job offer unless the university can find a
> position for your spouse, then you might as well disclose that
> information early. The universities who do not make offers to you because of your disclosure would not have made offers to your spouse had you kept it silent and revealed later.
>
>
>
If you do want to follow this advice, you will have to bring it up, since HR should have told interviewers not to raise the matter.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: I have been part of several hiring committees in a New Zealand university and:
1. We are instructed to never ask about a candidate's family situation, religion, sexual orientation, etc.
2. Personally, I do not want to know about your family situation to avoid any perceived bias in the hiring process.
3. Any mention of the situation on your part (like 'we are a bundle') could be perceived as making the hiring more complicated. Unless your application is miles ahead of the rest (unlikely) why would a committee want the extra complication?
The only situation where I could see an advantage is when you family situation would suggest higher chances of success. For example, you are applying to a job in the middle of nowhere (and potentially candidates would feel isolated) and your family happens to be from there.
I would wait to say 'we are a bundle' (if that's what you have in mind) to when you are offered the position. Ideally, you would never have to disclose your family situation until the university is willing to pay for your moving costs.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: One situation in which I have seen this work to a candidate's advantage is where the candidate has an extraordinarily strong record. Schools knew going in that solving the two-body problem was important for this candidate, and the university that was fortunate enough to make the hire did precisely that.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/04/22 | 2,013 | 8,586 | <issue_start>username_0: I've finished a mathematics paper with two co-authors, and I need to decide on a journal to submit it to.
More so than my other papers, I don't have much of a sense for how "good" it is. It is a substantial generalization of one of the main results proved in a very top journal, although not the most significant of these results, and not the one that got the most attention.
To my mind, (and after discussing the results with a few colleagues), the paper does not pass the "gut test" to be published in this same top journal. But it is not out of the question that it would be accepted. I would (very roughly) guess a 15% chance of acceptance, a 50% chance of positive reviews that are not quite positive enough, and a 35% chance of vaguely negative reviews that say "This is a nice paper, but it certainly isn't good enough to be published here."
Would it be advisable to submit to this top journal? Or would a little bit more modesty be wise? (And of course I will ask my co-authors, but I wouldn't be surprised if they defer to my judgment.) Thanks.<issue_comment>username_1: Well, why don't you give it a try? Sometimes your luck might favor you. Last year, I submitted a research paper in a Journal called APEX(Applied Physics Express)- Impact factor 2.71. After considering for nearly 2 months they said me that the paper needs modification and be published elsewhere. I thought for a while and worked on my paper modifying it. I decided to apply for APL(Applied Physics Letters), impact factor 3.79 and guess what the paper got accepted. However, people at APL took nearly 6 months and also made me hire a native English speaker to make some structural changes to the paper.
I think you should directly go for the top level paper. If they deny you, you can always find a replacement.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: If time is not so much of a consideration then picking the top journal is the natural choice. Sometimes it requires some luck to land in a prestigious journals. As they say, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". Different referees may have different assessments of your paper.
So, why not try your luck? Nothing to be ashamed of since your paper has value to begin with.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: The answer should certainly depend on many different elements, each of which should be judged with respect to your particular situation.
First, the time issue. You should have a look at the AMS survey on journal backlogs, which also indicates the median time to get an answer (for accepted papers only, but we can assume it gives an idea of what happens to all not-rejected-upfront papers). This survey is published regularly in the Notices, and you should be able to find it on line. Then, ask yourself if waiting that time is worth a likely negative answer. Some journals have a pre-refereeing procedure, and reject a fair amount of papers very quickly. This mitigates the risk (either you get rejected quickly, or you have a much-higher-than-average probability to get your paper accepted).
Second, the impression you give to editors. I guess that an editor could remember slightly abusive submissions, and that they would not help you future cases with her; however I have no data or evidence to back up this guess.
Third, your own feelings. Receiving bad reviews is not something to underestimate: it could diminish your enthusiasm toward your own work, alter your willingness to pursue in this direction. This is probably only a small parameter, but if you have had a few difficult cases recently, you might want to take a break from rejections. **Added in edit after a few more years of experience:** you should also think your possible chain of resubmission. What could happen is that after waiting two years and getting rejected by a top journal, you are a bit down and then submit much lower. Aiming at an intermediate level first might give you a better outcome. This applies even more at resubmission: how much do you try high? How high? This of course depends on the feedback from referees and editors, but some long-term planning might help.
Fourth, you should ask yourself if the journal you consider to submit to is an appropriate venue if your paper do get published there. I would not fear too much people telling that your paper is clearly below the journal's level, as we often judge papers by journal's name anyway. But it might happen that a more specialized and less prestigious journal could reach the intended audience better than the most prestigious, general journal. This is not a very common situation, though.
Last, but far from least, what you expect to get from getting published in the top journal? Is it so much of a career boost compared to very-good-but-not-top journals?
Note also that some editors have the habit of suggesting another venue to papers that have good but not good enough reviews in a very selective journal. It is not easy to know this beforehand, though.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: My thoughts, admittedly from a non-mathematician giving a general answer. Below are some things I consider when deciding where a paper goes:
* Do you coauthors have suggestions? Especially senior colleagues, they may have a good feeling for where a paper belongs, or where it absolutely doesn't belong.
* Do you have a timeline. As mentioned, journals have backlogs, and some journals are notoriously slow. If you need something *in press* soon, it might be best to pass on those, even if they are prestigious.
* Do those journals publish papers that "feel" like yours? If they've never published something like your paper, what are the odds yours will be the first? If its extremely rare that one is published, does the journal actually have the readership you want and again, you might want to adjust your probability of success down a bit.
I will say, despite all of this, I once submitted a paper to a journal thinking "Why not, worst thing that happens is they reject it." It got into one of the best journals in my field, and is still, 6 years later, arguably my most visible publication.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: I want to add three small points that haven't been mentioned in the other responses so far. It is possible that this advice is localized to my specific discipline (Philosophy), so take it with a grain of salt. (I'd be interested if commentators think it works the same way or differently in their fields.)
1. Many hiring committees for junior tenure-track researchers in philosophy care much more about the *quality* of one's publications rather than the *quantity*. Having more good papers is better than fewer good papers, but 1 good paper is worth much much more than 4 bad ones.
2. The primary metric by which a committee judges the quality of one's work is the prestige of the journals one's work is published in. The committee might have several hundred applications to read through and they realistically won't actually read everyone's writing sample. Therefore, the prestige of being published in a famous, peer-reviewed journal acts as a proxy for quality that signals that you have already been vetted by a 3rd party and found competent. If you make the shortlist, they'll actually read your work and come to their own assessment of it. But if you make it to the shortlist you're probably one of 15-25 candidates, rather than 1 out of 500.
3. These committees assume that the first work published right after the PhD is complete is probably the best work the candidate is going to do as a junior researcher. The idea here is that this is the work you've been working on the longest, and at the most depth, and you've had your advisor's help, etc.
Given 1-3, I think it's much better advice for graduate students in philosophy to spend a lot of time and get one thing published somewhere really really good rather than simply trying to dash something off to get "points on the board".
How good is "really, really good"? I'd say a top 20 general journal in your field. The difficulty of placing an article in such a journal gives hiring committees an immediate yardstick to know how good your work must be. Everyone in philosophy has had a paper rejected from *Philosophical Quarterly*, so people know how impressed to be when they see that you have something forthcoming there on your cv. *The Croatian Journal of Formal Logic*, might be great, but if nobody knows about it, then publishing there doesn't have the immediate cash-value of showing that you have been vetted by an independent third party.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/04/22 | 1,968 | 8,416 | <issue_start>username_0: I work in computer science, and am wondering what is the right balance between PhD students and postdoctoral fellows in a lab.
In the previous research group I was, there were one principal investigator professor, one researcher (~ assistant professor), **zero post-doctoral fellows**, and **nine PhD students**.
In my current research group, there is one principal investigator professor, **one post-doctoral fellow, twelve PhD students**, and no researchers.
I recently visited a research group in a university where, surprisingly, there are one principal investigator professor, **ten post-doctoral fellows** and **two PhD students**.
What do you think is the **best ratio** between the **number of PhD students** and the **number of post-docs** in a research group? **Why?**
Would you prefer to **spend your funding** for having **more PhD students** or **more post-docs? Why?**<issue_comment>username_1: Well, why don't you give it a try? Sometimes your luck might favor you. Last year, I submitted a research paper in a Journal called APEX(Applied Physics Express)- Impact factor 2.71. After considering for nearly 2 months they said me that the paper needs modification and be published elsewhere. I thought for a while and worked on my paper modifying it. I decided to apply for APL(Applied Physics Letters), impact factor 3.79 and guess what the paper got accepted. However, people at APL took nearly 6 months and also made me hire a native English speaker to make some structural changes to the paper.
I think you should directly go for the top level paper. If they deny you, you can always find a replacement.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: If time is not so much of a consideration then picking the top journal is the natural choice. Sometimes it requires some luck to land in a prestigious journals. As they say, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". Different referees may have different assessments of your paper.
So, why not try your luck? Nothing to be ashamed of since your paper has value to begin with.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: The answer should certainly depend on many different elements, each of which should be judged with respect to your particular situation.
First, the time issue. You should have a look at the AMS survey on journal backlogs, which also indicates the median time to get an answer (for accepted papers only, but we can assume it gives an idea of what happens to all not-rejected-upfront papers). This survey is published regularly in the Notices, and you should be able to find it on line. Then, ask yourself if waiting that time is worth a likely negative answer. Some journals have a pre-refereeing procedure, and reject a fair amount of papers very quickly. This mitigates the risk (either you get rejected quickly, or you have a much-higher-than-average probability to get your paper accepted).
Second, the impression you give to editors. I guess that an editor could remember slightly abusive submissions, and that they would not help you future cases with her; however I have no data or evidence to back up this guess.
Third, your own feelings. Receiving bad reviews is not something to underestimate: it could diminish your enthusiasm toward your own work, alter your willingness to pursue in this direction. This is probably only a small parameter, but if you have had a few difficult cases recently, you might want to take a break from rejections. **Added in edit after a few more years of experience:** you should also think your possible chain of resubmission. What could happen is that after waiting two years and getting rejected by a top journal, you are a bit down and then submit much lower. Aiming at an intermediate level first might give you a better outcome. This applies even more at resubmission: how much do you try high? How high? This of course depends on the feedback from referees and editors, but some long-term planning might help.
Fourth, you should ask yourself if the journal you consider to submit to is an appropriate venue if your paper do get published there. I would not fear too much people telling that your paper is clearly below the journal's level, as we often judge papers by journal's name anyway. But it might happen that a more specialized and less prestigious journal could reach the intended audience better than the most prestigious, general journal. This is not a very common situation, though.
Last, but far from least, what you expect to get from getting published in the top journal? Is it so much of a career boost compared to very-good-but-not-top journals?
Note also that some editors have the habit of suggesting another venue to papers that have good but not good enough reviews in a very selective journal. It is not easy to know this beforehand, though.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: My thoughts, admittedly from a non-mathematician giving a general answer. Below are some things I consider when deciding where a paper goes:
* Do you coauthors have suggestions? Especially senior colleagues, they may have a good feeling for where a paper belongs, or where it absolutely doesn't belong.
* Do you have a timeline. As mentioned, journals have backlogs, and some journals are notoriously slow. If you need something *in press* soon, it might be best to pass on those, even if they are prestigious.
* Do those journals publish papers that "feel" like yours? If they've never published something like your paper, what are the odds yours will be the first? If its extremely rare that one is published, does the journal actually have the readership you want and again, you might want to adjust your probability of success down a bit.
I will say, despite all of this, I once submitted a paper to a journal thinking "Why not, worst thing that happens is they reject it." It got into one of the best journals in my field, and is still, 6 years later, arguably my most visible publication.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: I want to add three small points that haven't been mentioned in the other responses so far. It is possible that this advice is localized to my specific discipline (Philosophy), so take it with a grain of salt. (I'd be interested if commentators think it works the same way or differently in their fields.)
1. Many hiring committees for junior tenure-track researchers in philosophy care much more about the *quality* of one's publications rather than the *quantity*. Having more good papers is better than fewer good papers, but 1 good paper is worth much much more than 4 bad ones.
2. The primary metric by which a committee judges the quality of one's work is the prestige of the journals one's work is published in. The committee might have several hundred applications to read through and they realistically won't actually read everyone's writing sample. Therefore, the prestige of being published in a famous, peer-reviewed journal acts as a proxy for quality that signals that you have already been vetted by a 3rd party and found competent. If you make the shortlist, they'll actually read your work and come to their own assessment of it. But if you make it to the shortlist you're probably one of 15-25 candidates, rather than 1 out of 500.
3. These committees assume that the first work published right after the PhD is complete is probably the best work the candidate is going to do as a junior researcher. The idea here is that this is the work you've been working on the longest, and at the most depth, and you've had your advisor's help, etc.
Given 1-3, I think it's much better advice for graduate students in philosophy to spend a lot of time and get one thing published somewhere really really good rather than simply trying to dash something off to get "points on the board".
How good is "really, really good"? I'd say a top 20 general journal in your field. The difficulty of placing an article in such a journal gives hiring committees an immediate yardstick to know how good your work must be. Everyone in philosophy has had a paper rejected from *Philosophical Quarterly*, so people know how impressed to be when they see that you have something forthcoming there on your cv. *The Croatian Journal of Formal Logic*, might be great, but if nobody knows about it, then publishing there doesn't have the immediate cash-value of showing that you have been vetted by an independent third party.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/04/22 | 3,660 | 15,461 | <issue_start>username_0: To give some background, I am a TA at UCLA for a lab class. They submit their assignments to TurnItIn, which you may know highlights any text pulled from another place.
I made it clear that they are not to work together and that no text in their reports should be found "anywhere else in the universe."
After the first week I caught a group of two plagiarizing. I repeated the "your text should not be found anywhere else in the universe" talk. I gave a long speech about academic honesty and such. One of the plagiarizing students dropped the class herself. I didn't take action on the other, besides a stern talking-to.
This week, two more students blatantly copied chunks of the other's paper. Whole paragraphs. I couldn't believe it -- I had just explained to them the week prior how easy it was to spot plagiarism. I brought them outside class one at a time and asked them what happened. I showed them the highlighted TurnItIn gradereport and their reports side-by-side. They each said they worked together, but didn't copy (slim chance. And still against the rules.)
Now the issue:
The professor that oversees my class doesn't have time to talk to me; hence I am here. He has given me two options: do nothing, or report them to the Dean of Students. If I do the latter, the punishment will extend beyond their grade -- they will probably fail the class, or even be suspended.
I want to punish them. But I don't want to ruin their undergraduate lives. Is my professor right -- I only have two options? (I cannot find any school-specific information about this.)
Or is there a better, less obvious way to handle this?
Update:
I talked around. It turns out that this kind of violation is serious, but it's not going to destroy their life. The Dean of Students people tend to be pretty reasonable when it comes to sanctions from what I hear. So I'm reporting it to them.<issue_comment>username_1: This sounds like "I want to punish them but not really". Fact is that these students have cheated even after *multiple* warnings. You are not teaching little children. Responsibility and accountability are important and adult students should have both.
**If you are sure they plagiarized** the only correct course of action here is to report them. It is then up to whoever handles such issues to assess the severity and appropriate punishment.
The students knew the risks of plagiarizing and decided to do it anyway. Giving them a milder treatment now will encourage other students to behave similarly since the consequences become less severe.
---
Note: are you sure the students copied from each other or is it possible that they are using the same source?
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_2: Firstly, I think it is not OK for professor to present you with options. He/she should have decided what to be done and it is actually funny that he gave an option that clearly conflicts with honor code.
If the cheating is provable, then you are paid to carry out the rules so you should report them. No person should be above the rules of the university, and I am sure the rules are clear. Your responsiblity is to grade homeworks and report them if they cheated. Anything else leads to corruption in any organisation, which is also misuse of power.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: Just give them no credit at all for that assignment. Since even copied homework takes time, and it's very likely that they will be caught, it's not going to be worthwhile to copy and not get any credit.
If your professor asks, you can say that you chose to do nothing, but that of course they could not receive credit for that work, which you assumed was what he implied in his advice.
If the students complain that they want to be able to make up the credit or feel they should get a grade, tell them categorically no. If they insist, refer them to the professor. This puts the ball in their court - they are unlikely to want to make the effort to complain about you, when they will be drawing attention to their cheating, and probably end up in a position where they have to openly lie to a professor.
If this does happen (because the students are spiteful or lack all sense of proportion) don't worry about it. Students sometimes think that an incident like this can be made to reflect badly on a TA. Even if they do pursue a complaint, even if it is upheld, and even if it is shown that you did the wrong thing, it is not going to be held against you. It will be accepted by faculty and anyone else involved (all of whom probably realize what PITAs some of your students are) that it is a the very worst a minor misjudgement of the type that everyone makes in their first few teaching experiences.
Just make sure that you are consistent (so that you can't be accused of discrimination) and clear (so that no-one can say they didn't understand the rules). If you get bounced into making an exception, immediately make it clear what the rules of exceptions are ('Everyone gets one chance', 'one chance only on the first homework' or 'one person got one chance, but now you have all been warned' etc.)
Lastly, don't take it personally. It is disappointing to try and treat people like adults, and then find that they treat you like you are an idiot. Ultimately it is a reflection on their immaturity not your teaching skills.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: Report them. It is precisely the job of those working in the office of the Dean of Students to make judgment calls of the sort you describe. They, also, do not want to ruin students' undergraduate lives.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_5: I'm also at UCLA, and have worked for profs that weren't willing to escalate when cheaters were caught. Many of them just assume that cheaters will drop or eventually fail the final or whatever.
My only advice is to remember: you're primarily here to do research and get a degree; TAing just pays the bills. Cheaters are upsetting, but choose your battles wisely and without getting emotional. In the long run, it probably isn't worth pissing off your advisor by going over their head.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: To add to everything else that's been said here, you SHOULD talk to your professor about this. If for no other reason than to make sure that all sections of the class are following the same rules. If there is no clear policy then you can't be expected to enforce the rules.
Also remember that a lot of students won't understand why it's cheating and you have to create that understanding. Putting something in the student's hands that explains the policy is key. Refer to the student handbook as appropriate. My handout usually says something like "This is your one and only 'warning.' After this if you plagiarize you will have crossed a line you cannot uncross." After I started handing that out and going over it very clearly on the first day of class I never again had a plagiarism problem.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_7: If the rules of your institution are told to you by this professor, and you choose not to follow them, then where does that put you relative to how you think of the students' behaviour with respect to the clear rules on copying?
Either you have discretion to decide the punishment or you don't, and it sounds to me like you're being told that you don't. Your professor may be incorrect in this, but if you can't find it written down either way then the only way to determine that is to contact another authority in your institution for another opinion.
It's possible that by "do nothing" your prof actually meant do the thing you want to do -- fail the assignment and nothing else. If so then you're home free, and I think you could probably establish that by asking the prof, "If I do nothing how should I grade the substantially-copied assignments? Give them both 0?" This doesn't require a long conversation, anything that can be handled by a 1-minute email is probably good for the prof.
Otherwise you're in the position of a cop who has been told by the captain, "If you think they've broken the law this goes to the DA. If you think they haven't then forget about it and cut them loose". You're saying, "well can't I just issue them an on-the-spot fine or something?". No, you can't, not if the person in authority says you can't. You can acknowledge the offence and follow procedure, or you can knowingly overlook the offence because you think the procedure is unjustified. And, I might add, good luck with that as a long-term strategy...
That said, perhaps you could contact the Dean of Students (or their representative), and ask whether *they* are prepared to ratify failing the assignment but not the class. Of course if you do this you pretty much have to report them if the Dean says "no, they must be expelled, this is a zero-tolerance issue for us" or whatever. What you can't do is decide on behalf of your institution that copying just one assignment isn't sufficiently bad to justify failing the class. The Dean of Students has clearly impressed on you that their opinion is otherwise or you wouldn't be able to predict their response.
Speculating wildly, I would guess that the reason the Dean's response is so stern is that many TAs before you have been through the process you're currently in. The class is told the rules against copying. Someone copies. The class is told the rules against copying again. Someone copies. Now what? The Dean of Students can probably list more things than you can that have been observed not to work.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_8: Academic honesty cases are very serious for two reasons. First, academic dishonesty strikes at the very foundation of what makes education work in the first place -- namely the idea of mutual trust. Second, academic honesty cases all too frequently degenerate into legal battles that cost the university time and money. For this reason of seriousness, it's paramount that the professor of record take responsibility for this situation and not leave it up to you as a TA.
Go find your university's academic dishonesty policy and read it very carefully. In all likelihood you will find two things that are relevant here: (1) only the professor of record has the authority to act on an academic dishonesty case in her/his class, and (2) more to the point, if academic dishonesty occurs, the professor is contractually obligated to report it. This is how most university's policies work. You might find yourself in a situation of having to remind the professor of this fact -- the prof might have freedom to handle punishments however s/he wishes, but the prof must make a report anyway, for the student's record. (If the student is a repeat offender, the student may be expelled.)
If the prof has this responsibility and still won't listen, go to the department chair with it. This sort of thing really can't be ignored. But I repeat -- this is probably not your responsibility. The thing to do at this point is to find the person who *is* responsible for investigating it and make sure they move on it.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_9: Firstly it depends on the assignment; I had to do labs in my computer Sci degree with a partner, each person then had to produce a write up on our own. We created one document with all the results in that we shared, and then wrote up the rest ourselves. There was no point in both of us writing down the same numbers and then typing the same numbers into ms-word. So text like the headings on a results table would be the same between the two of us.
Maybe give the students the option of.
* Being reported with all the risks that takes
* Or withdrawing their assignment and getting no marks for it.
* Or putting in a formal complaint themselves, so reporting themselves.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_10: I agree with the answers that suggest you should report them to the dean, and come what may. But I would like to raise a consideration in case you decide not to.
It is very likely, per university regulations, that you personally do *not* have the right to punish students.
We had a situation like this in my department, when the chair wanted the students punished but without involving the disciplinary board (for irrelevant administrative reasons).
We had to be extremely careful in letting the concerned students know that their project had been graded 0, not as a punishment, but simply because they hadn't followed the instructions which stated to work in 2-person teams.
In case you decide to "punish" them yourself without reporting them to the dean, you should study the applicable regulations to make sure what exactly your rights are. You wouldn't want to get into trouble to protect undeserving students.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_11: Let me share what I used to do in these situations:
First, don't report anything further up unless you've decided you want to escalate the matter; reporting plagiarism happened and then not doing anything about it could be construed as misconduct or collaboration. For this reason I also don't like those TurnItIn-like systems; who knows who keeps track of that stuff? Nah-uh. Now, I know, your email could also be scanned and analyzed, but still, I'd recommend starting out with a lower profile.
When I would notice what looked like plagiarism (let's assume it's 2-way; n-way is also possible but the principle is the same) I would hold passing a grade for these two students, and would email them to come see me during reception hours. Note that this could happen for other reasons that are not plagiarism - unintelligible hand-writing; an issue whose clarification/resolution face-to-face could decide between a very low and a high grade (e.g. correcting a typo would make everything work); and so on.
When the students arrive (I would try arranging it so that it's at the same time and not the week after), I would call them both in. I'd tell them I think there's been plagiarism committed. I'd say that, between the two of them, they have just one submission, and would suggest that they leave the room for a few minutes to decide how they want to divide the grade or the responsibility.
If they wanted half-grade each - I would do that; if one of them cried bloody murder and said he was taken advantage of, and the second didn't deny it - I'd give 0 for the assignment to the plagiarizer and the grading result to the other one; if they amicably agreed on any other distribution - also ok. If they would claim it's not really plagiarism, I'd have them try and prove it to me - but that never actually happened, they always admitted it immediately or they never bothered to show up. If they indeed didn't bother to show up they both got zeros.
Only if something extreme, or morally repugnant beyond just copying somebody's HW assignment answer, had happened - then I would consider bringing them up on disciplinary charges. Otherwise I wouldn't.
As for my motivation for this approach: I don't like policing students. I'm providingn them a service, and if they don't bother to do their homework it's their loss. I taught courses which were homework-heavy and I would tell students at the beginning of the semester that in this class they will "learn through their hands" and listening in class just wouldn't get them to where they need to be, so, again, if they don't work ardently on their homework they're just wasting the course.
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/04/22 | 444 | 2,041 | <issue_start>username_0: i found many papers and thesis written in different languages than English, mainly Portuguese and Chinese. is there an efficient way to benefit from these papers and thesis instead of translating them using Google translate.<issue_comment>username_1: If you have access to the digital copies, then dump the entire thing into Google translate so you can skim read it. Having done that, it would be a good idea to find a native speaker and get them to check the translation of specific sections that seem relevant on the basis of the automated translations. I wouldn't suggest asking a native speaker to translate the whole thing, or even read the automatically generated translation of the entire thing.
Another thing you could do is see if you can find other papers that cite the papers that you're looking at. One of them may contain a summary that'll tell you if you need to bother pursuing that particular paper. This will be pot luck though, and it will be a lot easier to just use Google translate.
Of course, don't use Google's translations in your work; get a native speaker to help you when it comes to that.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: If you have some knowledge of the source language, you can use [Linguee.com](http://www.linguee.com/?chooseDomain=1) to find the best translation of a word out of documents which have been translated (EU commission's texts for instance).
Thus, you'll have the word in all its possible contexts.
This is very useful for legal or technical vocabulary.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_3: A good working knowledge of languages is important for many fields of research. Google translate is good, but no substitute for actually being able to just read the article in the original. You don't need to know that many languages for most fields. I recommend that you pick up at least one research language other than English. Which one will be most useful will depend on your field and perhaps your specific topic. (My topic requires Latin, for instance.)
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/04/22 | 1,622 | 6,660 | <issue_start>username_0: A few years back, while still an undergraduate student, I wrote and submitted a paper to a (low-tier) journal. It was accepted and published. None of the professors in my college were familiar with the subfield in question, so I did it all on my own, without their supervision or assistance.
It was only later on that I realised that I was guilty of plagiarism. I did write the paper all on my own, and always provide appropriate citations, but sometimes I would quote single sentences or parts of them directly from my sources without indicating that they were direct quotes (even if these unmarked quotes were always followed by a citation to the original source).
It has now been several years but I keep feeling guilty about it, and worry that one day someone will notice it and call me out on it. Or at least notice it while reading the paper and think worse of me. But since it has been several years since the paper was published, I also don’t know what I could do about it. I have thought of putting something like a public admission and apology on my website (from which the paper can also be downloaded), but maybe I’m overthinking it and nobody would actually care. In that case it would feel like a bad idea to needlessly draw attention to something that nobody would have noticed otherwise. But the paper has been cited some times, and I have reason to expect that there will be people reading it in the future.
Should I do something about it or just let it be?<issue_comment>username_1: >
> but sometimes I would quote single sentences or parts of them directly from my sources without indicating that they were direct quotes (even if these unmarked quotes were always followed by a citation to the original source).
>
>
>
"*You didn't use quotation marks where you should have in a paper you wrote as an undergrad? My god, you are despicable human being.*"
Nobody reading your question here will think this.
Rather they will think something like:
"*Wow, you wrote a journal paper on your own as an undergrad and it's still being cited?*"
I would imagine that the vast majority of readers of your paper, even if they notice, would think likewise.
---
Though it's technically plagarism, I think it would be quite obvious to a reasonable reader that if your *intent* was to plagarise, you would not immediately cite the plagarised document you stole the quote from. Omitting quotation marks sounds like a minor transgression to me, particularly if your area is STEM where the (natural) language of the text is a means not an end. (If you did not have the citation(s) at all, I think it would be a different matter.)
Mistakes happen and this was clearly just a mistake.
(I would also add that I think it's pretty common for researchers to be somewhat embarrassed by earlier papers that they wrote when they were more junior. At least I am. But that's just a sign of improving.)
>
> I also don’t know what I could do about it. I have thought of putting something like a public admission and apology on my website (from which the paper can also be downloaded)
>
>
>
I would suggest two things:
* Update the preprint on your homepage.
* Keep a list of errata on your homepage.
In my area (CS) people mostly read the preprints (found through Google or Google Scholar).
>
> public admission and apology
>
>
>
I don't think there's a need to *apologise*. I think you just need to admit your mistake and move on. Again, mistakes happen!
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_2: I honestly don't think this counts as plagiarism. Plagiarism is presenting someone else's work as your own. All you did was use the same phrasing as the article you cite. Since you're giving credit where credit is due by citing the papers, I don't think anyone would object.
If you had done this with one of my papers, if anything I would be flattered. Had you failed to cite me, I would be very annoyed but if you cite my work and then use one of my phrases, I would simply be pleased with myself since you clearly thought that my turn of phrase was so good that you couldn't say it better. Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery and all that.
So, personally, I would do absolutely nothing. I really doubt anyone will be bothered by what is at worst "bad form". Of course it's better to place direct quotes within quotation marks but as long as the relevant paper is cited, you are very unlikely to anger anyone.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: I think that you already included in your question the most reasonable answer: upload a corrected copy of the paper to your webpage, and indicate on your webpage what the nature of the corrections was. I don't think you need to be specifically apologetic about it: rather **honesty** and **fixing the paper** seem to be called for.
I would only consider doing more than this if:
**(i)** The standards for quoting text without attribution in your field are more stringent than the academic norm.
and/or
**(ii)** You have some reason to believe that the unattributed quotes played a role in the acceptance of your paper.
In the academic circles that I run in (mathematics, and more generally STEM) neither of these apply and the second one is especially dubious: math papers are -- *alas!* -- not accepted for their dexterous phrase-turning.
If (i) and (ii) do apply, then I would next consider whether this paper is playing any significant role in your current academic profile. (You say it was published in a low-tier journal; on the other hand you say it is still being cited.) If all these conditions are met -- i.e., you have reason to believe that the paper might not have been accepted if the quotes were attributed properly *and* you feel that you have profited in some non-negligible way from publishing the paper, then I think you are ethically obligated to contact an editor of the journal. I would begin by sending them a copy of your "corrected" paper and take it from there.
I think it is very unlikely that this *almost harmless* kind of plagiarism (and I think we should agree that it is plagiarism: there are just more and less egregious versions of that bad practice; this is very unegregious, if I can make up a word) will get you in any kind of academic difficulties in your current job or even your future career. However, I think that academics should hold themselves to a higher standard than avoiding what could get them in trouble. From your post it is clear that you have high ethical standards and this has been bothering you for a while. If you do what I advised, I hope that you will sleep a little more soundly.
Upvotes: 4 |
2014/04/22 | 664 | 2,893 | <issue_start>username_0: I am speaking of project scope here.
So suppose my advisor is working with an industry .And you are asked to build a prediction model for small section of that industry? Does that qualify as a Phd Project or a Master's thesis project.
Or does a Phd project has to be generic model , in the sense all companies in that niche can use that model as basis for their analytics?
I am trying to understand the differences in scope for a PhD and MS Thesis project.<issue_comment>username_1: I've had this discussion recently—the major differences are in the scope and independence of the work.
There is no easy, absolute method to say "X is a master's thesis" and "Y is a PhD project" without knowing the amount of work involved in each approach, and how independent the student needs to be.
Ultimately, a master's thesis represents a body of effort designed to show that you have successfully completed the project to the satisfaction of your supervisor. A PhD thesis indicates that you have produced a sufficient intellectual contribution to your field, and that you have the capability to be an independent scientist.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Standards vary a lot: for example, I've seen MS theses in theoretical computer science from Israel that are mini-Ph.D dissertations.
But more typically as username_1 says an MS thesis is a demonstration of mastery of a particular topic, and may or may not include original research as a part of this demonstration. In this respect, an MS thesis is closer in form to a bachelor's thesis, but the material will be more complex, and less structured.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: The standards will vary quite a bit from field to field, committee to committee, etc. But having gone through this fairly recently, and having been in the position to advise some others:
* Masters projects: Good Masters projects can be tied up in a single paper - and should be amenable to being published. But they are generally a single, coherent research question. Secondary analysis of existing data, a theoretical paper to support an empirical study, a meta-analysis, etc. are all good examples. There may be lingering questions (there are always lingering questions...) but by and large the student should be able to "walk away" at the end.
* PhD projects, on the other hand, should lend themselves to *multiple* papers, at least the number of papers required for graduation, and preferably several more to accommodate changes in funding, research interests, dead ends, or the paper that seems to draw the ire of reviewers everywhere. It should be new, asking fundamentally unknown questions, or at least trying to get at known questions in a different way, and should be substantial enough that, at the end, the student should be able to consider that area to be their area of expertise.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/04/22 | 1,048 | 4,936 | <issue_start>username_0: When the editor receives a manuscript, he/she has to find a couple of suitable reviewers. I was wondering if the they were choosing the reviewers in order to match the expected manuscript quality?
What I mean is the following: if the editor receives a manuscript that seems to describe a major breakthrough, will he/she choose preferentially well known scientists to review it? On the other hand, if the manuscript does not seems good, will he/she prefer younger, less experienced researchers?<issue_comment>username_1: My impression from working with one is that good editors seek reviews and reviewers necessary and sufficient to justify their decisions. If the paper is obviously good and obviously right, the reviews may only need to be light. If it's a major breakthrough that requires careful checking, then reviewers of the highest quality will be sought. On the other hand, if the paper has major flaws but comes from a well-known, well-regarded author, the editor will seek out someone known to produce the high-quality review but negative review they need.
More speculatively, borderline papers probably require a lot of work from the editor. If they are unsure whether they want to accept a paper or not, they need high quality reviews to make the decisions on whether to offer revisions or not. They also need reviewers willing to do the work of multiple review rounds in a timely fashion. This latter thought is entirely speculative, but it is commensurate with my experience from conference program committees and the borderline papers we reviewed there.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: There is an element of logical necessity in the question you ask.
Let us start with the case of a really major breakthrough, think epoch-making result. In that case, editors will of course try to select someone who is able to understand and verify the work, so someone who presumably has notoriously an outstanding command of the topic, who is known for extreme precision and for the ability to easily incorporate new insights. Such a person has highly desirable qualities in order to produce outstanding research and is *known* for having them. The odds are that that person has produced top-quality research.
Now consider the fact that such persons are by definition rare, so as they are busy reviewing outstanding submissions, other people have to review less outstanding submissions. So in general, yes, submission credibly claiming a breakthrough are much more likely to be reviewed by well-known scientists or (logically equivalently) submissions claiming much more modest progress or claiming breakthroughs but rather dubiously are more likely to be reviewed by less well-known scientists.
But, as always, there are exceptions. I know at least one relatively junior, relatively unknown scientist who has displayed such excellence and thoroughness in reviewing top manuscripts in his field that he is regularly asked to evaluate submissions whose quality and importance are way beyond his own published work; a statement which should not be considered a slight on the quality of his research: one of the submission earned its author a Fields medal.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Editors try to maintain a good status of papers published in "their" journal. There is no obvious point in using different standards for different papers and I am sure that such differences are not concious decisions if they appear. If an editor receives a paper that is outside of their comfort zone, it is of course possible they are not aware of possible good reviewers and may make seemingly odd choices. How common this is will be difficult to assess but that it occurs is certain.
In the specific of receiving something of breakthrough character, the procedure should normally be the same. However, an editor always has the choice of adding as many reviewers as they see fit. If a controversial paper appears, it will likely receive quite varying reviews and adding additional reviewers may be useful to get a sense of the quality of the work. This does not necessarily mean an editor will go for specific names but I can see that it may be the case that one would go for prominent names for such a paper.
In my experience as editor and author (and reviewer) I often get the sense that good science receives far harsher reviews than poorer. I do not think this is because the good stuff are assigned to "better" scientists, I actually think it is because a good paper is easier to fault be cause it is more transparent than poor papers which are muddled.
So, in short, there are many aspects to how papers are run through a review process. Choice of reviewers is not generally done after quality of the paper although it can happen. In the end a journal, through its editors, want to retain its status and letting poor papers through, does not serve such a purpose.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer] |
2014/04/22 | 2,231 | 9,288 | <issue_start>username_0: It seems like the traditional exam model (two midterms at 30% and one final at 40% of the grade, closed book) is flawed. For instance:
1. Students are not allowed to access resources, whereas in reality they would
2. Students get only a few minutes per questions, whereas in reality they would get days
3. Students are not allowed to collaborate, whereas in reality they
would
4. Students cram for the exam the day before, and forget what they
learned after the course is over
5. Students focus on the exam to the detriment of learning the material
and understanding real-world applications
6. It is difficult to claim
that the exam score demonstrates mastery of the course material in
contexts other than an exam
But in practice, is it possible to improve on these flaws, without introducing major increases in workload for the instructor? Is there any system of evaluating student performance in an undergraduate course which is an improvement over a traditional exam approach?<issue_comment>username_1: Although exams have the flaws you described, there are also many positive aspects you have not discussed:
* Exams are actually an objective way to test performance, in a "hard to copy" environment. Although one may disagree with what is actually being tested, objectivity is usually not questioned
* They are fast. It takes 3-4 hours to test hundreds of students
* They are universally used and most of the students are accustomed to them.
* It is an excellent way to prepare students to perform under stress, a skill which is extremely useful in any work environment. All works / skills have some sort-of-testing (e.g. presentations, interviews). Even getting your driver's license requires testing. So, learning to do well in exams is a crucial real-life skill.
The only complementary (but not good enough for actually completely replacing exams) tool I can think of, is project assignments. Especially in CS, projects are a very effective tool to prepare students for real-work assignments. But they are not a good enough method on their own without some sort of personal written examination. They allow too much collaboration, copying and usually when done in teams, the good students do most of the work while others slack. While a professor might take measures to minimize this, it is impossible to avoid it 100%.
So, I do not think there is a universally better way to test students' performance than written exams. One may complement it with projects, assignments, oral examinations but in most of the cases, completely abandoning it is probably a mistake.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: >
> Students are not allowed to access resources, whereas in reality they would
>
>
>
* Not necessarily so. Instructors can allow "cheat sheets," or allow open book exams.
>
> Students get only a few minutes per question, whereas in reality they would get days
>
>
>
* Not necessarily true. My boss often asks me questions and expects me to give prompt answers. I don't always have the luxury of asking for a few days to research something. If we are in a high-stakes meeting with customers from out of town, my organization's effectiveness might well hinge on my ability to ask or answer intelligent questions on the fly.
>
> Students are not allowed to collaborate, whereas in reality they would
>
>
>
* True, but exams are designed to measure individual ability and performance, not someone's ability to contribute within a group, or accomplish some objective as a group.
>
> Students cram for the exam the day before, and forget what they learned after the course is over; students also focus on the exam to the detriment of learning the material and understanding real-world applications
>
>
>
* Perhaps so, but that's what we get when we test on the minutiae and the trivial, as opposed to testing on the synthesis of high-level concepts (more on that later).
>
> It is difficult to claim that the exam score demonstrates mastery of the course material in contexts other than an exam
>
>
>
* Maybe so, but it's not difficult to claim that, as a general rule, if students are given identical exams, students who score above the median probably understand course concepts better than those who scored below the median (with some possible exceptions, due to factors such as test anxiety, and perhaps even a little luck).
In short, you bring up some possible shortcomings with what you call "the traditional exam model," but you can address some of these simply by redefining your parameters. Instead of two closed-book exams that count toward 70% of the student's grade, give three open-book exams that count toward 50% of the student's grade. Make one of them a take-home exam, and you at least put a dent in the "few minutes per question" problem. By reducing the exam percentage from 70% to 50%, you have an extra 20% to play with, so assign a group project worth 20% of the grade, thereby addressing the collaboration problem you mention.
As for cramming and concentrating on the wrong things, that's what students will do if you structure an exam that requires them to commit a lot of petty knowledge to short-term memory. I try very hard to make my exam questions address higher-level concepts, rather than nitnoid facts. I ask them to explain these concepts, often by weighing in on hypothetical debates. (Sometimes these debates aren't even hypothetical; I'll find a online discussion thread where a debate is raging, then paste it into my exam and ask them to chime in). In other words, insofar as I can, I test on what I want them to remember five years from now. If I want them to solve a problem, but don't care if they've memorized a requisite formula (because they'll be able to look it up anyway), then I'll just include the formula in the exam. I often tell my students, "Anythihg you would need to memorize will be put in the exam itself. If it's something I have trouble remembering off the top of my head, I don't expect you to memorize it for the exam."
>
> But in practice, is it possible to improve on these flaws, without introducing major increases in workload for the instructor?
>
>
>
Ah, now, there's the rub. If you followed my suggestions here, look what I've done! There are three exams to grade, not two. These exams don't have a lot of multiple choice questions, and then there's that new group project I mentioned (which needs to be drafted up, assigned, and graded).
It's hard to get something for nothing; most meaningful improvements are going to come with some cost.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: One alternative that's been gaining momentum in actual classroom use is standards-based grading (SBG): <http://www.fwps.org/teaching/sbe/grading-system/>
In SBG, the instructor establishes a list of milestones that students are expected to attain throughout the course. The students then can provide evidence of any sort -- within parameters set by the instructor -- that prove they have met the standard. Student evidence of attainment of a standard is marked on a scale usually from 0 to 4 (unacceptable, novice, progressing, acceptable, and mastery -- or something like this) and grades are assigned at the end of the semester based on how many of the milestones have been met at "Acceptable" level or above.
For example, in calculus, one standard might be "Take the derivative of a second-degree polynomial using the limit definition". A student might show that they know this by doing a problem on a standard timed test. But maybe they don't have it down as well as they should, and on the test their work is marked as a 2 out of 4 (progressing; maybe they got the definition right but did some of the resulting algebra wrong). This isn't the end of the story. Later in the course, the student can show evidence again that they've learned what they need to learn -- for example, they can schedule time in office hours to come work a problem or two to show you they've met the standard. Or maybe take a short quiz in class, or work a problem during unstructured group work time in class meetings, or whatever avenue the instructor allows.
The point of SBG is that we want to assess students based on what they know, and give them multiple ways to show that they know it. SBG can therefore be a superset of traditional timed testing -- students that do well in timed situations will do fine in SBG, but students who struggle with timed testing can have multiple chances to get their act together, and as long as they can prove they've mastered the material by the end of the course, that is what matters.
I don't personally practice SBG but I would like to. I'd suggest this blog post by my colleague <NAME> who is a big SBG proponent: <http://profjonh.blogspot.com/2014/02/sbg-mia14.html>
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: In courses that focus more on real world practical ability, assignments (like creating a project, software, etc) are a suitable alternative. It can be done during more time, using literature and, if preferred, in a small group.
A student still needs to defend an assignment (demonstrate it working and answer enough questions to be sure the work has not been copied from somewhere).
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/04/23 | 1,121 | 5,114 | <issue_start>username_0: Should the department share the departmental problems (financial, officials, political, etc) with the students? or it is official matter and none of their business?
For a more specific example. Imagine that students are complaining about the lack of teachers in specific topics. The department head tries to secure fund for faculty recruitment, but Dean refuses. *Should the department head consider this as an internal matter between officials or should inform the students why he is not hiring teacher?*
Of course, I do not mean organizational secrets. Most of these news spread among students through rumors and gossip. My question is: should a department head directly inform the students about problems? Or according to the common business models, an organization should not reveal its failures and problems to customers unless it is a must?
What is the appropriate scheme for treating students? (1) customers who get service from the university employees in return to tuition fee, or (2) part of the organization? Obviously, these are not solid categories, and I just want to express the issue.<issue_comment>username_1: I think a department should share information with students that can affect them. A non-hire of faculty doesn't affect students directly unless the students were recruited to the department with the promise of expanding in a certain area, and then this fell through.
But I don't know of a single department that would make such a promise to incoming students (and certainly not undergraduates).
On the other hand, if the department experiences a shortfall in funding that means that they have to change how they fund students, then these students must be informed as soon as possible since this materially affects them.
Apart from these cases, one can certainly make the argument that sharing **relevant** information with students helps foster an atmosphere of collegiality and gives the students a sense of belonging. Within reason...
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: The answer is "it depends."
It depends on:
* What the specific problem is,
* The department/university/student/faculty culture,
* What can be gained by telling students about the specific problem,
* What reasons there are *not* to tell students about the specific problem.
There are several reasons to tell students about problems:
* It can often be beneficial to share information with students so that they feel more invested in their department (as username_1 suggests).
* Another reason to tell students about a problem is if there is some action students can take to help the problem. (For example: "We have been having trouble attracting the top students this year, and we really need to recruit some great new PhD students to keep this department going strong. Please make some extra effort at the event for admitted students to show them what great research we are doing here and encourage them to accept their offer!")
* A third (more cynical) reason: if it's a major problem that students will find out about anyways, it's often better for them to hear about it directly from the department/university, so that administrators can add their "spin" to the news. (For example: "Our recent accreditation review didn't go well, as you may read about in the newspaper tomorrow, but here our concrete plan to fix this issue.")
On the other hand, there are good reasons *not* to tell students about some problems. Here are a few:
* It can be beneficial to shield students (to some degree) from department politics and financial issues that don't directly affect them, and that they can't do anything about. (For example: I don't need to know which faculty member is mad this week because they feel slighted over not having been asked to come to lunch with a certain job candidate.)
* Having partial information can be worse than having no information at all, i.e., students can misinterpret the information they are given because they lack certain context (which *can't* be shared with them for whatever reason).
* Department/university guidelines may require information to be withheld in some cases. For example, there may be a policy that things said in certain meetings are to be held confidential among the participants unless explicitly approved for outside release. This may allow certain things to be said that wouldn't be said otherwise, but limits the sharing of information with students.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: Students need to be informed! Students pay tuition to go to college, and, in my opinion, the college or university leadership that chooses not to inform students of information about the school they are attending, is making poor decisions. I am an older student working on my undergraduate degree and I think students need to be informed. If students aren't included in the information loop, it's not going to help the schools reputation, and if the students read about it in the local newspaper before they're informed about it, in my opinion' they're going to lose a lot of respect for the leadership.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/04/23 | 411 | 1,804 | <issue_start>username_0: In research papers, should Introduction and Conclusion sections be numbered or non-numbered? What does the scientific paper etiquette suggest? Furthermore, in either case, should they appear in the Table of Contents?
If the answer depends on the research field, please elaborate. I'm in electrical engineering, but do occasionally write mathematical papers as well, so those two fields are personally of highest interest.
On a side note, in case someone confuses it with the Introduction section, I am quite sure that the Abstract section should be non-numbered either way.<issue_comment>username_1: It's not field-dependent, it's a journal-dependent issue. Some use a format where everything is numbered, some use a format where nothing is numbered, and still others leave it up to the authors to decide.
However, when sections are numbered, everything in the main text should be numbered, including the introduction and conclusions. You don't skip numbering those sections but add numbers for the rest. That doesn't make any sense. (End matter such as acknowledgments and supporting information may be handled separately.)
The best advice is **check the style guide for your journal.**
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Certainly, they *are* numbered in mathematics and related fields. Why? Because often you state theorems and formulas in Introduction or Conclusions: How would you label these to allow citing them, if their parent (=section) is not numbered?
*(With my Copy Editor hat on)* I allow only three unnumbered sections: List of notation, Acknowledgements, References. They come in this order (if present) and they are at the very end of the paper.
Nonetheless, as **username_1** pointed out, it's field- and journal-dependent.
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/04/23 | 646 | 2,898 | <issue_start>username_0: The faculty in which I am currently working is planning to subscribe to the ACM Digital Library and to the IEEE Xplore Digital Library. I am not pretty sure how much are the real costs of the subscription because for example in:
<http://librarians.acm.org/sites/default/files/ACM_DL_PricingGuides2014_NoTabs_V19_Academic.pdf>
it appears something about tiers; I suppose that for a small access to this material oriented only to students that are doing their bachelor's final year projects, we will be in tier 1. About IEEE I still do not have information about it.
In any case, I would like if there are another alternatives to those two digital libraries, excluding Arxiv because a lot of their articles have not been peer reviewed.
Any suggestion?
PD. Update information:
We would like to access to articles about all the fields of Computer Science, the access would be for around 20 students maximum each month (that is the number of students enrolled in their last bachelor project). We need only the articles to be reviewed for their research as supporting literature.<issue_comment>username_1: The comments contain very good information. I think the only real alternative is to settle for access to the subset of those articles that happens to be freely available, either from authors' websites or the arXiv. Note that authors can indicate on the arXiv version where a paper has been published, so you can avoid using papers that aren't peer reviewed if you wish.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: If you are needing frequent access to particular articles published by ACM and IEEE, then ACM DL and IEEE Xplore are really the only ways to go.
However, if you are needing to be able to find and reference general background information across a broad range of computer science subjects, then there are informal access methods which also work quite well.
First, Google Scholar is very good at finding non-paywalled copies of PDFs. This is especially the case for computer science, where many conferences have very liberal policies about self-archiving and where many people strongly believe that material should be made accessible online. Some organizations, such as AAAI and AAMAS just always put everything online for free as a matter of policy. Even IEEE and ACM are fairly liberal about this and rarely interfere with authors who do not follow the letter of their law.
Second, the [ResearchGate](http://www.researchgate.net/) site has an option for privately requesting copies of publications from authors, and most computer science authors are quite willing to share (again, there is a strong "information wants to be free" culture in much of the community).
The efficacy of these approaches varies from subcommunity to subcommunity, but it sounds like the type of general access you're looking for may well be sufficiently served by them.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/04/23 | 1,428 | 5,818 | <issue_start>username_0: Since the first time I had to write an (academic) CV, I seem to be getting two conflicting opinions on the subject of *including non-academic* interests on an academic CV.
(Some examples of such interests would be sports, cooking, etc.)
The "sources" of my advice include professional people in and outside of academia, (not that many) PhD students, a lot of internet searches and observing the CVs of other academics/researchers.
* One one hand, I heard that **including a section about such interests is important**, as it is supposed to demonstrate that you are a "diverse, complete person" and not a solitary scientist/workaholic. This is also one of the more common *"don't forget"* advice I found on not-academia-specific guides to writing a CV.
* On the other hand, a lot of examples of CVs of senior scientist **didn't include anything of the sort**, which mostly makes sense to me: since I am writing a CV to apply for a position / grant in an academic concept, I should be judged based on my academia-related activities.
So, I would like to know **what is actually the convention** in academia? I can imagine the answer might depend on several factors such as:
* culture of the country
* culture of the field
* seniority of the scientist (e.g. PhD student vs permanent Professor)
But, then, I am really not sure. Is it a matter of convention depending on some or all of the above, or, if not, what is the global convention for including non-academia related interests in an academic CV?<issue_comment>username_1: The *convention* in an academic CV is *not* to include information on non-academic hobbies or interests that are not relevant to your professional skills and qualifications.
You will find this view confirmed on sites that give specific advice on the **academic** CV. (e.g.: [this one](http://www.academiccareer.manchester.ac.uk/applications/cvs/content/)).
That's not to say there's never a good reason to include this information; there may be, in some cases. (For example, you might mention your time abroad doing unrelated humanitarian work to explain a chronological gap.) But in academic CVs it's not standard.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: When considering applicants for an academic job, should employers be taking interests in things like sports or cooking into account? In all academic circles I am aware of, the answer is a clear **no**. If I were a candidate for an academic job and somehow found out that another candidate got additional consideration for these kind of interests, I would be quite upset, and if there were (this seems unlikely) some kind of written record of it, I might have a real grievance.
So the answer is that, about as certainly as any one academic can be about the entire world of academia, I believe that putting such things on an academic CV will not get you additional formal consideration. Some people do put them on their CVs anyway: I have looked at thousands of CVs over (not-even-that-)many years, and I would say that maybe 5% include information like this. I don't take it into account in my deliberations. I might happen to be personally interested, but I might also semi-consciously think "Boy do I not care that Mr. X enjoys cooking and running. Let me take another look as Ms. Y, who listed only impressive, relevant things on her CV." When there are several hundred applications, you do want to err in the direction of not annoying your readers, however mildly. Now you might well argue that your application could just as well find someone who semi-consciously admires you for cooking and running. That's your decision. But my feeling (which of course is very much based on *me*) is that you will in the aggregate lose rather than gain a small number of points with this practice....and in the current academic job market, losing a small number of points is liable to have the same effect as losing a large number of points!
Here are two followup remarks:
1) There *is* a place for you to put benign personal information: your webpage. Nowadays I think that every academic job candidate should have a webpage (I didn't until after I started a tenure track job, despite the fact that one of the key people who eventually hired me hinted several times to my postdoctoral supervisor that that would be a good idea. On the one hand: oh, well; do what I say, not what I do. On the other hand: that was almost ten years ago, and since then my webpage has become a major part of my professional profile. I really think that a young academic without a webpage in 2014 looks like a Luddite.)
2) You write "academic CV". I wonder whether this hints at your geography. In the US, the term CV is *only used* in academia (and also in the medical industry, [according to wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curriculum_vitae): these are overlapping circles). To my American ear, the term "academic CV" sounds almost redundant. But the same wikipedia article helpfully informed me:
>
> In some countries, a CV is typically the first item that a potential employer encounters regarding the job seeker and is typically used to screen applicants, often followed by an interview, when seeking employment.
>
>
>
You should know that in the US we call that a "resume", not a CV. I think this is a helpful distinction to keep in mind when trying to decide whether information about CVs is applicable: a "business resume" is very different from an "academic CV". Anyone who tells you that a CV should be 1-2 pages is talking about a resume instead: although you sometimes see "brief CVs" which are that length, an academic CV is rather supposed to be a *comprehensive document* detailing your academic record, so it grows roughly linearly with the length of your academic career.
Upvotes: 4 |
2014/04/23 | 2,080 | 8,918 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm a teacher in a Vocational Education school in Spain. In our Vocational Education system, we have two different levels:
1. Vocational High School (post compulsory secondary school)
2. Community College (this is considered Higher Education)
It's hard for me to establish equivalence with the US System, but I guess you might have similar levels.
In Spain, students with a Vocational High School diploma can't enroll directly in Community College, they need to sit a test first (a sort of SAT test, but not so hard as SAT).
I would like to know how it goes in the US. Is there also some kind of test for entering a Community College if you come from Vocational High School? In that case, could you tell me how this test is called, please?<issue_comment>username_1: The answer is apparently pretty complicated, since US education has a tradition of decentralization. Originally, community colleges were pure local-government entities, although there is now a lot more state involvement. There is not a single nationwide set of rules.
Vocational high schools are not very common in the US. For the most part we simply have high schools. Vocational education tends to be unpopular, because parents don't want it for their children for reasons of prestige.
In my area in Southern California, any student who has graduated from high school can enroll at a community college, and there is no admissions test. California's master plan for higher education states that the mission of community colleges is to admit any student who is capable of benefiting from instruction. Even students who don't have a high school diploma can attend a community college.
Some of the comments below show that the facts described above do not hold nationwide.
Due to funding cuts in 2012, students who don't have a high school diploma or a GED (a diploma based on taking a test that is supposed to be equivalent to a high school diploma) no longer qualify for federal financial aid.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: In the US there is first a federal (country-wide) rule: there are high-school diplomas, roughly equivalent almost-like-a-high-school-diplomas called a GED or a variety of other names, and then there are accredited higher education institutions providing certificates, 2-year degrees (called an associate's degree), 4-year degrees (called a bachelor's degree), 5-7 yearish degrees (master's degree), and of course the PhD...in addition to a slew of other special professional degrees for high ed.
Where it gets particularly hard to generalize is we have 50 states that determine all the details of the rest, especially the high-schools. I'll try to provide a broad overview. While this is true across states for the most part, the exact mix, nature of funding, and multi-track availability varies tremendously across the country.
Traditional high schools are the most common, which simply teach a variety of subjects and offer some sports, music, and arts programs (where possible), and don't especially differentiate between students who are planning to go to college from students who don't. Some special programming exists tailored to certain professions or college prep, but this is usually minimal. Graduation gives you a plain high school diploma.
Magnet schools exist at the elementary through high school level, and are focused on a specific area of excellence that permeates their whole school design; some schools specialize in science and technology, math, media/broadcasting, dance and/or fine arts, etc. This isn't necessarily about college or professional prep, but there is often a particular bent to some schools and they generally encourage higher education. Graduation gives you a plain high school diploma.
Vocational schools are high schools that are much like magnet schools, only their focus is on certain professional preparation. There are schools that offer programs in all sorts of vocations from culinary arts, electrician, building/construction jobs, auto repair, and many others. Graduation gives you a plain high school diploma.
College preparatory schools (prep schools for short) are, at least in theory, designed with college seeking students in mind. Everything is geared towards being ready for college and getting into a good college. Graduation gives you a plain high school diploma.
There are also some "alternative" institutions that seek to provide a high school education to people who didn't fit in well with other institutions for various reasons (ranging from disability, family situation, pregnancy, legal problems, different learning style, etc), as well as religious institutions. All offer plain high school diplomas, generally.
Now, anyone with a high school diploma and usually even a GED (basically a special program or test that allows one to get a diploma - or something like it - without having to go back to high school or through high school at all) can apply to any higher education institution they like.
Most higher ed sets it's own standards for admittance, though, which is usually based upon grades while in high school (GPA), ACT/SAT test scores, essay, etc. Some places have preferences or relationships with certain high schools (the high schools often being referred to as "feeder schools"), but that's about it.
Now, higher ed is yet another ball of wax, and varies tremendously by state - even more than high schools!
Most states have community, technical, or junior colleges, which generally offer the 2 and 4 year degrees. As these places are often smaller in size, they offer limited and differing selections of degree programs (some may have no fine arts programs, others might have no engineering...etc). Florida calls these smaller places junior colleges, Wisconsin has state technical colleges, Arizona has community colleges...etc. They are similar, but funding and "prestige" varies heavily.
The terms differ, but the general rule is the same: smaller, less degree programs, often focused on certificates and 2-year degrees and very limited 4-year offerings (if any at all). It is not uncommon for the smaller schools to focus on providing a lower-cost, student-centered program with the expectation of transferring to another institution to complete their bachelor's degree.
Then there are the bigger universities, which are sometimes called "4-year institutions", and focus on a larger campus, more degree programs, and are centered on the bachelor's degree. Some offer limited master's programs, and even fewer have select PhD options in specific areas.
We also have "polytechnic" colleges, which vary in size but are often focused on certain aspects of the sciences such as engineering. It is not uncommon for other institutions to omit engineering and related programs entirely, and thus specialized colleges fill in the gaps.
Then there are just big "universities", which offer a wide selection of everything, really. Most states have at least one, and sometimes 2 or more, of these. They often cost more, have more options, are located in big cities, and are just massive.
However, no matter what institution, the same rule generally applies: some are "selective", which means you take tests, and some have open access and anyone who can pay the fee can enroll. The tests are most commonly the ACT/SAT if you are coming from high school, but some schools - especially junior/technical/community colleges - will instead offer their own "placement test" mainly in math and reading to determine if you need to take any remedial classes first.
Selective schools limit enrollment, and usually use a multiple factor process: personal essay, maybe reference letters from educators, transcript of grades from wherever you went to high school, ACT/SAT scores, etc. Each school sets their own rules, and this ranges from your MIT schools who are proud of their tiny admittance rates, to most schools who just don't want to admit students they think will not thrive in their programs.
Students who can't get into selective schools but want to are often encouraged to attend the junior/technical/community colleges for a year or two, and then re-apply. When applying then the high school grades and tests are at times ignored completely or at least heavily discounted, and strong preference is given to those with good grades at whatever college they have been attending. This process is very common with mid-to-large state-funded schools.
So, in summary: high school diploma is just a diploma in the US, higher education institutions set their own individual admittance standards (ranging from strict to none, varying by place and state), most selective institutions require ACT/SAT scores and high school transcripts at a minimum regardless of where you went to high school or what you did there.
I hope this provides you with more than you actually wanted to know!
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer] |
2014/04/23 | 1,074 | 4,033 | <issue_start>username_0: I want to send an email to a professor to inform him that I want to accept the offer of PhD admission and Research assistantship. But I do not know how to start email. Is the following good? if not, would you please recommend better phrase.
>
> Dear Professor,
>
>
> I hope you are keeping well ....
>
>
><issue_comment>username_1: Congratulations on finding a PhD position :) When sending an acceptance e-mail to a professor, I would say the "general" rules of communicating with professors via e-mail apply.
* Be polite, and extend thanks when appropriate, but don't overdo the social pleasantries.
The polite part basically holds for any e-mail and live correspondence.
I would say that "I hope you are keeping well" would be a bit unnecessary.
* Be short and to the point. Respect the professors time.
Professors receive many e-mails a day, and are usually very busy. Saying what you want to say clearly not only shows respect for their time, but also makes it more likely that everything written will be carefully read.
* Do at least a basic **spellcheck**.
Especially in the beginning of a communication. It doesn't cost much time and effort, but could leave a bad impression.
* Do not attach big files unless explicitly asked for.
Anything larger than a few MB should not be sent unless asked for (e.g. sending all your credentials / application papers when first contacting somebody is bad), and especially not to somebody who you are not collaborating with at the moment.
Beyond this, there is not much else. I already feel like it's hard to call any of these *rules*, they're just guides based on common sense. Just say what you need to say. I put and extended the comment by [@user11259](https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11192/user11192) here as an example:
>
> Hello Dr./Prof. Brain,
>
>
> I gratefully accept your offer of admission and research assistantship, and I look forward to working with you.
>
>
> (Please let me know about the next steps in the admission process I need to take.)
>
>
> Sincerely,
>
>
> user11259
>
>
>
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Almost everyone who interviews attempts to present themselves, their accomplishments, and their personal objectives politely and submissively to the interviewer.
Dear Professor,
I hope you are keeping well ....
Hello Dr./Prof. Brain,
I gratefully accept your offer of admission and research assistantship, and I look forward to working with you.
When you write "I hope you are keeping well" or "I gratefully accept," you are subordinating yourself to your "superior."
This attitude is not "academic," it is playing power politics or submitting to colonialism.
The first thing you must do is read everything you can get your hands on your professor has published. Then select any aspect of the professor's writing that jumps up at you. Find something Professor Brain has written, and ask her one or more questions about her assertions. SHE MUST RESPOND--SHE CANNOT HELP BUT RESPOND BECAUSE YOU ARE ACTIVATING THE KEYS TO HER PSYCHE.
When Professor Brain responds, find a term or concept she mentions; and ask Professor Brain to elaborate.
After you have had a continuing conversation with Professor Brain for several e-mail messages back and forth, you can discuss any procedural issues you like. But at that point in the discussion, you will have established where you stand, who you are, and how much you care. Do it properly, and YOU WILL BECOME THE SUPERIOR.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_3: This is very culture and person specific. My acceptance email was (translated from Dutch):
>
> Harry:
>
>
> Sure. When?
>
>
> -- Maarten
>
>
>
I do **not** reccommend that as a general style, but it was the right response in my specific case, as in the Netherlands (academic) titles are less important than in other countries and I knew that Harry (my advisor) was even more extreme in his insistence on informal and brief/terse communication.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/04/23 | 2,247 | 8,532 | <issue_start>username_0: A recent job posting at a British university has specified available openings at multiple levels: lecturer, senior lecturer, reader, and professor. However, it's not clear how to map these titles to American equivalents. For instance, where would someone who has finished up several years of an assistant professorship and is interested in moving into such a position be classified? Would it be as a senior lecturer or reader?<issue_comment>username_1: My impression is that: Lecturer and Senior Lecturer are roughly equivalent to an untenured, but tenure track Assistant Professorship in the US because both Lecturer and Senior Lecturer positions are full time, open ended positions. Reader is equivalent to a tenured Associate Professor and Professor is equivalent to full Professor.
They aren't exactly equivalent however. Most places in the UK don't actually have what americans would think of as tenure, I think.
The people that would be called "instructors" or "lecturers" in the US are non-tenure-track, contingent labor hired for one term or one year at a time and often not even full-time, although this varies. I don't know what the name of such a position would be in a UK university, or whether such positions are as common in the UK as they have sadly become in the States.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: I got my PhD in the UK and have been working in the US for the last 5 years. My understanding is that an Assistant Proffessor is basically a lecturer and a Full Professor corresponds to a Professor in the UK. Things get somewhat trickier in the middle though. A US Associate Professor could be translated as either Senior Lecturer or Reader but I would go for the latter.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_1: Usually, lecturer is the lowest open-ended position (although there are exceptions), and professor is the highest one, everything in between can be quite specific. For instance, Swansea University is considering [four different grades from 2013](http://www.swansea.ac.uk/personnel/informationforstaff/academiccareerpathways/):
* Lecturer (replacing Lecturer Grade 8 and Tutor)
* Senior Lecturer (replacing Lecturer Grade 9, Senior Professional Tutor and Research Fellow)
* Associate Professor (replacing Senior Lecturer and Reader)
* Professor (that one at least is unchanged!).
Each title comes with a set of expected criteria. In addition, a concept I've seen several times in the UK is the notion of **academic pathway**, which can characterise further the criteria for the positions. For instance, at Newcastle University, where I'm currently working, we have [three main academic pathways, with the corresponding positions](http://www.ncl.ac.uk/hr/assets/documents/academic_career_pathways_rjcb_290513.pdf). In order to illustrate the different expectations based on the pathways, I included the expectations w.r.t. [the UK Professional Standards Framework (UKPSF)](http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/ukpsf). I also include the [grade](http://www.ncl.ac.uk/hr/assets/documents/collated_with_starting_salaries_august_2013.pdf) (positions above G are usually open-ended, although there are exceptions).
* Teaching & Scholarship Pathway (the "standard" pathway):
+ Grade E: Teaching Assistant (encouraged to become recognised at UKPSF Descriptor 1)
+ Grade F: Teaching Fellow (be recognised at or be working towards UKPSF Descriptor 2)
+ Grade G: Lecturer (likely to be working commensurate with the achievement of Descriptor 3 and are encouraged to work towards it)
+ Grade H: Senior Lecturer (expected to be recognised at or be working towards UK PSF Descriptor 3)
+ Grade H: Reader (be recognised at or be working towards UKPSF Descriptor 3 or 4)
+ Grade I: Professor (be recognised at or be working towards UKPSF Descriptor 3 or 4)
* Teaching & Research Pathway:
+ Grade F: Lecturer (should be recognised at UKPSF Descriptor 1 and be working towards Descriptor 2)
+ Grade G: Lecturer (should be recognised at UKPSF Descriptor 1 and be working towards Descriptor 2)
+ Grade H: Senior Lecturer (should be working towards UKPSF Descriptor 2 or 3)
+ Grade H: Reader (should be working towards UKPSF Descriptor 3)
+ Grade I: Professor (should be working towards UKPSF Descriptor 3)
* Research & Innovation Pathway (since there is no teaching expected, UKPSF is not relevant):
+ Grade E: Research Assistant
+ Grade F: Research Associate
+ Grade G: Senior Research Associate
+ Grade H: Principal Research Associate & Reader
+ Grade I: Professor.
In other words, you should not try to translate the title, but instead understand where do you fit within the academic pathways of the university offering the positions. When it comes to teaching, it can be particularly useful to understand where one fits within the UKPSF, in order to match the corresponding title with the scheme used at the university. For instance, showing that you are working towards obtaining Descriptor 4 could be helpful to get a Reader position instead of a Senior Lecturer.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: The UK Professor rank is quite a bit more selective than the US full Professor rank; it more closely matches a Distinguished or named Professorship. Most American full Professors would be classified as Readers or Principal Lecturers in the UK system. (Reader and Principal Lecturer are generally equivalent; the older UK universities tend to use "Reader" while the newer ones tend to use "Principal Lecturer.") Look at faculty lists of UK universities and see how few Professors there are.
Many American Associate Professors would be placed at the Senior Lecturer rank, although some would be Lecturers. While the US hierarchy requires promotion from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor after five to seven years, some UK universities have faculty (aka academic staff) who serve in the Lecturer rank for longer than seven years.
American Assistant Professors would be placed at the Lecturer rank.
These equivalencies are generalizations, of course. You may want to look at the distribution of academic ranks among the faculty (and their corresponding scholarly accomplishments) at the universities you're interested in.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: Academic rank data for UK faculty (i.e., “academic staff”) are compiled by the Higher Education Statistics Agency. Table 11a at <https://www.hesa.ac.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3081> (bottom of the table) shows that of full-time faculty, 14% are Professors, 27% are Senior Lecturers or Senior Researchers, 52% are Lecturers or Researchers, and 7% are “other grades.”
I assume that Readers and Principal Lecturers are included in the “senior lecturer/researcher” category, since the Reader and Principal ranks are not always used at the newer universities. (Note that these data are for 2007/08. The 2008/09 data seem to combine full-time and part-time faculty, and the more recent data require payment for access.)
Data for US faculty are available in the 2014 Almanac of Higher Education (Chronicle of Higher Education) at <http://chronicle.com.www.library.manhattan.edu/article/Full-Time-Instructional/148195/>
Among full-time faculty, 24% are Professors, 20% are Associate Professors, 23% are Assistant Professors, 14% are Instructors, 4% are Lecturers, and 14% are "other ranks."
For a general overview, see the sources cited by <NAME> et al. in “Academic Economists’ Pay and Productivity: A Tale of Two Countries,” which is freely available through Google Scholar. Moore et al. state, “For many years, the rank of professor in UK universities was reserved for a very select group and often there was only one professional chair per department and that person served as head of the department (Brown, 1963). .... To control costs, the UK system has placed limits on the proportion of faculty in the senior ranks (reader/senior lecturer and professor) at each university. Periodically, the University Grants Council and government have raised the senior limit in response to market forces (Bett, 1999). In contrast, most US universities do not place limits on the number of senior positions. As a consequence, the proportion of professors is much higher in the US than in the UK. Currently, less than 25 percent of UK academic economists hold the rank of professor (Blackaby and Frank, 2000).” This isn’t the best source, of course, but it came up right away in Google Scholar and it seems to address the question reasonably well.
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/04/23 | 568 | 1,645 | <issue_start>username_0: Recently my paper is reviewed (by a professor from independent third party) and accepted by a journal. But, my employer allows me to publish this paper only without its name there.
Publishing house is expecting affiliation for each author, i.e. I can not leave affiliation as blank.
What should I write as the affiliation?<issue_comment>username_1: As noted by [@mankoff in a comment](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3010/does-one-need-to-be-affiliated-with-a-university-to-publish-papers#comment17608_3010) on [Does one need to be affiliated with a university to publish papers?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3010/does-one-need-to-be-affiliated-with-a-university-to-publish-papers), you can use "Independent Scholar":
>
> Here is a recent paper published by someone affiliated as "Independent Scholar": [dx.doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-12-00171.1](http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-12-00171.1)
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Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: For completeness’ sake, I mention that another option would be to give your private address as an affiliation.
[Here](https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-247X(89)90081-4) is an example for this. [Here](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1205.5520.pdf) is another one (affiliations are at the end of the paper)¹. [This one](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1609.01596) only lists the city and country part of the address².
---
¹ Credits to [<NAME>](https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20036/jessica-b) for pointing this one out.
² Credits to [Cheersmate](https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/101067/cheersmate) for pointing this one out.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/04/23 | 1,429 | 6,144 | <issue_start>username_0: My situation is as follows: I spent my undergraduate time at one university and recently entered grad school at another university (both of them in Germany, my field is theoretical computer science).
For my Bachelor's thesis, I worked (for about two months or so) on a topic that had not been considered at the time.
My former supervisor, although he proposed the topic, is not (at least not for the last 30 years) actively doing research in that specific area, which resulted in me ending up quite on my own. However, I could get some new results. They were, of course, not groundbreaking, but sufficient for the undergraduate level and the amount of time spent working on the thesis.
So we submitted the results to a (medium-to-low-ranked) conference in the subfield.
The reviews were quite mixed. Two were rather superficial: One positively and recommending acceptance, one negatively and recommending rejection (actually, the latter one was quite rude).
The third one, however, although recommending for rejection, was quite encouraging. The reviewer liked the idea of the paper, while the results we obtained did not suffice for publication at conference level but (his words) were rather suited for venues for work in progress, e.g. workshops in the area.
I actually agree with the third reviewer, for it would have been quite a surprise for me if a second-year undergraduate would have been able to produce publishable work on his own just like that, so I am not that disappointed.
My problem is that I do not plan on pursuing that specific subarea of research in the future and neither does my former supervisor. However, given that I ultimately aim for an academic career, I think it might be worth some efforts to get something published. Additionally, at my new university, nobody really cares about the area of the thesis, so chances to get some expert here to work with in order to improve the results are rather bad. This means that if I want something to happen, I would have to invest a vast amount of time and thoughts into a topic I don't want to pursue in the future, instead of entering new areas of research as quickly as possible.
So: Should I improve the results and finally get them published or should I invest the time for acquiring knowledge in a different area (and start publishing later) and abandon the work that has been done (giving away a possible publication) (w.r.t. the impact of the outcome on my academic career)?<issue_comment>username_1: There is no clear answer to this question because it depends on several factors. First, it has to be said that it is a shame if good research is not published. If you get encouraging comments and know what to do to meet certain criteria you can probably assess how much work will be involved and then if you are willing to put in that effort. having something published is never wrong, even if it is not in the field you want to pursue. If you are not interested or do not want to spend the time then it will be harder to generate the necessary improvements.
So, if you want to pursue a career in research, having something tangible published is always a plus. It is a question if you want to take a chance to "waste" your time; if you think it is worth it.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: >
> However, given that I ultimately aim for an academic career, I think it might be worth some efforts to get something published.
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>
This alone makes me thing that it may be worth the effort - attempting to enter an academic career becomes *vastly* easier with some publications under your belt. Don't be discouraged by negative reviews - more than one of my papers has gotten reviews back that are essentially "This paper is bad, and the authors should feel bad" that end up seeing publication.
I would continue to pursue your paper for at least another round or two of submissions, but given it's not strictly speaking what you're interested in, if it becomes a burden either in your classwork or in publishing something you *are* interested in doing (I had a paper become just such a problem) return it to the shelf.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: >
> So we submitted the results to a (medium-to-low-ranked) conference in the subfield. The reviews were quite mixed. Two were rather superficial: One positively and recommending acceptance, one negatively and recommending rejection (actually, the latter one was quite rude).
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I think having a positive review suggests it might be worth factoring in the comments and trying another submission elsewhere, assuming you're confident that the paper is technically sound.
Just to build on the other answers, I can see three options (with decreasing awards):
1. Work hard on the paper (if possible) and submit it to **a conference with a similar level of competition** (or perhaps even greater).
2. Work a little on the paper and submit it to **a good/relevant workshop** or as **a short paper to a conference**.
3. Submit the paper "as is" to **the [arXiV](http://arxiv.org/) e-print server** (which won't be peer-reviewed, but it will be publicised and the ideas will be marked as yours).
At your stage of career, taking any of these options would help open doors for you later on. Higher options open more doors.
Which strategy is best really depends on the depth of contribution in the paper (ideally you could discuss this in person with a more senior academic in roughly the same area). Note also that the options are not mutually exclusive.
The most generic advice would be to take option 3 now and submit the preprint (since it doesn't preclude submitting to a workshop/conference), work as hard as you can and try submit to another conference; if the reviews are similar, submit to a workshop or as a short paper. This strategy might involve more work but tries to maximise your profit.
A fourth option (which may or may not be feasible) is to take option 3 and then try find somebody else to collaborate with: someone to advise/guide you and share some of the workload in extending the paper towards an improved conference submission.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/04/23 | 2,716 | 11,119 | <issue_start>username_0: I received a rejection letter from a relatively high-impact journal based on the feedback from three reviewers. After I reviewed their comments, I feared that their comments were biased and am not sure if I should appeal. The comments from all three reviewers are all negative, but one is more bias than the other.
The first reviewer said that I need to carry out a lot more experiments that will involve a lot of cost, which is not practical. However, in the comment, they only suggested one additional experiment that needed to be done. The second reviewer complained about the quality of the figures, but I think they are fixable. The third reviewer complained about the novelty of the paper but I think they did not carefully read and understand the paper.
Is it still possible to write an appeal if all three reviewers were negative about the paper since their reason to support rejection wasn't strong?<issue_comment>username_1: You seem to be conflating "Bias" and "Negativity". Bias would imply that your paper was being reviewed unfairly, either because of its content, or its authors - if they were known or divined by the reviewer.
It's entirely possible, and fairly standard, to get negative reviews you disagree with. When it comes down to it, your paper was rejected, and the only time I've ever seen appeals to the editor work is for things that are flagrantly egregious and wrong, rather than just "This is weak and I disagree with it". And even then, it's usually a long shot "What's the worst that could happen, they say no again?" play.
I suspect your time would be much better spent addressing the comments of the reviewers within the paper and revising it, rather than appealing to the editors.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_2: @username_1's answer is spot on. I would like to expand further on the differences between a **biased** review, a **lazy** review, a **significantly erroneous** review, and a **negative** review, and which do/don't warrant an appeal.
The examples given in this post come from a contest held by the always-excellent [FemaleScienceProfessor](http://science-professor.blogspot.com/2014/01/fake-review-contest-vote.html). Quite a few are real reviews, or based on real reviews.
### Biased Review
*Does* warrant an appeal, if it's the reason your paper was rejected. Often editors are smart enough to identify a biased review on their own, and will simply discount its advice.
[Example #1](http://science-professor.blogspot.com/2014/01/fake-review-contest-entries-13-16.html) (here, the reviewer clearly lets his personal goals get in the way of a fair review):
>
> I am afraid I cannot support the publication of this paper. The authors present an idea that I myself have had for some time and just haven’t gotten around to writing it up yet. I think that when I write my paper, it will be better than this one. These authors would be well advised to wait until my paper is published, and then they can cite it.
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[Example #2](http://science-professor.blogspot.com/2013/12/fake-review-contest-entires-5-8.html):
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> Since the author is a woman, I had lowered my expectations accordingly, but the author did not even meet those. Even though I have never done experiments in my life and have never used any of these techniques, the experimental results presented were completely misinterpreted in my distinguished opinion.
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### Lazy Review
Does *not* warrant an appeal. If all of your reviewers give you a lazy review, you need to do a better job exciting the reader (thereby motivating the reviewer to carefully read the whole paper in detail because it's such compelling reading.) (*Very* rarely, this can be an indication of a bad journal/conference and you should find a better place to submit your work).
[Example #1](http://science-professor.blogspot.com/2014/01/fake-review-contest-entries-19-22.html):
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> The topic of this paper is not of critical importance to furthering knowledge.
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> Sent from my iPhone
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[Example #2](http://science-professor.blogspot.com/2013/12/fake-review-contest-entries-1-4.html):
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> Paper Title: Linear and Nonlinear Methods to solve XXX
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> Review: "Why is the approach limited to linear methods, and the author does not propose nonlinear methods?"
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### Significantly Erroneous Review
(per JeffE's suggestion)
This is a distinct case from the Lazy Review. It does *not* include the case where the reviewer "erroneously" concludes that your work is not interesting or useful, just because you disagree with this conclusion. It does *not* include the case where the reviewer says "I am concerned about X" and you believe you've adequately addressed X.
It *does* include cases where a review is affected by a significant factual, logical, or mathematical error. This *is* grounds for appeal.
[Example](http://science-professor.blogspot.com/2013/12/fake-review-contest-entires-5-8.html) (the reviewer is mistaken as to the meaning of "[graph](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_%28disambiguation%29)" here):
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> Paper title: Graph analysis of System ABC shows differences in A-B connections during Condition X vs. Y
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> Review: This paper uses a novel method to study ABC system dynamics. However, I don't know anything about graph analysis so I'm going to interpret the paper through the lens of a different analysis method I do know something about. Thus the only constructive feedback I can give is that this paper is a poorly written explanation of a structural equation model of XYZ - the conclusions drawn make little sense given the data, i.e. they frequently refer to "graphs" but all I see are these pictures of circles and arrows.
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(A minor error is highly unlikely to be the reason for a rejection. Therefore, for a minor error, an appeal is not likely to be successful - an appeal will be useful only if the point of appeal was the reason for the rejection. In the case of a minor error, I would advise to use the reviewer's mistake as an opportunity: to clarify in the text points that might lead people to mistakenly discount your results, or even to decide to ignore the criticism because it's not a common enough misconception to be worth addressing in the paper.)
### Negative Review
A review that does not fit into the above categories, but still criticizes your paper, is just a negative review. It is *not* grounds for an appeal. It should be taken as constructive criticism, and you can use it to make your paper better.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_3: Short version. **Do not do it**.
Long version: You have to understand there is something wrong with the paper. One negative review might be unlucky / unjust. But three negative reviews? That means that the paper needs some serious fixing before re-submitting again.
The other possible problem with your paper might be that you are aiming too high. Maybe your paper is actually good but not good enough for a high impact journal. That would also explain why the third reviewer just "brushed off" your paper without really reading it. Your paper simply might not be interesting enough for such a journal. This is a phase that many researchers have in the beginning of their research. Living in our research "bubble", we believe our research and results are amazing, when simply they are not. It takes some research maturity to actually understand the real "size" of our results.
Also based on your previous questions on this forum and your problems with your advisor it is obvious that you lack guidance. You are simply not objective enough to judge the merits of your research and you need someone "wiser" to judge your work hard but in a fair way. But please humble down. Do not start a war with the world. Your advisor was "bad" and you had to fight back. Now the reviewers are bad? This is really not happening. Just improve your work, your presentation of the work and if your work is good enough it will be published accordingly. If it is not published, it is nobody's fault but yours. You should at least start considering the possibility that you might actually be wrong and the reviewers are right. After all, they are more experienced than you.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: >
> The second reviewer complains about the quality of the figures, but I think they are fixable.
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You fix the figures and then re-submit. Not a problem.
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> The third reviewer complains about the novelty of the paper but I think s/he did not carefully read and understand the paper.
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You write to explain why you think your paper is novel. You might still have a chance.
Now,
>
> The first reviewer say that I need to carry out a lot more experiments that will involve a lot of cost, which is not practical. However, in the comment, s/he only suggests one additional experiment that need to be done.
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>
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In my opinion, this is a **strong reason for rejection**. I think the reviewer has doubts about the results you have in the paper. You truly need to do more experiments to convince the reviewer and **other readers** the results in your paper are correct.
My suggestion is to **do more experiments before you consider the appeal**. Not only you want to convince the reviewer but also yourself that your paper is good. You don't want to publish a bad paper, do you?
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_5: I suspect that the reviewers are responding to an unconvincing paper. A paper that does not convince them. While you have not reported evidence of their bias (or explained the reason that you suspect that they are biased), I find myself somewhat biased by the quality of the English used in your posts.
If the language in your paper, matches that in the posts, then it is unlikely to convey a convincing presentation of your research - however good the research might be. If you think this is a contributing factor to the rejection (or is responsible for the bias), then the best approach may be to enlist the assitance of a Technical Author or Technical Translator, to help you turn your paper into a convincing one for an English Language publication.
Alternatively you might find it easier to publish your research in a different langauge journal.
Please understand that I'm observing, not criticising. Your English is much better than my own efforts in any language other than English.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: One thing I haven't seen commented on in the other answers or comments is that if you appeal claiming that their review was biased, you're poisoning the well -- you'll have accused three known and (presumably) respected reviewers of unprofessional conduct. If they didn't dislike you before this, they'll certainly have cause now.
From what you're saying, this seems to be your first submission and you yourself admit that at least some of the objections they have to your paper are fixable. Try fixing those and resubmitting. **Don't start throwing around accusations of bias until you have a clear pattern, or you'll quickly develop an unwelcome reputation of your own.**
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/04/23 | 996 | 3,997 | <issue_start>username_0: With apologies for the attention-grabbing title: of course I am not actually asking you to tell me when I, specifically, should schedule my defense. But I have heard very plausible-sounding rumors that the time of day at which a PhD candidate holds their thesis defense can have an impact on the difficulty and even the candidate's chance of passing. For example, scheduling a defense just before lunch may mean the committee will ask fewer and less involved questions, because they will be anxious to finish so they can go eat. Similarly defending in the mid afternoon may lead to less complex questions because everyone is tired - or alternatively it could cause a *more* difficult defense because the committee members are in no hurry to get back to work. And so on; the rumors abound.
What I would like to know: is there is any research backing up the idea that there are better or worse times of day for a candidate to schedule their thesis defense? Any anecdotal experience from people who have sat on multiple PhD committees?
Of course I'm not claiming this should be a major influence on when one schedules their defense, but people do talk about it, so (as a scientist!) I can't help but wonder if there's any truth behind the idea.<issue_comment>username_1: First, I have never heard of any research backing up the idea that defenses will be more less successful based on the time of day the defense is held.
Second, the best time to defend is *whenever your committee can actually make it*. When I defended, my goal was to get get at least three of our four committee members in same physical room (one non-chair member could attend via video). Within a six-week window, I felt lucky to find *any* two hour-window to schedule the defense.
Finally, *you are overthinking things*. Pour your energy and concern into the content and remember that if your committee is encouraging you to defend, it's because they think you are ready. Surprises are unlikely.
Of course if you are in the enviable position of having to choose a time of day, I personally like defenses at the end of the work day so that you can head out with others — e.g., students, family members, maybe even committee members — for a celebratory post-defense drink or meal.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: **Whatever time of day all your committee members can all get together**. (Forgive the short answer but that's really it from my perspective)
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: [This answer](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/117459/33210) is the one I would accept. But, I know of one notable exception.
A friend in my PhD grad program choose his defense time for late morning (around 10 am) on a Tuesday. That way, his public defense would get done around 11 am and his closed door defense with only his committee would take less than a hour because his major advisor and several committee members always went to a local restaurant for their "Taco Tuesday" special around 11:45 am.
This worked for him, but my major advisor made me pick a different time when I tried to repeat the trick.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_4: I had mine at 1 pm. It finished at 3:30, which gave me one and a half hours to make all the necessary corrections and then get to the pub.
In retrospect, 1 pm was a good time. I'm not a morning person by any stretch of the imagination. 1 pm allowed me to roll out of bed at 10 am, have a good full English breakfast and have an hour just to flick through the thesis and post <https://xkcd.com/1403/> on social media channels. If you're a morning person that's always super alert at the time of 9 am, then try to schedule it as early as possible in the morning.
Really, you know what time of day you personally feel most alert and responsive. Given the flexible working nature of a lot of PhD students, you've probably settled into a working routine that works well for you by now. My recommendation would be to plan it around that.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/04/24 | 765 | 3,141 | <issue_start>username_0: Some universities have a *School of Something* and some a *Department of Something.* Are they identical and just two common terms for the same thing, or they are different in the university structure?
My impression is that a *School* is generally larger than a *Department.* Probably, *school* is an academic unit between *department* and *faculty.* Maybe, a faculty has a few schools, and each school hosts some departments.<issue_comment>username_1: In many universities School is used for units that confer a professional accreditation (e.g. School of Law). In contrast, Departments are units that refer to specific areas of knowledge that do not end up as a professional qualification (e.f. Department of Philosophy).
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: The term *school* and *department* are going to mean different things at different institutions. Generally speaking, the term *school* refers to a larger unit within a university than *department* and many schools will contain multiple departments. For example, *Harvard University* contains a *School of Public Health* (and other schools) which contains a *Department of Epidemiology* (and other departments).
That said, names are often not even used uniformly or consistently *within universities*. For example, at the same organizational level as the *School of Public Health* at Harvard is the *Faculty of Arts and Sciences* which runs both *Harvard College* and the *Graduate School of Arts and Sciences*. My current university uses the concept of an academic "unit". Many units are "schools" (e.g., the *School of Public Health* or the *Information School*) but others are not (e.g., the *College of Arts of Sciences*). There is also an organization within the university called the *Graduate School* which cuts across and oversees work in different units and schools.
Sometimes, smaller "schools" will not contain separate departments. Sometimes, a large department in a large school might be larger than entire schools elsewhere in the university! Sometimes, the terms might be used interchangeably. In many other cases, they won't. In some cases, one or both terms might not even be used at all!
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: In line with <NAME> answer there may be no uniformity between different institutions. In general the following hierarchical structure is applied to universities in Ireland.
1. University Name
2. College Name
3. School Name
4. Department Name
So in my case in my [university](http://www.nuigalway.ie/colleges-and-schools/) as a History Student it would be the Department of History in the School of Humanities at the College of Arts, Social Science at my university.
In this scenario the School is made up of a number of Departments of specialised study and the college is made up of the schools that would fall under its remit.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: School is a specialized one, which caters to only the studies beyond UG i.e Graduate and Doctoral one. Schools generally do not have UG studies
Deptt caters to dominatingly UG studies as well ....
Upvotes: -1 |
2014/04/24 | 456 | 1,875 | <issue_start>username_0: Take the course code PHYS 3054 or PHYS 354. The physics department doesn't offer 54 courses at the 300 or 3000 level.
I imagine some universities subscribe to a set of common best practices for course numbering. So I suspect that there might be an answer that applies to the numbering systems of a number of institutions.<issue_comment>username_1: I suspect it really depends on the university. But in my university, it represents the subfield in the department within which the course is offered.
For example (I'm in electrical engineering), EE X1X might be courses on power systems engineering, EE X2X on communication networks, EE X3X on signal processing, EE X4X on electronics...
But in my department at least, there are enough misnumbered courses (for "historical reasons") to confound anyone who doesn't know it and is looking for a pattern.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: username_1 mentions two of the major factors---subfield identification and historical reasons. Even without a rigorous system of subfield identification, there's typically a lot of spacing in course numbers so that unrelated courses don't typically have adjacent numbers (and indeed, there's plenty of space between unrelated courses).
This goes along with numbering sequences sequentially---520 and 521 might form a two course sequence, in which case you don't use 522 or 523 because someone might get confused and think they're part of the sequence. And then later, when you retire 520 and 521 and combine them into a single one semester course, you might call it 522, to remind people it's similar, but you don't use the same number so people can easily tell which course someone took. This leaves a lot of historical detritus (you want to wait a long time before ever using 520 for something new), which leads to lots of widely spaced numbers.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/04/24 | 1,651 | 7,245 | <issue_start>username_0: I am a PhD student at an engineering department in Europe. At my department, and at most others in my university, research papers are the main benchmark of a scientist’s productivity. It seems like this is also true in other institutions.
For instance, last year the faculty considered the number of journal papers for each department a key performance indicator, and when a PhD student is at the end of his/her studies, he/she is often judged by colleagues based on how many papers they have published.
There is no threshold of a number of papers required in order to obtain a PhD or a senior position, and conference papers are also relevant and encouraged, but counting journal papers is the key point. In the end, a PhD thesis is just the sum of published papers during the PhD studies, and itself is not that relevant.
Naturally, I feel pressured to publish and to have lots of papers to support my upcoming degree. It seems to make sense - if you have a result, why wouldn't you publish it in a journal? Why wait for the thesis, when it's not really published and nobody will read it? And after all, submitting research to journals and conferences is also beneficial for getting a review of the research from someone who is outside one's department.
However, recently I realized that a friend of mine, also an engineer in a related field, received a PhD from another university with 0 journal papers, and just 1 conference paper where she was a second author. Her university is well regarded, and on almost all world rankings in the top 100. She was accepted for a post-doc position at another top university. I have seen a few other similar cases, and other people just not caring about papers.
I cannot judge the work presented in her thesis, but I found this shocking, and it made me reconsider. How can one be well regarded with hardly any publications? Why would anyone choose not to publish (not counting the thesis as the bare minimum)?
***Hence my questions:*** How relevant are (journal) papers in terms of valuation of a fresh PhD, and for their future career?
**EDIT**
I would like to thank everyone for their reply, especially @Superbest for the edit (sorry, I am not a native English speaker), I didn't expect that my question would generate such a discussion.
I'd like to clarify some things:
* In my field conference papers are less relevant than journal papers, and are used to present research in progress in order to get comments and advices.
* The graduate didn't publish a revolutionary paper which is worth like 10 other average papers. We are talking about a zero. I see no reason why would anyone choose NOT to publish at least one paper about a PhD.
* Even if the graduate had very good recommendations, why would anyone in academia, which depends on publications, hire someone without any publication record? Why would a professor think that the graduate would suddenly start to be productive?<issue_comment>username_1: Published papers (either as journal or conference papers, depending on your field) are an important metric in measuring a candidate's output. However, one important thing to note is that many graduate students publish a substantial fraction of their papers close to the end of their degree programs, so that their publication record may look quite sparse. More importantly, the publications may not be published in time for them to actually graduate, but may be finished up in the period immediately afterward. For instance, I wrote six papers as a graduate student, but only two were published while I was a student—the other four appeared the year after my degree was awarded. This is an entirely normal state of affairs.
Another thing worth noting is that, at least in engineering (and particularly engineering in Europe), a substantial fraction of projects are financed by industrial contracts. In such cases, the primary "fruits" of the project represent proprietary information which cannot easily be published. Under such circumstances, publications become quite difficult, and the quality of the work becomes much more significant.
Finally, while publications are important, at the level of a postdoctoral position, they are equally as important as the interview and letters of recommendations from colleagues. Somebody who comes to me highly recommended from people I know well and trust are much more likely to get the position than someone with the same credentials and quality of recommendations from people I don't know as well.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: 1. **How much people rely on your publication record to judge you depends on how much they understand your research**. The further they are removed from your area of study, the more they will depend on "the numbers". People who work in your subfield will base their opinion on the actual quality of your work and on your reputation in the community. Fortunately, the most important evaluations (i.e., reference letters) usually come from people in your subfield.
2. **Not all publications are created equal**. Let's say I'm hiring a postdoc. Candidate A has 10 publications with almost identical titles all in [low-quality journals](http://www.davidketcheson.info/2012/10/16/low_quality_journal.html). Candidate B has one publication that describes a significant breakthrough and is published in a good journal (I don't mean Nature or Science, just a journal that is widely read by people in the field; e.g. (in my field) [SINUM](https://www.siam.org/journals/sinum.php) or [SISC](https://www.siam.org/journals/sisc.php)). Who would I hire? Almost certainly candidate B. Indeed, Candidate A's publication record may actually be a negative factor.
3. **Publications matter most in academia.** A mathematician friend of mine took a job at Google after graduation. They didn't really care about his publication record; they hired him because he had created the Cython language, which was purely incidental to his research. If you go the academic route, your publications will be a critical factor in your evaluation for getting a post-doc, a tenure-track job, and tenure. If you go to industry, they may not matter so much.
4. **Publishing norms vary by field.** In mathematics, for instance, people may sit on a result for years while they refine it or try to develop it further. Senior people may just put their papers on the arXiv. In other fields, it seems like new developments *must* be published within a week, and you're expected to write vast numbers of papers each year.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: I generally agree with the other answers so far. I will just add that as a PhD student myself my supervisor put it like this:
Its not strictly necessary to publish many papers as a student but it makes writing and defending your thesis much easier. Your thesis must show some novel work. If you have some peer reviewed papers then this work has clearly already been accepted as novel, which basically ticks that box. Secondly you base your thesis on your papers.
Indeed I know some people whose thesis is basically 3-5 papers stapled together with an introduction and conclusion and maybe a bit of editing to make it flow better.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/04/24 | 1,458 | 6,164 | <issue_start>username_0: I let a student associated with me (but who is not really my PhD student) submit a paper to a fairly-local meeting (some people do come from abroad). Because I'd been tasked with supporting the student, I let him put my name on the paper and also helped with the presentation, but I found the content unconvincing. However, he was exploring an area that I knew little about and had little interest in, so I'd hoped he'd get reviews & (if accepted) discussion that would give him more guidance than I have been able to.
In fact, no one seemed as sceptical as I was of the work, and it got into the meeting and was presented both in our department and at the meeting with if anything positive comments.
However, yesterday I got an email from a postdoc who was cited in the paper (the student compared himself to the postdoc's work, the meeting's papers are on a website, Google Scholar alerted the postdoc) and was incensed at **the paper's low quality and inaccuracies**. I think the postdoc is being a bit paranoid, but is broadly right on the technical issues. I have also previously noticed that one of my more-successful colleagues I've been collaborating with recently had a less tolerant attitude towards student publication than I do.
I'm wondering if I should put more effort on quality control. The cost would be possibly stifling a student unnecessarily if I'm wrong, and allowing fewer students to have fewer presentation experiences since I'm already working flat out keeping up with giving feedback on their journal articles & dissertations.<issue_comment>username_1: I think we can distinguish two situations here:
1. The work is not convincing because it is still **preliminary**. In this situation, even if the results might prove wrong latter, I would see no objection to send the student to present a talk or a poster about it, as long as the preliminary nature of the work is clearly stated. I might give him the opportunity to meet other researchers, find new ideas or even build collaboration based on these first results.
2. The work is not convincing because the **results are flawed**, the protocol is not robust or the techniques might not be adequate. In such situation, as @ff524 said, I would advise not to let the student present the work in public meetings. It will be unproductive both for the student and the advisor (as you experienced).
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: In my opinion, since you aren't the supervisor, it's not your role to stop the student from publishing. If you are an expert in the subject of the publication and you don't think it's strong, you should advise them not to publish and explain why, but that's as far as you should go.
However, you "let him put [your] name on the paper" -- a paper which, by your own admission, you don't know much about! Regardless of whether the co-author is a student, and regardless of the quality of the paper, the behavior you're describing is **wrong**. In my field, it's actually **[forbidden by at least one of our professional societies](http://www.ams.org/about-us/governance/policy-statements/sec-ethics)**:
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> All the authors listed for a paper . . . must have made a significant contribution to its content.
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This is generally construed as meaning you should have done a significant part of the research **and** a significant part of the writing.
Now, violating this rule for a paper that you don't even have a high opinion of seems not only unethical but foolish.
I realize this is a harsh-sounding answer, but you have posted the question anonymously so I hope you don't mind me being frank.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_3: My answer is, to what end? What purpose are you serving by allowing such work to be published? The community does not benefit, as the work is subpar and (apparently) flawed. The student does not benefit, as (a) the experience is different from actual publishing with more rigorous review processes and (b) their reputation is tarnished. You receive no benefit for the same reasons.
The only possible benefit I see is that the student gains experience in informal writing and presenting, which they can already gain through group lab meetings without the possible repercussions relating to their reputation. In short, this appears on all fronts to be a pretty bad practice.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: As a mathematician, I had the same first reaction to this question as several other answerers and commenters: It's wrong to be a co-author of a paper that is just someone else's work. But I need to temper that reaction with the fact that other fields have rather different standards. In particular, in some (maybe even all?) of the experimental sciences, it is standard practice for the head of the lab to be a co-author of everything that comes out of that lab, whether or not the head actually did any of the research or even understood the research. As far as I can tell, the rationale for this is that the head of the lab gets the grants that make everybody else's work possible. The question here suggests that this sort of thing might be involved here ("I'd been tasked with supporting the student"), so co-authorship might not be quite as crazy or as unethical as it looks to a mathematician. Even in the experimental sciences, though, the head of the lab is (as far as I know) expected to make sure the work is good (and is held responsible if it is not).
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: Sorry to break the "don't answer your own question" norm here, but I want to float an answer. First, I *did* contribute to the paper (suggested direction of research) and the system presented *does* work. My issue was whether this new system was a real academic contribution, which I left up to the academic process to determine.
Overnight, the postdoc who initially complained a) admitted that the idea was great if not entirely well executed and b) told me he's found a new prestigious collaboration writing a better paper. In my mind, this is how academia is supposed to work. So my proposed answer is "yes". I leave it to you folks to vote up or down.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/04/24 | 1,734 | 7,246 | <issue_start>username_0: This question may be too wide or in some perspective perceived as unclear but covers a key issue (for me) in academia, namely, *academic writing*.
Students start their academic career with varying skills in writing. Often, and this the case in my department, there is no thought through progression to go from beginner through novice and proficient to expert level (the latter perhaps in graduate school) or some such scale.
My question is therefore how to get students to progress in appropriate steps through an education. In other words what is a reasonable progression of writing skills through an education. I am looking for suggestions of appropriate expectations for, say, an annual or semester wise increase in difficulty or complexity of exercises with the aim of learning academic writing skills through an education including graduate school.<issue_comment>username_1: As a grad-student I really appreciate this question. As a Humanities student most of our writing is text. I found even at under-graduate level a substantial amount of time could be taken up going over the same writing issues (usually after assignment hand-backs) over a number of course modules. It amazed me that there was not a module to at least give the basics in academic writing.
I have noticed though in Ireland(my home country) that there is a number of Academic Writing Centres starting to set up in Universities. At the moment they are voluntarily drop in centres where you can get advice on your writing.
In the case of the [university](http://www.library.nuigalway.ie/awc/) I attend
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> The AWC offers free one-on-one tutorials on essay writing for NUIG students. Last year, AWC tutors helped over 500 students to overcome recurrent problems with grammar, punctuation, spelling, and essay structure.
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They also run group workshops at certain times of the year for different levels within the University, so some are aimed at under-graduate and some at post-graduate. Normally at these workshops you bring some of your writing and as a group you give each other advice on improving our writing style.
Finally they run an online course which works in the following way.
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> Online students are assigned weekly writing tasks and editing tasks. Editing tasks consist of specific questions which assist students in providing constructive feedback rather than criticism. Guided editing tasks help students to re-evaluate and improve their own writing. Students then rate the usefulness of the critique they received. In this way, points are awarded for effort rather than existing ability or experience. The entire process is strictly anonymous. The AWC takes on a supportive role for the duration of the course. Students receive weekly readings and emails.
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A number of other universities also have a academic writing centre in place. See [here](https://www.ucd.ie/library/supporting_you/support_learning/librarylink/writing/) and [here](http://ctl.nuim.ie/student-learning/academic-advisory-0)
While this is by no means a perfect model because it requires the student to want to participate it is a step in the right direction for improving a persons writing skills.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: In my lab, we were required to produce three-to-four page white papers, including figures, every time we presented at a lab meeting (approx. every 6 weeks).
This had two significant effects. Firstly, it forced the student to write down their progress, which was invariably ridiculously useful when the student actually started writing their thesis. Staple together a few of these sections and the methods, and often a good part of the background, was written for you.
Secondly, it gave everyone a chance to practice their professional writing in a casual lab setting. No one felt threatened and everyone improved. We would even review the articles being written by the lab professor, as there were always improvements we could suggest to him as well.
I strongly recommend this practice.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: 1. HAVE them write. A lot of times students don't write because they simply aren't asked to. (Keep in mind the corollary to this is you're going to have to do some reading!)
2. Have them research! Many times students don't make the leap on their own between reading, writing, and then (hopefully) thinking that's incredibly obvious to those of us who have devoted our lives to teaching. I've seen a lot of lightbulbs go on when I've been able to help a student make the connection between research, writing, and work output.
3. As username_1 started to say above, if your school has an academic writing center go there and ask lots and lots of questions. Usually people who work in these departments have thought far more deeply about your question than you might ever be able to. They might even be able to give you exercises or assign a tutor to monitor your class. At the very least, make sure the students know the writing center is there and that you expect them to use it!
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: We start by getting all students evaluated by our Teaching & Learning Centre. TLC staff will recommend an action plan for students that are struggling with their writing skills. Additionally, in most courses we ask students to write essays and summaries of any lab work, which is returned with specific comments on the quality of writing. After all this, most students will *somewhat* improve their writing; however, many will never be great at it.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_5: To build on username_2's answer, if you run a lab then have a **lab blog** and encourage or require your students to contribute to it. It is a [great way to **structure writing** and **improves research**](http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/literally-psyched/2013/04/12/why-grad-schools-should-require-students-to-blog/), [learn how to **communiate** research](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/4754/66), [encourage **active learning**](https://math.stackexchange.com/a/678854/13668), and even **[improve technical writing](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/738/66)**. The public nature of a blog, puts a bit of pressure on the student, and you (or a senior student) should help them edit their first couple of posts, but afterwards give them freedom to roam. This is especially useful during thesis writing, since a student can package partial progress into posts. Finally, by requiring students to blog, you let them **build a [web presence](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/616/66)** and let them make connections in the field that don't depend exclusively on your klout or their papers (which usually are few and concentrated toward the end of the PhD for many students).
As a graduate student, I chose to [blog](http://egtheory.wordpress.com/) on my own and it has been an incredibly rewarding experience. It has allowed me (along with other parts of my online activity like G+ and SE Q&As) to develop papers faster, feel part of a bigger community, and make [new contacts that lead to new independent collaborations](http://cancerconnector.blogspot.ca/2013/07/a-visitor-resulting-hackathon-and-nice.html). I can't recommend it enough.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/04/24 | 2,537 | 10,239 | <issue_start>username_0: I am considering doing a PhD however I was surprised to find out that there are no set standards for a PhD in research.
For example, one study could test 500 patients, while another, tests only 10, yet both students are awarded their PhDs. Then there are retrospective studies, which are easier than starting a new study. Finally, there are some PhDs that are purely research and then there are some that are based on essay writing.
However, at the end of the day, the degree is the same, Doctorate of Philosophy, it does not mention anything special for those endless sleepless nights of analysing data and being able to pull off amazing statistics, as compared to a student of any other field.
So my question is, why bother going the tough route when it makes no difference at the end of the day, unless there are careers out there *outside of academia*, that specifically asks you, what type of PhD do you have?<issue_comment>username_1: >
> Why are there no standards for awarding PhD degrees?
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There are certainly standards for awarding PhD degrees. I think you mean to ask why are there no grades? It's a subtle distinction perhaps but an essential one.
If somone holds a PhD, what does that tell you? It tells you that the university awarding that PhD feels that that person is capable of pursuing independent research in the area of the thesis. Different universities may have different ideas on how to measure that, but typically a PhD will have to have published at least one peer-reviewed contribution (often more, sometimes many more).
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> However, at the end of the day, the degree is the same, Doctorate of Philosophy, it does not mention anything special for those endless sleepless nights of analysing data and being able to pull off amazing statistics, as compared to a student of any other field.
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Your degree does not mention anything special (e.g., a grade). If you work harder than your peers, you may end up with the same degree on paper, but your head will contain lots of special information useful for lots of jobs, and your publication record will show lots of papers with lots of citations useful for lots of jobs
In other words, **your grade is your demonstrable research output**.
How else would you propose to grade or differentiate or categorise different PhDs? How could those grades be compared across different supervisors, different examination boards, different universities or different areas?
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> So my question is, why bother going the tough route when it makes no difference at the end of the day, unless there are careers out there outside of academia, that specifically asks you, what type of PhD do you have?
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A PhD is a requirement of many jobs in academia, and some research positions in industry. Typically PhDs are competing with other PhDs for positions, hence holding a PhD in-and-of-itself, is just the entry point. After that, candidates will be judged on what they did during their PhD and afterwards. If you spent "*endless sleepless nights of analysing data and* [pulled] *off amazing statistics*", you'll have lots to talk to the hiring committee about.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: Whenever someone acts impressed by a PhD, I tell them tongue-in-cheek that a PhD is nothing more than a testament to that persons patience... they were willing to remain a graduate student long enough to earn the degree.
More accurately, though, a PhD is simply an indicator that someone is able to *think*. You're completely right; research topics will vary tremendously from field to field, and one person's degree and/or experience in grad school is likely completely different from the next's. However, both of them demonstrated their ability to reason through a problem, their willingness to put their nose to the grindstone and get the research done, and their ability to communicate their results to a third party (their thesis committee).
Regarding fields asking about your PhD, I joke with people that (the following is all true) my undergrad is in psyschology, my undergrad specialization pre-med, my graduate lab electrical engineering, my research topic neuroscience, my actual PhD degree biomedical engineering, my postdoc in biology, the stuff I actually enjoy statistics, and with all that my two industry jobs have been in banking and health insurance operations. How you sell yourself is a function of your salesmanship more than your actual credentials.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: Focusing on just a small part of this question, my answer is this: Because 'academia' is a wide and diverse place, with many different skill sets, questions and challenges.
You're also focusing too much on the "letters" in a PhD. You don't get a PhD - you get a PhD *in something*. You'd no more expect a PhD in Epidemiology and a PhD in Theoretical Physics to have done the same work than you would expect a BA in Math and a BA in German to have done the same coursework.
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> For example, one study could test 500 patients, while another, tests only 10, yet both students are awarded their PhDs. Then there are retrospective studies, which are easier than starting a new study.
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Consider the following studies:
* A study of the biomarkers associated with an extremely rare neurodegenerative illness that effects mostly children, doing full genome sequencing on the small number of prevalent cases of the disease (10), extensive personal histories and environmental sampling, etc. to identify potential drug targets.
* A study of the risk factors, survival times, etc. for ventilator-associated pneumonias in a large group of community and academic hospitals, pulling all incident cases within the hospital for the past year (500), sorting through the medical records for each, and applying some cutting edge statistical techniques to deal with some of the messiness of the data - interval censoring, competing risks, and non-independence of patients.
* A study of exactly 227 animals to understand the pharmacokinetics of a new tetravalent vaccine, specifically looking for markers of immune response and nephrotoxicity.
* The development of a complex, agent-based model of the human gut, applied to both inflammatory disease, and the post-antibiotic exposure proliferation of certain bacterial species that impact the lining of the intestinal wall.
Which of these doesn't deserve a PhD based on their sample size, or whether or not they were a retrospective or prospective study (also, a largish 'Citatation Needed' around retrospective studies being easier - they're *faster* but not necessarily easier)? And these are just examples I can think of off the top of my head that fit in the somewhat wide field of "Biomedicine". Heaven forbid we throw in Mathematics or Physics or Religious Studies. One of them doesn't even have patients, and is entirely separate from the "Prospective/Retrospective" distinction.
"Why are there no standards for awarding PhD degrees?" (which is, incidentally, not true. There may be no *universal* standards, but universities often have them on the school or departmental level) has the same answer as "Why don't we publish everything in the same journal?"
Because academia is wide and diverse, and only describes a certain aspect of the pursuit of knowledge, not a specific set of methods, study populations, or even study questions.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: >
> Why bother going the tough route when it makes no difference at the end of the day?
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It does make a difference. It's very unlikely that there will be a job where they ask you if you have a PhD, and when you say yes, tick that checkbox, move on and never mention it again.
A PhD is the single biggest unit of research experience for most young researchers (for older ones, usually their recent publications are much more relevant than their PhD). Therefore, if you apply to any job (academic or industry) where the PhD is a relevant qualification, you will be expected to discuss your thesis work at length. The employer will then judge the quality of your work, and based on that they will decide whether they will hire you over all the other PhDs. Of course, some employers are incompetent, and are influenced by the "brand" (whether you got your PhD from a famous place/advisor), but that's another matter.
So, no, if you slack off and get an "easy" PhD, it will not impress anyone who matters.
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> I was surprised to find out that there are no set standards for a PhD in research.
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This is because such standards are unnecessary. Advisors are senior scientists who know well that if they let a student they supervise graduate with a garbage PhD, it will hurt their reputation when one day someone says "*Wow, what a horrible thesis! Who supervised this?*". So advisors will naturally try to make theses as good as possible.
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> unless there are careers out there outside of academia, that specifically asks you, what type of PhD do you have
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Indeed, there are many careers where they would ask all sorts of details about your PhD (as I've also remarked above), both in the industry and academia, assuming it's relevant - Wall Street, for instance, has a habit of sometimes hiring people based on the fact that they have a PhD (in a quantitative field) alone without caring much about what the thesis is about.
Consider that usually, hiring a PhD is pretty expensive - even postdocs make about $50k annual, and in the industry it goes to $60k-120k. Why would anyone pay that much money for a PhD holder, and not even bother to ask the details of their PhD?
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: Enjoy your studies! don't worry about paper certificates or PhD. The endless sleepless nights will be amazing, because you have spent them without sleeping, as you were more involved in it (research) than in your relaxed sleep.
If you are more concentrated towards what those certificates mean, that implies you are studying for marks not for joy that you get by studying. I hope you will not be the one who studies for marks, but indeed who studies to enjoy, to know the world better. What more do you want? Go ahead, enjoy your studies.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/04/24 | 4,448 | 18,565 | <issue_start>username_0: When I'm teaching an advanced graduate class where the source material is drawn primarily from current research papers, there isn't a canonical text per se, and a typical lecture, while loosely structured, also involves discussion that might help clarify the papers.
In such a setting, asking students to scribe lectures serves a useful purpose. Students hopefully remember the material better after writing it down, and are forced to be more precise. And classroom discussion can be captured for posterity.
But I don't think I've found a way to implement this effectively. My current mechanics include:
* students are assigned as scribes between a week in advance, and on the day of the lecture
* I provide a latex style file, and also an example or two of prior scribe notes.
* students are expected to produce a first draft within a few days of the lecture (lectures are once a week), and the hope is that a good version of the notes is on the website a week after the lecture.
* these are "seminar" classes: they are 1-credit, and the only work the student needs to do to earn a grade is one or more scribes and (sometimes) one lecture.
What happens is that the initial draft is usually abysmal, and it either takes me a really long time to wrestle the document into shape with the student, or I give up and do it myself, which also takes a lot of time.
Are there useful practices that can improve this workflow ? Is my timeline unrealistic ?
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> p.s To avoid confusion, when I say **scribe** (which is common
> parlance in my area) I don't mean a literal recording of minutes but a
> synthesis of material that if well done becomes something resembling
> lecture notes.
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><issue_comment>username_1: >
> students are expected to produce a first draft within a few days of the lecture (lectures are once a week), and the hope is that a good version of the notes is on the website a week after the lecture.
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The timing seems a bit strict. If the students have a lot of projects going on they may not (want to/be able to) make time for this. Maybe this is one of the reasons you are getting abysmal first drafts.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Pay a student who's not taking the class, and preferably has already taken it, to capture the lecture and discussion. That person will be able to focus objectively on what's happening.
Alternatively videotape or do an audio recording that the scribe can use.
Ask everyone in the class to provide their notes to the scribe.
The scribe will be focused on trying to capture questions, answers, comments, etc. which means he or she may find it difficult to acquire a deep understanding of the material. The scribe also may find it difficult to participate in class because they're too busy writing down/typing everyone else's questions and comments.
I've performed as a 'scribe' as a graduate student--I was a TA and sat in the class to help deepen my understanding of the material and to know what the students were being taught. I was then able to expand on (and correct some equations) the material during lab sessions. I had to pay close attention, but having previously studied the material made it a lot easier.
I've also taken minutes for a subcommittee that I'm on occasionally. I find it tremendously difficult to switch focus between trying to capture everything important and actually participating through providing information or asking questions.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: My experience with transcription:
Our university uses a lecture capture system ([Camtasia Relay](http://www.techsmith.com/tutorial-camtasia-relay-website.html)) that creates a video file with the instructor's screen plus the audio of the instructor's lecturing. We recently hired students to take the software's "best guess" captioning for a single course and create good closed captions.
To our amazement, every 50 minutes of lecture took roughly **EIGHT HOURS** to transcribe.
So my main answer is yes, your timeline is likely too tight.
You may want to look into some sort of lecture capture system.
My socratic teacher self also thinks that students creating their own summary of the discussion is likely more helpful to deep learning than receiving a transcript.
Or have students create a wiki or google doc for each seminar with the main figures (codes? equations?) provided for them to discuss. A different student could be in charge of each day's wiki setup and upload the appropriate discussion points and edit the final product and report to you on class participation.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: You might find a "delta-scribing" process more effective. To prepare, provide (enough copies of) a rough outline of the material to be covered in that lecture, ideally in the order to be covered, with a blank box next to each bullet point, and space somewhere (perhaps on a different sheet of paper).
Now the goal of the transcription team is to record the actual order of points presented. The order presented is recorded in the blank box, usually by a number. The space is used to record as much of the additional words needed for the lecture, including particularly cogent phrases describing the material, as well as subpoints of discussion. This may save just enough work on the part of the team that all the additional ("delta") salient points brought up in lecture can be covered.
If the lecture is actually more of a free-flowing discussion with many people introducing new points, it might be good to have each two-person team operate so that one transcribes the points the other person presents. Perhaps a brief discussion as how to best transcribe the point might be in order, so that there is a "secretarial consensus" of sorts.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: I have taught a similarly structured graduate course, and seen a similar wide variation in quality of the notes. I did assign scribes at the beginning of the class, and allowed them to swap as long as everyone ended up scribing at some point. I feel like this helped in matching students to topics they were particularly keen on.
For the future, I've considered having all the notes be in a wiki. There would still be a "main" scribe for each topic, but everybody (including me) could contribute to any page. They would be assessed on their overall contribution, which is trackable from the wiki history. The assessment structure is pretty much pass/fail anyway, so I'm not sure it makes much of a difference, but I like the idea of rewarding students for helping each other. Also, it means it's OK for each wiki page to start out as *very* rough notes, potentially from many hands: it can be progressively rewritten. This avoids the problem where the original scribe gets stuck at an early stage - if they missed something, or misunderstood something, then they can get help on it, but still be able to make a meaningful contribution to the end product.
This may not be suitable for you if you have a lot of mathematics or diagrams (depending on choice of wiki software), or if you would prefer things to be in LaTeX for other reasons.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_6: As a student, I would send out a Google Doc to each member of my class. We would all collaboratively take notes together. This was, of course, chaotic and messy but it worked very well. The anxiety about 'missing something while writing down something else' was alleviated with more eyes and ears on the subject. When the lecture already had or could have followed a written structure, (say a review sheet or an agenda for the day) we would base the document off this, which worked even better as people would focus on one topic or bullet point and make sure that was finished and fleshed out as the rest of the class raced on.
However, this does mean giving your students an additional task. Sometimes, as has been noted, active note taking and learning don't go well together. However, student lead, collaborative note taking is another option, if maybe not the best one.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_7: You have the following goals:
(I) Every student will transcribe at least one lecture.
(II) The transcribed lecture notes will be of a sufficient quality to be useful to the other students, and ideally to be posted somewhere for others to access.
(III) You don't want to spend an unreasonable time writing or correcting the notes yourself.
In my opinion these are three worthy goals and any one of them is attainable, but as a set they are probably incompatible with each other. So you may want to choose (not necessarily once and for all, but depending on the course) which of these worthy goals is the worthiest and prepare to sacrifice one or both of the others. In more detail:
If you prioritize (I), then the emphasis is placed on creating a learning experience for the students. If you do this you will find that the variation in the quality of the note-taking will be amazing. I have seen this in students' written notes over the years. Yesterday a student left his notebook in my office. I flipped through it today to try to figure out who it was. It is one step above chicken scratch: for instance, he is writing on lined paper but his mathematical expressions and equations only stay within the lines about half the time: he can have a "written slope" which is only slightly larger than -1. (This helped me identify the student, who does not have his name written down anywhere. I noticed his characteristic negative slope when he was writing on the board in my office yesterday.) On the other hand, in my graduate course I have glanced at several students' handwritten notes at the end of the lecture and marvelled at how much better they look than my own handwritten pre-lecture notes and what is on the blackboard at the end of the leecture. At one point years ago I gave in a borderline undergrad/graduate level class what I thought was one of my best lectures of all time and at the end realized that I hadn't prepared any lecture notes and sadly reflected on the fact that it would be lost forever. Then I remembered that I had one student in the course who took great lecture notes, and I asked her for her lecture notes for this purpose. I think that what she gave me was an improvement on my delivered lecture, and using her notes I got my favorite part of what amounts to a textbook on number theory: [you can see the lecture notes here](http://alpha.math.uga.edu/%7Epete/4400FULL.pdf). (Yes, I touched it up a bit afterwards, but not by that much.) You can also see that I thanked this student at the end of my notes.
All of the students mentioned above are "A students". I personally do feel that the gender difference between the students is playing a role here. This is not a scientific observation and I certainly mean no offense to anyone, but in my experience the difference in note-taking care between male and female students is, on average, dramatic.
Anyway, if you prioritize (I) and (III) you're going to get such uneven samples as to make it a pretty jarring experience for anyone to try to follow the entire course by reading the notes. Having the notes be texed adds other levels and brings other skills into play. Some people will naturally go back and spend time prettying up their tex files; others won't. (I started out as the latter and very slowly over the course of thousands of pages of notes am heading towards the former. But for someone who has thousands of pages of texed mathematics on his webpage, my texing skills are distressingly middling.)
Thus if you prioritize (II), then I think you need to seek out the students who will do the best job. This works against (I), and you need to look for extra compensation. I agree with the other answers that providing good latexed notes is something that may be worth paying for.
If you *really* prioritize (II) then at a certain point you will decide to type the lecture notes yourself. This is what I do in most classes I teach. At this point I have a bit of a reputation as a guy who has lots of typed lecture notes. When I begin a graduate course now, I often tell students explicitly that I will not be typing lecture notes as the course progresses, because that is *very* time-consuming. But then, at some point in the semester I usually break down and reveal to the students where my heretofore secret lecture notes can be found. I actually just did that yesterday in my graduate class this semester....with less than one week of class left.
Typing your own notes totally destroys (III): to get something that looks good you have to work significantly harder during the semester than you otherwise would need to do in order to deliver exactly the same lecture *and* you need to put more time into it after the semester is over. On the other hand, I have found this practice to be extremely valuable to both my learning and my career: I have gotten a lot of wonderful professional interactions out of it. Thus I would say that the real drawback is that it defeats (I).
To summarize a very long answer: I think you need to decide whether the point of this is the process or the end result. You either provide a learning experience for all the students or you provide decent-to-high quality lecture notes, or you provide both but don't get it done until after the end of the course. I don't see how to do everything at once.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_8: You say it is an advanced course, so you may have met some of the students before in beginners courses, projects, etc.
Pick one or two competent and reliable students and pay them to write lecture notes¹. Repeat in subsequent iterations with the purpose of incremental refinement.
You can sell the idea to them by noting that
1. they'd get paid for work they'd have to do in some form, anyway,
2. they'd learn more because they'd have to do it a bit more precisely than for
their own jot paper and would get feedback from other students (and you),
3. they'd have external motivation to do said work (counter-procrastination) and
4. they'd have the chance to make a good impression with you.
---
1. I think lecture notes should be different from transcripts, but ymmv.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_9: I originally wrote this answer back in 2014. I'm updating it for 2018, since I now have a bunch more experience.
I have had students scribe for me in graduate classes many times. You can read their work on the course webpages: ([1](http://www.math.lsa.umich.edu/~speyer/631/), [2](http://www.math.lsa.umich.edu/~speyer/665/), [3](http://www.math.lsa.umich.edu/~speyer/632/), [4](http://www.math.lsa.umich.edu/~speyer/631_2014/), [5](http://www.math.lsa.umich.edu/~speyer/665_2012/), [6](http://www.math.lsa.umich.edu/~speyer/632Old/632.html)). I have also twice taught honors classes where I assigned students to prove a lot of results in class and assigned them to write up notes on the day's work. You can read the more recent version here ([1](http://www.math.lsa.umich.edu/~speyer/395/IBL.html), [2](http://www.math.lsa.umich.edu/~speyer/396/IBL/)); I also did this a previous time but no longer have a digital copy of those notes. Some advice:
* Keep the assignment manageable. For a graduate student, I think writing up one 50 minute lecture is a reasonable task. If I were doing longer lectures, I'd probably break the responsibility in half. For undergrads, a group of 2 or 3 working together to cover 50-80 minutes of classwork is reasonable.
* To make the assignment more manageable and the notes more uniform for my grad students, I made a big LaTeX template with all the macros I thought they might want.
* For my undergrads, at first I required them to use LaTeX, working together on [Overleaf](https://www.overleaf.com/), but I found I was spending a lot of time answering LaTeX questions, so I switched to telling them they could use any medium they wanted. You should probably decide whether it is worth spending your time teaching undergrads to use LaTeX. A downside of letting them use any medium is that there wasn't a good way for me to edit those notes.
* Impose a tight deadline. My deadline now is to have the notes done 24 hours after the class, before people forget what happened.
* To make the tight deadline fair, let students choose what date they want to work on several weeks in advance. Ideally, warn about dates which will be unusually diagram heavy.
* I scribe the first lecture myself, to illustrate to the students what I was looking for. I post the TeX source of the notes along with the PDF, so that students could copy techniques from each other.
* For my grad classes, I edit the notes, both to remove typos and to add additional comments on material which I had not covered well. This was probably 30 or 60 minutes of work per lecture, but when the turn-around cycle was tight, I felt that the time doubled as helpful preparation for the next lecture by reminding me what I said rather than what I meant to say. It would be better if I edited the undergrad notes as well, although I currently am not because so many of them are handwritten or in Word.
* I frequently say things in lecture like "I don't know the precise answer to your question, but it is something like ... and I'll put the details in the course notes", and I in other ways encourage people to treat the notes as a reference.
Some things I haven't figured out a good way to do yet
* Incorporate this into the course grade. For grad students, I just don't; I instead praise good work informally, in public and private. For undergrads, I had a small portion of the grade which was my feeling about how well they did on class participation and note taking, but I will freely admit it was very subjective.
* Teach students to use LaTeX better, or to write better. It is pretty easy to fix their work, but I never feel that I have time or energy to tell them how to improve it next time.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_10: At the University I am a student at (Undergraduate in Liberal Arts), we have mandated discussion sections for courses over a certain number of students. In one of these discussion sections, we have two people each week (who signed themselves up ahead of time) give a short presentation/summary of all of the readings for the week and a recap of the lectures.
I think that (depending on the format of your class) having your students themselves present to the class their findings might motivate them to do a better job at taking notes.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/04/24 | 712 | 2,655 | <issue_start>username_0: I was wondering where I can find any information on the postdoctoral fellowships/calls to work in Europe which are similar to <NAME>? I'm doing my
basic internet search on this, but don't seem to succeed that much. I'm especially talking about the fellowships that are offered in the areas of pure or applied sciences or engineering areas.
Any information, site or blog that you know of, I'd greatly appreciate if you could please pass it onto me.
Thanks a lot!<issue_comment>username_1: Listing what I know, but it won't be a complete answer for sure.
Germany has several opportunities for foreigners, including [DAAD](https://www.daad.org/) and [Humboldt fellowships](http://www.humboldt-foundation.de/web/start.html).
Italy has launched this year for the first time a call with name [SIR](http://sir.miur.it/); it is now closed, but maybe it will be renewed.
All of them are generalist calls, not aimed at a particular field.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: For life sciences:
1. [HFSP](http://www.hfsp.org/) Long Term Fellowships and Cross Disciplinary Fellowships. CDF is aimed at people from other disciplines that want to enter biology.
2. [EMBO](http://www.embo.org/funding-awards/fellowships/long-term-fellowships) Long Term Fellowships.
3. [LSRF](http://lsrf.org/) fellowships.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: Some of the open academic positions, including postdoc positions, in Switzerland are listed on the [ETH-get-hired](http://www.eth-gethired.ch/search/sector/0/academic/1) website. Although somewhat more popular in German-speaking Switzerland and for Science/Engineering it is fairly general in scope.
I should note that these are typically fully funded job offers, not grants.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: There are literally zillions of scholarships.
Contact the representative of EU and the embassies of countries you are interested in. They always have an S&T department which generally have advertisement of such scholarships, websites, or even newsletters on this very topic.
Assuming that you are in the US, you can contact the MIT European Career Fair (<https://www.euro-career.com/>) they have several connections to national frameworks like DAAD or Humbold.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_5: The European commission hosts a database called EURAXESS on research fellowships that are being offered within the European Union, at all levels (European funding, international funding, national funding). You can easily narrow down searches by these levels and career stage. The link is:
<http://ec.europa.eu/euraxess/index.cfm/jobs/index>
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/04/24 | 732 | 3,022 | <issue_start>username_0: From my experience in biology (by experience I mean reading other papers), it seems that there is an unspoken rule that itemized lists do not belong in the body text of a paper.
I have almost never seen a paper have a bullet point list or a numbered list which is formatted as a separate entity in the body text (although I have seen them in eg. the sidebar, or figures which essentially are a numbered list). The closest I've seen is an "in-line" numbered list:
>
> Our paper raises three points: (1) yada yada, (2) blah blah and (3) bip bap boop. Point (2) is particularly important, because yakkity yakkity...
>
>
>
Are bullet point or numbered lists, formatted similar to how StackOverflow formats them for example, discouraged in scientific publication? If so is there a reason why?<issue_comment>username_1: It is **extremely** common in my areas of computer science (TCS and machine learning) to see a paper itemize a list of contributions as a bulleted or numbered list. I use it regularly as a technique to highlight and emphasize contributions and key ideas in a way that stands out.
So while any such answer is area specific, I'd say that in the areas of CS that I'm familiar with it is definitely not discouraged.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: I agree that itemized list are not very common in the biology literature. However, I do not think it is a requirement of the publisher (I check in PLoS Biology, Cell and Plant Physiology), but more a choice of the authors. I personally tend to include itemized list when it is necessary and I never had any comment from the publishers.
One possible reason to choose inline list over an itemized one is that is take less space. Since some journal have a pay-per-page policy, it might be an incentive. The same goes for grant application in which the number of pages is usually limited.
An other reason, but I am speculating here, is that itemized list might be seen as an *ugly* (the term is not mine, but from a reviewer of one of my paper) or cheap writing style. I personally disagree with this view, since the importance is the *message*, not the *writing style*, but I think it is out there anyway.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: There are no rules for or against lists, and as has been indicated by other answers, their use may vary between disciplines. That said, there are some points you need to consider. Lists can be useful if used correctly and detrimental if used too often. Lists disrupt the reading or flow of the text. One should thus consider if a list is useful or really necessary before making one. Does it help the reader to understand the text? Lists have a tendency to express issues in brief statements. This can be good but can also mean the text loses important logical steps. Having too many lists may actually make things confusing, because you lose track of them all.
So, use lists as a tool in your writing toolbox but be aware of overusing them in a text.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/04/25 | 837 | 3,466 | <issue_start>username_0: Specifically, why do some universities have a defined "graduate school" and associated "graduate faculty," with separate appointment process, and some do not, even when they offer many graduate programs? What is the organizational and administrative thinking behind this?<issue_comment>username_1: I am not sure about the US, but in Belgium, Universities are only allowed to give a "real" PhD when they have a doctoral school (equivalent to grad school) attached to them. In some cases this institute can be more silent (background function), and the university is the public face of the PhD, but it HAS TO exist and it has to be recognised. Concerning faculty appointed solely to the doctoral school... well, in my university, the normal faculty where the profs are working has a internal contract with the doctoral school and appoints normal staff to it for a given number of hours.
So in short. It should exist. But it might not be publicly advertised.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: In US universities, a 'graduate school' is usually an administrative entity that manages all aspects of graduate life. [At the University of Utah](http://gradschool.utah.edu/), for example:
>
> The Graduate School fosters excellence by providing administrative
> structure and leadership to maintain and enhance graduate education at
> the University of Utah.
>
>
> Our programs offer financial assistance, rigorous academic
> opportunities, and professional development to students, staff, and
> faculty.
>
>
> We are guided by the principles of quality, diversity, and integrity
> as we help students to prepare themselves for successful, relevant
> careers.
>
>
>
The link posted in the comments suggests that faculty are required to be associated with the grad school in order to function as advisors etc. I think this is also an administrative action, designed to demarcate faculty that can advise students from all the other people who are designated as faculty (for example, adjuncts, research faculty, teaching faculty, and so on).
So there's no **academic** function associated with the graduate school.
You can think of the graduate school as the university-wide entity that manages the individual chairs of graduate studies at departments.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: At many U.S. schools, faculty must "apply" to be "graduate faculty" in order to do various things related to graduate education: teach graduate courses, sit on thesis committees, serve as thesis advisors, etc. The university's official catalog for each year will have a list of these faculty members. The faculty don't receive anything special (like extra salary) for this.
There is typically a very straightforward "application" consisting of a cover form and a vita that has to be submitted every few years. From the perspective of faculty, this is just a small bureaucratic thing to take care of every few years. It is essentially invisible to students.
Someone in the graduate college reviews each "application" to make sure that the faculty member meets the necessary criteria. But the goal is typically just to document that the graduate faculty are qualified - which already we know they are when they are hired. So the faculty who "apply" are rarely in doubt about the outcome. Faculty who are removed from graduate faculty status typically have stopped being active in research (e.g. on their way to retirement).
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/04/25 | 849 | 3,883 | <issue_start>username_0: I currently am working on a MS in pure maths, but am interested in options for pursuing a PhD in a more applied field. Specifically I am interested in going on to graduate work in something like statistics. How hard would it be for me to go straight from an MS in pure math with only a very few courses in statistics to a PhD program in statistics?
I have some experience in probability with my research (random walks on finite groups). But outside of that, I am pretty inexperienced with applied math.<issue_comment>username_1: I think the main hurdle will not be the knowledge about statistics you'll bring. (As a trained mathematician you should be able to pick up new math quick enough.) The main hurdle could be to embrace a new kind of doing science and research.
In more applied math people sometimes think differently about problems than in pure math. Roughly speaking, one is much more open to adapt assumptions and requirements for some problems such that they become more simple theoretically, more suited computationally or otherwise more convenient. Since one usually works with things that are related to the real world and hence, somehow uncertain and noisy, it is often not useful to stick to every assumption but use some freedom in modeling. I heard the saying "All models are wrong." Well, true but this should not make you hesitate to work with models.
I've seen people changing from pure math to applied math who never could adopt to these principles (but also cases where there were no problems). If you think that you won't have problems with issues like I described, then things will turn out fine, I think.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Perhaps another big difference is that being able to interact with other disciplines is very important to be good at statistics. If you are open minded and curious about learning other topics (e.g. genetics, computation, etc), together with a solid mathematical background you can be a very good asset in statistics.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Math graduates is what most of the body of grad students in statistics is made up of (I've been both a stat student and a stat faculty, so have seen a fair number of these folks). In terms of getting into a program based on your credentials, you wouldn't have any issues (unless, of course, your US-style GPA is like 2.2, in which case you would have some explaining to do in any application to any program, no matter what the discipline is). If anything, you'd be better prepared to tackle the theoretical courses. For instance, the Central Limit Theorem should be proven using characteristic functions rather than moment generating functions, since the latter are not defined for all the distributions to which CLT applies; as a good math major, you probably have had a course in complex analysis. What's more, it might be easier for you to get to a top program, as lower ranked ones may consider you to be overqualified. On the other hand, as other answers strongly suggest, you need to have a more practical mindset than what is typically found among pure mathematicians to get through the applied courses. (The most difficult ones for me were the courses on psychological aspects of response in survey data collection: there was about 5 papers ~ 100 pages worth of reading every week, and the concepts were entirely foreign to me.)
Check out [CrossValidated](http://stats.stackexchange.com) site in the SE system to see what this could be about. (Note that it is heavily biased towards computational/machine learning side of statistics.)
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: Modern statistics is pretty computational, which you might not have been exposed to in pure math. I switched from CS to stats and had to play catch up on theory; you might be the opposite, and need to learn how to code.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/04/25 | 846 | 3,449 | <issue_start>username_0: There's something I am not able to understand. I'm a CS master student in Germany. Now I'm doing my master thesis. Before starting my thesis I had an image about PhD students which turned out to be wrong. Always thought that PhD student work much much harder than us and have too much stress. Or that they wake up at 5 am and keep working all day and night! But then when I started working on my thesis, my supervisor was so nice that he gave me a place in his office. Since then I always see the PhD student coming to their offices at 9 or 10 am and leave at 5 pm. I also see them waste a lot of time by hanging around or going for smoking every 45 minutes or so. They even spend almost one complete hour having lunch and then having coffee and desert!!!
Is this the normal life for PhDs or is there something wrong here?!!<issue_comment>username_1: There's no single "correct" answer in the life of a graduate student—the culture varies from university to university, department to department, and even group to group. It's also a function of the PhD student as well.
One thing to note is that, as a CS student, you're working in a field where it is *very* easy for students to do their work in environments outside of the laboratory. (Compare that to, say, experimental biology or chemistry, and the freedom in work environment is pretty stark.) Consequently, you don't really have a good feel for how many hours the students are working in aggregate—they may be spending a lot of time working from home, or in the evenings or on weekends.
At the other end of the scale, I have known advisors who expected their students to put in **a minimum** of 70 to 80 hours per week in the laboratory. (Of course, since this is lab work, there's no way to do much of it "from home"—other than reading and writing.) And in my own experience, there are weeks where I barely worked 40 hours, and others where I put in close to 90 (usually right before conferences and when I was racing to finish my thesis).
In the long run, there are very few absolutes when it comes to the career of a graduate student, and you really do need to find your own "path."
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: In addition to what others have said,
1. Do not assume that "hours looking productive in the office" == "hours working".
2. Do not assume that "hours working" is proportional to "amount achieved".
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: First of all, master and PhD are two different kinds of life. For PhD time is usually flexible and they would like to work this way because progress in their work to some extent relies on inspiration. So it's understandable that they need enough sleep hours. Unlike master students, who just attend courses and learn things written in the textbook, PhD students have to invent things that has been written no where. For master students, hardworking (hours in your opinion) is enough. However, for PhD students, inspiration, insight are the key.
Second, it's also a matter of personal habit difference and labs management difference. Some people would like to sleep from 1am to 8am, some like 11pm to 6am. It's different from people to people. And some professor pushes more, while some pushes less.
Third, many PhD has to work at home in the night and doesn't have the summer/winter vacation. But as master students, you don't have any study tasks during the same period.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/04/25 | 349 | 1,438 | <issue_start>username_0: I wonder how many manuscripts are submitted daily to the top scientific journals, such as Nature or Science. Each of those journals has multiple editors, specialising in narrower fields. The question that follows is how many submittions does one editor handle daily?<issue_comment>username_1: According to [*Nature*'s website](http://www.nature.com/nature/authors/get_published/index.html), they received 10,952 submissions last year, which works out to an average of almost exactly 30 papers per calendar day. Given that there are [26 subject area editors](http://www.nature.com/nature/about/editors/index.html) according to their editorial masthead, it would appear that the average editor gets about 8 papers per week, or one or two per day.
However, their caseload is probably much bigger, since they also have to deal with all of their other "open" papers as well—so an editor might have something like 60-100 active papers to deal with at any one time (ballpark estimate, assuming a two- to three-month life cycle—although I suspect it's actually much longer than that if multiple rounds of reviews are required).
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I have met a subject editor from Nature, she told me that every day she reads between 8-12 papers and that she needs to make a quick decision whether to send it to review or not. So the workload might also change by subject.
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/04/25 | 1,714 | 7,330 | <issue_start>username_0: I am writing a paper aimed at a physics journal which extends an old paper (not by me), which introduced a mathematical formalism for a physical problem in a rather handwaving way and without addressing most of its mathematical background.
In addition to exentding this formalism, my paper elaborates on this mathematical background and relatedly introduces the formalism in a ”more rigorous” way.
I consider the latter one of my paper’s key features for the following reasons:
* One might consider the formalism and the methods derived from it not to be properly substantiated in the old paper.
* Though the mathematical background has no other application so far, it is interesting for its own sake and perhaps from a philosophical point of view.
* My approach to the formalism might be more accessible to some people and make them give a better understanding of what they are doing when applying the formalism and related methods.
As these points are rather opinion-based, I do not intend to elaborate on them in the paper – at most I might shortly mention the didactical aspects in the conclusion.
(I mainly mentioned them here to give you some idea what I am talking about.)
However, I do want to briefly mention in the abstract or the introduction that I “rigorified” the formalism, where *briefly* can be anything between one word and two sentences.
For example, my abstract could look like:
>
> [Old paper] introduced [old concept], which is useful for [application].
> We extend this concept to [new concept] and also *rigorify its mathematical background.*
>
>
>
My problem is that *rigorify its mathematical background* is far from what I actually want to say.
I am therefore looking for **a way to say this without seeming arrogant or condescending on the old paper and in particular without implying that the old paper “did not do its mathematics properly”.**
I intentionally do not give my best solutions for now, as I do not want to induce any bias on them, in case I may underestimate them.
I am also torn between *Academia* and *[English Language & Usage](https://english.stackexchange.com/)* for posting this question.<issue_comment>username_1: How about something like this:
>
> WeakMath et al [foo] introduced a formalism for the problem we study. Their framework conveys valuable intuition\* about [the problem] but is not precise enough for further development of the mathematical structures introduced. In this work, we elaborate on their ideas, placing them in a formal mathematical [something] that allows us to [do awesome things]
>
>
>
\* if it does
You get the general idea: give them credit for intuiting the right ideas which will lessen the blow when you drop the hammer on them :)
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: You are taking a problem from another paper and providing additional perspective which will allow future research to solve or add to solving the problem. This does not make the original paper any less worthy.
To get into the mindset for writing in a non-dismissive fashion, you might adopt the following scenario: "Their paper is the greatest thing since sliced bread! My model and formalization will allow others to handle this and similar problems with a more formal perspective. How can it possibly be any more win-win?" . This may exaggerate the current situation, but it is not a lie when framed properly. With such an attitude, you can write glowingly about the inspiration provided by their paper, and the anticipated benefits your perspective and formalization will give. I don't see any need to "drop a hammer" on anyone.
Putting myself in such a mindset, and making things general, I come up with:
"We take inspiration from Their paper [1], and provide additional mathematical perspective.
Our model of the problem reflects the intuition in Their paper, and has among its benefits a framework which we feel can be carried to other situations. In particular, we believe it furthers formal and rigorous treatment of the problem."
Take reasonable precautions: whatever you write, have your mentor or colleagues review it. If someone in your department who is politically adept approves, you can try sending an advance copy to the authors of the inspiring article, to see what suggestions they may provide. DO NOT send them a copy without such outside wisdom and approval.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: It sounds to me like you are viewing the older paper through the lens of the type of paper you would have written in the first place and are finding it wanting. It also sounds like you are viewing your own work as "fixing the flaws" of the older paper, almost as if you want to replace the older paper in your mind with your paper and pretend it had been written that way all along. More quantitatively you have your eye on the mark that the older paper should have hit, you are filling in the gap between the actual old paper and your eyeballed mark, and since you are measuring from the eyeballed mark you are giving the difference a minus sign. This framing seems to be behind most of your problems. Try recasting the entire thing more positively in your own mind.
1) Someone else published an inspirational paper way back when. This paper introduced some formalism and concentrated on its application to a physical problem.
2) Your paper gives much deeper attention to the mathematical aspects of the formalism, while also extending the formalism. Since 1) showed that the formalism is interesting and useful, your work has evident value.
There are no "minus signs" in the above description: 1) + 2) = your eyeball mark.
Unless there are actual mathematical errors in the older paper, you don't need to say that you are fixing or "rigorifying" (not really a word, by the way) the older paper. By the way, I don't know whether you've heard my rant about this use of the word "rigor" in mathematics and its applications. As an adult mathematician I have become increasingly skeptical of mathematical "rigor": the other paper either made mistakes (which you will need to correct), made claims which were unjustified or insufficiently justified (in which case you make clear that what you are contributing is the justification and not the claims themselves) or they weren't doing mathematics at all (which is fine: that's what you're adding). Adding rigor must mean one of the things above, right? It is not some generic ingredient that you can sprinkle more or less liberally over a piece of "unrigorous mathematics" and make it rigorous.
In summary: unless there are some clear mistakes, you don't need to bill your work as fixing their mathematics. You can bill it either as adding the math or adding more math. Both of these are good things added to other good things: no problem.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: >
> In this paper, we re-examine the results of [OriginalReference], extending its ideas to [X and Y and Z], providing a new approach via [method] to the original which may better illuminate [aspect W].
>
>
>
Essentially, "okay, the original work was pretty cool but we can do more with it, so we're going to run with that to get to this new stuff, specifically by doing this thing here because it makes a point or points more accessible and obvious".
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/04/25 | 1,313 | 4,999 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm a CS master student working on my thesis. I'm 25 years old and still until now when I wake up in the morning to start studying I wake up stressed and my stomach hurts. I also feel a very bad headache. When I had courses I used to wake up in this situation everyday because I had to. Now I started my thesis and I don't have a deadline for it. So now when I try to wake up very early in the morning (7am) I end up surrendering to stay in bed because I don't want to have that ugly feeling in the morning. I noticed that now I wake up at 9 or 10 am. This is making me waste a lot of time. I'm not working as hard as I used to be.
My questions are:
* does everyone has this feeling in the morning? and how to overcome this feeling?
* how do you motivate yourself to work?<issue_comment>username_1: This (lack of motivation) is common in graduate school. Without delving into the way you personally like to work (whether you are intrinsically or extrinsically motivated, whether your advisor is involved or uninvolved, whether you are motivated by reward or punishment, etc.), it's difficult to give specific advice.
These are some general motivational strategies:
* Get up and start something small. Doesn't matter what it is. As long as you are working on your project (even formatting your thesis), you are okay. This is not to say you should be working on it all the time, just that even the small things are helpful. Small tasks get you into the groove and ready to tackle larger problems.
* Leave things unfinished from the day before. If you reach the end of the day and are in the middle of a task, leave it, don't stay up to finish it. This way you have to get up in the morning to keep doing what you were doing, rather than waking up and saying "I don't know where to start."
Finally, if you think you may be depressed (if you are constantly saying "I have no reason to get out of bed"), please talk to someone or see a doctor. It gets better.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: You may need to pace yourself with your studies. Which may include taking breaks. Have you given your body and mind enough rest to recuperate from the previous day?
Motivation comes from self-will and is a mental state. When you wake up in the morning, what do you plan to accomplish? It's a good idea to break down what your goals are. If you have a paper to write, what are the first steps that should be taken? Complete those steps first then move onto the next ones.
Here is some material on motivation:
[http://www.amazon.com/100-Ways-Motivate-Yourself-Third/dp/1601632444/ref=sr\_1\_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1398475489&sr=1-2&keywords=Motivate](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1601632444)
As a CS student close to your age it's quiet understandable. Try talking to those who are in support of you as well too. A word of encouragement never hurts. :)
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: >
> Now I started my thesis and *I don't have a deadline for it*
>
>
>
This stands out in the description of your problem. I perform best when on a deadline. As counter intuitive as it sounds, it has been shown true as much for coursework assignments/papers as for research. When I did my MSc thesis, the university regulation allowed a maximum of 24 weeks. That's key, it said *weeks*, not ~ 6 months. And late submissions would not be accepted. That seemed strange given the research aspect of the task but the key learning was the iterative process of **getting to the point and refining later**.
I then experienced open-ended research during my doctoral studies at another university and found that the apparent upside of not being under time pressure was actually very, very counterproductive. Not only was that a trap for perfectionists who'd find themselves stuck in *eternal beta*, it would also give the illusion that you have time to think about other considerations. Many of which would be destructive thoughts like *Do I really like what I'm doing?*, *Where's all this headed?*, *This is junk, and will never work!*
**My take is**: Look beyond your thesis and set some nonnegotiable milestones/deadlines. And stick to them like your a religious fanatic. Your *post-thesis* self will be most grateful to you for it.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: Postgraduate study is a long term commitment, and part of the key to success is a healthy and sustainable attitude. Spending 90% of your waking hours either studying, trying to study, or feeling guilty for not studying is neither fun nor productive.
When you're mentally tired, you need a break to keep on working. So take a well deserved break. *But don't feel guilty about it*. If you feel like you're procrastinating, that just compounds itself into a cycle of guilt and low productivity.
Also, give yourself at least one day a week where you *do not* work. Catch up with friends, do your housework, and only study if you genuinely want to. And don't feel guilty about this either!
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/04/25 | 2,254 | 9,291 | <issue_start>username_0: A while back I reached the stage where my ideas for research topics/papers exceeded my capacity to personally work on them. As a PostDoc, I tried to head-hunt students or more junior researchers in my area (or at conferences, etc.) to talk with them about the ideas and see if they would be interested in collaborating or co-authoring a paper. This worked well for a while.
But now (more recently) I find that I again have a back-log of promising topics that have exceeded my capacity to even advise/delegate. I have no students to work on them. The ideas are mixed in quality, concreteness, promise, etc. and I'm saving some of the ones I am most interested in for myself or for students. But I know that there are others I will have to neglect (and I often choose the "safer" topics since being in tenure-track, I have a constant hunger for publications).
Now I have a text file on my hard-drive with a list of sketches of ideas so that I remember them. But a lot of the details are left unexpressed in my head; most of the ideas in the text file would be pretty meaningless in their current form without some explanation, further development, context and/or motivation from me. At the same time, I have sufficient experience to know that there are interesting paper/thesis topics in there that I could help develop and/or advise if I had the time/money.
For some of the topics, I have been saying "[some day](http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/274079-sure-baby-ma-ana-it-was-always-ma-ana-for-the-next)" for too long.
In any case, I cannot imagine I am alone in this. I am sure that various researchers see many potentially promising research topics fall "by the wayside" due to more urgent, day-to-day matters. I sometimes wonder if other professors similarly have lists of research topics that just rot away in a text file somewhere. It would seem like such a waste if this were the case: think about the union of all these text files sitting on local hard-drives! It would seem to be a major flaw in the academic research system if this were prevalent: that the sharing of raw (or perhaps lightly pasteurised) ideas is not properly incentivised by "the system".
---
The question ...
**Assuming I have a surplus of (good) ideas for research topics in my area – that I cannot work on myself and cannot delegate or even find time to actively advise – what should I do with them?**
To avoid a loss of generality, a good answer should assume that I'm not nice: **what personal incentive would I have for sharing my ideas in this manner?** I don't want to give away my ideas for free. These ideas require development and expression before they can be shared (which is difficult to do "up front"). If I am not incentivised to develop the ideas into a shareable form, the reality is that I will use my precious time to do something else I *am* incentivised to do.<issue_comment>username_1: An incentive you should recognize is time: worrying about these problems takes time away from what you do want to prioritize.
I recommend the following experiment, and will assume for sake of discussion that the ideas lie within mathematics. Take one or two of the ideas that you consider expendable, and spend 30 minutes writing a MathOverflow post about them. Post that on MathOverflow, and then sit back and wait. If you do it with proper attribution, people may solve them and give you credit for your contribution, or otherwise make progress that you might deem satisfactory. Or they might be ignored for a while. The basic idea has been put out there, and you can decide to reprioritize it and then later post what progress you have made as a partial answer.
The point of the experiment is to see how you feel about letting something go. If it works well for you, you can repeat it with other things. If it doesn't, you can stop at the second or third expendable idea this way. I have the hope that sharing some of your low priority expendable ideas will bring more satisfaction than waiting for the right time to reveal it to someone. As my background is mathematics, I suggested the MathOverflow forum. You will have to find or create an appropriate forum to share these ideas.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: I believe the most 'formal' way to share these would be to write a survey of the area that your open problems relate to, highlighting each problem. This adds a publication, and anyone who solves one of the problems is likely to cite it. Moreover, if the survey is sufficiently in-depth, it can generate a large number of citations as an introduction to the area.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: I also have a long list of problems that I think
* need to be solved and
* where I at least have an idea in which direction a solution may be found
I tend to ask around at conferences or whenever I meet someone who may know something very much. Though we don't have "unsolved issues" sessions per se, it is not weird that a presentation points out an identified problem without solution.
>
> What personal incentive would I have for sharing my ideas in this manner?
>
>
>
* I also came to the conclusion that I'll probably never run out of problems or ideas to think about.
* My research ideas are usually not ideas out of the blue, but problems where I could need a (better) solution.
* So one incentive is: **I need the solution.**
* A second incentive is: I've made the experience that while I can describe the problem in my field's jargon, this may not lead to search terms that find a solution which is already known in some other field.
**Sharing the problem may save me from reinventing the wheel.**
* My personal experience typically is along the lines "yeah, you're pointing out a valid problem. Though I have no idea how to solve it or whether someone else has a solution". (Ongoing situation for some *years*, until I had thought long enough to arrive at a solution myself). It then was my solution that enabled me to find similar approaches in different fields - so not that successful at reusing already invented wheels. SX sites may be better than conferences in that aspect.
From that experience it looks as if I'm hunting for a rare chance that someone will step in who's interested in solving the problem.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: The long term solution is: 1) *obtain funding*, 2) *build a research group*, and 3) *delegate*. Goto 1. (Somewhere along the line, *get tenure* to ensure that this loop will continue indefinitely.)
These task will require coherence across your research ideas.
Firstly to have a convincing enough thrust for funding agencies to invest in you.
You to have a narrow enough focus for your research group to work cooperatively (or at least, to be able to read and comment on each other's work).
Finally, you'll need ideas to come in big enough chunks for PhD students to write dissertations on.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_5: I am finishing my PhD in molecular and cell biology and have recently made [all my spare research topics public](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zRiakve_hMB4k_n3KzrI4ibhdudRNRCJtahaUVhPi1M/edit) at the top of my website. It's a Gdoc that anyone can comment on and I am updating it periodically. As you are saying, the thoughts and ideas are "mixed in quality, concreteness, promise", but just the fact that I extended them to a public domain makes me excited as there is-albeit small-chance someone will read them and push them forward in some way. My personal view is that by letting my thoughts fly like this, I created (a possibility for) a feedback loop that will eventually anyway lead me to refining and possibly drastically improving their original form.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_6: I had the same problem. My advise is to at least write them down. Excel spreadsheet is a good format as you can have a few columns for categories ad use the "filters" to sort them. At least this way, they are not running around head as much. Also can put a prioritization in there and/or even a box for "done".
I advise NOT sharing your ideas much. (Sounds radical but listen to me.) If you have some 1-2 true colleagues who really help you and you want to help them, fine. But in general this will not be the case. In fact often people won't take action on your ideas, or if they do, they won't give you coauthor or even acknowledgement. At least until you get tenure, you need to push your own sled and pump out your publications. Also, maybe knowing that the ideas are relying on you to execute them will help to get them done at all.
Good luck. (Yes, this is an old post, but it's an enduring issue.)
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_7: One platform where you can share research ideas, whatever the discipline, is Wikiversity: <https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Category:Research>
Whatever platform or website you use, you may have to advertise your ideas to colleagues, or they won't notice.
As for getting credit and being incentivized, this is not possible in the present system. But I am sure that you already do some free work for the community, if only peer reviewing. You may consider that an idea is worth sharing when sharing it seems a better use of your time than doing peer reviewing.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/04/25 | 897 | 3,540 | <issue_start>username_0: I know that typically, unpublished references (i.e. references not published in some journal, especially online resources) are highly discouraged. I'm working on a paper regarding Bluetooth LE implementations, and most of the materials relevant to my paper are either online (i.e. on mailing lists discussing implementation of Bluetooth LE on Linux, or manufacturers documenting limitations of their Bluetooth LE chips) or in the Bluetooth 4.0 standard itself.
Is it appropriate to use these online references? They're pretty much my only source of information, as my paper is mostly on real-world implementations of Bluetooth LE.<issue_comment>username_1: >
> Is it appropriate to refer to these online references? They're pretty much my only source of information, as my paper is mostly on real-world implementations of Bluetooth LE.
>
>
>
Referencing web-pages whose content can change (and that are not explicitly versioned) is far from ideal. What you are citing the web-page for may disappear today, tomorrow, the next day: you don't know. Furthermore, you may not know who authored the content, or how reliable the claims made in the content are.
However, particularly in applied areas of Computer Science, it can often be necessary to reference online material.
My personal rules for this are as follows:
* If the web-page refers to a versioned standard of some sort (e.g., a W3C or ISO standard), with a clear author and/or editor list, use a bibliographic citation. (You can always use Google Scholar to check for precedent of the page in question having been previously cited; [Bluetooth 4.0 has been cited 20 times](http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=bluetooth%204.0))
* For other web-pages (whose authorship is not clear or that may not be versioned), reference it with a footnote and the date you accessed it.
I have seen papers use the bibliography for URLs without explicit authors, but for me, it's poor style (as well as being incompatible with a lot of citation systems).
The second option should be used sparingly in my opinion.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: If your paper is on "real-world implementations of Bluetooth LE" then mailing lists on implementations of Bluetooth LE and manufacturers' documentation of Bluetooth LE products are your [primary sources](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_source). This is akin to e.g., a historian using Napoleon's informal personal correspondence as a source for information on *his* world.
Of course, you should consider where these sources come from in *how* you use them. If you read on a mailing list or forum,
>
> Bluetooth LE is the worst thing ever. Mine never works!
>
>
>
you would not use it as a factual source to conclude that Bluetooth LE is terrible. You certainly *could* use it as a source to indicate that some users have experienced frustration with early implementations of Bluetooth LE. (I cite bug tickets often in my own papers.)
**Bad use of informal source:**
>
> Bluetooth LE is not a good technology [1].
>
>
>
[1] "Let's all complain about Bluetooth LE here," Bluetooth User Forum, posted April 1 2104, http:/bluetoothforum/lets-complain, retrieved April 25 2014.
**Good use of informal source as a primary source:**
>
> Bluetooth LE users have expressed frustration with the technology [1].
>
>
>
[1] "Let's all complain about Bluetooth LE here," Bluetooth User Forum, posted April 1 2104, http:/bluetoothforum/lets-complain, retrieved April 25 2014.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer] |
2014/04/26 | 1,211 | 5,080 | <issue_start>username_0: Within my college, teachers generally allow any student who earned a D or lower on an exam, to retake the exam. While I do not need to follow this policy in my courses, many students expect their instructors to offer retakes.
I would like to offer retakes, but see two problems:
* Setting a fixed cut off at a "D" seems unfair to students. If a student earns a single percentage point more than this, they cannot retake it, but the student who retakes it stands a chance to earn a full A.
* Allowing all students to retake would create too much extra work for me. Some students who earned a 95% would still try to retake it to get 100%.
If there a fair method of allowing exam retakes that discourages every student from taking them?<issue_comment>username_1: I think the easiest way to handle this is to allow anyone to take the exam again. However, the caveat is that the retake **replaces** the previous grade, whether or not it's a better grade. A student who got a very high grade (such as 95%) on the first exam is unlikely to retake an exam to gain five points, when there's every chance the grade could go down by taking the exam a second time.
What one other professor did in a similar situation was to make us choose between keeping the grade on the exam or taking the repeat exam **before** we saw the grade on the first exam. That is, you could either get your exam back and take that grade, or leave it sight unseen and take the second exam.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: One common strategy is to let students split the difference: if they got a 60% on the first exam and an 80% on the second then the final grade would be 70. This can be combined with username_1's advice, if you are so inclined.
Another option is to cap improvement: the scores that can be obtained on the second exam are bounded. This could be a maximum improvement (e.g. 10%), half the distance to 100%, or a course-wide threshold (say 80%). All of these options discourage people who already did well from taking the exam again, in some cases prohibiting them from doing so.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: Exam retakes are inherently unfair, and doubly so when the criteria for allowing them account for the amount of effort on your part.
There are different causes for the inherent unfairness, including at least:
1. Exams are inherently unfair for various reasons - not the least of which being that some people do poorly on timed exams but are better able to exhibit command of the subject matter in other settings.
2. People who are taking more courses or have to work to finance their studies have a lot less free time to prepare for an additional exam, so they are less likely to take it even with all other things being equal.
3. It is not obviously the case that command of a subject matter (in general, or the subject matter of a course) is quantifiable. Hell, it's not obviously the case that the command of a subject matter is properly comparable among individuals.
4. Retakes are an exception to the default uniform grading policy. Making exceptions is already problematic for those who relied on the uniform policy being applied.
---
... so if you're already making the exception that is retakes, and regardless of what retake policy you choose, be open-minded about making exceptions or changes so that your students feel they're not getting screwed.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: ### Follow your university's policy.
If your university has a policy on how to handle exams retakes, I would say that you should follow that policy. It will ensure fairness and consistency across the university, ensuring that students won't be especially advantaged or disadvantaged as a result of who is teaching a specific class. Additionally, by following the policy, you'll avoid disrupting whatever scheduling your university has developed by assuming that X% of students will wind up retaking the exam, by giving them significantly more or less exam-retaking students.
If you disagree with your university's exam retaking policy, I think the correct course of action would be to lobby the university administration to change it - or to work towards joining whatever committee is responsible for deciding it, so that you can express your opinions I'm that context.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: In my former institution, the policy on retakes was that if you retake the assessment(s) for a module then your mark on that module is capped at the minimum pass mark. So if you need 40% to pass, then even if you get a perfect score on the retake exam, your final mark will be 40%.
This means there is no detriment to students who passed with, say, 42% and who think they could do better if they took the exam again. They are not allowed to retake, but they could not get a higher mark from retaking anyway because their retake mark would be at most 40%.
That said, this is a policy which should exist at the institution-level. You should find out what your institution's policy on retakes is, and follow that policy.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/04/26 | 1,768 | 5,919 | <issue_start>username_0: Do students at liberal arts universities have 'harder' courses than students at research universities?
Computer Science curricula at large research universities have 5 to 6 courses per semester. The Liberal Arts model dictates roughly 4 courses per semester. If the load on the student is considered to be equivalent, there must be something special to the teaching in the Liberal Arts model.
How is it that a 4 course Liberal Arts semester is as intensive as a 6 course research university semester?
UPDATE: Many of the comments below say the course load I mention above is inaccurate. I have obtained the figures as follows.
* The [Liberal Arts Computer Science Consortium (LACS)](http://www.lacs.edu) has released 3 LACS curricula in response to ACM/IEEE CS curriculum recommendations. The first [in 1986](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=5666.5667) in response to [the 1978 recommendation](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=359080.359083), next [in 1996](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=240483.240502) in response to [the 1991 recommendation](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=103701.103710) and the most recent [in 2007](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1240200.1240202) in response to [the 2001 recommendation](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=359080.359083). The 4 year course breakdown in all the LACS recommendations is roughly the same:
+ 4 courses per semester
+ 30-35% CS courses, 10% math, 5% science, and the rest, i.e. 50% or more courses on arts, humanities and social sciences.
* A typical graduation requirement at a research university is at least 120 credits, which comes to 5 3-credit courses per semester. Many require more than 120 so 6 course semesters are not uncommon.<issue_comment>username_1: Teaching at a Liberal Arts school (in the United States), there is a lot more "teaching" expected. Largely, you do not have TAs for your classes, meaning you not only do all the lecturing, but also the grading and lab work associated with the course. Furthermore, Teachers at Liberal Arts Schools are expected to take a serious interest in the undergraduate body since there usually are no graduate students (hence few TAs).
I am not sure if they are equivalent, and certainly my advisor my research university only teaches 4 classes a year as well. I'd say his teaching load is far less than my professors at the Small Liberal Arts school I attended for undergraduate. That being said, he also has 4 graduate students he advises, which I think end up being a lot more work.
So from a class prospective, teachers at Liberal Arts schools tend to spend more time teaching. But from an advisement perspective, research universities tend to be more intensive. It probably evens out, though I have no first hand experience.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: As with other commenters, I think the premise here is flawed.
I teach at a [public liberal arts college](http://www.umw.edu) which is typical of many. (Certainly our curriculum and requirements are in line with other schools in the [COPLAC](http://www.coplac.org/) Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges.)
Our students are required to complete 120 credits to graduate, which over four years averages to 15 credits a semester, or five 3-credit courses. I don't believe there is any serious difference in student course load when compared to large research universities (but maybe someone will prove me wrong).
The main distinction about teaching at a liberal arts college is that the overall curriculum is broader, and students do not focus on specialization as much as integration of diverse subject areas. Instead of taking 70 or 80 credits of (say) computer science, our students take only 40-45, with the other two-thirds of their degree consisting of courses in other areas. In this way, students build a broad, integrated perspective which incorporates their major into a study of the world at large. The focus at liberal arts colleges is to help students become better critical thinkers, decision makers, and problem solvers, rather than becoming subject matter experts in a narrow discipline.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: You are making several unfounded assumptions:
* That courses are always 3 credits, so that "4 courses per semester" means 12 credits. I have taken courses that were worth 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 credits. Many of the science courses I've taken, including math and computer science courses, have been worth 4 credits. Basic sciences that involve a lecture, lab, and recitation have sometimes been 5 credits.
* That most liberal arts colleges follow the LACS recommendations to the letter.
* That the LACS recommendations somehow suggest that less than 120 credits are required for graduation. [Here](http://nemo.sandiego.edu/koo/publications/tale12.pdf) is an example of a liberal arts college following the LACS recommendations for CS and requiring 120 credits.
I did half of my undergraduate degree at a liberal arts college and then transferred to a large research university for the other half. There was virtually no difference in my courseload between the two - I took exactly one credit more in my two years in the research university. I just pulled up my transcripts, and this is what I took each semester:
Part 0
I transferred in 30 credits in humanities, etc. from college courses taken while in high school.
Part 1 - Liberal Arts College
1. 16 credits, 4 classes (4, 3, 4, 5)
2. 13 credits, 3 classes (4, 4, 5)
3. (Summer) 3 credits, 1 class (3)
4. 19 credits, 5 classes (3, 4, 5, 4, 3)
5. 12 credits, 4 classes (3, 3, 4, 2)
Part 2 - Research University
1. 16 credits, 4 classes (4, 4, 4, 4)
2. 19 credits, 5 classes (4, 3, 4, 4, 4)
3. 16 credits, 6 classes (3, 4, 1, 3, 3, 2)
4. 13 credits, 4 classes (4, 3, 3, 3)
(My undergraduate degree was in Electrical Engineering, with a minor in Computer Science.)
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer] |
2014/04/26 | 2,415 | 10,481 | <issue_start>username_0: I have been fairly active in the open-source software community with a few projects that have gotten some attention. However, my reputation in the academic/publications world is a little bit low and I'd like to improve that.
I've seen papers written for all kinds of things ranging from simple summaries of a given project, up to discovering new ideas.
I'd like to write a paper about a specific open-source software project that I've built but I'm puzzled whether it would be appropriate to write a paper about it. After all, not many important software projects were published in the form of a publication.
**Edit:** as a concrete example, this is one project I've built: <http://lmatteis.github.io/void-graph/> - it can visualize RDF structures as a dynamic graph which can be saved in SVG and used in presentations or slides. Would you find this appropriate as the subject of a publication?<issue_comment>username_1: I had faced this exact situations a few years ago. I had developed an open source project, which went pretty popular and started being used by many corporations across the globe. Since, I was looking for strengthening my presence in academia, I planned to write a paper on it and sent to a decent journal. The result was rejection with a plethora of useful comments and suggestions. It took me almost an year to publish that paper in a reputable conference.
So, the lessons learnt were (and possibly applicable to you as well)
* The expectations of research tracks is not only that your thing just works, but you need to justify how and why it works
* There should be results (mostly analytical), to demonstrate that your technique works and hence can be used by other people referring/reading it.
* You need to answer why your work is important and what it contributes to the field
* Moreover, most conferences have or accept papers from industrial or application tracks, where you can describe your work in an implementation centric way (possibly giving you some leverage from nuances of research papers as mentioned above)
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: Depending on the area, some journals and conferences accept "application notes", a specific kind of paper that puts much more weight on that significant open source software has been written. Researchers that use such software must normally cite this publication so may also be high impact journals and articles. Search for the journal with this profile. You still must show in the introduction why your work is important and better than some known, older alternatives.
The alternative "classic" approach is to look if some scientifically new results and conclusions have been obtained, or maybe some new algorithm have been proposed and evaluated, with less care if the newly written code is popular or even usable in practice.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Yes, you should. But on the other hand, do not necessarily assume it will be accepted easily. Some advices:
* Your best bet is a demo track in a CS conference (as Peter suggested). For CS demo apps maximum number of pages is usually four, so use them wisely.
* Check all major CS conferences (VLDB, SIGMOD, EDBT and those focusing on Linked Data - RDF). Check their demo track. Read the papers from years past. How is your tool compared to these efforts?
* You must understand that academic criteria is different than industry criteria for what is good or not. The easier way to reject a paper (even a demo paper) is the "infamous" question: "What is the scientific contribution of the paper?" To be published and accepted, you must prove that your work has multiple scientific test-cases and usages. It is not about what is the most excellent work of CS engineering. Otherwise, excellent apps like Photoshop, Worpdpress would get best paper awards.
* Another main question you need to answer on your paper is: Why is your tool better than every one's else (you must provide such a comparison => you must be familiar with what similar tools are available). There are multiple RDF tools or graph tools that may handle thousands / million of nodes. Can your tool support such sizes? (I have worked with SVG many - many years ago and at that time, SVG was not scalable for those sizes. So, also keep that in mind).
* You must describe your tool completely: Tool Architecture (frameworks used, server architecture), what it can do (screenshots, mini-tutorial), where the tool may be downloaded / demoed, what calculations may be done with your tool etc...
Of course this is not an exhaustive list. They are just hints to show you what you should aim for. Note, there are many CS researchers who would like to work with proficient open-source engineers (like yourself) on various ideas, so if you want to expand yourself into academic publishing, you will find your way. Good luck!!
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: Yes - for example, in my field, there is one fairly good journal that allows a type of short journal article on new "tools", and I've read more than one PLOS paper on an open-source application. As others have mentioned, there still needs to be some research content - likely a worked motivating example comparing your package to other means of analyzing the same information, preferably an example whose scientific importance is pretty clear to begin with.
But you should absolutely consider it - it's easier to give you credit for using your software if it's linked to a paper.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: >
> I'd like to write a paper about a specific open-source software project that I've built but I'm puzzled whether it would be appropriate to write a paper about it. After all, not many important software projects were published in the form of a publication.
>
>
> Edit: as a concrete example, this is one project I've built: <http://lmatteis.github.io/void-graph/> - it can visualize RDF structures as a dynamic graph which can be saved in SVG and used in presentations or slides. Would you find this appropriate as the subject of a publication?
>
>
>
I can help with specific suggestions for suitable venues in your area (that accept system papers) in order of decreasing impact for improving your research rep:
* [Semantic Web Journal accepts Tools and Systems papers](http://www.semantic-web-journal.net/tools_and_systems). You need to be able to demonstrate real-world impact of the tool/system. Effectively, this track is for paving the cow-paths: publishing about tools/systems that are already well-known in the community but don't have sufficient scientific contribution for a research track (and incentivising the developement of tools/systems that are useful for the community). First step is to get your tool/system to be well-known.
* WWW Demo Track: Write a short 2-page paper on your idea, pack it with as much academically-restrained ehthusiasm and technical detail as you can and hopefully you'll get to present it at the WWW conference. These 2-page papers will be published in the supplementary proceedings and will be indexed in DBLP. The criteria for demo papers as WWW is (in my opinion) often fickle ... a lot of demo papers are borderline/rejected full papers. Otherwise reviewers follow their own whims.
* ISWC|ESWC Demo/Poster/Challenge tracks: Probably you want to aim for a demo track. Submit a four or five page (LNCS) paper to ISWC or ESWC describing your demo. Main emphasis for reviewing is on the novelty of the system itself, technical soundness, and how nice a conversation-piece it will make at the poster/demo session. Demo papers are sometimes (not always) published as a CEUR proceedings, which will sometimes end up in DBLP.
The first option is essentially free (money wise) for you.
The latter two options will incur the cost of attending the conference to present a demo. If you are an independent researcher, that might not be an option: it might be a high cost for little reputation gain. But it depends on your long term goals.
---
Another option is to find your inner scientific contribution and go for a research track submission.
The most important aspect is that an expert in the area will *learn* something about the area that they didn't already know and couldn't find out about elsewhere (without doing the research themselves). As a reviewer in a research track, after reading a paper I will always ask myself: did I learn something? What did I learn? What is its nature (theoretical, experimental, analytical, synthesis, etc.)? Where else could I have learned that?
As an author, I apply the same principle in reverse: what is the reader going to learn from this paper and how can I highlight it and frame it in the proper "research-speak"? (This may appear cynical, and perhaps it is a little, but being able to identify, highlight and sell your core contributions is a delicate art that does lead to better papers ... as well as higher success in peer review.)
Ultimately, with experience on your side, it sometimes doesn't require much effort to find an angle from which something can be turned into a scientific contribution.
---
Also, take encouragement from the fact that many of the most highly cited papers/references in the Semantic Area refer to software projects or systems of various types (Google Scholar citations): Jena (856), Sesame (1346), Protege (1060), DBpedia (1344), OWL API (265), and so forth.
Being system papers, all of these papers were (arguably) arguable in terms of scientific contribution.
Likewise, many authors in the area have made their names through works that are inherently practical while being based in industry (e.g., HP Labs, Talis, Bell Labs). Looking through the author list of some of the papers above will throw up some such names.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_6: As a user of open source software, I would appreciate the authors of said software producing a paper about it.
Then when I use the software I can cite the paper.
Sure I can cite the software itself, or its manual, or a book about it.
But citing a academic paper looks better, and assuming there is free/easy access to the paper, anyone who doesn't know what the software is, or doesn't feel it is suitable for academical use.
I'm writing a project proposal presently, I cited papers for SciPy, IPython, and several others.
However I had nothing good to cite for Subversion.
I may end up citing the software itself, as I did for Python.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/04/26 | 715 | 2,981 | <issue_start>username_0: I will get an information science under graduate degree this July in an Italian university. I want to apply for a computer science degree at an American university. Here in Italy the high school lasts five years instead of four, and the undergraduate degree (*laurea triennale*) lasts three years instead of four.
So my concerns are:
1. Is there a way to get a list of all American universities that accept an Italian *laurea triennale* as an undergraduate degreee?
2. Since I will graduate in July and in most universities the next semester begins in September, I think that I should start applying from now. So the question is: do they allow students to apply even before they got the graduate degree and TOEFL?<issue_comment>username_1: It is standard practice in the US for students to apply for graduate programs before they have received a degree, and the TOEFL exam is normally taken as part of the admissions process.
However, you should also be aware of the fact that you have largely missed the admissions "window" for this coming fall: at most American graduate schools, you need to apply during the **previous** fall. So, for instance, to apply for admission in September 2014, you should have applied during the period (roughly) September 2013 to January 2014.
It is unlikely you will be able to secure admission to any American graduate school starting this September. At best you will be able to apply for admission in the fall of 2015. The only exception will be schools with "rolling admissions," which accept applications at any time.
As for the acceptance of the "triennale" degree, you will need to ask the individual schools you're interested in; I'm not aware of any such master list (because the number of recipients of such degrees who enroll in any particular program probably isn't big enough to support such a list).
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I was admitted to a graduate program at UCSD based, in part, on a 3-year bachelor's degree from London University. There did not seem to be any issue at all with the duration or number of course units. I don't know whether it would have been different if that had been my only qualification - I also had a master's degree and very substantial work experience.
Many of my fellow students had bachelor's degrees earned outside the US, and the admissions process seemed to be designed to handle that smoothly.
I do think you have left applying far too late for starting in Fall 2014. You probably need to reset to Fall 2015, plan what to do for the next year, and collect the critical dates for applying to each university you would like to attend.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: The italian laurea triennale should be the equivalent of an US bachelor degree. I think that professor from your Italian university can help you to understand better the situation.
You should not encounter any problems. As long you respect the deadline
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/04/27 | 689 | 2,912 | <issue_start>username_0: *(This question is set up under the EECS context, but any generic answer is much welcomed)*
It is said that publications during one's undergraduate time will be an advantage in his/her PhD application. Usually, an undergraduate only starts publishing papers in his/her junior (3rd) year, and the application deadline usually comes at the end of his/her junior year. Hence, it is very likely that although the paper has been accepted by or even already presented in a certain conference, yet it has not been included into IEEE Xplore.
If the student has not uploaded the paper to some preprint database, such as arXiv or ResearchGate, then the admission committee will have no access to the paper. Of course, they may still be able to find some information about the paper, e.g., a tittle and an abstract appearing in the conference schedule, but after all they cannot go deeper into the paper content.
Questions
=========
* Does the admission committee even bother to go through the paper to assess the work quality? (Sometimes, you can have a rough quality assessment by looking at which journal/conference the paper is accepted by)
* If the answer is positive, is it a good idea for the applicant to upload the papers to arXiv and provide the committee with the links so that the committee can read the papers as they wish?<issue_comment>username_1: While it's a single N experience from my graduate school application process:
>
> Does the admission committee even bother to go through the paper to
> assess the work quality? (Sometimes, you can have a rough quality
> assessment by looking at which journal/conference the paper is
> accepted by)
>
>
>
Yes. *Several* interviews I had mentioned content within the paper, at at least one of them had a good 10 or 15 minute discussion about the research that didn't start with the phrase "So, tell me what your paper was about..."
>
> If the answer is positive, is it a good idea for the applicant to
> upload the papers to arXiv and provide the committee with the links so
> that the committee can read the papers as they wish?
>
>
>
Yes. If your field is arXiv friendly, put it there. If your field isn't particularly arXiv friendly (like mine) and your paper is in press, consider providing the PDF as a supplement to your admissions packet.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Committee members will absolutely want to see it. The best way to ensure that they can easily do so is to submit a copy of the paper with the application (either on hard copy if the application is hard copy, or more commonly electronically). My own experience has been that most schools *require* submission of a writing sample as part of the application (although I'm not in engineering). Even if you've already published something, it's not enough to just give the reference; they want you to provide the actual paper.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/04/27 | 2,732 | 11,300 | <issue_start>username_0: I keep coming across general wisdom of the type, "A teacher has to be a clown". This attitude is gaining traction, e.g. as in [this TED talk](http://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_emdin_teach_teachers_how_to_create_magic).
This leaves me quite baffled. Thinking back to my own teachers, the ones I admire most and feel I learnt the most from were all serious and single-mindedly focused. Maybe it is for that reason that I have become a similar teacher, though not by a conscious decision on my part. My students find me a tough teacher but I receive emails several semesters later thanking me.
I have discussed this with colleagues around me and while they agree with me, they argue that the current iPhone generation has so many resources available to them, working hard to grab their attention should also be the teacher's task. Afterall, the argument goes, they may just receive better instruction online through a world leader in the subject.
I am just wondering what others feel about this.<issue_comment>username_1: Teachers and professors don't need to be clowns. However, they do need to **engage** their students.
The old mode of a teacher standing at the front of the lecture hall talking "at" students for an hour or ninety minutes at a time is a cultural relic, rather than necessarily the best way to educate students, as learning in a lecture is usually at best passive.
There are many ways to get around this problem—including engaging in class discussions, demonstrations, group learning, and, yes, sometimes humor can be used to make the point. But just as teaching should not be a stale recitation of facts, neither is it open mic night at your local comedy club. Learning is serious business, but it doesn't have to be boring, either.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_2: Give me reasons to listen to your lesson, and I will be entertained. There is a reason for what I signed up for the class, anyway. Also note that, if I want a clown, I can go in the evening to a performance; way easier than getting up 7 am to go to a lesson.
As Moriarty said, you need passionate, engaging educators. You raise an interesting point with the online courses: why would I follow a local lesson, when I could be listening to a top-class eminence? Again, you need to give me a reason: interactivity, quick doubt solving, a syllabus tailored to what I specifically need in my field... or plainly better explanations (world geniuses can still be improved).
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: I think it's really easy to underestimate a student's ability to sense passion and dedication and respond to it. While cheap gimmicks might work, passion always shows if it exists, and students respect that.
Passion is a form of authenticity that can't be easily faked. Similarly, a natural comic can teach well with jokes, but someone who's forcing humor to be "entertaining" and comes off as inauthentic.
So while I don't know where you got this idea that "a teacher should be a clown", it is nevertheless true that a teacher should show that they care about their subject, their students and teaching, and this can be done in many ways.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: It's largely a question of balance. In a single-teacher, tens/hundreds-of-students classroom, "one size fits all" is a necessary evil\* to some extent. Practicing versatility of style and introducing variety (e.g., by having some serious, [nose-to-the-grindstone](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nose_to_the_grindstone) days mixed with some days of light edutainment – and telling students which it's going to be at the start of class) can help ensure that your "size" fits most students at some point. If you don't mix things up haphazardly, you can at least create the impression that you're a balanced educator and not stuck in any one style. Sometimes all it takes to get students on-board with your education plan is to cater to their expectations just enough to get through to them once. Afterward, they may follow you out of their comfort zones more willingly, even if it doesn't come as naturally as they'd like.
There's an [opportunity cost](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost) every time you serve one kind of student preferences that others don't share. The "evil" of a one-size-fits-all educational system is that by failing to present curricula in modes that suit several major learning styles, some nontrivial subpopulation is always served poorly. In certain manners, one can try to suit several styles all at once (e.g., by mixing audiovisual presentation with individual and group exercises), but this makes it difficult to focus attention on any one element, and costs time both in preparation and in class. You can't *literally* attend to all elements at once – [multitasking is somewhat misconceived](https://cogsci.stackexchange.com/q/3708/4086).
Humor and entertainment value in education are similar issues. As is the case with humor and entertainment outside of an academic context, you can't please every audience without considerable talent, and you can't please every audience *member* no matter how funny you are. Within an academic context, you face an even greater challenge as a comedian: contextual expectation violation. Some students may expect clowning, but probably just as many won't, and will consider you unprofessional if you cater too much to those who do.
Thus it's a question of balance and how you want to strike it in your classes. As I see it, it's a question of whether to try to (dis)please the same people throughout the academic term, or whether to give every student a more equal mixture of (dis)service.
* Do you want to choose a particular (set of) style(s) and stick to it (or them)?
+ This is somewhat necessary, because no one can cover the full range of teaching styles in any one class. It is also wise to play to your strengths and not force unnatural styles.
+ A somewhat necessary consequence is that certain students will not approve of your chosen approach, and their educational outcomes may suffer. However, those whose preferences you do serve will approve of you and thrive more for every additional moment in which your approach matches their preferences.
* Do you want to try to mix up your delivery and serve every preference some of the time?
+ Some amount of variety is inevitable, as you're human and bring a slightly different energy to every day's class. Certain topics may deserve different styles of presentation, and coverage of most will benefit from taking multiple perspectives. Arguably the fair approach is to try to give equal time to all students' preferred modalities.
+ This can be a strain, both for you and the students who recognize that you could teach the class their way more often than you do. Most people will have some weaknesses, and class time might not be the best time to work on those as a teacher. Part of the necessary evil of a one-teacher-per-class system is that students have less choice over whether a teacher suits their preferences. You can only do so much about it by playing the part of several different teachers over the course of the course.
Either way, someone will be pleased and someone else will be displeased with any given element of your class. Clowning around is no more universally acceptable than any other style.
\*A fairer way of describing the one-size-fits-all approach would be as a conventional compromise with efficiency concerns regarding budgetary and labor limitations. It might not be necessary to teach individual students in a several-students-per-teacher environment – home-schooling and one-on-one tutoring are counterexamples – but as a society with scarce resources for serving boundless educational demand, this status quo is at least necessary *de facto*. Maybe this is for lack of a better idea, but I haven't got one myself, and most would be difficult to implement at best.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: Reiterating a part of other good answers: the "real" version of the question is about "added value". Is there any reason to come to class as opposed to just reading the book/notes, or looking at things on-line? If the instructor does not, or cannot, add value beyond reading the book... etc... why in the world would a student want to show up? This is not at all about the misguided over-specific "will it be on the final?" information, but about the *content*.
I have had the good fortune to attend lectures from some very good mathematicians, and/but a certain number gave amazingly bad talks. Painstakingly copied onto a blackboard their notes... often without saying a word. Even with wonderful notes, there was no evident reason for a group of people to show up at a particular time, sit quietly in a cramped space, and copy (presumably fallibly) into their own notes what could have been photocopied...
Yes, such scenarios are a slightly extreme failure, but do highlight the issue of "adding value". The model of your copying notes (which may have been copied from some other source) onto the board, to be copied by students, ... is just silly, all the more so in modern times.
But to "be a clown"? Depends. By itself, probably this is dumb. To be *witty* about the narrative, to be *facile*, to be *aware*, surely helps keep the class alive, and these affect-oriented things are not replicated in text. Next: how to be better than videos? First, make it clear, by function, that you are reading the facial expressions and body language of the students, whether or not they overtly ask questions. Make it clear that you are \_paying\_attention\_to\_them\_. Videos don't do that (quite yet...)
Just joking around can have a nice ice-breaking effect, but is just killing time unless highly integrated into the programme.
I think a good general criterion is "added value"... some of which could be "entertainment", but then there's the question of movement toward your goals for the course.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: For me a teacher shouldn't need to be a entertainers. A better teacher should understand and know how to make his topic more interesting and friendly to it's listener. To make a lesson to be more interesting is to show the relevance and its application. To make a lesson to be lively is to use some visual aids to be easily understood and to help picture the purpose of the topic in that way listeners are not bored and help there imagination guided.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_7: Teachers are teachers and clowns are clowns, should not be confused. Even so, humour, multimedia, vivid talks, are important elements to facilitate communication. Everybody loves to be taken seriously and students are not exceptions.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_8: I think it depends on the topic. Teachers should first and foremost be a great teacher. That person has to be ready, present material in an understandable manner, answer questions, all that fun stuff.
Some more dry topics require extra showmanship on teacher's behalf. That is the only time when you have to go out of your way to "entertain" students. Other times, communicate with students like you always would.
I find that professors that talk to students like equals get more of my attention.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/04/27 | 1,743 | 7,399 | <issue_start>username_0: I graduated from college 5 years ago, and I was very fortunate to graduate with no debt. For the 3 years after graduating I worked hard, had solid employment, and saved very carefully. This afforded me the opportunity to use a portion of those savings to buy a used car that people comment on while I am driving down the street which I have owned for 2 years. It looks a lot nicer than the cost because I bought it after a large portion of the value depreciated. I love the car, it is very reliable, and I very much want to keep it.
I know I am supposed to be a "poor graduate student", and my offer included funding plus a stipend, so I consider myself very fortunate.
I was very adamantly told by someone that owning such a car would make me look bad, and that if funding became tight I would get the short end of the stick because my car was too nice. He said the exact same thing happened to a fellow graduate student when he was in a PhD program at the same school 30 years ago.
If it really would reflect poorly on me to have a certain car I'm willing to take a step down, but I wanted to hear from others. Is this perception accurate?<issue_comment>username_1: [This answer is based on my experiences in the U.S., specifically in math grad school but I think many fields would be similar.]
Your fellow graduate students will initially take your car as evidence that you're rich. They'll probably wonder whether you'll be a snob, but personal interaction should allay those fears. Once they get to know you, there will still be comments and jokes about your car for the entire time you're in grad school, but I don't think it will be a real problem. In the program I was in, most grad students didn't have cars, and the ones who did gained a little popularity if they took their fellow students on road trips (or even trips to get groceries or see movies), so your reputation may even benefit from having a fancy car.
Faculty don't necessarily know whether a student even has a car, let alone what sort of car, but this sounds like a car that will lead to rumors going around the department. You may get similar reactions from faculty as from students, but they are less likely to care about social interaction with you (for example, whether you're a snob). Your apparent wealth could theoretically play a role behind the scenes in allocation of funding, but I don't think this is likely, and it would be inappropriate for it to be a factor in most decisions. The most plausible scenario might be if money were tight and you requested extended funding beyond the years you were promised. If the department head is deciding which requests to approve, there's not enough money to approve everyone, and your car leads to a reputation of being rich, then the car could work against you. However, I don't think this is likely enough to be worth worrying about, and you can always address any rumors about your wealth with your advisor early on in grad school if you think they might be a problem.
The main disadvantage I see is that your fancy car might be your most salient, defining characteristic, forcing you to work a little harder to establish yourself in people's minds for your research rather than your car. Once again, I don't think this is a big deal, but it might make you feel a little uncomfortable knowing that half the department thinks of you primarily as a person with a car. (On the other hand, this is far from the worst thing you could end up being known for.)
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: It depends; TA stipends seem to be roughly the same across the country, but $1700/month goes a lot further in Manhattan, KS than it does in Manhattan.
It also depends on the car. Here in LA, it takes a lot more than a BMW or Mercedes to draw attention.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: My honest feeling is that this is a trick question: it's not anybody else's business what kind of car you drive. If you didn't already have the car then there would be the question of whether buying an unusually nice car is a wise allocation of your (perhaps scarce) financial resources. Since you already have the car: great, you like it; keep it.
Will some people judge you differently because you drive a nice car? Sure; people will judge you differently depending upon how much hair you have and how you style it, depending upon how often you go to the gym, depending upon your regional accent....You are who you are.
The idea that driving a nice car could make you less competitive for academic funding seems almost offensive to me. Most graduate academic funding is not "need-based". If it is, then presumably you need to submit more comprehensive financial information than just the car you drive, and presumably you're not willing to give away or hide substantial amounts of income in order to qualify for more need-based funding.
In summary: [What do you care what other people think?](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Do_You_Care_What_Other_People_Think%3F) The fact that something bad allegedly happened to someone else 30 years ago is not nearly a good enough reason for you to stop doing something that gives you pleasure and that in no way interferes with your professional life. (FYI: most academic programs have changed significantly in the last 30 years. Stories from 30 years ago are still interesting; it is much less clear whether they are still relevant.) Live your life for yourself and the others that you care about; do not optimize for the perceptions of others.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: Don't change your life just so you can conform to the expectations of people who know nothing about you and will judge you for such superficial and idiotic things. It really shouldn't even matter whether you worked hard and bought a used car that looks nice, or just won the lottery and bought a brand-new Ferrari. It's your life and it has absolutely nothing to do with how good of a graduate student you will be.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: My graduate experience on a social level seemed to have a lot to do with appearances and judgments thereof. It took a lot of time to bust some barriers that people unfairly made about my certain identities. That being said, no one that interacted with me for any amount of time judged me unfairly for long. That being said, driving a nice car is nowhere near the type of difficulty that other people may have due to their gender identity, sexual identity, race, ethnicity or socioeconomic status.
That being said, I had an issue close to yours where I wanted to be a TA trainer in my department. A year after I was passed over for this opportunity, I came to find out that the reason was because I had an external stipend and they wanted to "spread the funding" around instead of give the opportunity to me.
This is a bit troubling and there was some pushback on the deciding committee, but in the end they did not give me that opportunity because I "did not need the extra money." I believe this had to do with my current funding package instead of how much money it looked like I had, but this is something to consider.
A year later, the university itself had no problem giving me the university-wide equivalent job analogous to the department one which was a better experience and paid better, so in the end it worked out for the best.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/04/27 | 422 | 1,833 | <issue_start>username_0: I am facing a dilemma regarding whether or not to apply for Spring for PhD programs at some universities in US. What are the pros and cons of applying for PhD or MS programs in Spring?<issue_comment>username_1: Most PhD programs, and many master's programs, in the US only offer one admissions cycle per year, with programs starting in the fall. This is in part because of the PhD program encompassing classwork as well as research.
The main issue that speaks against spring admissions is that in most programs, the coursework begins in the fall semester, and any "sequences" (where course Y depends on course X) will often begin in the fall semester. Thus, starting in the spring semester may mean that your coursework phase will need to extend longer, so there's no real advantage between starting in the spring and waiting until the following fall.
Where there might be an advantage is if you are able to use some of the time for finding a research group (if that is necessary for a research thesis for the master's degree); in some cases, you could even get a head start on the thesis work, which could allow you to finish somewhat faster.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I started grad school in the spring of 1998, immediately after I finished my undergrad the previous fall. I happened to be continuing at the same university with an advisor that I had worked with some during undergrad. Aeismail is probably right, but it can be done. I spent the time starting to do a little research and taking a few interesting classes that were outside the standard new-graduate student sequence. You probably won't shorten your time in grad school with a spring start, but you might enjoy it more with a warm-up semester. If you can make $50k+ by waiting til the fall, that might be worth it.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/04/28 | 1,530 | 6,377 | <issue_start>username_0: I observe media uses health studies or research and come up with conclusions to influence the consumers today with headlines suitable for few corporations
[New study says caffeine can help strengthen memory function](http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/new-study-says-caffeine-can-help-strengthen-memory-function/2014/01/13/bff02b5a-7c7c-11e3-93c1-0e888170b723_story.html)
[Research shows beer can be good for you](http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?id=9015796)
* Is it true that some research today are manipulated to suit corporate agenda particularly private funded?
* Is there a way to identify commercial research?<issue_comment>username_1: There is always a possibility that an Industry funded project (meaning a company is funding it vs. the government) is influenced. However, in academia, the idea is that peer reviewed work looks at the methodology and results to decide if it makes sense. There are also different types of 'research'.
1. In the media 'A new study...' does not necessarily mean academic publication (in the case of your link, it was). Anything is possible, and if an upcoming researcher who needs funding tries to find meaning that benefits a company to get more funding later, than yes, it is possible for research to be 'manipulated'. In the case that it was a company producing the research themselves, such as a coffee company posting its own research, most likely it is biased. An example is the bing challenge, which says that research shows people choose bing over google, but that was Microsoft's research.
2. A company can fund academic research that leads to a publication. In this situation, there is an acknowledgement of who funded the research. There are often conflict of interest statements that are included in the publication.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Industry funded research is a common phenomenon, and honestly I don't see much problem with it, as long as it's clearly stated that the project is designed, funded and/or carried out by a profit-driven company, held privately or publicly.
Many journals I follow, mostly within medical and biomedical research) specifically ask for the *funding information*, as well as declaration of any *conflict of interest*. While the use of these sections are not limited to corporate funding cases, it is also a good place to denote involvement.
I believe the important part of your question is how corporate funded research is framed/presented towards general public. That is more of a discussion on media ethics and protocol than academia, I would say. Practically all respectable journals have peer-review (often blind), obvious cases of undeclared conflict of interest are relatively easy to pick up.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: The existing answers address the fact that industries do sponsor research. However, you should note that the wording of a given headline is entirely chosen by either the marketing department in a company, or by some journalist aiming to maximize click-through to his article. It's very common for a fairly mundane paper to generate sensationalist headlines, through no fault of the researcher.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: The first thing to point out here is that you are referring to media directed at the general public, not scientific publications. "Science" article in newspapers and magazines are rarely objective and most of the time fail to convey the actual conclusion of the paper they cite.
This can be harmful to the public's perception of research results in many ways and I get upset by it quite often. Scientists themselves almost never write to the newspaper to correct false conclusions made from their work, not even when their own words are misinterpreted, taken out of context, or simply made up.
>
> Is it true that some research today are manipulated to suit corporate
> agenda particularly private funded?
>
>
>
[It has been shown](http://www.bmj.com/content/326/7400/1167) that, even with rigorous methodology, researchers will have a tendency to make companies that pays them happy. Note that **this is not restricted to privately-funded research.** Government agencies that fund research obviously **also have agendas** and are generally far more powerful than the average commercial company (the US Department of Defense comes to mind). There is also a 'scientifically correct' among public funding agencies and scientist throughout history have struggled when their findings conflicted with popular political opinions.
In general, what diminishes this effect is when a lot of people from various places and with competing or opposite interests are researching on the same topic. One can expect the biases to level themselves out.
>
> Is there a way to identify commercial research?
>
>
>
Yes. First, read actual scientific literature and not lay articles in men's health or gossip magazines. Second, *reputable journals* always ask authors to state every source of funding, and possible conflicts of interest. Third, switch your brain on when you read and use your judgment. If one lone article by Smith J. et al. states that products manufactured by Smith J. LLC are the next big thing, use extra scrutiny.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: There are many "studies" funded by interest groups with agendas where the "researchers" know what the outcome is supposed to be based on that agenda.
Most such however are not funded by private industry (at least directly) but by political pressure groups, government agencies, and yes, sometimes industry groups (like a group set up to promote the drinking of beer might fund a "study" to show that beer is healthy).
This has been going on for centuries, possibly thousands of years, it's nothing new.
"Peer review" can help undermine such things, but sadly that too is all too easily corrupted. Just fund a "scientific journal" and have the review staff filled with more "scientists" who know where their paycheck is coming from and what they're supposed to agree with if they want funding for their own next "study".
Science is expensive, people need to eat, and as long as there's people with an agenda to push and enough money to push it through shady (pseudo)scientific "studies" there's going to be "scientists" eager to take that money.
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/04/28 | 1,199 | 5,165 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm currently writing an objection to a decision to reject my Master application.
The decision is made by Admission office, not by Admission Board or Committee. All members of the Admission office are not members of the academic staff, so there is no at least one professor from the programme who participated in making this decision to reject my application. I checked this because in the email I received, there are the names of the members.
As they use the word "reject" it might lead someone to think that my application was not complete, but this was not true. According to this decision, my application was carefully examined and, in addition, I was not informed that there is some document missing as it is stated in the FAQ on there website, i.e. they will inform me in the case of missing document or delay caused by more time they need to check my educational background.
In the email that I received there is no a reason why my application is rejected. Now I have to state clearly the grounds on which I object there decision.
I applied with not only BSc that meets the requirements but also with two year Master degree in the same field, successfully finished without redoubling the year, high marks. Before applying I informed the admission office for this and I did not have any remarks for my previous educational beckground as I saw that all requirements are referring to previous Bsc. I was even waved out from GRE/GMAT requirements.
I need the help especially from those who have expericence in the European (EU) Education Law or Dutch Higer Education and Research Act (WHW) to clearly state the Articles that are violated concerning:
1. The composition of the Admission office (I know that it is a practice everywhere in the world to have at least one professor, but I need an official document, I cannot only refer to the ethics)
2. The right of a student to have at least some information to know why the application was rejected as it has to state clearly the grounds of his objection
3. Is there any convention or document that clearly defines what is non-selected and rejected document (this document must be official)
4. Regarding the level of my previous education which fully satisfies the requirement, is there any ground for discrimination based on the fact that maybe I'm overqualified or overeducated, taking into considereation also the fact they told me previously that I can apply?
Thank you for your understanding<issue_comment>username_1: In my (central European) university, candidates for admission to a master's program who are coming from an outside university go through either an "admissions committee" (*Zulassungsausschuss*) or an "examination committee" (*Prüfungsausschuss*). Although the decisions are in fact made by those committees, the decisions are usually reported through assistants to those committees, who would constitute the "admissions office." It would represent a huge time commitment for the chair of the committee to individually respond to the different applications, and therefore that work is passed on to the intermediaries.
Thus, I wouldn't read too much into the fact the letter came from the "admissions office" instead of the "admissions committee."
However, if you were in fact rejected on the basis of having an "incomplete" application, even though you were explicitly told that you would be notified of missing documents, that would give you the right to request a review, since they didn't follow their explicit policies.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: As the bachelor-master subdivision in the Netherlands is fairly recent, most master's programs are so-called "Connecting Master's". These are designed for students graduating from one specific bachelor's program at that same university. All students who graduated from that bachelor's program (and sometimes hand-picked similar programs at other Dutch universities) are accepted into the Masters automatically. If by a *"BSc that meets the requirements"*, you mean that you completed one of these bachelor's program that should qualify you for automatic admission, you should be able to build a much stronger case than worrying about who was on the committe.
On the other hand, students who did not graduate from one of these selected bachelor's programs have to apply to the university for a certificate of admission *(bewijs van toelating)*. The application procedure is left up to the individual universities to define and implement. The conditions for acceptance will depend on the specific program you applied for. This means that (assuming you fall into this category) you should base your appeal on the university policies for the application procedure, and the program's requirements.
The admission requirements should be detailed in the *"onderwijs- en examenregeling"* of the program you're applying for, and should match the education goals of the preceding bachelor's program.
Source: [Wet op het hoger onderwijs en wetenschappelijk onderzoek, Artikel 7.30a](http://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0005682/Hoofdstuk7/Titel2/Paragraaf2/Artikel730a/geldigheidsdatum_28-04-2014).
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/04/28 | 1,244 | 5,388 | <issue_start>username_0: From talking to colleagues in a variety of fields and different institutions, there seems to be a huge variability in the ways committees handle their responsibilities of reviewing dissertation chapters. I would like to know two things:
1. What do you consider the best practices for advisors, other committee members, and candidates in order to move the dissertation writing along efficiently?
2. Does the *Journal Review* policy (specified below) seem reasonable to you?
>
> **Journal Review Method**
>
>
> In this model, the dissertation advisor treats his or her role as the
> chair of the candidate's committee as if he or she were the editor of
> a journal and the dissertation chapters articles submitted for review.
> The student submits a chapter to the advisor who decides whether it is
> ready to send for review. If it is, then the advisor sends the chapter
> to committee members for review. The committee members make a brief
> (2-4 page) report to the advisor that either: accepts the chapter as
> is, accepts it pending minor revisions, rejects it pending major
> revisions, or rejects the chapter entirely. The advisor then makes the
> final determination as to the status of the chapter. It will be the
> advisor's responsibility to make sure other committee members submit
> their reports in a timely fashion. The defense is held when the
> advisor judges all of the chapters to be "accepted".
>
>
> The primary benefits of this policy are that it creates a clear
> organizational structure which allows candidates to receive prompt,
> actionable feedback on their work.
>
>
><issue_comment>username_1: The policy is straight forward but an open question is what use a complete reject means if the advisor has deemed the chapter as passable. As I see it the advisor has (should have) both the insight into the details of the problem and research as well as general knowledge of academic expectations to deem when a manuscript is in shape for passing on. If a committee member does not think this is right then the question still remains who may be right and who may be wrong? Is the decision by vote in the end since there will likely be three or five persons involved in reading the chapters? In my system it is possible for a student to defend even if the advisor or committee member advise against it. Only fools do but it is possible. It is however, still possible for committee members to disagree but usually when issues arise it is because the student-advisor communication has failed for one or the other reason.
So in my view the "journal review method" is a good start but you also need to consider what will happen if there is disagreement and how to possibly weigh the input. Do all committee members have equal weight in all aspects or are they experts in some parts and therefore carry more weight in those chapters than in others. I think the system requires some tweaking in order to accommodate the clear differences that exist between a journal publications and a thesis (*sensu* monograph) where a thesis typically contains larger quantities of more detailed information than would be possible in a published paper.
As a side point, in my system where paper based theses are the norm, it is hard to "reject" a published paper; one can disagree but something that has passed peer review (albeit a poor one) has still passed. The key pint is thus the overall quality of the work and of the emerging scientist behind it. This i snot necessarily covered by the "journal review method" alone.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Here's what I think from the point of view of mathematics in the US.
For us the usual system is that the advisor is expected to read the thesis carefully, judging its correctness, significance, and novelty, at a level of depth comparable to or higher than would be expected of a journal review (which in mathematics is already pretty deep). The other committee members are expected only to give a more cursory reading, basically to satisfy themselves that the contents of the thesis appear to be mathematics research at an appropriate level.
As such, I think your system would face the following problems:
1. Expertise. Mathematics as a field is highly specialized, and most of the members of the committee will not be experts in the same area as the candidate. They will not have the necessary background or expertise to carefully read and evaluate the dissertation at the level you propose. For a journal submission, referees can be chosen from anyone in the world, and even so there may only be a few dozen people whom an editor would consider well qualified for that particular topic. The intersection of that pool with the candidate's university is typically just the advisor.
2. Workload. Even supposing the committee members to have the necessary expertise, what you propose would require a very significant time commitment from them. An average dissertation chapter in mathematics might be 20 or 30 pages of dense computation and logical argument. To read a paper of that length, evaluate its correctness and significance, and produce a 2-4 page referee report, a mathematician might easily spend at least 10-15 hours. Multiply that by 4-6 chapters and that is a lot of work, especially considering that a single person may be on several committees.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/04/28 | 725 | 3,055 | <issue_start>username_0: At the moment I'm a high school student, who is passionate about the High Energy Physics areas, especially Phenomenology, String Theory, QFT and so on. I would like to pursue a B.Sc. degree in Mathematical Physics in the future in my country (central European country with a lot of famous string theorists ;) ). After that I would like to move to the USA to get a PhD in the one of the areas show above, but I heard that getting a post-doc and then a permanent job is quite hard.
Is it true? Would I have better success if I wouldn't limit myself only to the US, but include here, Europe, Asia, and Australia.<issue_comment>username_1: In many respects any career in academia will be quite hard. Positions are very dependent on funding so there is often little choice in location and wages are often quite low compared to similarly skilled people in industry.
However, I wouldn't let these things put you off. If its what you enjoy and you are half decent there will be jobs out there. Also I wouldn't worry too much about post-docs at your stage. After 7-10 years of undergrad and PhD you might conclude you don't really enjoy HEP so much, you enjoy something else more, or even that you just aren't good enough - theory type subjects at high school/undergraduate/research level are all very different (my view is slightly biased here, I did a masters level QFT module and then realised it definitely wasn't for me).
I would focus on doing well at your undergrad studies and preferably getting some research experience, for example via summer placements. Work out want you enjoy. If you find something try and do a PhD in that. Then you can worry about post-docs.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: Currently, yes, it is quite hard. Assuming you go on to get your PhD in some field of HEP theory, you'll graduate with a very specific skill set that qualifies you for maybe about 10 available postdoc positions in the entire world, of which perhaps 3 or 4 will be in the US. (Obviously these numbers vary by perhaps a factor of 2 year to year and from one specific subfield to another; take them only as rough estimates.) But there are typically hundreds of people applying to each of these positions, so in the absence of other information your chances of getting one are not good. If you do get a postdoc, then your chances of getting a tenure-track faculty job are lower by perhaps another order of magnitude.
That being said, high school is *way* too early to be planning your future based on the chances of getting a postdoc. In particular, the difficulty of getting a postdoc should not dissuade you from getting a PhD in high energy physics, if you decide that's what you want to do when you finish college. There are plenty of other things you can do with a PhD in physics, especially if you have supplementary skills like computer programming. And by the time you approach the end of graduate school, you'll have a better idea of whether you are more qualified for a postdoc than the average applicant.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/04/28 | 819 | 3,568 | <issue_start>username_0: Consider this situation,
I get accepted for a second masters degree at the University of Toronto, and just before that I graduate with a masters degree in a much less established university.
Both degrees are in the same field, **Computer Science**.
Further, UoT knows that I am completing my masters degree.
My plan would be: to use this opportunity to get into the PhD program at the University of Toronto, because this is what I applied for in the first place.
Would you pursue this second masters?
Thanks<issue_comment>username_1: If you can't get into the PhD program without it, I would ask them if it is a requirement or an opportunity to prove one's ability. I think that it is important to get a guarantee, or at least a good chance to get into the PhD program.
It has certain advantages to work there before:
* Better contacts
* Already acclimated
* You know the software and equipment
I would pursue the second master but I think it would make more sense to apply directly to PhD programs.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: Contact the department and ask them directly "How many students who applied to the PhD program and were only accepted into the masters program end up graduating with a PhD?" If this number is very low, I'd advise against this. Some professors will discriminate against masters students when looking for students to do research with, and if this is the culture at UoT, you should know about it going in. The worst outcome is you end up paying for a second masters and leave with two masters degrees in computer science, which will look unusual in job interviews. I know of at least one interviewer at a company who said he automatically views two masters degrees in the same subject (or even a highly related subject) as a big red flag.
It might be better to enter a PhD program at a different university or get a job. You can always apply to PhD programs next year. I know of several students with less than stellar academic performance who enter good PhD programs with work experience. As someone who has read a fair amount of personal statements before, those who have been in industry for a few years tend to write better ones. They tend to know what they want and are not going into academia just because it is the "next step" without thinking about it.
Computer science has the advantage that often you don't need a university to do your own research. Start doing research in your spare time. If you find a question you are really interested in and have made some progress, contact professors who work in that area at various PhD programs. You have a much better shot of getting into a good PhD program if a professor has notified the admissions committee that they want to work with you.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: Please note that not all Masters programs are created equally, especially if the degrees come from different countries. The University of Toronto would typically ask you to have your degree evaluated for equivalence.
Degrees in Pakistan for example have historically been exaggerated. A Pakistani bachelor's degree would be the equivalent of a high school leaving exam and it's Masters degrees would be the equivalent of bachelor's degrees. This is because people persuing academic studies in Pakistan had to spend a considerable time studying the Koran and other Islamic books before they could move on to the actual course they were interested in.
Perhaps the UoT does not recognise your Masters degree as equivalent of its own?
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/04/28 | 681 | 2,556 | <issue_start>username_0: This is a question branching off of [this one](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/19914/best-practices-for-dissertation-committees-to-review-chapters/19919?noredirect=1#comment41452_19919). I would like to judge how common it is for universities to give course reductions for service on dissertation committees.
Two questions:
1. Does your university offer such reductions for the advisor, readers, examiners?
2. How generous is the reduction? (1/3 of a course, 1/4 of a course, etc.)
Please include your discipline and location in the reply so we can get a more robust picture.
For instance: USA, Philosophy, 1/2 course for the dissertation advisor, 1/3 course for the readers, 0 for the examiners.<issue_comment>username_1: In mathematics in Minnesota, the advisor gets a half-course reduction, and committee members no reduction.
Thus, some years ago, when I taught a crypto class and a coding class that were popular with some engineering dept grad students, and I found myself being asked to be on about 250 Master's and PhD committees within a few years, it was a task that was not literally directly compensated-for, despite consuming significant time. But I figured it was part of my service duty. I allocated an hour or two prior to the actual presentation to review the document, and the presentation itself would take an hour or two.
(My chief benefit was amusement with some of my "colleagues" who apparently thought I was grossly exaggerating, since "obviously no one would agree to being on so many committees"...)
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: In Sweden, main advisors may get symbolic compensation, in my department 3% time, co-advisors receive 1%. If you serve on an examination committee you do not receive any compensation by either your own department or the department where the defending PhD student resides. At a public defence there is an official examiner, referred to as "opponent". this person typically receives about USD 1000 for the task which includes a 1 + hour public discussion of the work.
In short, none of very little compensation is given to anyone involved with the study and defence of a PhD student. For the PhD defence, all costs involved for travel and housing is of course covered.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: >
> Does your university offer such reductions for the advisor, readers, examiners?
>
>
>
**NO.** Advising students and serving on dissertation committees is a normal and expected duty of all faculty members at my university.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/04/28 | 522 | 2,082 | <issue_start>username_0: The question is pretty easy and fit in the title.
So: can I use instagram pictures for an academic work?
I think I have to ask people who posted them if they agree but I'm not sure. I don't want any trouble with plagiarism and copyright.<issue_comment>username_1: In mathematics in Minnesota, the advisor gets a half-course reduction, and committee members no reduction.
Thus, some years ago, when I taught a crypto class and a coding class that were popular with some engineering dept grad students, and I found myself being asked to be on about 250 Master's and PhD committees within a few years, it was a task that was not literally directly compensated-for, despite consuming significant time. But I figured it was part of my service duty. I allocated an hour or two prior to the actual presentation to review the document, and the presentation itself would take an hour or two.
(My chief benefit was amusement with some of my "colleagues" who apparently thought I was grossly exaggerating, since "obviously no one would agree to being on so many committees"...)
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: In Sweden, main advisors may get symbolic compensation, in my department 3% time, co-advisors receive 1%. If you serve on an examination committee you do not receive any compensation by either your own department or the department where the defending PhD student resides. At a public defence there is an official examiner, referred to as "opponent". this person typically receives about USD 1000 for the task which includes a 1 + hour public discussion of the work.
In short, none of very little compensation is given to anyone involved with the study and defence of a PhD student. For the PhD defence, all costs involved for travel and housing is of course covered.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: >
> Does your university offer such reductions for the advisor, readers, examiners?
>
>
>
**NO.** Advising students and serving on dissertation committees is a normal and expected duty of all faculty members at my university.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/04/28 | 1,914 | 7,695 | <issue_start>username_0: After the recent death of 61 year old Spanish teacher <NAME> in Leeds today, what is the best way to deal with violence in schools in the UK as it happens?
Most schools in the UK do not have a lockdown / violence procedure as it is very rare.
However can we deal with this as it happens effectively in the UK?<issue_comment>username_1: In the US, a college student's risks of being robbed, assaulted, or raped on campus are each roughly 3x10-3 per year. This is higher than we'd like it to be -- well, we'd like the rate to be zero. One's chances of being victimized can probably be reduced by taking commonsense precautions such as calling Campus Safety to ask for an officer to walk along if one has to cross a college campus in the dark. I don't know how much of this violent crime is alcohol-related, but certainly alcohol is involved in many off-campus incidents.
As a teacher, there are some common-sense things you can do if there is a violent incident, such as a shoving match or scuffle. Identify yourself as a teacher to the student who has been violent. If the person is your student, tell him/her to leave class until the next meeting. Call 911 and report the incident to Campus Safety.
>
> Most schools in the UK do not have a lockdown / violence procedure as it is very rare.
>
>
>
The reason we do have lockdown procedures and lockdown drills here in the US is not because school shootings are common in the US. In the US, a college student's annual risk of dying in a school shooting is something like 3x10-6 per year. Since the risk of being raped is roughly 1000 times higher than the risk of being a victim of a school shooting, this idea of a lockdown drill is clearly disproportionate. It's based on cultural and
emotional responses, not a realistic assessment of risks. Although
events like the Kennedy assassination, 9/11, and the Newtown shooting
are culturally powerful, they should not be allowed to take over our
lives or evoke a dysfunctional response.
There is no intellectually rigorous evidence for any particular lockdown procedure, drill, training, etc. For example, my school wanted us to show our students a video advocating a "run, hide or fight" strategy, but there is [no clear evidence](http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/14/us/colorado-school-shooting-response/?hpt=hp_c2) to support this strategy.
Furthermore, drills detract from instruction and may violate students' rights by locking them up in a classroom and telling them that they can't leave.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: The best solution to violence is, generally speaking, prevention. As have been pointed out, school shootings are rather rare occurrences. I will herein detail a number of steps for an educational institution to work to lower crime rates.
**1. Educate your students and teachers.**
The inclusion of this point may seem trivial, but there are simple steps individuals can take that will protect them from crime. Most noticeably is the importance of not being alone - a single person is a much easier target for crime than someone in a group. Sticking to brightly lit, well-traveled areas will also decrease the likelihood of being targeted. There are many more tips on a number of websites.
**2. Invest in infrastructure.**
A clean, open, well-lit space is much less likely to be the site of crime. Janitorial and groundskeeping staff are especially important to this effort. Paving common walking paths will encourage more people to use them, benefiting them of safety in numbers. Trim trees and install outdoor lights. If a casual observer can notice something is wrong, it's less likely for a crime to be committed there.
**3. Invest in direct security.**
Have security cameras installed so as to cover major public spaces. Make their presence visible, but not obtrusively so. The presence of cameras both act as a deterrent and can help after a crime. Note on visibility: A potential criminal will look for cameras, so simple visibility is all that is necessary; Obtrusive cameras will make users feel their privacy is violated.
Get either local police or a security service to routinely make circuits of campus. "Complete" coverage should mean that anyone standing in a public space should see police/security once every 15-30 minutes, even if they just drive slowly by. If an effort is made by officers to be helpful and not oppressive, this can even become an attractive feature to potential students and teachers.
**4. Purely reactive measures.**
While the steps above are either preventative or act as a deterrent, there are a few more measures that can be taken with a focus to respond to crimes after they happen.
Security call boxes can help a victim alert police or security to a crime and secure emergency services if necessary. Even in the age of cell phones, it is probable that a victim does not have other means to alert security. Dialing on a cell phone might be difficult, or their phone may have been stolen or lost in a scuffle.
Have a therapist on staff and give security training to facilitate an air of reassurance - this is especially important when dealing with victims of rape or sexual assault. There is much more information on this in security circles. Having this training will also make others more comfortable with the idea of going to security with their problems by assuaging their fears of a security investigation disturbing their life.
---
Ultimately, there must be an effort to both make the campus physically safer and to make the local culture more resistant to crime. These measures are not only focused on making crime harder but also making crime less accepted as "a reality of the community". Criminals ultimately pick on the lowest hanging fruit, and we have the possibility to move it out of reach.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: ### Emergency notification systems
It's important to have systems in place which enable timely (read: not help up in red tape) warnings of immediate and pressing danger.
Following the 2007 incident in which more than 30 people were killed by a student gunman at Virginia Tech, officials at VT were criticized for a perceived failure to warn students in a timely manner:
>
> When an emergency occurs at Virginia Tech, its emergency plan dictates that a Policy Group consisting of senior administrators (at that time not including the chief of campus police) be convened by the president to oversee the university’s response. On the morning of April 16, the Policy Group, anxious to avoid a panicked reaction, acted slowly to alert the campus to a dangerous situation. In the emergency message it sent out almost two hours after the first shootings at West Ambler Johnston Hall, the group said there had been a shooting but did not state explicitly that two people had been killed and that the killer had not been apprehended.
>
>
>
([Source](http://www.changemag.org/Archives/Back%20Issues/January-February%202008/full-connecting-the-dots.html))
In the aftermath of this incident, many universities [indicated](http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED502232.pdf) that they were taking steps to improve their emergency notification systems, including:
* Implementing a system with the ability to broadcast notifications to students by text message or personal email address
* Creating a written protocol for determining when to issue a broadcast emergency alert
Of course, these systems are far more likely to be used for non-violent but immediate, pressing dangers such as a fire, earthquake affecting structural integrity, etc. Regardless of the nature of the emergency, it's important to have these systems in place.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/04/28 | 1,679 | 5,765 | <issue_start>username_0: Not disregarding that the Ivies are fine colleges in many aspects, how to deal with high-school students fixated on the idea that they need an Ivy league education, or otherwise their education would be second class. Or to deal with equally fixated people who think that academics in the Ivy league is the only golden rule (and the others are second class). Talking about this makes me sound a tad envious, but I like to make people see that many other colleges are fine too (although maybe not that famous).<issue_comment>username_1: If it means a lot to you, you could start by sharing with skeptics specific examples of academics/researchers/graduates who attended non-Ivy League schools, and how they "made the world a better place," or some such.
If that fails, as an alternative, you could simply let the people who believe that Ivy League schools are the "be all, end all" go on believing that. For some people, image is everything, and there is no convincing them otherwise. I don't doubt that there are pros to attending Ivy League schools, but some people perceive the quality of an Ivy League education through an illogical/emotional lens that is very hard to change.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: It's not hard to find Ivy League alumni who will readily admit - even adamantly defend - the statement that there are other colleges in the US which are just as good academically, and that you do not have to go to an Ivy League school to get a first-class education. Of course this is purely anecdotal, not any sort of logical argument, but then again people who feel like the Ivy League is the only way to get a top-quality education in the US are also not drawing their conclusions from logic, so perhaps an emotional appeal is just what they need.
If you're talking to someone who might be open to an evidence-based approach, try asking them to name what they consider to be the top universities in the US. Or better yet, look up a few college rankings and find out which names consistently appear near the top. For example, the [US News and World Report rankings](http://www.usnews.com/info/blogs/press-room/2013/09/10/us-news-announces-the-2014-best-colleges) for universities are headed by
>
> Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Stanford, University of Chicago, Duke, MIT, University of Pennsylvania, Caltech, Dartmouth
>
>
>
and for liberal arts colleges, by
>
> Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Bowdoin, Middlebury, Pomona, Carleton, Wellesley, <NAME>, Davidson, Haverford
>
>
>
[Forbes' top 10](http://www.forbes.com/top-colleges/list/) are
>
> Stanford, Pomona, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Swarthmore, West Point, Harvard, Williams, MIT
>
>
>
Beyond those I'm not sure of other ranking systems' reputation, but the [Parchment rankings](http://www.parchment.com/c/college/college-rankings.php) give as their top 10
>
> Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Princeton, Duke, Yale, Caltech, Pomona, <NAME>, Brown
>
>
>
and the [Academic Ranking of World Universities](http://www.shanghairanking.com/) gives
>
> Harvard, Stanford, UC Berkeley, MIT, Caltech, Princeton, Columbia, U Chicago, Yale, UCLA
>
>
>
and so on (you get the picture). Anyway, whether this person you're talking to comes up with their own idea of the top colleges or uses one or more of these lists, it's rather unlikely that their list will match the list of Ivy League universities: Brown, Columbia, <NAME>, Harvard, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania, and Yale. Clearly, while a university's membership in the Ivy League is somewhat *correlated* with having a high ranking, it is not the only way to get one.
You could also mention that the [Ivy League](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_League) is actually just an athletic conference, like the Big 10. The member schools generally happen to be academically high-achieving, but membership in the Ivy League is in no way meant to be a certification of strong academics.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: In terms of getting a job that utilizes connections significantly :
1. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, (maybe) Wharton; required for employability
2. MIT, Brown, Penn and the rest of the Ivies; you need to excel in order to get the job
3. Below that : summa cum laude is all but required.
The trend is similar for law schools : but LSAT is closely related to which school you go to(for whatever reason) so it doesn't hurt, although it is not taken into too much consideration in the admissions office.
In terms of getting into academia
(extrapolating from article "Sorry Cal State, No Princeton Grad School for You")
A little bit lenient on the rankings but conversely the lower you go on the school ranking the better your grades need to be. Of course on average graduate school bound students get better grades than those who aim for employment post bachelor's.
1. Top 5~10 : To get into top 5~10 in your field, you need at least magna cum laude
2. Top 30 : To get into top 5~10, you need summa
3. Top 50 : To get into top 5~10, you need to be one of the best students in your class
4. Top 100 : Very rare(a handful a year, per school)
5. Outside top 100 : Once a few years(with an extra master's)
This trend is mimicked for MBA programs : leniency in GPA, need better GMAT or GRE.
So while in terms of employability many prestigious fields require that you at least go to a top 20 institution to have any good chance, graduate school focuses a bit more on marks and recommendations. Still, your college name goes a long way.
So it's not that some students are obsessed with rankings per se, it's that companies and schools that matter to the world are obsessed with where their applicants went to college.
Upvotes: -1 |
2014/04/28 | 4,687 | 19,590 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm working on a project with a partner that involves developing a mobile app and corresponding server. I won't bother with the specifics, but both involve a fair amount of work (both require some custom algorithms as well as thousands of lines of code). This project will serve as a final for one of our classes.
Originally, we agreed that I would write the server and he would write the mobile application. I stayed up for a couple nights straight and got together a working server in no time. He told me he was bogged down with papers/family life/etc., but he'd handle the client side.
About two weeks went by and still no progress had been made. I had some free time so I figured out how the app needs to be written (i.e. writing out the pseudocode and sketching wireframes). When another week went by and still no work had been done, I went ahead and wrote a good deal of the client code. My partner is also my friend and I trusted him when he told me he would do his part and he was just totally bogged down.
Now the project is due on Friday and I'm still the only one who's actually done anything. I find out today that he *still* has yet to write a single line of code because he's so busy (but not so busy that he couldn't go to a baseball game, a concert, and spend all of Friday night getting drunk).
I'm not sure how I want to approach the situation. Even if my partner finished the project on his own, I've still done 80%. I don't think its fair if he gets an A because I killed myself to do the work of two people. At the same time, if I tell the professor how little he's done, the professor will fail him (rightly so) and I will lose a friend.
How can I get the credit I deserve for my work without losing my friend? I feel like I have the Hobson's choice between getting credit for my work and keeping a friend.
EDIT: I did choose a specific answer as my accepted answer, but all of these answers are of really good quality. If you're having a problem similar to mine, I highly suggest reading through all of the answers here.<issue_comment>username_1: For convenience, let us refer to your friend as "John."
As a friend of John, you should be gracious
in accepting his personal failings, mistakes and idiosyncrasies.
At the same time, that does not preclude that you should deal justly with him.
As I see it, here are your two choices:
* If you are lenient with John on this occasion,
perhaps in the future John may do something similar in his workplace,
where the consequences are more severe.
* On the other hand, if you do what is right
by telling your professor what has happened,
then John may fail the class.
However, he could always take it again, and learn it properly the second time.
If John is a man of good character,
he would respect you more as a friend than before;
but if he is not,
such a friend is not worth having, in my opinion.
One of the most important things for a young man/woman to learn
is that "for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."
In other words, "for every action there is a consequence."
Finally, the movie [The Emperor's Club](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_Club) may be relevant.
Very briefly, <NAME> plays a teacher
who decides to change grades to favor a student, but later regrets his decision.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: When students come to me with problems like these, I very rarely just take the side of the active student against the "lazy" one.
If you work in a group, you're both responsible when the dynamic doesn't work. And keeping the group dynamic healthy is something every student should learn. I know how difficult it is, I've been both the lazy student and the active one.
It may feel to you like there's nothing you possibly could've done. But that's never true. You started the project by immediately splitting the work load, and reducing the level of necessary communication to a bare minimum. He took the easy half, because he was busy. When his work started to lag behind, you began to write specifications for him.
All this combined probably sapped his motivation. Every step along the way took the challenge out of his part, while he still had those thousands of lines of code to get through. Meanwhile you felt like you were doing more than your share, but you were getting things done, and things that you designed, problems you solved.
In a healthy project, you communicate and you meet often. You don't divide the workload to minimize communication, you use your shared expertise and you design together. That way, you both stay motivated, because you both feel like it's still *your* project.
What you're doing now is focusing on everything that *he* could be doing differently. That may be the fair option (cause you're doing all the work), but it's not a productive option, cause that's not a dimension you control. You should be asking yourself what *you* could've done differently. It may feel unfair, but it's something you can actually implement, so you'll feel a lot less powerless.
Anyway, that's a lesson for the next project. For this one, I'd say remain detached. It's not your responsibility to make sure John learns something, and you'll get the same grade either way. Talk to him, tell him you're unhappy with the way the project's gone and ask if you could've done anything differently to get him more motivated. Let him know you don't expect to be working with him on future project and you're better off as friends than as collaborators.
Just make sure you don't get angry with him. Anger might've been productive halfway down the project, but you're too late now.
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: I had a similar experience in a programming course. My partner started to claim to have some problems doing it, so when I finished my part, he decided I should take part of his task. After a few iterations, he was left with a quite trivial piece of code, plus the documentation (easy, but boring).
Long story short, I ended up doing it all by myself. For orthogonal reasons, the relationship with my friend was quite delicate, so a frontal confrontation would have been messy. Instead, I submitted it without making comments, but every file had the auto-generated header including `author:@David`. A few days later, the lecturer asked me why was this, and I just explained what happened.
In retrospect, my handling was not so good, as I didn't try hard enough to solve the problem before the deadline was biting. But it is too late now. If he is your friend, and you want to keep it, you should talk to him first, **don't let the problem rot**. Now you have to decide if he has enough time to make it up to you, or if you should inform the grader (together) and reach an agreement (for example, split the grade).
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: Do not attempt to talk to the prof about it, as in my comment above. There are too many ways that that could go wrong for all of you, and surely not giving "satisfaction", such as it would be, to you.
The goal of not having someone get credit for a thing they didn't earn is dubious for fairly obvious reasons, and even though it's more understandable that you'd not want someone else to "get credit" for something *you* did, in overtime, ... the situation of collaboration with a partner chosen by you tends to put you in a situation of having little ground to stand on. And the rest of your life will provide you with very many more examples of people aiming for, and receiving, more credit than they earn.
Lesson: good friends are not necessarily good collaborators. Indeed, in the future, consider that a botched collaboration might ruin a friendship, thus, do not hastily choose collaborators from among friends. (Pity, I know...)
The possibility that you get *less* credit than you earned is also just a presagement of many events. Although one should generally avoid such situations, especially if one has bills to pay and such, it is unavoidable... So keep your internally-generated stress level as low as possible, even while recognizing the failings of many people... e.g., one's friends.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_5: Not enough information:
* which year are you in, and how much grade does this count for, and how important is the class?
* would failing be a minor issue, or cause major GPA damage, or to lose a summer internship, recommendation for grad school, or what are the $$$ consequences?
* are you honestly telling us you didn't know anything about your friend's work ethic until now? What was his track record on previous projects? Did you ask?
* don't pick a friend as a project partner, unless you personally know them to be reliable.
* different colleges, courses and professors have different mechanisms for handling the team dynamic, giving credit, handling denunciations and members flaking out. Some professors do handle this situation, others don't want the headache of intervening, or they figure this acts as an early first real-world lesson. Usually the TAs (or admin staff) know the deal. You should have found out what the general procedure is - at the start, when you're choosing team-members, not at the 11th hour. (Expect the best, plan for the worst)
Anyway, my reactions:
* sounds like you could have completed this all as an individual project. (Once you realized you could, why on earth didn't you? And don't email or give him the code or wireframes, dammit. Unless you're using SCM, in which case make sure your 'Author:' name appears on all your checkins)
* when you agreed milestones and your friend started not delivering, you should have warned him you would remove his name from the team by (date) if he did not deliver (milestone). And actually meant it. Early on, would have been more credible. Constantly kicking your teammate's ass to do basic work is no fun.
* anyway now you're at this late stage. Find out how the professor/course/college handles such situations. But let's assume they don't get involved.
* this is important: you also learned something about your own judgment, and specifically, when taking teammates, be more skeptical and discerning, ask questions, sit back and observe whether they take responsibility, schedule stuff, manage communication, deliver it. Or just go and get drunk. Be ready to fire a team-member. Have a fallback. Learn what would happen in the extreme case you couldn't find a suitable teammate, or had to submit as an individual project.
* if you had fired the guy in week two and submitted the entire working thing as an individual project, I really can't see why you wouldn't get an A/A+. You're not obligated to carry him.
>
> I'm not sure how I want to approach the situation. Even if my partner
> finished the project on his own, I've still done 80%. I don't think
> its fair if he gets an A because I killed myself to do the work of two
> people. At the same time, if I tell the professor how little he's
> done, the professor will fail him (rightly so) and I will lose a
> friend.
>
>
> How can I get the credit I deserve for my work without losing my
> friend? I feel like I have the Hobson's choice between getting credit
> for my work and keeping a friend.
>
>
>
* well yes, but you got yourself into this situation, and learned a crucial life lesson. You do have to make that choice. It will depend in part on how significant this grade is. Unless he's a tool, I don't see that he'd stop being your friend, but if he did, he's evidently not that good a friend.
Yes you do have to make that decision now. Decision time. So: decide which is more important to you? Fill in the blanks for us.
* going forward, a more pragmatic expectation of human behavior on teams is that a large fraction of people will be lazy, bad communicators, well-intentioned but not very good, or just suck up your productivity for a variety of reasons etc. So: think ahead, plan accordingly, communicate clearly, document who did what, anticipate dependencies, deal with unacceptable behavior.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_6: Some people are just lazy, there is nothing we can do. Good friends do not always make the best study mates. And in cases like yours, you really can see how a friend can be irresponsible and leecher. My advice to you is, let this be a lesson to you. Do not talk about this to your professor and you get your deserved grade while he gets his undeserved grade.
And this nice lesson will result in the fact that you will always choose the people that you are going to do a project with much more carefully.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_7: Different people have different activity curves. Some plan to distribute the load evenly over the time remaining, others prefer to sprint doing everything in the last 24 hours without sleep.
Students with very different activity curves may both study with success, but they are not well suitable for working in a single group.
The "sprinter" also gets into nasty situation, staying without the necessary communication and cooperation during these last hot hours, because the "careful planner" is not ready (or even not capable of) the enormous burst of activity very close to the deadline. This is likely to happen, have your coffee maker ready then.
Attempts to do part of the partner task almost never work in the intended way. Trust. Wait.
You can try, this time, to adapt to your friend. For a single time, everything is a good experience. If this is something really not for you, simply avoid the shared projects later.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_8: Aside from anything else you should check your institution's code on plagiarism. If you submit the work jointly when you literally did every single part of it, then *you* might be guilty of a serious infraction (helping your friend to cheat the assignment) for which you would be held responsible if caught.
Best outcome is probably if you can persuade your friend to do one of:
* contribute significant work to the project right now, even if it's inevitably less than half, so that it is at least a joint project as required.
* take his name off the project and accept the fail. Maybe that means you've done a project solo when it was supposed to be a group assignment, which might mean you fail too so check the rules on that. If collaboration was supposed to be an important part of the assignment, then whoever is to blame you have in point of fact not completed that part (and for that matter arguably you wouldn't have seriously collaborated even if he'd done his end, since the first thing the pair of you did was split the project in two).
>
> I don't think its fair if he gets an A because I killed myself to do
> the work of two people
>
>
>
With respect, you created that situation when you went significantly past 50% of the work. It's not fair, but it's how group assignments work. It also wouldn't be fair if you did 50%, he did 20% and you got a bad grade because the project was incomplete. I think (although I'm not sure) that the purpose of group assignments in part is to teach you a lesson along the lines of how important it is to develop the ability to persuade others to get some freaking work done. A lesson that you have hopefully learned and therefore deserve the grade.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_9: I don't think this has been said yet but.. if I was a teacher knowing that one of the student did all the job, I would fail both, because we are in university and what is evaluated is not only the capacity to solve the submitted problem, but also the team cohesion and capacity to collaborate efficiently.
Actually, studies about group dynamics show it is not so simple to have every team member do his share, and the more members they are in the group, the higher is the probability that some of them will hardly do a tiny part of the job.
From another point of view, I would suggest you to reconsider the problem, because you are in the perspective "It is unfair that we get the same grade when I am the only one who actually did something", and you are too focused on the grade and work acknowledgment... But you did not come to university only to get good grades and being acknowledged, right? Your main goal is to learn. If possible learn things that will be useful in your professional life. Be happy, you just learned a lot about group dynamics, and that friends are not always the best colleagues, and since you did all the work for two people, you probably also learned a lot on what you are currently studying and will probably get a better grade than your friend in final exams because you practiced a lot more than him.
Now getting back to the point, when I was in junior high, I had to make a presentation with 3 colleagues. I did my part, but they just printed some encyclopedia extracts. Then the teacher said that my work was worth a 20 while theirs were worth a 0, and that since it was a supposed to be a teamwork, he would take the average. As a result we all got a 5. This is the reason why I don't think anything good will happen if the teacher figures out that you actually did all the job.
Plus it is always better to keep an ace up one's sleeve, so I'd say nothing, submit the work as is if had been done by both, and wait for the result. If the teacher figures out by himself or you get a low grade, you can still explain things afterward. If you both get a good grade, don't feel like it is unfair, because you got more than the grade you deserved (since you got the job done without actually managing to work as a team), and as for your friend, try to be happy for him, managing to get credit for something he did not do, but keep the whole story in mind, you don't know what life will bring, maybe there will be an occasion for him to repay you later in another domain, taking you to the airport or helping you when moving from your former house to a new one.. etc.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_10: I also dont recommend talking to the prof, but if you do, I suggest being smart about how you tackle the subject by instead working from a constructive angle.
For example, go in asking how to motivate someone to deliver their best work. Or ask how they (professor) handled working with people who cant pull their own weight.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_11: Honestly, college students are terrible project managers, so most group projects are done by a single person anyway. Usually the strongest student (or the one who cares the most) realizes it's easier to do all the work themselves than to prod the others to do their share.
I would just do all the work yourself, because class projects kind of have to be designed so that it's *possible* to work individually. At this point you're much more familiar with the codebase than he is, so it will be much easier for you to write the client than him.
If you still feel bad about it, remember that you got much more out of this class than he did. Next time you have to write a nontrivial piece of software, you will be better at it because of the work you did in this class. Not to mention job interviews are coming up, and it's much easier to talk convincingly about a project if you were the one who did most of it.
(By the way, I recently had the opposite problem, where my partner and I were fighting over who got to do all the work, because we were required to work in teams, and both of us wanted the practice. Sometimes I did the homework sets without telling him because otherwise he would have done them first.)
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/04/29 | 1,291 | 5,759 | <issue_start>username_0: I've recently started as a PhD student, but had previous publications in forms of conference papers and various talks, so I consider myself very experienced with my particular field of research. One of my supervisors had once assigned me for a review task for a journal because she did not have time to complete it. This was fine with the editor of the journal, too.
Starting from that date, I began receiving invitations to review manuscripts every few months. Of course, I took that opportunity and completed the reviews – which naturally takes a lot of time.
Now, I cannot really invest the time anymore. I've previously rejected two review invitations with "I do not have the time to complete this review" (or similar), but I keep receiving invitations.
What could I do to politely ask the editor not to consider me for review?
Is there anything I'm about to do that could be considered inappropriate? I understand that reviewing activities are positive contributions to my academic career, but I don't think I can take it *now*.<issue_comment>username_1: You can suggest names of potential reviewers to the journal editor, if you have not done so. He/she might not know who else are specialists in the area; hence you keep being invited. It also helps to be more precise in specifying the period window you won't be available for reviewing, because the editor does not know if you will be available the next time he/she invites you to do a review.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: As far as I know, there is no *official* please-do-not-bother-me-ever-again button that removes you from the reviewer list in a journal's submission system. That being said, I assume just writing the editor a polite email should do the trick. Other than that, you can always continue to refuse reviewer invitations, and I am pretty sure editors will relatively quickly stop sending you invites (they hate wasting their time, too).
That being said, I would personally urge you to reconsider your stance on this. Reviews are an important community service that are essential to the functioning of science, and one review every few months really is not an over-the-top amount. For instance, I review at the very least one journal submission every month, plus proceedings papers for conferences and workshops where I am in the Technical Program Committee. That you recently started your PhD studies should actually only be *more* of a motivation to keep reviewing, as this is actually a pretty good way to stay on top of your field.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: Your problem is that you get a review request every few months? As in, three or four a year? Seriously, dude, get over it. Writing a polite "Sorry, I'm too busy – why don't you ask Dr X and Prof Y?" a few times a year is hardly a significant drain on your time so just keep doing that.
You say that the issue is that you don't have time to do reviews *now* (your emphasis). This is a temporary situation so trying to set up a permanent "don't call me" isn't a good solution. It's also not a practical solution. If you're only getting a few requests per year, what's the probability that you'll ever, in your whole life, see two requests from the same journal editor or conference programme committee member. (OK, the events aren't independent but you see my point.)
Also, you should try to do some reviews; as has been pointed out in the other answers, reviewing as many papers as you submit is a reasonable rule of thumb. And if a paper comes along for which you're the "perfect" reviewer (for example, it extends your own work and makes detailed use of your technical material), you ought to at least try to make the time to review that.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: The answer already given all have very good points; I will just add my editors perspective. The system of peer review relies on everyone doing a share (I refrain from saying "their share"). People who agree to make reviews are often remembered by editors as "nice" and will receive additional offers. It is difficult to say how many no answers there is to a yes answer in general when it comes to agreeing to review but it sure is not balanced. Therefore, a no is not a great surprise. If the no is accompanied by a nice explanation and suggestions of other potential good reviewers then the no and the request is productive in the view of an editor. Many electronic systems usually have links to agree or decline reviews so it is only a matter of clicking once. With the decline you may receive a request for suggesting additional reviewers but even that can just be ignored.
If you think you are requested too often by a journal for which you do not want to do reviews or as you state, you do not have the time, a short note to the fact to the editor may be sufficient. But, remember that an editor handled quite a few papers and even more review requests so even that request may not be entirely heard. In addition, many automatic systems have data bases over reviewers so that one editor may find your name and use it although another editor was the one asking you earlier on. In ScholarOne Manuscripts, which is used by "my" journal, you as a reviewer can yourself assign periods for which you are unavailable. So depending on your situation, you may be able to at least partially fix the problem yourself.
In the end, declining a review is not a dramatic issue and should not take very long. If you are inclined to continue in academia, you will be asked to review again. How often will usually depend on the usefulness of your reviews so the fact that you are being asked repeatedly probably says your reviews were useful or your expertise is in demand.
Upvotes: 4 |
2014/04/29 | 550 | 2,308 | <issue_start>username_0: I am interested in areas of theoretical physics/mathematics which simply don't exist in my institute. I tried 2 or 3 different groups here which were not in my interest (but I felt I had some transferable skills) and it didn't work out.<issue_comment>username_1: There is no age limit for graduate studies. People are free to apply at whatever stage of life they choose, if they feel it's the right move for them.
As an example of this, a very good friend of mine was a social sciences major as an undergraduate, and worked in Washington, D.C., for a number of years before leaving politics and starting a PhD program in medical physics—and he did this in his mid-thirties. I've worked in the same department as other postdocs who made the career choice even later—they were in their early fifties!
So I would not look at your case as hopeless at all. If you find something else that inspires you, go for it.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: As your question stands, the only honest answer is *it depends* but probably *yes, it does.*
Your question is lacking in essential information for a definite answer. Are you currently doing a masters or a phd? What is your background? Do you want to make a career in academia, ie. research oriented, or in the industry? Are you self-motivated? etc...
I would not rule out changing grad schools based on your age alone as there's no age limit to right a wrong. However, use common sense: be *pragmatic* and take time to analyze your options. Perhaps your advisor would allow you to collaborate with groups from other universities? Or maybe you could even do an exchange program? Is wrapping up what you have and moving on to something you're more interested in an option? If your project has been given a grant, ponder carefully the implications of leaving your current grad school.
If you feel that changing grad schools is your only option, then unless what is hidden behind *starting again* is that 400 lb gorilla, I see no obvious reason why you should not live a more fulfilling academic life.
Final note: if I were to review your application to a new grad school, I'd like to understand the reasons that brought you to your current grad school if no group was seemingly doing something that you're interested in.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/04/29 | 765 | 2,781 | <issue_start>username_0: I want to cite a series of three papers (condensed-matter physics, if it matters) where the first author is a different person in each case, say authors A, B and C, but all the papers come from the same group led by author D. That is, the list of authors in each paper is "A, ..., and D", "B, ..., and D", and "C, ..., and D".
Cited independently, I would refer to these papers as "A et al.", "B et al." and "C et al.". However, I want to cite them as the most correct variant of "a series of papers by D's group".
My question is whether this is acceptable as above or it would undermine the work done by A, B and C, considering boss D was paying them but probably was too busy to work out the details of the paper, and most of the work was presumably done by A, B and C.
Is there a standard styling for these cases I can rely on?
Edit:
I finally just opted by
```
... as pointed out by the same group of authors on a series of papers [1-3], ...
```
which I think strengthens the idea that A, B, and C did not reach their conclusions separately but as part of a wider collaboration.<issue_comment>username_1: This really depends on what you are doing. I think it is fine to do
>
> D and colleagues have written about X (A et al., XXXX; B et al., XXYY; C et al., XXZZ).
>
>
>
buy you need to ask yourself what, beyond avoiding the passive voice, it adds over
>
> X has been written about (A et al., XXXX; B et al., XXYY; C et al., XXZZ).
>
>
>
One case where it might be useful is if you are pointing out a potential bias or criticizing a technique.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: Where are you sending the work? It might be such that the citation style is numeric, and then you can write whatever words you like:
>
> D and colleagues A, B, and C developed the state of the art in this area over the last several years [1-3].
>
>
>
Etc.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: This is most likely a field-culture thing, but I find it very odd that you would treat the three papers as anything but independent pieces of work. If you want to indicate that the three papers are part of a series, you could always say something like
>
> a series of papers [1,2,3] presented blah blah
>
>
>
On the one hand, you want to give the "group leader" prominence, and on the other hand you clearly recognize the potential unfairness. I can imagine some of my students being rightly upset if their dissertation work was referred to as "work from the lab of Prof. Venkat".
I realize that many lab-driven disciplines are top-down in this way, but since there's a perfectly reasonable way to cite the work, I'd avoid highlighting the "lab leader" any more than merely by their presence on the author list.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer] |
2014/04/29 | 1,272 | 5,332 | <issue_start>username_0: There is a recurring pattern I see in conferences organized by several professional associations. Two different conference fees are offered, X for members and Y for non-members, with Y>X. Often, the annual membership fee for said professional associations is less than Y-X, so becoming member is cheaper than paying the non-member fee. For example, for different reasons today I have stumbled upon the pages of [this](http://www.ima.org.uk/conferences/conferences_calendar/4th_ima_conference_on_numerical_linear_algebra_and_optimisation.cfm.html), [this](http://www.ehu.es/en/web/fjim2014/registration) and [this](http://www.cfenetwork.org/CFE2014/registration.php) conference.
I can only see two possible reasons for this practice, both ethically dubious:
* to force people to become members, increasing artificially the dimension of the professional association.
* to "move" funds from the conference treasure to the association treasure, leaving them available for a larger number of activities.
Often conference fees are paid by research funds, while membership fees are paid personally by the researchers, so this practice also has unpleasant side-effects on their personal finances.
Questions:
1. Am I overlooking more plausible justifications for this practice? Do you agree with my analysis?
2. How ethical do you find this practice?
3. Should I raise the issue with the professional societies I am a member\* of?
---
\*: You can probably guess the reason why I am a member. :(<issue_comment>username_1: Typically the organizations that do this are professional societies. And, as you mentioned, they have many more activities than just running the conference, so having membership fees separate from conference attendance fees allow them greater flexibility to manage their accounts.
Some places allow membership fees to be paid out of institute funds (this depends on the country and the situation, of course). However, many countries also make such professional expenses tax-deductible (after a certain threshold). Obviously it doesn't recoup the full cost of the membership, but it's better than nothing.
However, one additional point to consider is that most such conferences require that at least one of the authors of a presentation to be a member of the society. (Sometimes, this requirement falls on the presenter herself.)
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I find this practice 100% ethical. I don't see any argument to the contrary in your question.
Nobody is forcing you to do anything. You don't **have** to attend any conferences. But conferences cost money, so if you attend then you do **have** to pay something. Even then, you don't **have** to become a member. The non-member registration fee is generally not so high as to be prohibitive.
This is no less ethical than your local supermarket distributing coupons. You don't **have** to shop there and you don't **have** to use the coupons even if you do. In fact, in the US many supermarket chains offer memberships that give you discounts -- that's not unethical!
As for your second bullet point, in my professional society I know that conferences actually **lose** money and are subsidized by other sources of society income (mainly journals). I don't know if that is typical.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: I think that the question is written from the perspective that the conference is somehow an independent entity from the sponsoring organization. But that feels somewhat ahistorical to me. To have a concrete example, consider a society I am a member of: the [Association for Symbolic Logic](https://aslonline.org/info-about.html), founded in 1936. According to their web site,
>
> The Association for Symbolic Logic is an international organization supporting research and critical studies in logic. Its primary function is to provide an effective forum for the presentation, publication, and critical discussion of scholarly work in this area of inquiry.
>
>
>
Of course there are societies much older, and much younger, but presumably each was founded by a group of individuals who agreed that a common organization would help their goals in some way.
The conferences organized by these societies are "meetings" in the genuine (non-academic) sense: they are an arranged time and location for members of the society to gather and confer, like a family reunion. The conferences are arranged by committees from the society, rather than by independent organizers, and the general expectation (and reality) is that the majority of attendees are members of the society.
These conferences are not like a car show where the goal is to draw in a large group of otherwise unknown people. The conferences are usually open to the public (with registration), but the general public is not the main audience - the members are.
This is where the bullet points in the question go astray, in my opinion: they assume that the main goal of the conference is to attract non-members to attend, when in reality the conferences were created to advance the purposes of the society and provide the society members an opportunity to confer and present their work. If an insufficient number of researchers thought that was worth the membership fee, the society *and* its conferences would disappear.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/04/29 | 2,089 | 8,664 | <issue_start>username_0: I am an student and in one of my college courses, the professor seems stressed or frazzled. He is always running late and unprepared, which seems odd because the Powerpoint slides are already done and he uses previous tests and quizzes. The tests, homework, and most of the quizzes are computerized and graded automatically. So, He can't be overwhelmed with grading. Which leads me to believe that he is having problems at home.
My question: would it be appropriate to ask him if he is okay, either by email or face-to-face?
I don't want to invade his privacy but I don't like seeing anyone in distress.<issue_comment>username_1: Professors are human beings, just like everyone else.
If you have a concern about a professor's health or emotional well-being, then there is absolutely **no** reason not to ask in private. I would recommend doing it face-to-face, as anything said should be an off-the-record issue, an I don't think a faculty member who is having issues will want to "publicize" that in an email.
However, if you are a student of the professor in question (or a subordinate), the professor may not want to reveal any personal issues, again because she might view such sharing as inappropriate. On the other hand, so long as the professor is not a sociopath, she will appreciate the concern you're showing.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: He either has personal issues, or he doesn't focus on teaching.
If he is having personal problems, it is wrong to approach him like a friend and expect him to give details. You are the student and he is the professor, and his personal issues are private and he will share them with someone close if he wants to. As an adult, he probably knows how the process works.
Either way, the only thing that matters is whether he is doing his job properly. If you think he is not doing so, then you should give constructive criticizm, such as when you are in class and you don't understand, you can say that for the last classes you are having difficulties understanding and putting it all together and suggest a method so that you can benefit better from his course. Or, you can send an e-mail about how certain things can be improved without sounding very negative.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: This is an incredibly bad idea. While I'm all for developing friendships between faculty and students, this does not seem to be what you're discussing. It's not clear from your question, but you make it sound as though you've never had a conversation with this professor (and if you've had some short ones about the class, that doesn't change my point). **EDIT:** I see from comments that you have had some more conversations with him. I don't think this changes my underlying point.
In general, you should move very slowly in developing a personal relationship of this sort with a professor. I might have been OK with asking such a question of my advisor by my last year of graduate school (but probably not), but I can't imagine doing it with any other professor earlier in my career. Asking someone you barely know a deeply personal question that could easily be read as an implicit indictment of their teaching (which ultimately, it seems it is) will lead nowhere good. I think the best case scenario is that they laugh it off as eccentric, but the worst case is they're hurt or insulted; you don't want that coming into their mind when they're grading or writing a recommendation later.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: Some people are just naturally frazzled. They could be having the greatest and most relaxing day ever, and show up to class 4 minutes late, hair all wild and uncombed, wearing odd socks and having forgotten to bring you your marked assignments. They may be remarkably easy to frazzle or they may not even feel frazzled, they may just look it! Asking if everything is ok, especially if you say why you are worried and point out you see a pattern, will probably offend this person.
Or perhaps something really is bothering your prof. I use "the same slides" every year (except that I read them over, tweak them, add some, rearrange others etc) and reuse some aspects of the tests and quizzes. You may not know this, but that's not the hardest part of teaching. Nor is marking. And the only profs who teach a single course are adjuncts like me who have a whole 'nother life off campus, or super distinguished researchers who've had their load lowered. So you are not the only dance this prof is dancing, and you may not be the most important one, either. Your belief that the workload for this class is easy doesn't mean that the prof's overall workload is easy, by any means.
But hey, perhaps you're a very perceptive person (I'm not, but I know some) and you've nailed it: this prof is going through hell with something personal. I have had to show up and teach while going through hell (a dying parent, for example) and about the worst thing that could have happened is some kid (everyone under 30 is a kid to me) asking me if I'm ok and if there's anything they can do to help. Some kid who doesn't even know me! I'd be so humiliated that my distress had shown through. I get my support from a variety of people, and I choose who I want support from. I would have trouble even stammering through a sentence like "I'm sorry if my performance isn't up to your standard this week, I have a lot on my plate that I would rather not discuss."
I just can't see this question leading to a good place if it was asked of me, **even if** (and it's a big if) your assumption of a personal problem is in fact accurate. And if it's inaccurate, that's even worse. There's really no upside.
Here's the furthest I think it's ok to go. You're having the usual conversation that you do after class, with questions about your field etc, and the prof either flat out says "I don't have time to discuss this now, I have to go and deal with something" or you get that perception. You could carefully say something like "Sorry, I didn't realize you had less time than usual this week. Hope things let up for you soon." Most likely the prof will just grimace, say something noncommittal, and head out. But there is a chance you'll get a reply like "I hope so, I can't take much more" or "no, I'm afraid it's going to be like this for months and then it will get worse" and those are openings for you to say something pleasantly supportive like "oh dear, I'm sorry to hear that. How can I help?" But without that opening, even if it's obvious to you what's happening, maintain the fiction that it isn't. That can actually be a form of help.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: After reading the comments and thinking, the conclusion that I have came up with is that everyone is humans and deals with personal or professional issues and that some people are just more compassionate/sympathetic then others. I think that if someone shows genuine concern without being obtrusive to a subordinate or supervisor shouldn't be a problem with the proper approach, timing, and relationship. If a person, does act poorly to a genuine concern then it just shows that the person doesn't know how properly deal with the problems and probably should be a concern to others.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_6: I think we forget that professors also experience a range feelings such as happiness, anxiety, sadness, frustration, etc. The fact that he runs late and is unprepared is not acceptable behavior for a professor. However, I/you can't judge him because we don't know what is happening to him personally or professionally.
Professors are under a great deal from their supervisors, the school, and even the students. There is a possibility his job is in jeopardy & so he may be spending the time searching, rather than preparing. He may be up for a promotion, award or maybe he needs to submit the last chapter of his book that he's struggling to write. Obviously, these are all speculations but my point is it may not be "problems at home" that are stressing him out.
If your relationship with this professor is close, then asking if he is ok, face-to-face only, would be acceptable. The key is express your concern and not make him feel like you're judging him. Let him share what he wants to. If you feel you can, you may offer to help him. It will be his decision whether or not he accepts.
**From my personal experience:**
I had a very good professor my freshman year, who felt comfortable confiding in me about his professional, & when I graduated his personal challenges. During this time, we have built a friendship of 15+ years.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/04/29 | 721 | 3,090 | <issue_start>username_0: What is considered a reasonable rate for faculty turnover in a "healthy" department? How much turnover is too much/little? Presumably the rates might depend on seniority. Does departmental turnover tell you anything about your colleagues?<issue_comment>username_1: Reasons for faculty turnover are more important than numbers. For example, in the late 90s, CS professors were leaving their positions to start companies. I also know of professors who left otherwise ideal positions to solve a two-body problem (move near their spouse).
One important component of faculty turnover is tenure denials. If you are a serious candidate, you should ask why your opening exists and the outcome of recent tenure cases.
Another component is faculty taking advantage of early retirement offers. If a school is offering sweet deals for retirement, it may not be at its most financially secure. (On the other hand, if they're doing a tenure-track search, that's a positive sign.)
If you can contact faculty who have left through your social network (e.g., if one of your committee members knew them socially), you might be able to get the dirt on the department.
It also doesn't hurt to look at the student newspaper, now usually available online. At one school at which I interviewed, my host stopped me from picking up a copy. I did so later and read about major problems between the faculty and administration that involved a lawsuit, the AAUP, etc.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: When I was actively in the job market, I noticed a small number of schools that seemed to have multiple openings every year. It made me wonder what was going on at these places, but I had no way of knowing. At my current school, we have several retirements coming over the next two to three years. Multiple hires for several years in a row. Now, I know the reason behind the situation, but will prospective hires? Is this a healthy situation? There are various scenarios that could be playing out. Espertus has given you several good ones. My example is another. Try your best to find out what the cause is, but it is likely to be difficult to get a definitive answer. The best advice is to keep your eyes and ears open (which you seem to be doing) and try to read between the lines in conversations. Use what sources you can to get information that will help you.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Not a complete answer, but a possibly instructive example (at least ground for discussion). The math department at Ecole Normale Supérieure has a somewhat radical approach to this question. Two rules for the teachers and researchers there:
1. No one stays longer than ten years
2. No one teaches the same class more than three years in a row.
The idea of course is to keep the department members "fresh", on the cutting edge of research and to vary the topics that are represented. Such a strict rule is clearly not practical in any but this very specific environment, but I think the idea that there should be a minimal turnover is a sensible one.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/04/29 | 1,172 | 5,092 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm a graduate student in a biological sciences lab. About 6 months ago I started an after-hours (does such a thing exist?) project with a fellow graduate student in a different lab doing computational physics. We principally work on the weekends and late at night, and I like to think that the time we use would otherwise have been spent playing video games, drinking, etc (not doing lab work), but who really knows?
Our collaboration has been extraordinarily fruitful and we have one paper ~90% written, and a follow up ~50% written. Both are highly theoretical, and have no direct relation to our respective theses work. Also, both our PIs know and are supportive of us pursuing this project, and neither has so much as even hinted at wanting authorship. And neither is an expert (or even an amateur..) in physics.
1) Should we include our PIs? They could potentially contribute to editing and big picture, but are not able to even assess the validity of what we've accomplished. As an "experienced" graduate student I know they shouldn't be authors, but they are also making it possible for us spend our time thinking, and they've supported our endeavor at least in spirit.
2) Suppose our PIs are not included. We're just two graduate students. Is it even possible to get a fair review with neither of us having the requisite degrees? How do we pay for publication ($1000-5000)? I'm interested in the "meta" discussion as much, or more, than the ethical discussion. For example, there is a third faculty member in this area who we've had some discussion of the science with, and who is a computational physicist. Should we include him on the manuscript as a signature of credibility? Should he be last author or a middle author, if so? If there are any physicists perusing, I'd be particularly interested in your thoughts, as my experience in publishing has been solely in the biomedical journals so far.
Thanks for considering my dilemma.<issue_comment>username_1: There have been a number of discussions on this site about authorship, and looking at the [authorship](/questions/tagged/authorship "show questions tagged 'authorship'") tag will reveal them.
Ultimately, the conclusion of all those discussions has been that conventions on authorship are field-dependent and define "contribution" in different ways for different areas. In your case, it sounds like your advisors have both encouraged you to work together and have not requested authorship. Since the usual response to questions like yours would be 'ask your advisor', it sounds like they've answered, by saying that you **don't** need to include them. But I'd check with them anyway.
The remaining part of your question deals with purely tactical considerations: to whit,
>
> Can augmenting the author list increase chances of the paper being accepted for publication ?
>
>
>
I think the consensus on this site, and in general, is that misrepresenting or exaggerating contributions for any reason would be considered **quite unethical** (where again contributions must be evaluated in a field-specific manner).
The work must stand or fall on its own merit, and be reviewed accordingly. It might be rare in your community for graduate students to author papers without PIs, but there's always a first time (and in my community it's quite common).
On the more mundane issue of paying for publication (I assume you're thinking of one of the open access journals that charge such an amount), that's a discussion for you to have with your advisor(s) before submission. They might suggest alternate journals, or even be willing to pay the fees (again, the equivalent would be a PI in my field paying for a student to attend a conference and present a paper not co-authored by the PI: this is also quite common)
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: Although these questions have been discussed before on this site, I think this is a slightly different case.
If you indeed work on this project outside of work hours and do not use university resources in any way, than this project is essentially a "hobby". In this case I would make an effort actually NOT to involve your advisors in any way, the same way you would not involve them in a manuscript you prepared about antique toys in your spare time. I think it would be good to keep a clear separation between work and non-work. Even in terms of technicalities like intellectual property this makes a big difference - if this research is associated with work, the university will usually own it, not you.
However, if you need actual relevant advice on the paper from an expert, I would ask an actual relevant expert rather than your advisors. Then, depending on his contribution and on the field, he may be added as an author or acknowledged.
Regarding publication fees, you could first try to look for a journal where the fee is not that high. Also, many journals are able to give a seriously discount or even waive charges for a good reason. You can ask prior to submission and explain the situation.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer] |
2014/04/30 | 747 | 3,258 | <issue_start>username_0: When rereading my copies of letters of recommendation I wrote when a student of mine applied to multiple graduate schools, I was appalled to see mistakes I made where the wrong graduate program was mentioned in the letter. For example, in a letter to CMU, I recommended the student to Georgia Tech.
Do mistakes like this hurt a grad student applicant, perhaps by showing they are applying to other programs, or do they only reflect poorly on the letter writer? In this case, the schools were all in the same (top) tier.<issue_comment>username_1: I've occasionally seen letters with incorrect graduate program names, and it's not something I'd worry about. It's never bothered me, and while I've seen other committee members point it out, I've never gotten the impression that they particularly cared. (They've pointed it out in the spirit of "Oops, someone messed up" rather than "Here's a negative factor we should keep in mind.")
There are two cases in which it could be harmful:
1. If you name a substantially lower-ranked program, then the reader might wonder whether this low ranking influenced your recommendation. (Maybe you have several variants of the letter, and send more enthusiastic variants to lower-ranked programs.)
2. If you include any comments about how suitable this specific program is for the applicant, then of course these comments will become worthless if you name the wrong school. However, most letters for applicants to graduate school don't include such comments, and even when they do it's rarely a crucial part of the letter. (It's particularly awkward if you send Harvard a letter talking about what a perfect fit Yale would be and how you have encouraged the applicant to go there if accepted.)
You mention the possibility of hurting the applicant by revealing where else they have applied. Theoretically, this could look weird or problematic if they've made eccentric choices about where to apply. (If a top program knows they're also applying to a much lower-ranked program, then the committee might take it as an admission of weakness or an indication that the applicant has a strong personal reason to go elsewhere.) However, I wouldn't worry about it in practice. It's expected that everyone will apply to a range of schools, and I don't recall ever having seen a case I thought would really worry admissions committees.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I cannot estimate how much, but I think this could harm the student's case: such mistakes make one think that the letter writer made them in a hurry, not caring too much. This can in principle mitigate the positive effect of the letter.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: I do occasionally see copy-and-paste errors in recommendation letters and I smile for a minute and move on. Living in a glass house as I do, I would not dare to throw stones.
I know this is tangential, but I take the opposite extreme with cover letters. If a candidate is applying for a job at my university and their letter mentions another university, I take it as a big strike against them. It may not single-handedly sink the application, but mistakes like this often correlate with poorly written applications in general.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/04/30 | 394 | 1,755 | <issue_start>username_0: How can I find information about upcoming special issues related to a special field of study? There are good websites for upcoming conferences but I could not find any place to search for special issues.<issue_comment>username_1: As far as I know, there is no website referencing special issues from different journals. However, I see two potential ways to stay informed :
1. Make a list of the good journals in your field, then browse their website for information (might take some time, especially to stay up to date).
2. Use social networks. Many journals have twitter accounts and/or blogs and they are likely to advertise their special issues through these media.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: In addition to the two sources mentioned by William, I can add *professional societies* or their equivalent. It is usually these that organize meetings that result in special issues. It is rare (may differ between disciplines) that journals themselves, unless they somehow specialize, provide open special issues around a theme. Usually, it is then by invitation, or papers emanating from a workshop or symposia etc.
Hence, looking for especial issues may be a dead end and you should be looking for activities that lead to such issues.
As a final note, the term special issue signals an unregular issue in a scientific journal open for submission of manuscripts. Many conferences issue proceedings but then the prerequisite is usually attendance at the meeting and presentation of the paper there.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Recently, I have found one website to get special issue information regarding sci/scie indexed journal. Please go through the following website.
* <https://research.com/>
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/04/30 | 859 | 3,622 | <issue_start>username_0: I don't know whether this is the appropriate place to ask my question but since there is no harm in asking, let me ask. My nephew, who is an undergraduate student, has sent a paper to the journal [*Notes on Number Theory and Discrete Mathematics*](http://www.nntdm.net/) about one month ago. Since it has been 1 month, he has tried to know the status of the paper by mailing the required person twice, but due to some unknown reason the person seems silent.
Does anyone know anything about the journal except the information that has been given to its website? What should my nephew do now?<issue_comment>username_1: 1. I have never heard of this journal, but from the website it seems legitimate based on its publication history (extending back to 1995) and its institution of origin.
2. What your nephew should do now is just settle in and wait, and don't bother emailing the editors. As a commenter said, one month is not nearly enough time for a journal to process and review an article. It's usually more like 3-4 months and could possibly go longer than that. And the editors of these journals probably get so many emails from authors requesting status updates that usually those emails are simply ignored -- or if you have a nice editor there'll be an automated reply that says, in so many words, "Please stop emailing me."
The frequent emailing could even backfire. Recently I submitted an article to a journal, with a student co-author, and was told they'd get back with me in 9-12 weeks. Six months passed and I had heard nothing. I emailed the editor and asked to make sure she had everything she needed (= polite way of bugging her for an update). The editor said she would check with the reviewer. *One day later* I received the review -- a three-line rejection letter that indicated clearly that the reviewer had not even read the article. To me, there is a strong likelihood that the article was rejected directly because the reviewer was annoyed at being bugged. This is clear malpractice, but what are you going to do about it? Welcome to our wonderful academic publishing culture.
So, tell your nephew to move on to his next project and let this simmer on the back burner until the end of the summer.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: It can easily take 6 months for a review to come back. However, a acknoledgement of receipt should be given. Remember to allow enough time to pass between your emails and don't mail too frequent, it normally takes a few months. It could backfire and make you seem rude if you are too pushy. But 1-2 emails asking if the paper is received seems ok, if you don't get that, perhaps give them a call.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: The fact that your nephew hasn't heard anything yet is a good thing. There are really only two reasons a mathematics journal would get back to you within a month:
* the paper clearly isn't good enough for the journal (typically a "desk reject" where the editor makes that decision without a full review); or
* it is a "predatory journal" which doesn't actually do proper peer review (and likely will charge you to publish your article).
So probably this journal is legitimate, and the editor thinks your nephew's paper might be worth publishing, and has sent it out to reviewers. This stage can easily take six months to a year (maybe towards the lower end of that for a journal with "notes" in the name).
I couldn't find a ranking for this journal, and MathSciNet no longer indexes it. Both of these are bad signs in terms of quality, but it looks like a real journal.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/04/30 | 941 | 4,322 | <issue_start>username_0: I have seen several math papers which end with a statement like "After completing the research in this paper, we learned that all the results are already known." I wonder what are the situations in which such a comment is appropriate.
Such statements usually sound lazy to me, as though the author opted not to do a literature search at the outset, and after learning of previous work the author opted not to edit the paper (or withdraw it from submission for publication) beyond adding one sentence. Putting the comment at the end of the paper seems especially questionable, in that the beginning of the paper gives the reader the impression that the results are new. But I realize that mine is an extreme perspective which does not apply to all situations, and I would be interested to hear other perspectives.<issue_comment>username_1: In part, I agree with you: if one finds out the result one has proven is in fact "trivial" (for various definitions of trivial), the "right" thing to do is to not bother submitting it for publication. (Though leaving it up on arXiv, for example, may be useful.)
But, here are some possible defenses:
* In mathematics it is not always the result that matters: the journey getting you there is a big part of it. This sentiment is very well-expressed by Thurston in his essay ["On Proof and Progress"](http://arxiv.org/abs/math/9404236). Just because one has re-proven a well-known result doesn't necessarily mean that the paper is trivial! If the approach is new this can lead to better understanding. But in this case I, at least, would advertise this fact in the introduction beyond a single sentence.
* As indicated in the comments, most of the time when I saw such a sentence it refers to fairly recent (perhaps even simultaneous) publications. Given that sometimes mathematics research takes time to complete, it is not entirely impossible that the authors genuinely started working on an open problem only to have the result solved in the mean time. And if the problem is somewhat obscure, I think the authors can be forgiven for only doing a detailed literature search *before* they start their research and not repeatedly doing it once every few months. In this case the language you quoted seems rather appropriate.
* It could honestly be a case of ignorance! Suppose the same essential problem manifests in two distinct field of mathematics which have their own lingo. Then it is quite possible that even most experts in either field would not have recognized easily that the two results are the same. (The "two-way" relation above can also be a "one-way" relation, where researchers in field A generally don't know about result B in field C, while for researchers in field C the applicability of result B to problem D seems obvious.) In this case having the duplicate paper published will (a) help raise awareness that the problem has been solved and (b) perhaps even help the two fields become aware of each others' results.
* Similarly, one may have discovered a simplified proof for a special case of a very powerful general result. While the result may be well-known, having this simplified proof in the special case maybe worthwhile, if only for pedagogy.
* In the modern day of electronic communications this should happen less, but one should remember that in the history of mathematics there are many results which have been discovered, forgotten, and then rediscovered. And even with the advent of MathSciNet, sometimes very technical results are hard to search for: you have to know exactly the right string of keywords to discover it in the literature.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: In life sciences this is quite common, although the cause may be different. Authors will typically use this sentence if after their paper was reviewed/accepted but before publication, a relevant paper was published. This can happen because many groups often work on similar subjects ("competing"). A lot of times it can be something that the reviewer/editor asks the authors to add.
In this scenario I think it is more justified, because the authors really could not have known about the other paper since it was not published yet. Also, revising the whole paper after it has gone through review may be a problem.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/04/30 | 1,153 | 5,043 | <issue_start>username_0: I am a few months into my PhD and my supervisor and co-supervisor are close friends.
Unfortunately, I find that my co-supervisor is not useful – he doesn’t provide any help or input into my project. Additionally, he has given me a hard time on more than one occasion, e.g. making a derogatory comment about the source of my PhD funding, not including me in discussions with his other PhD candidates (although I was physically present), and asking me to buy items for another PhD candidate using my budget.
I would like to stop being supervised by my co-supervisor, but I have not yet built a relationship with another academic that I could ask to take the role.
Do I need a co-supervisor? Can anyone recommend ways I deal with this situation?<issue_comment>username_1: The direct answer is not a PhD students does not *need* a co-advisor. The problem here is to think about the role of co-advisors. I am sure the view on this varies so my view is coloured by situations with which I am familiar, which is the US and Sweden. Co-advisors may be involved because they have specific expertise that may be relevant to part of the work, for example specific investigations, lab work ec. Co-advisors may also be there to provide overall scientific expertise and provide feedback on written articles or the final thesis or both. Hence a co-advisor may not be very active when you start your PhD. At the same time by signing up as a co-advisor, I would expect the co-advisor to be open for discussion during your time as a student but it may fall on you to initiate such contacts when you need it. The main advisor is, after all, the one responsible for the direction of your work within your thesis topic.
So while one does not *need* a co-advisor, there are many instances where such support is necessary or at least very useful.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: Normally, a co-supervisor is not needed. However, there are some circumstances where it can be extremely useful. One such instance (with which I have some experience) is related to supervising students between departments. At some institutes, candidates admitted to department X can work with a primary advisor in department Y (and vice versa) if they have a co-advisor in department X.
Beyond that, though, there aren't many places I know where a co-supervisor is required. If you have concerns with how your co-advisor is treating you, the first thing to do is to speak to both of your advisors. If the behavior continues, then you may also want to consider talking to the faculty member in charge of graduate affairs within your department.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: A co-supervisor must be useful. It is not fair to take a role of "useless supervisor" who can later be added as a co-author with relatively little input to the published works.
This of course depends somewhat on the status of the co-supervisor. Some professors already do not spend much time on experimental research, focusing on lectures or department-level supervision instead. In such case the department may have several intermediate supervisors, each having small own research group. In such case, without co-supervisor, you stay alone and may not even be able to get equipment and reagents you need for work.
However situation when some freshly baked post-doc starts "teaching" a good PhD student without use is also common. The goals may be to get into co-authors or even to take over the promising research topic. Sometimes such co-supervisor may be even obviously less competent than his student, so why to piggy-back him?
In case a co-supervisor is not useful, talk to professor and ask to remove co-supervisor out of your head. Simply say you do not think you benefit from additional supervision, explaining that the problems you are supposed to solve with ones help you can solve no worse or maybe even better yourself. Some cases / examples would be good.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: Generally, the co-supervisor is somebody to guide you when your primary supervisor is not available. A good co-supervisor can boost your research power as he/she can share alternative viewpoint about research information. This supposes to encourage your research/work to become more rounded and more suitable for larger group of people.
Nevertheless, my suggestion is based on my experience in Australian system that heavily relies on the guidance of the supervisors. To deal with this situation, I suggest you seek for the person with the higher power as he/she can make a change or comments on your co-supervisor. One of the options is the primary supervisor usually holds more power than the co-supervisor. Also, he may know who is more proper than that guy, if they aren't friends. A more safe option is to consult with the head of the postgraduate office who has more power as the person has to take care of everyone in the school. So, he/ she should be able to regulate the inappropriate conduct or move him from your supervision panel.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/04/30 | 1,057 | 4,459 | <issue_start>username_0: I have just started a PhD along with another candidate. We are each looking at different aspects of the same subject. His data provide context for mine, while my data simply add value to his. As I will be asking him for some of his data, he has decided that he wants some of my data. However, he is interested in using a particular part of my data which I think will be the most fruitful part of my PhD.
His data are quicker to prepare than mine, and he will undoubtedly write up his chapters/ publications before I get a chance. I am worried that this will have a negative impact on my ability to publish my papers.
Do I have to give him my most promising data? Is there any way around doing this? I would prefer to rely on older data from Honours students looking at this subject and not ask for his data, if this allows me to keep my own data.<issue_comment>username_1: What does your supervisor say about this?
I've seen situations where someone not sharing data not only prevented papers being written, but completely obliterated the collaboration.
One possibility is handing the data over, but helping with its analysis and the subsequent writing of the paper (with co-authorship). You could offer the same to the other candidate.
In any case, as you have only just started, I wouldn't worry about the negative impact. There's plenty of time to build.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: *Am I obliged to share my most promising data?*
From my personal experience, it depends on the way your advisor runs the group. For example, if you are in a group where co-authorship with other students is encouraged, then opening up your data vault to other students (and them doing likewise) can benefit everyone involved. I've seen other groups at my university (and other schools I've attended) run this way and it seems to work well for all parties involved.
However, if your group is not such as that described above, you need to be very clear (to your advisor and collaborators) what you expect to gain out of the collaboration/data sharing. In this case, *don't assume* that someone will look out for you and give you the credit you feel you deserve.
I encountered a situation early on in my studies where I shared data with a fellow student. Everything they did with my data was kept secret from me, i.e. it was obvious to everyone that this student had no intention to include me in any of their scholarly works (yes, I *did* deserve co-authorship). It was only due to the fact that they couldn't get anything to work that their chances of getting anything published fell to zero, and I wasn't screwed over.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: If both of you are working in similar fields, you should likely co-author papers (and share results). Very rarely have I run into profs that didn't encourage (or almost mandate) cross collaboration among their students, and the profs I did run into like this were nearly impossible to work with.
A couple of tips
1) Be sure to make it clear you want co-authored papers - you did some of the work, you deserve some of the credit. Also figure out who will be first author BEFORE you go any further.
2) With the other student, discuss your paper ideas, and see if you can carve out a piece of research that will be mainly yours, and another piece that is mainly his. Make him a co-author if appropriate.
3) Try to work out an understanding without involving your prof first. Go to him/her after you've made a good effort come to a mutual agreement and failed.
3) Remember that your graduate program is a small group of people who all know each other. This situation sounds like it could blow back on you (for not sharing all the data), or the other guy (for not giving credit where its due) in a big way. If you've promised him data, give it to him. If he decides to be a jerk and bogart his research, then don't work with him again. You have other great research projects you can keep for yourself.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: Why this urge of researchers to keep things secret...
Why don't you talk to your college about this and see if he is open to having you as a coauthor (you write the section on the data for instance) = double win. Or could you publish your draft as a report from your university that he could cite? Or another option...
It will depend on your supervisor in the end, but you can subtly make him aware of the problem.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/04/30 | 4,053 | 16,743 | <issue_start>username_0: I have seen several questions on this forum that have similar things and some of them have been quite satisfying for my quest. But I want to mention my specific case and want to have some useful suggestions, so I am writing this, which maybe or may not be a redundant question.
In my work as a research associate, I always have this problem which irritates me a lot.
Every time at the start I have to study something, of course related to my area but a somewhat new for me (painful, but this is what anybody has to take it to get the job done), learn it and apply it (I would say the apply part is the sweet/joyful pain).
Suddenly the next demand comes as **"Write down"** and it is where the pain concern ends and I start feeling as if my hands are cut and my mind is blank and **"ME"** can never do it.
Sometimes the demand is **"Write down and make it as long as you can and we will make it short later"**, the torture is, for God sake I do not have even a few words to write!
**Problem as I feel it:**
Even after doing everything by myself, I feel that I can not describe it in writing. While if it is about describing it orally I am confident that I am much better than many.
When it comes to writing, I never know what to include and what not, especially when the demand is about **as long as you can**. I have had read tens of writings and have had done the things practically by myself but no idea what makes my mind blank about writing technical things.
I feel myself really good at doing technical things and love it.
Finally, I think I am missing some steps involved in that writing and I never miss the steps of doing things practically making me successful in that.
If these are steps, what are these?
If these are not the steps, what else are these?
Many times I have got my office reputation damaged because of going blank even after many days/weeks given to me for writing. I want to get rid-off this problem and want it never happen again. I would love to be the researcher who satisfies the demand of **as long as you can**?
A foot note: In general I do not feel myself bad at writing, though my answers to most emails and my own emails are mostly brief but satisfy the receivers. One more thing to mention that might be useful to assess/suggest me is that it took me around an hour to complete this question completely.<issue_comment>username_1: I suspect you are finding this difficult because you are trying to write in an academic style, and are judging yourself as you are writing. *I think the secret to easier writing is to spend as little time as possible "writing". Instead, spend your time jotting quick emails and editing stuff.* Let me explain what I mean.
1. Get together with someone who knows nothing about your research, and explain it to them. Record yourself, or at least take notes on the main points that you address.
2. Now write your explanation down, but informally, as if you were writing an email to a friend. Better yet, make it a real email -- that will help you keep it informal.
3. Also gather any other emails you've written to your supervisor, or colleagues and friends. (If you're not already doing so, get into the habit of writing those emails regularly, while ideas are fresh in your mind.)
4. Take those emails, and paste them into an empty document. This will be the starting point of your paper.
5. Now rearrange the information as needed, to make it coherent. Everywhere there's a gap, stick in a message like NEED TO EXPLAIN X HERE.
6. At this point, you're beginning to have an idea of the structure of the paper. This would be a good time to write an outline, to see if you've left anything out. This outline goes into the document along with everything else. (You can delete it before submitting the paper.)
7. Now fill in the gaps. But write informally, as if you were writing an email to a friend.
8. Now go through your document, and make the sentences more formal. Don't overdo it, though. You don't want your writing to be stilted; you want it to sound natural.
Congratulations. You have the first draft of your paper, and you barely did any real "writing"; it was mostly just writing emails and editing.
*It's much easier to make informal, but clear, writing more formal, than it is to make formal writing more clear!*
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: First, "*Write down and make it as long as you can and we will make it short later*" is probably one of the best advices you are going to get in your entire life in terms of technical writing. As you progress, writing large text is always the easy part. Writing a self-contained text with the required theorems, proofs, results to fit within a conference / journal paper page limits is the real hard part.
You say you do not know what to write. **Then you must write everything**. What is your input data? High level description and in detail stats. What is your output data? Again high level description and in detail stats. What do you want to do with your methods? What are your methods actually doing? And how are they doing it? Again top-to-bottom. A high level description first and then move into extensive details.
Also compare with previous methods. What do previous methods do? What are their strength and weaknesses? What are YOUR strength and weaknesses? For what datasets your method performs best etc...
Go into exhaustive detail. E.g., in a CS reports you may say "we use Java and Hibernate on a Intel i5 workstation running CentOS with 6Gb of DDR3 RAM."... Initially do not omit anything. Write anything relevant to fill the pages. As you become more proficient in writing, you will see that you may distinguish what is really important to say and what to skip. Do not overthink. Start writing, even it initially seems not good enough. There is no need to be perfect initially. Once you have some pages written, come back and edit. Repeat the cycle with every couple of pages added. Soon, you will find that filling the pages will not be a problem. Trimming unimportant things from these pages will be the real challenge. Good luck!!
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Just some thoughts that occur to me while reading your question:
>
> "Write down and make it as long as you can and we will make it short later"
>
>
>
To write well is to make every word count: to not waste a reader's time. Length should never be the goal. Say what *you have to say* as concisely and clearly as you can. Do not get into the habit of writing "filler".
>
> Even after doing every thing by myself, I feel that I can not describe it in writing. While if it is about describing it orally I am confident that I am much better than many.
>
>
>
Writing well means keeping the reader in mind: what will capture their attention at the start of the paper, what they will need to understand before the next section starts, what are their expectations for what is going to come next. As such, a good starting point for writing is to consider that you are discussing the paper orally with an imaginary reader you meet over coffee. How do you get them interested in the topic you want to discuss? How do you convince them of the novelty of your idea? How do summarise your unique contribution? If you had a pen and paper to sketch some ideas down, what would you sketch?
>
> If these are steps, what are these?
>
>
>
First you need an idea of the scope of what you want to write about.
Second you need a frame for the paper, typically the section headings, a rough idea of the goal of each section, how they will fit together, what the reader will learn from each part.
Third you may need a detailed frame for the paper. For example, I have given students headings (as comments in the file) for each paragraph. In the introduction:
1. "What is the setting/area?"
2. "What is the specific problem?"
3. "Why is it interesting?"
4. "What has been done about it before (on a high-level)?
5. "What is our unique perspective for solving the problem?"
6. "How will that be achieved concretely?"
7. "What are our contributions / How is the paper structured?"
Some paragraphs can later be joined together, as necessary. Having this framework for (at least) an introduction in mind, I find, helps inexperienced writers get over the "cold start" problem. (More experienced writers may not need to follow this structure.)
Then you start ... at the start (well skip the abstract ... do that last). Take it piece by piece. If you feel you don't have enough information yet to write a part, skip to a part you can write and come back later.
Write your abstract and conclusion last. Make your conclusion reflect what was promised in the introduction (but now providing concrete details, such as a summary of results).
---
>
> Many times I have got my office reputation destroyed because of going blank even after many days/weeks given to me for writing. I want to get rid-off this problem and want it never happen again.
>
>
>
Sitting there frustrated isn't going to help. But even though I would consider myself fairly experienced at writing, I often have the same problem.
Each paper is different so if you're not sure about creating the outline, you have to talk with someone else to help you plan out the paper/report or even just to get your own thoughts straight.
Even if you're not sure what to write, *just write something*. Most papers will go through several drafts so the first draft doesn't need to be perfect ... each draft just needs to be an improvement. And a first draft can help you get feedback from others to point you in the right direction.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: I thought of leaving this as a comment but ran out of space so moved it to answer.
As user11192 says start with smaller chunks. What I have found to work for me (engineering) is to start with the plots or the results that I want to talk about.
First I decide *what results I want to present* and the conclusion I want the reader to draw from them. Then *write a few (2-3) sentences* for each of them (usually a presentation file works better for this) stating the observation and conclusion.
Next it try to *decide how to arrange the results* and how to group them. This is subject to change if I later realize that some other grouping or arrangement works better. Here I am thinking of "what is the better way to convince the reader of my conclusion". At this step I also decide on a rough outline for the whole report.
Next I describe the setup. I try put in details to make sure that if I were to do it from scratch I would have all the details required. This will end up being long and needs lot of trimming depending on what kind of report I am writing.
Afterwards I go back to the results and expand on the sentences. Think of it like telling a story you want to guide the reader to your way of thinking. Tell whatever comes to your mind (imagine you are talking to someone if that helps) and decide what to cut out later.
Next to make the report complete I add in some motivation. Here again it helps to start with few key sentences and then join them together.
This forms the rough draft. I sleep on it for a day or two and the come back and edit it so that it makes sense. If I feel overwhelmed or satisfied I send a draft to someone else for a cursory review. I can then use the feedback to improve the draft.
Often times I am lost as to what to talk about. In that case I just make a list of all things that seem relevant to me. Try writing down short incomplete sentences. If you can talk about you can write it (just write down the dialogue that you thought of while talking).
You need to realize writing a report is not one time thing. I usually go through 2-3 reviews (except for online posting ;) before I am satisfied. So get the first draft out (even if it is list of disconnected sentences), afterwards it is easier to make edits because you now have a better idea of what the report should look like. Most of the time it is the lack of idea of what the final product will look like that makes one avoid doing anything.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: Don't want to write? Make a video instead.
There is actually more to it, but I am guessing that your "blank mind"
phenomenon occurs when you are making notes to yourself as well for any
project. So as a first step, use a camera phone or tape recorder or
videocam to record your notes and impressions.
Let's back up a bit. You are asked to write up stuff at some point,
and the horrible blankness descends upon you, and this is what you
want to avoid. I recommend talking to the asker and find out what is
wanted. Will a journal of notes suffice? Is this for internal
distribution to be polished later, or are you expected to produce
publishable material? Just how is what you write going to be used?
When that is clear, you will have a better idea of the expectations,
which my gut tells me is part of what causes the anxiety. You might
even talk to the asker about the process, and if they are willing to
review/revise alongside you as you produce.
In any case, you will need to collect material to put into your
product. Let me assume that you like the video idea. Here are
some concrete suggestions.
* Make a collection of short videos rather than one long video.
That way reviewing and transcribing will be less of a hassle, and
may help in the organizing process.
* For each video, start by saying "This clip is going to be about ...",
so that you (sort of) embed the title into the clip. This helps in
organizing. Use "Take 2" or "part 3" if that helps you break a
long subject up. Don't worry about mistakes, you can always make
a corrective clip.
* For each video, end by saying "This clip was actually about ..."
so that you can record major discrepancies between content and
the embedded title at the beginning. That way you can go to near the
end for additional and possibly more accurate metadata.
* For each video, rename the file containing the clip so that it
reflects the content title, or whatever else you need for your
organizing system. At this stage, THIS IS THE ONLY WRITING YOU
NEED TO DO.
Now, you don't have your product, but you have a bunch of material.
How do you organize it? Make another video!
You can videotape your process of rearranging the material, making
a priority list from a directory listing, making an outline verbally
or typographically as you wish. You can also make verbal notes as
to which stills from the video you deem worthy of inclusion.
I suggest this because you seem more comfortable at telling your
story with your voice than writing it with your hands. This idea
does not circumvent the writing part, but relegates it to transcription,
which I hope does not trigger a mental block. (There may even be
software to aid in transcription, but I do not feel qualified to make
recommendations.)
Also, this idea may not work for you, but you might give it a try and
(wait for it) videotape the process and your conclusions. I wish you
every success, even if video is not the answer for you.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_6: You might try a technique that professional book writers and harried corporate executives use: index cards.
Try carrying a set of small index cards to jot ideas as they occur to you. One idea per card, written in a complete sentence, and only on one side of the card.
Leave space at the top of the card to record data that will be (or you think might be) useful to you later. For example, on the left side of my cards I always enter the date and a note about the context in which the idea occurred to me. On the right side of the card, I note the bigger topic(s) that my idea relates to.
At random times (usually when I can't focus on anything else or I'm on a plane) I review and sort (and re-sort) the cards. When I'm reviewing, I'll find cards to throw away, to store in a "Hell, yes!" box or in a "Block Box."
"Block Box" is my term for an idea that is not immediately relevant but that I am loathe to give up ... so I just need a place to put it for easy retrieval.
I learned about the index card technique when I read "The Organized Mind" by <NAME>. In addition to using the cards to empty out my "monkey mind," I use the cards when I'm feeling highly resistant to accomplishing something.
Perhaps it will work for you to unblock your mind.
P.S. Perhaps you've heard the quote "If had more time then I would have written a shorter letter." It's been attributed to Cicero, <NAME>, <NAME>, Thoreau, <NAME>, and many others.
<http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/>
We are all in good company. 8)
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/04/30 | 757 | 2,971 | <issue_start>username_0: I realize writing in active vs passive voice is a heated debate in academia, with arguments being made for and against both styles. My adviser prefers passive voice.. But is it acceptable to switch from passive to active voice in the same paragraph? What about different sections? For example, the intro and literature review in passive voice, but switching to active voice for materials and methods section. Is this a big no no?<issue_comment>username_1: You should write your paper in a consistent form. I personally prefer the active voice as well, but if your supervisor prefers passive... well then you will have to make the best of it or argument with him.
Try to be specific within paragraphs or connected sentences. If you have an example that you were doubting about, perhaps you can post it here and we will have a look.
But in general: no.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: "I realize..."
Active.
"arguments being made..."
Passive.
My point here is that it's normal to switch. It's probably a good idea to favour one or the other, but I imagine you would have a lot of difficulty using *only* the active voice or *only* the passive voice throughout a paper. Don't worry about it too much.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: It is perfectly normal to use both in the same sentence:
>
> John stepped in front of the window and was immediately shot.
>
>
> The continuum hypothesis implies that the continuum is not a
> measurable cardinal as was shown by Stanislav Ulam.
>
>
> The lump of lead turned to gold after being prepared by a senior
> alchemist.
>
>
>
The point is that you may want to focus on $X$, but sometimes $X$ is "doing" something and sometimes $X$ is influenced by, say, $Y$. If you want to keep the focus on $X$ and not shift to $Y$, it makes sense to combine the passive and the active voice. This makes the writing actually more coherent, not less.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: I believe it is acceptable to switch from passive to active voice according to the way the thoughts come to our mind. This way we do write exactly what we want to express. Sometimes when we try to use one or the other style we write in a "mechanical" way.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: You can switch between active and passive, but the switch should not be jarring. A good reference on active vs passive is:
<https://serialmentor.com/blog/2015/12/19/dont-use-the-passive-voice>
Which argues that the choice between the active and passive voice is determined in any given sentence by what is in the stress and topic positions of the sentence. The TLDR is:
>
> The simple rule is this: Topic and stress trump active and passive. If the topic is the actor, use active voice. If the topic is being acted upon, use passive voice.
>
>
>
Personally in my science writing, I tend to favor the active voice unless it really is easier to write a sentence in passive, in which case I do.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/04/30 | 1,057 | 4,576 | <issue_start>username_0: I teach at a community college in California, where students can drop a course with a grade of "W" up until the 12th week of the semester. Within the last year or so, I seem to be seeing an increase in the number of students who find themselves passing the course at the 12th week, but who decide to drop because they want a better grade and are willing to take the course again later. However, I'm not sure that this increase is real, since my sample size is small. And if it is real, I don't know how widespread the phenomenon is or how to probe for possible causes for the change, since a number of different variables have changed in this time frame (including changes in state law and school policy).
Is there any source of hard data or method for getting data on this? I think there's a pretty big literature on student success and persistence, but the impression I get is that a lot of the literature takes it as a matter of definition that if the student doesn't pass the course with a C, it's because the student didn't "succeed," i.e., the student's academic performance wasn't passing. It seems like it would be difficult to gather statistically robust data to measure the phenomenon of drops due to grade dissatisfaction, since instructors aren't systematically asked to submit or retain the grade records of students who are no longer enrolled at the end of the term.<issue_comment>username_1: I've just done 15 minutes of moderately focused research, and found nothing.
It looks like in most exit surveys students claim to have dropped because of family or work conflicts, which may be true but is not the acute reason for the drop for your students.
A Google search for "drop and retake" finds dozens of recommendations [like this](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskAcademia/comments/1q28kq/i_have_until_midnight_to_drop_stat/) for pre-med and other highly grade-motivated students.
I'm rather intrigued, actually. If these students could be motivated to stay and get the grade, it would save the state a lot of money. And if they couldn't drop after Week 2, they might work much harder much earlier.
I sense a possible research project...
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: As far as method goes, it surely could make for an interesting study! In my recent literature review of factors predicting student success I didn't find anything about this phenomenon - but I wasn't looking for it directly, so that doesn't prove there aren't good studies about it!
But as a data point, I've regularly had professors explicitly tell students before a withdraw deadline to review their grade and if you aren't doing well or just unhappy with your performance so far, they strongly suggest you consider withdrawing from the class! I myself did it for a comm class where I unavoidably missed a few early days that guaranteed I couldn't do better than a B+ even with perfect performance, so I retook it later once I had a more stable schedule.
Now as for systematic gaining of data, you are quite right that it is difficult. A number of factors make this hard, even if we assume that the withdraw deadline is half-way through the course:
* Is the first-half of material, and performance on it, an accurate reflection of the rest of the material?
* Do later projects/papers/tests disproportionally skew one's final grade for a class, such as having the final project be worth more than the entire first half of the semester?
* Are "worst-grade drop" provisions available in the course, as when some professors give five exames but only count your four highest?
* Is the class cumulative or "increasingly difficult" in nature, where if you can not master early material you are sure to do even worse on later material? (Math classes are often this way, in my experience)
* Since students are dropping the class, by definition you don't know how they would have done had they stayed in the course!
* Can missed/failed early work be made up for, without major penalty?
Most studies I've seen simply consider those who drop or withdraw as experiment mortality and ignore it completely. On drop and/or withdraw forms at institutions I've attended they also generally don't even ask you why you are dropping, so this data might not yet be retained in any way and would have to be done as part of the experiment.
One could certainly conduct studies where simply drop/add forms are given options to indicate reason for dropping, and then use that data to try to determine if the problem is reported widely enough to merit further research?
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/04/30 | 1,343 | 5,020 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm working on a small application which would hypothetically allow instructors to perform a variety of grade transformation techniques on a given distribution. (I don't intend for the application to actually be used)
What are some of the more commonly used transformation techniques assuming a distribution is ~normally distributed? Online resources on the topic are somewhat sparse.<issue_comment>username_1: It's not perfect, but I often use a piecewise linear transformation. Specifically, I fix some cutoffs (typically the cutoff between a B+ and an A-, between C+ and B-, between D+ and C-, and between F and D) and then scale all the A's linearly with their range, the B's linearly in their range, and so on.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: One I have not used although I've heard of being used before is to *rank* the final numerical score, and then use that to assign the final grade. Typically these ranks are then used to bin the results into corresponding letter grades of arbitrary proportions. E.g. the top 5% get and A, (5 - 10%] get a B etc. (I have no idea how (un)common this is.)
If you wanted the end result to be as close to normal as possible (frequently not possible if you have ties - or pretty much meaningless if you have small class sizes), you could convert the ranks to quantiles and then take the inverse CDF of your specified normal distribution (mean and variance) you desired. I don't know of anyone who goes quite that far in curving grades though.
This is actually how all civil service exams (exams that state agencies use to hire individuals here in the US) are curved that I know of. After the minimum score cut off, people are ranked into specific bins, and then cohorts of interviews are arranged for the people in the first bin (and if they don't work out they go further down the list).
I would speculate the most *common* form of curving is simply bumping grades above a particular cut-off. See the [Freakonomics blog](http://freakonomics.com/2011/07/07/another-case-of-teacher-cheating-or-is-it-just-altruism/comment-page-2/) for one example.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/YcDO6.jpg)
(source: [freakonomics.com](http://www.freakonomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Polish-graph.jpg))
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: <https://divisbyzero.com/2008/12/22/how-to-curve-an-exam-and-assign-grades/> gives a nice rundown on a slew of different methods that a feasible, as well as a nice analysis of the pros/cons of each.
**EDIT**
The suggested forms of curving include:
1. Returning graded exams, having students fix their errors, and giving them a percentage of the points they missed back. Has the advantage of forcing students to understand why they were marked down and hopefully learn something, but doubles the amount of grading necessary and gives a larger curve to students who performed poorly.
2. Flat scale: $f(x)=x+b$, basically giving everyone $b$ points. Nice and simple, but can be problematic if there's a "curve-breaker" that would end up over 100%.
3. Rescale percentages so that the highest grade $H$ becomes 100%: $f(x) = 100 \*x / H$. Similar pros and cons to the previous, except that higher scores get a larger curve.
4. Linear rescaling: $f(x) = ax + b$. Combination of the previous two, particularly in regards to being able to pick two raw scores $x\_0$ and $x\_1$ and choosing what curved scores they correspond to.
5. Drop a question: $f(x) = 100\*x / (100-p)$ where a problematic question is worth $p$ points. Must be careful to ensure that it was truly an unfair question, and has the con of disenfranchising students that may have spent unproductive time on it.
6. Root functions (and generalized root functions): $f(x) = \sqrt{100 x}=10 \sqrt{x}$ or $f(x) = 100^{1-a} x^a$ where $a$ is between 0 and 1. Gives a nice boost to lower scores (Calc I optimization problem), but is hard to explain to students and perhaps needlessly complicated.
7. Classic "Bell Curve": Mean becomes a C, other letter grades by standard deviations from the Mean. Creates a cutthroat environment of students competing against each other and automatically fails half the students. Really only feasible for large quantities of scores (like standardized tests) and is computationally more complex.
8. Extra Credit Problems: assign a separate problem that students can use to earn points back on the exam. Can be problematic in that the stronger students will generally be the ones that actually do the problem correctly, effectively giving the higher scores a larger curve than the lower scores.
9. Grading by Gravity: throw the exams down a hallway and assign grades by how far they go (facetious)
10. Tenured & just waiting until retirement: Everyone gets an A (or F) (also facetious)
From there, the article gives a breakdown of some excel code for converting percentages to letter grades, as well as giving examples of several implementations of curves.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/05/01 | 628 | 2,694 | <issue_start>username_0: I was dismissed from my Masters program due to bad grades. I also have a mention in my records that say that I might have used last years homework. I did not copy and they had no proof that I copied per se. I couldn't care less about my grades at the time and I deeply regret doing what I did. Is there hope for me in applying to grad schools in the future?
Additionally, I am an international student. Can someone tell me if all this will affect my getting a VISA?<issue_comment>username_1: Unfortunately, your transcripts are likely going to be required at time of application to any other program, and you can assume that you will be asked about your poor grades during the application process. That said, you're not the first person to have made bad decisions in the past, so I would definitely still apply.
One thing I would strongly advise *not* doing is attempting to hide the fact you have poor grades by simply not sending the transcript, and pretending it didn't happen. Doing so will almost guarantee career-threatening problems later on when someone finds out what you did (and it won't be hard, there will be a gap of a few years you won't be able to explain, and all the officials at the other university still know that you were there).
I have no idea about the visa.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: >
> Is there hope for me in applying to grad schools in the future?
>
>
>
Yes, but you will need a convincing argument for why graduate school will go better next time than it did the first time you tried it. It's easy to say "I didn't care about grades and didn't work very hard, but I'll work harder this time," while actually working harder is much more difficult, so vague excuses may be discounted.
You could get lucky and find a school that is happy to give you another chance (perhaps a less prestigious department, which sees potential in you beyond what's typical for their students). You might also be able to give a more concrete excuse for your past grades (for example, if there were external factors in your life that troubled you last time but won't apply this time). Otherwise, the best way to demonstrate that things have changed is probably to succeed at something else. Finding a job and doing well at it can show that you are now more mature and responsible than when you were a student, and successfully taking a few classes part-time can also look good.
So I'd suggest following a two-part strategy. Try applying again with the best explanations/excuses you can offer, and see whether it works. If it doesn't, then you should start thinking about longer-term methods to demonstrate that you've changed.
Upvotes: 3 |
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