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2014/10/10 | 1,399 | 6,329 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm due to attend a conference soon, and plan to take notes on the talks I attend. My note-taking software of choice (org-mode) can easily export to HTML. Is it legal to post my notes on my website? Is it ethical?<issue_comment>username_1: Firstly, you will need to ensure that content from the conference is allowed to be shared - I have attended conferences were we were explicitly told not to share the content as much of it was pre-publication.
Secondly, and very importantly, if it is allowed and you do take notes, you should provide proper attribution - referencing the author/speaker and the conference proceedings.
If you are not sure of the legalities of reproducing your notes - ask and receive explicit advice.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: The question of whether it is legal and ethical to take notes intersects with a number of different areas, each of which needs to be considered:
1. Expectation of Privacy: Are you going to be exposing the speaker to a level of publicity inappropriate with their reasonable expectation of privacy?
2. Copyright: Are you going to be violating copyright on the speaker's intellectual property?
3. Non-Disclosure Agreements: Are you going to be violating a non-disclosure agreement that you or your institution has signed? Such agreements are most likely to be the case when commercial secrets or non-filed patentable material is involved.
4. Security classification, arms control treaties, export restrictions: Certain data and technologies are subject to special regulation due to their potential to be used for harm.
For a typical open-registration scientific conference, you have no need to worry about non-disclosure agreements or controlled information. If you are in a situation where those are applicable, you will most certainly be told in no uncertain terms, and will probably have had to sign specific paperwork to take responsibility for this fact.
These issues, though, are the ones that can cause real trouble if you screw them up. No open-registration scientific conference should ever have them apply, however.
That leaves copyright and privacy. Copyright isn't a problem if you're taking notes: that's your highly lossy paraphrasing of their material, and as long as you don't try to pass it off as your own work, it's both legal and ethical. If you were recording audio or video, that would be a different question, as well as potentially problematic for privacy.
As for privacy: if somebody has signed up to present their work in an unrestricted meeting, there is no expectation of privacy for the work. As for the person themselves, scientists are semi-public figures: as long as you are commenting on the public and professional aspects of the person, that is certainly acceptable (i.e., it's OK to talk about a scandal about a retraction, but at least ethically problematic to talk about rumors that they were raised by drug-addicted wolves).
Beyond that, it's common courtesy to make sure you get names and attributions right, as well as keeping you from embarrassing yourself. But your personal notes aren't a record with any special standing, and as long as you keep from actively slandering the speakers you should be fine. You still might cause trouble for a speaker who screws up and inappropriately discloses nuclear weapons secrets on pre-patent IP, but that's more their problem than yours...
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: This may be field-specific, my answer refers to public (in a way that attendees do not need any security clearance or something) computer science conferences:
I do not see any issues with posting these notes. In this day and age, commenting on whatever talk is currently being held live from within the talk on Twitter and Co. is becoming commonplace.
I have been to several conferences whose organizers specifically recommended a particular Twitter tag so the comments from the audience members could be quickly found online, and once, there was even a projector set up that would display any comments posted tagged with the conference tag throughout the run of the conference. Likewise, photos from the conference presentations have sometimes been posted by the conference organizers and others.
One of the nice features of this is that attribution comes almost for free - the conference tag already points out the event, and the time at which live comments are posted indicates what talk is currently being held. To make sure, you can always include a small note about the paper number or title, but that's already sufficient to unambiguously identify the paper and the authors based on the conference schedule.
Lastly, even though you may want to express certain opinions about the talks, in most cases it is generally good to be respectful toward the authors. Nothing is won by publicly humiliating them in any way; if you have objections against their presentations, make them specific and tangible. Also, make sure you are aware whether you are referring to an actual shortcoming of the underlying research, or just to a presentation issue due to limited presentation time. If you think the issues are serious, you might even try and contact the author for a clarification, and then integrate that additional knowledge when writing or updating your note. *The only time at a conference when I saw participants write somewhat respectless Tweets on a talk (and thought they were rather appropriate) was when a business person literally flooded the audience with buzzwords (yes, in a [buzzword bingo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzzword_bingo)-enabling way) and thus delivered zero useful contents. That is definitely an absolute exception in conference talks.*
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: I'm not a legal expert, but regardless - **it is ethical from first principles**. You're a researcher, and your duty - as well as part of the purpose of the conference - is to expand human knowledge and understanding. The publication of your notes (with due attribution of claims, mentioning of speakers etc.) directly promotes that purpose.
If it's illegal, then that's bad law. Try to get this law repealed in your country; try to get people to circumvent it en masse; or try to find a legal loophole to allow you to publish your notes.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/10/10 | 1,341 | 5,545 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm an undergraduate student. I used to think that a PhD certifies a person as an expert in a specific topic of a specific field. I've now been told that while that's true, a PhD most importantly proves that you are capable of independent research in general.
A professor of fluid dynamics told me that if he wanted to shift his research to an unrelated topic like dog anatomy, rather than getting a second degree he would seek out successive projects that get progressively closer to his research interest (e.g. a project on modelling blood flow in a dog, etc.), until eventually he is working on his originally unrelated research interest.
Is the above approach generally valid? If it works, then what legitimate reason is there to get a second PhD?<issue_comment>username_1: I would tend to agree with your professor: a Ph.D. primarily certifies you as being capably of creative contribution to research, and secondarily as an expert in a narrow sub-discipline. Combine that with the continually shifting landscape of the scientific frontier, are there is a great deal of flexibility in what a person with a Ph.D. may end up doing over time.
I have heard one of my close colleagues say that: "One way or another, in ten years time we can't be doing the same thing we are now. Either we will have succeeded and need to move forward, or we will have failed and need to try something else."
In such changes, there is usually a significant degree of continuity that allows one to "pivot" from one area for another. Like in your professor's example, there are a lot of ways in which dog anatomy and fluid dynamics are related, and it's natural that an expert in fluid dynamics might well be drawn to the parts of anatomy most relevant to their existing skill.
A nice real-world example of such a radical transition: [<NAME>](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Knight_(scientist)) made his name pioneering networks and computer architectures, then radically shifted into biology. There is a [nice interview with him](http://www.fastcompany.com/3000760/tom-knight-godfather-synthetic-biology-how-learn-something-new) about his history and how he made the transition, which involved lots of re-education but not bothering with the formality of another Ph.D. He's also moved back and forth between industry and academia quite a bit.
That said, I could imagine some transition so extreme that it might require an entirely new apprenticeship, e.g., from astrophysics to medieval French history. But that sort of change would be a rather extreme an unusual example.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I suggest asking yourself this set of questions before engaging on a second PhD:
* Do I find delight in long hours of profoundly involving, extended, and solitary study?
* Have I achieved my greatest satisfaction in researching and writing long research papers in the previous PhD? Would I enjoy writing more?
* Do I have a compact intellectual drive and curiosity that is becoming more concentrated in the next field of research or several related fields? (This momentum needs to be distinguished clearly and honestly from a drive to have a Ph.D. in order to obtain something else, whether an attractive job, a certain status, a sense of accomplishment, and so on.)
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_3: It depends. Largely on **is the first PhD recognized**?
Consider someone doing a PhD degree in some field with rather low standards. Say, in politics, or medicine. You may end up being frowned upon if you are in contact with technology PhDs, who (apparently) have higher standards.
It will of course also vary from school to school. And people in medicine and politics will downvote this answer...
So in my personal opinion:
* if your PhD was 3-5 years *additionally* to a masters degree, is from a highly regarded school, involved publishing several scientific papers, and is in a discipline such as CS, Physics, Math: don't bother doing another PhD
* if your PhD was a "small" solution, maybe only 2 years after a bachelor, you didn't publish anything before (if at all), and your work was mostly summarizing and discussing what others wrote before: compare to standards in tech departments.
Your professor of fluid dynamics probably has a PhD of the first kind. Widely respected as capable of doing *own* research. But you know: not all PhD programs have such standards.
I've [read](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mediadesk.uzh.ch%2Farticles%2F2013%2Fdissertationen.html) of PhD "thesis" assignments that essentially meant transcribing some old medical work into modern language; which apparently many students outsourced this, because they couldn't even read the script anymore...
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: Some doctorates are more specific than a PhD
--------------------------------------------
Some tasks require specific qualifications for which a generic PhD may not suffice. For example a researcher working on neuroscience or robotic prosthesis may come from various fields of science, but (depending on your jurisdiction) can be prohibited to work on people independently before obtaining also a degree in medicine - no matter what skills they may already have, the specific degree is mandatory. Similarly, there are areas of sociology and politology where a reseacher would be well skilled in the relevant areas of law, but they may need to obtain a jurisprudence degree to be allowed to practice those skills.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/10/10 | 2,553 | 10,378 | <issue_start>username_0: Recently, I took the PhD qualifier exams for my department. In my dept. there are 3 exams, each covering a subfield (say subfield A, B, and C). First you are given an hour to work through several problems, and then you have another hour to present to several professors, who critique your answers and ask supplemental questions.
I was well prepared for all of my exams, and did excellently on exams B and C. Exam A did not go as well. During the oral part of the exam, I was asked a question using term Z'. I stated that I am unfamiliar with this term and asked for clarification on its meaning. I was given a vague and unhelpful explanation, along with some chastisement about how this term was "fundamental" knowledge. This wasted perhaps 5 minutes or so of the exam and make the remainder of the oral part fairly awkward. Though I believe I solved the problems correctly, I left with a bad feeling about the terminology issue.
After the exam, I looked term Z' up on Google. Seems it's a **very** uncommon term for Z. The textbook I was being tested on used Z, as did all 3 of the courses I've had on subfield A.
A few days later I got the results of the exams. I failed exam A, but will be allowed to retake it in the future.
For the sake of identifying what I did wrong, I spoke with one of the professors who administered my exam. I asked what I should focus on for the next time. He said "the fundamentals." I asked whether the terminology issue was the deciding factor and it apparently was not. Instead, he thinks I don't understand absolutely fundamental concept Y. Oddly, he also complained that I used a more general form of Y. (So, which is it? Do I understand Y really well or not at all?) The most I can make of this is that the terminology issue made him and the other committee member think I'm an idiot, and then they were much less fair to me from that point on.
He then asked me to solve a problem which he made up on the fly. I used one version of Y to solve this problem, and he complained that (though correct) how I did this demonstrates that I don't know what I'm doing. The annoying thing about this is that I'm a TA for undergrad class A right now and the way I solved this problem is exactly the way the book the dept. uses does. It seems that he'll complain regardless of how I do things.
I now believe this exam was not fair, and this professor likely will be on my exam committee next time. I doubt I'll be able to pass if he continues being so unfairly critical of me.
At this point, what are my options? I am considering appealing to the dept. head, but I don't want to make things worse than they are right now. I could make enemies in the dept. if I appeal, and I'm not sure if there are other options I should consider.<issue_comment>username_1: It is hard to know the exact issues for an oral exam we were not present for and for which we are hearing only the candidate's version. Based on your own description it sounds like you feel very strongly that you know the material flawlessly and were treated unfairly. I'm sorry about that. However your description did not convince me that that's what actually happened: rather it sounds like the committee had some issues with your performance that you don't yet fully understand. Since you are allowed to retake the exam, you should find out as precisely as you can what went wrong and what they want you to do better.
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> I was well prepared for all of my exams
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Isn't that for the committee to decide?
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> and did excellently on exams B and C.
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May I ask: is that the feedback you got on exams B and C: that you did excellently? Or was it just that you passed? It matters: if in two out of three exams that committee really felt that you did "excellently", then they think you are an excellent student and there will be a lot of support for you to stay in the program. Also, do you have the same examiners for all three exams?
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> During the oral part of the exam...The textbook I was being tested on used Z, as did all 3 of the courses I've had on subfield A.... I asked whether the terminology issue was the deciding factor and it apparently was not.
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You gave a very long description of something that took "five minutes" of a one hour exam and was explicitly said not to be a cause of your failure. You are focusing very strongly on whether it was reasonable for you to know the terminology. But then afterwards you just looked it up on the internet and decided that it was not something you need to know without talking to anyone else about it. That's a problem. Another observation is that -- and this is something that happens to lots of students - you let your entire performance get derailed by an inessential minor point.
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> For the sake of identifying what I did wrong, I spoke with one of the professors who administered my exam.
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You should speak to every professor who administered the exam. Exams are not failed because one of the committee members didn't like your performance: at the very least the majority felt that way, and much more commonly they all did.
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> The most I can make of this is that the terminology issue made him and the other committee member think I'm an idiot, and then they were much less fair to me from that point on.
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I wasn't there, but I think this is not a very good guess. Since there seems to be a lack of clarity about the result even after speaking to one of the examiners, I would consider asking for a **written evaluation** of your performance. It would be a good idea to discuss this with your adviser first and make sure that this will be properly viewed. I think it is a very reasonable request: you passed two out of three exams and will take the third one again. You really want to know clearly -- and spend time thinking about and taking into account -- the reasons for the failure.
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> . I used one version of Y to solve this problem, and he complained that (though correct) how I did this demonstrates that I don't know what I'm doing.
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I don't understand what that means. As you've told it, it certainly sounds annoying. But he must mean something by it. Your conclusion
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> It seems that he'll complain regardless of how I do things.
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is the most negative and unhelpful possible one. Does this faculty member have a reputation in the department for being so unreasonable?
You mention that your adviser was there for the deliberations [but I guess not for the exam itself?]. That should be extremely useful: you can get your adviser to explain their decision to you. If he does not understand why you failed despite being at the deliberation, then you do have a problem. If that is the case, definitely bring up the prospect of getting a written decision that you can then go over with him.
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> They did suggest that I might have been rude, but I don't think I was.
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Whoa. Your advisor thinks that you may have been rude to the exam members, but you have just brushed that off because the one exam member you spoke to didn't specifically mention it?
I'll give you the honesty of a lifelong academic who is a complete stranger to you: **to me, you do sound a bit rude and disrespectful**. You look for confirmation on the internet that you are getting asked silly questions. You say "In this case, the one professor I've spoken to is definitely wrong." And you write
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> There is nothing to study. The professor I spoke with's claims about my knowledge are contradicted by their own statements as well as my performance on another of the exams (which builds upon knowledge of field A).
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To hear a student who has failed an exam say that there is nothing to study the next time around is a huge red flag. Maybe you know the material well according to your own standards and previous experience. But if you know it **perfectly**: you are in the wrong place. No one who has nothing to study belongs in academia: you already know everything, so you have nothing to learn. Also you happen to know that your examiners are wrong, do not understand the material as generally and intuitively as you, and cannot even make logically non-contradictory statements in explaining themselves. Well, look: either you're right or wrong about this. But if you truly feel this way, then either way, at the very least *this* PhD program is not for you.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I want to post what I did do for future reference.
Ultimately, I've decided that my best bet for passing quals is hitting a home run on my retake. One thing I did find helpful was speaking with someone at the ombuds office. They informed me of the procedures I would need to go through if I were to file an appeal. Given that, if I fail the retake and I believe the decision is unfair, I will appeal without hesitation. I would recommend talking to someone at the ombuds office to anyone else in a similar situation.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: I am a student in a doctoral program as well and have had three encounters with three professor's who are close in behaviors and thinking. If you have a disagreement with one of them the other two makes it hard for you. There is no way of knowing unless another professor outside their circle pulls you to the side and explain what is going on. Correction it was four of them. I received a B grade from two of them and an A- from the other two.
In their classes they make you feel insignificant and a bother to be there and critical of every thing you say all because my political views were different. However, in other professors classes I was able to show I am worthy of a PhD.
So, I understand what you are going through. I would go to the top and ask for a conference with all parties on the test committee and have someone there from outside who knows calculus and be a witness of your understanding of the theorem. I do not know calculus on your level but I know when someone is bias and that one failed you displays bias.
The more top people know what is happening the better but speak to an academic attorney first before doing what I suggest or anyone else to guide you. Find news articles where colleges been sued for your type of issue and contact those lawyers.
I hope things works well for you.
Experienced Student
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/10/11 | 6,037 | 25,255 | <issue_start>username_0: In my courses, students work on large, on-going projects, but submit some parts each week, showing their progress. All of the work is done on a computer or table.
Mid-semester, I always get reports from students of technical failures, e.g.:
* Deleted entire project folder.
* Reformatted hard drive or upgraded system without backup.
* Sent computer to be repaired, cannot work on project until it returns.
* USB not unmounted, files broken.
* Device containing project folder lost or stolen.
I want to create a policy which is not so harsh as to turn all of these students away. At the same time, I worry if I am a little lenient, students will start claiming problems every time they forget to do their homework. What is a good policy that is not too harsh, recognizing that technical problems do happen, yet which cannot be too easily abused?<issue_comment>username_1: You should deal with them in the same way that you deal with students who claim to have lost non-digital work. Here are two reasons:
1. This is not really any different from when students complained that **"the dog ate my homework."** Both paper and digital formats are susceptible to being damaged, lost, or destroyed.
2. They will not get any special exceptions from their boss when they lose important digital documents in a real job.
My students do most of their work in digital formats and I've never made special exceptions. I suppose I would do so in some unusual circumstances (say, a university server where they were told to store their work had been hacked).
If you want to help them develop better digital work habits, introduce them to backups, Dropbox and/or version control. But I don't think that is your job.
Upvotes: 7 <issue_comment>username_2: A few years ago, these were legitimate (if sometimes dubious) problems. With the arrival of free and easy-to-use cloud storage, however, there is no reason that anybody should ever have to lose data again.
[Dropox](https://www.dropbox.com/) has a free account that provides 2 GB of storage, automatically backs up any time that you are on the network, and gives the ability to undelete files and roll-back to previous file versions across something like a month of time. Since it's cloud-based, it can be linked to another computer should one be broken or stolen. As long as your students aren't doing something extremely data-heavy, like art & design, the 2 GB limit shouldn't be a problem.
Given this, why not set up a policy as follows:
* At the start of the class, state that students who work electronically will be expected to keep good backups such that "the digital dog cannot eat your homework." Introduce the class to Dropbox as a recommended solution, but let them know that any cloud-based backup is OK (there are lots of other solutions available too, but Dropbox is currently the best for both universal availability and simple user interface).
* Then, during the semester, if somebody comes to you with a tale of woe, treat it like you would somebody failing to show up for a quiz. There might be extenuating circumstances, but they are rare and probably come with the equivalent of a doctor's note (e.g., a campus police report on stolen property).
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: Possibly what you could do is give your students an **educated** fair warning. **Show them how to make backups!**. Knowing how to backup data, especially for system administration, is an invaluable skill, and can save people countless hours of time and frustration. My teacher expects us to make backups of our files regularly because of the possibility of data loss, and since she told us how to do it (if you don't want to do tarball, or zip backups, you can use cloud services such as Amazon or Dropbox to save files), there's no excuse to have lost anything. **A CS student should be competent enough to not have this happen!**. Frankly, any CS student should be aware of, and familiar with
1. How to make a backup of important files in Linux or Unix using `tar -cvf [file_name] [folder_name]`
2. How to extract using `tar -xvf`
3. How to make backups in windows using either Windows © tools, or simply making zip files of important folders.
4. How to use online services such as dropbox.
5. How to write shell scripts to perform regular backups either in Bash, or if using Windows, .bat files.
If you provide them with this knowledge, which should only take about an hour, or even provide a handout or a web post about this issue, and inform them that data loss is common, and steps need to be taken to prevent this, then they are completely liable for any irregular data loss that occurs. Also, you are in the clear a a teacher, and have given your student an invaluable lesson on data management and possibly Linux/Unix/Windows skills they didn't have prior to meeting you. Of course these are just suggestions. I do wish someone would have taught me how to make a simple tarball backup script on day one. Would have saved me much grief. Happy teaching! :)
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: Based on this question, as well as based on your previous questions (e.g., [here](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28504/what-to-do-about-students-who-ask-for-help-too-often), [here](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28450/is-read-the-syllabus-a-sufficient-transfer-of-responsibility), or especially [here](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/23445/do-i-need-to-define-all-forms-of-cheating-in-the-syllabus)), I get the impression that students in your school are leading the teachers on quite a bit. I have been teaching large undergraduate courses (400+ students) at a public university in central Europe for years, and many of the problems you often seem to stumble into are pretty much unknown to me. For instance, I can literally remember a *single incident* where one of my many students claimed that he could not finish his homework because he lost data due to a technical problem. You, on the other hand, make it sound like this is a regular occurrence.
As I don't think that your students are somehow inherently more prone to lose data due to no fault of their own, the logical conclusion is that they are (at least in the majority of times) just making up excuses. Hence, the question is not *"how to deal with students who lost their digital work?"*, but rather *"how to deal with students who **claim to have lost** their digital work?"*.
My answer to this question (and, incidentally, also to your other, previous questions) is *to treat your students as adults.* Among other aspects, this means that they are responsible themselves for any technical issues on their end, the real ones as well as the made-up ones. Yes, this will mean that occasionally, somebody will actually be struck by a problem innocently, but at a university, adults are supposed to handle problems by themselves. To me, this is a large part of the learning process at a university - there is no safety net that catches you when you are behaving unreasonably (and, yes, not correctly backing up your homework definitely falls into this category).
So, my answers to your problems would be (formulated a bit more politely, but no less directly):
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> Deleted entire project folder.
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Too bad. Do it again.
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> Reformatted hard drive or upgraded system without backup.
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Too bad. Do it again.
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> Sent computer to be repaired, cannot work on project until it returns.
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Use one of the computers in the university lab, or borrow a computer from a friend.
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> USB not unmounted, files broken.
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Too bad. Do it again.
(Also, speaking as a computer scientist, this is so unlikely to happen on modern file systems that I would be very much inclined to think that you are lying to me.)
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> Device containing project folder lost or stolen.
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Restore from backup. If you have no backup - too bad, do it again.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_5: You say your students already:
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> submit some parts each week
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Simply ask them to submit the whole project folder (perhaps in a zip) instead. If they lose their work, they can always roll back to the last version they gave you.
Advantages of this:
* Requires no extra training for the students. They already know how to send you folders.
* Requires no extra work by you. You already have a system for dealing with folders they send you, just keep using that system.
Disadvantages:
* If the projects are very large, it may be difficult to send them. Many email providers have size limits on attachments, and uploading large files takes time. Although you could just ask students to send you a link to their DropBox.
* Files use more space on your disk.
* There is some latency associated with recovery. It may be some time until you (or the TA) see the student's request for the last version. If, like I suspect is commonly the case, they have a habit of "losing" work a few hours before the deadline, they may email you saying they lost their data at 3 am, and claim that they couldn't finish the work in time because you didn't reply quickly enough.
Alternatively, you can require them to use a version control system, such as git (there are other version control systems, but I've never encountered a reason to use them over git besides "the rules say I'm not allowed to use git"). With GUI tools like GitExtensions and TortoiseGit, not to mention numerous tutorials online, this is extremely easy to figure out even for novices. Set up repositories for them, and communicate that they will be graded for that week on the last commit before that week's deadline (also solves the "but you looked at the wrong branch" problem - if they have several branches, they can make sure their final commit is to the preferred branch). Advantages over the "send whole folder" method:
* No busywork on your part required. You don't have to go into twenty emails, download attachment, rename and organize it every week.
* If they lose data, they don't require your intervention. They can check out from their repository themselves.
* As git will only upload the difference between states, if there are large files that are static between revisions, subsequent commits will be small and take up little network bandwidth or disk space.
* Students get experience with a good version control system that is widely used in the industry.
* Students learn first hand about importance of versioning. Likely, individuals who managed to get in college will immediately understand that the more frequently they make commits, the less work they'll need to redo if they lose data. If for some strange reason they cannot comprehend this, you can explain it at the beginning of the course.
Disadvantages are:
* Students (and you!) must now learn git (or whatever system you choose). Although, perhaps "you better go learn git right now or you will fail this course" is not a bad thing for students to hear at certain points of their education.
* Students may try to get tech support for git from you, or get upset when you tell them to go elsewhere (such as stackoverflow) for that.
* You must set up a repository for them to use. However, your school's IT department would probably be able to help with this, and even the worst case scenario of "set up a free account on BitBucker or github" is not that bad.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_6: It may simply be that Ben has unluckily come across more students with academic integrity issues than many of us. A sensible compromise is to say to the class that certain 'excuses' for non-submission of work are not really going to hold water, and others would require some actual evidence, or a properly formed description of what has gone wrong.
Regardless of your outlook, things do go wrong, I have been involved in many cases of USB drives failing and even the most reliable forensic and data recovery tools being unable to recover the data. This is more-so if a drive suffers from certain types of electrical damage. However, I agree that CS students should at least have some good practice under their belt in terms of data management, backup and continuity.
However, are they really adults yet? Of course not! All the statements about them being adults and now they need to learn to be adults. Listen to yourselves, please - they will be a few years in post before they become more adult and start to take real responsibility for their actions. I train new employees on a monthly basis and the main thing is to allow them to shadow someone with sound technical skills and integrity, they need to 'learn' to become professionals and as such build the skills we expect of a professional practitioner (our domain is IT Security) - they certainly are not all ready when they arrive from University to make sound business (or in many cases technical) decisions.
There is nothing wrong with showing them good data management techniques and actually I would argue that as a practitioner of over 20 years service, its is imperative to show them the principles of data management. One solution does not fit all, some IT security organisations would rather their employees do not use the services of Dropbox (for various security and non-dislosure reasons), however as a basic backup facility and data repository, it is ideal for students. We train all of our staff in data management, so why would you not educate students?
I liked the fact that Joshua took the time to show how to use the tar command (and extracting from a tar file) using Linux. To support this, there is an excellent (if perhaps a rather Unix biased) tutorial at: <http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Teaching/Unix/>, which covers the (basic) use of tar, gunzip and to be fair provides a very nice introduction to Unix. Most of this will work on Linux too, with the odd usage exception and of course side-effects may differ. Therefore, even if you lack expertise, it's likely not a good enough excuse not to provide some sort of guidance. That guidance may just be to make use of a suitable resource that provides the skills or knowledge, and that's what a good teacher does - you can't be great at everything (and remain a modest and well-balanced human being).
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_7: I do not work in academia, but have faced almost identical problems many times as a business owner.
The underlying problem is that:
* You do not want to allow people to consistently take advantage of the system
* But you also don't want to be too harsh with "innocent" people who have found themselves in a tough situation. (we've all fail to achieve an expected goal every now and then due to circumstances outside our control)
I always address this problem using some form of this basic pattern:
- Be lenient on first transgression
- Be strict on future transgressions
- Do not "judge" the quality of excuses.
For example, this is what I might do in your case:
1. Have a "known" policy of allowing one transgression.
2. Have an "unknown" policy of affording leniency on the second transgression. (Always afford leniency, but don't tell people that you will do this until they find themselves in hot water. This will help you to not have to fail people who took a "strike 1" when they probably shouldn't have, but then found themselves with a legitimate problem later on)
3. Afford zero leniency on the third transgression.
What is really nice about this type of policy is that you don't have to be the arbiter of who has a "good" excuse. People always have a good excuse, especially the people who are gaming you and the system. You can consistently execute this policy the same way for all students. It will allow the "innocent" students to always succeed. It will allow the "players" to succeed just as long as they are taking their studies seriously overall. And you will be able to fail incapable students without even having to listen to their reasons for not having done their work because after all, you already gave them two chances and statistically, it is extremely unlikely that they had three legitimate "emergencies" in one semester.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_8: Use Git!! Why? Both your and my question have the same answer: "You must award failing grades for failure to submit assignments." Git is so pragmatic, its usage will solve your dilemma and provide students will practical experience with a ubiquitous technology!
Git is a source code management platform that functions as a repository for safe-keeping of all code revisions. In doing so git enables independent collaborative efforts to be merged safely into branches, each of which carries along with it a required message and an exact differential of the code between commits.
Sure, diligent frequents to the great outdoors like your computer science students working offline in the wilderness will inevitably eventually have their laptop eaten by a bear, their digital work for class mere free radicals in the wild.
While close inspection of one's abrasions and tattered garbs can reveal much about wild ursa and truth, an emotionally-detached audit of your classroom's Git repository can actually do a much more practical job. Honest efforts committed throughout the course will shine brighter than his sunburned scratch marks -- and an empty repository will surely ease your apprehensions regarding lending no leniency at all.
Using Git is an amazing part of the software development process. In fact, utilizing git as the central repository for digital work allows for brilliant collaborative efforts among the student body. Perhaps a test would be the random distribution of APIs among the students and the assignment to write code to implement it. You my consider not divulging the function of the assembled code until the next day, when you can put it together, together!
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_9: Well speaking as someone who until recently was a student and someone who doesn't like to see all the slackers get off, but on the other hand, I have had technical issues before.
I would say:
1. DropBox, AeroFS, Google Drive, etc. are everyone's friend
2. CrashPlan and Time Machine are also everyone's friend.
With those two, most excuses will be gone. If you introduce them and students are too lazy to use them, then I don't see a lot of need to feel sorry for them.
I had a laptop get stolen once while I was in school, and I lost all of the data on it, mainly because it was all less than a month old so it was not included in my monthly backup (and things like DropBox didn't exist at the time yet).
On the other hand, I had a Macbook with a dying hard drive that randomly corrupt files and/or refuse to boot while I was in the middle of my MBA program. I would re-install Mac OS and it would work for another week or so until it exploded again. With DropBox and Google Drive, it was a simply a nuisance rather than a disaster.
You can also mention to your students that:
a. You don't recommend changing or upgrading their computers during the project
b. You don't recommend upgrading their OS during the project
c. You don't recommending them using a beta OS or changing OS during the project.
d. They should be careful what they install on their computers.
i.e. the computer should be a tool to do their work and not something to play with and hack on.
The answers suggesting to use CVS, etc. are a bit silly unless the students are computer science students. Version control tools offer less benefit when dealing with binary files and the learning curve is steeper.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_10: A story a few years back: My ssd failed on me, and in the same week a certain individual with a certain file hosting service was arrested, with the file servers being shut down. Luckily, I had only recently moved to the cloud and still had an external hd with a two-week old backup on it.
My teacher gave a bit of leeway, warned me about using dubious hosters and gave me a week extension period. I'd advise a strict position, except when their backup service is legitimately compromised. This could even happen to a major service.
I guess a more legitimate file hoster wouldn't have had this problem, but it's still ultimately out of your control. I now use a combination of an external hard disk (or two, depending) with Google Drive and OneDrive for easy file transfers to my phone & tablet, as well as an additional backup.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_11: I too ran semester-long projects with mostly freshmen and found it sufficient to "strictly" enforce a *lenient* late-work policy:
1. I *always* accept late-work until a stated buffer time before grades are due
2. I assign one or more drafts/pre-work (i.e., outlines, notes, actual drafts) of all major assignments for a non-negligible portion of the total assignment grade.
3. late work is *always* assessed a daily diminishing penalty starting at the due time, regardless of reason for lateness; I don't have the formula in front of me, but I think it ranges from 15 to 2 points/day
I inform the students at the beginning of the semester that I'm not in the business of gauging the validity of their excuses, and have instead a generous, consistently applied policy which will allow them to recover (through diligence) when life gets in the way.
The net effect is that the draft phase of the assignment is the only one where they can completely lose their work before I, at least, have a backup copy. At this early point the consequences of a data loss aren't failure of the assignment (unless they neglect the importance of the draft phase, for which I have no sympathy.)
In practice, I've found that the policy has the desired effects:
* My non-slacker students who have occasional life or technical issues have been able to recover with minimal final-grade impact
* I don't have to waste mental overhead on feeling unfair, debating whether I'm being lied to or manipulated, or worrying about being biased in my adjudication of excuses
* The slackers we intend to punish with a strict due-date policy are still astonishingly capable of using the generous policy to hang themselves
* Students almost never completely write off an assignment (or the course), because the diminishing penalty preserves enough value that it always makes sense to do the work (isn't that the real goal?)
* I get to feel like my students learn the more valuable life lesson of how-to-dig-myself-out-of-holes-of-my-own-making-through-working-hard-to-catch-up as opposed to the alternative lessons of how-to-burn-with-perceived-injustice or how-to-shrug-and-never-complete-the-work-because-it-will-no-longer-be-accepted.
I realize it takes a philosophical shift to *let go* of the notion that we need to reject late work. I also realize this answer is basically just a variation on the current most-popular no-special-policy answer, but the implementation differs enough that I thought it might help you approach the problem from other angles.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_12: One of digital media professors laid down the rules (this was back in 2004 or so) under which he would accept the "my files were lost". You needed to have three different back ups, in three different locations. For example, physically at your residence, physically on campus on a portable drive, and online on the campus storage, all of which magically lost the files at the same time. Note that campus storage, like many modern-day cloud backups, in theory could recover files deleted (though doubtful they'd spend the time for a student's lost paper).
Since the chance of all backups being lost simultaneously is for all intents and purposes zero, he was able to all at once
1. Make his policy of not accepting "my digital files disappeared" as an excuse.
2. Encourage better than good backup strategies.
3. Give a reasonable exception to policy (reduces complaining) while knowing full well no one would make use of it.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_13: From the sound of it, the assignment is being submitted little by little, over many weeks. In that case, students can retain their previous weekly grades, but lose credit for the most recent iteration.
Say it's a matter of 10% a week for ten weeks. The student has successfully made five submissions, earning up to 50% for those weeks. In week 6, the files get lost. The student gets a 0 (out of 10) for week 6.
Hopefully, the file will have been recreated by week 7. If not, then another 0 for week 7, etc. until the end of the course.
Basically, the student gets credit on an ongoing basis for successful early submissions and loses credit for each week of "failure."
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_14: Further to @DavidRicherby's comments: For the last couple of years I was at Plymouth University, the university was providing each student with an enormous amount of storage space on a OneDrive for Business account, with fully-automatic backup and version control. If you're nervous about the privacy and security implications of involving a third-party cloud storage contractor, I guess that, at the cost of some effort in setup, you could achieve the same with a university-managed git server.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/10/11 | 598 | 2,540 | <issue_start>username_0: I published a paper on a statistical topic after my bachelors.
Currently I am doing my masters thesis and I would like to cite/use my own paper in it.
However, I did not inform my supervisor before that I already had a publication in a similar field of my thesis when I started, because I did not expect it to be directly relevant then. However, now I would like to use this paper.
Is it OK to cite my own paper in my thesis? Will the supervisor be OK with it, despite I did not inform him about my previous work when starting the thesis with him?
Thanks.<issue_comment>username_1: I don't see why your supervisor would be concerned about it, especially if it is relevant for your current research. But, to be sure, let them know about your previous work and emphasise how it is relevant (and its importance) to your current work.
When you use your paper, make sure that you cite it as you would any paper.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Practiced in moderation, self-citation is natural, healthy, and ethical.
There are typical two reasons why excessive self-citation can become problematic:
1. It often indicates a person who is unaware of the related work being done by the rest of the community.
2. Self-citation can be abused to falsely inflate one's perceived importance and citation metrics.
A healthy line of research, however, will often produce a non-trivial fraction of self-citation in each paper because your old work *is* related to your new work. In fact, it would be unethical to *not* self-cite when citation is appropriate.
A simple guiding principle for approaching the question is this: if somebody else besides you had written the paper, would you want to cite it? If the answer is yes, then you should cite the paper. There isn't even any particular reason you need to mention it to your supervisor, though it would probably be fun and enjoyable for you to mention in passing, "Hey, and it turns out this other paper I wrote was actually useful enough to cite!"
Now as to whether you can *include* your other paper as part of your thesis, this is a very different question. The first question is: why would you want to do so, if a citation will suffice? If you've done a Masters' Thesis worth of work excluding this other paper, there is no reason to need to include it. If you haven't, then that is when you need to have a discussion with your supervisor, because the answer will depend on the policies and practices of your particular department.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/10/11 | 308 | 1,237 | <issue_start>username_0: I live in US. In some applications it is asking to enter your cumulative and major GPA. However I am wondering which GPA is more important and which one is used for admittance famous graduate schools (Top 10) in engineering program?<issue_comment>username_1: First of all, remember that GPA is more of a negative filter than a positive filter.
If you do not have an excellent GPA in your relevant major, then you are definitely going to have trouble getting admitted. The GPA outside of your relevant major is less important, but it will still raise major questions if you have, say, all As in major and all Fs outside.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I have a buddy who was an admissions officer some years ago, and he said, "major."
In graduate school, you will be taking mostly courses either in, or related to you major. Therefore, your "major" GPA is considered a better proxy than "cumulative" GPA for a graduate degree.
In graduate school, there is much less emphasis on being "well rounded" and more on "specialization." If your non-major grades are decent, and your major grades are good, that's what counts. My friend had a 3.9 GPA in the engineering major, and only a 3.3 overall.
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/10/11 | 799 | 3,334 | <issue_start>username_0: I am in my first semester of a computer engineering PhD in the USA. At my University during your first year they will pay for your expenses to attend, up to $1000.00, for a conference. Every year after that they will pay your expenses if you get a paper accepted.
I am wondering how others look at/find conferences that they feel are worth the monetary and time commitment for what they provide. My areas of interest are embedded systems, computer architecture, and security. I have found many conferences but am unsure of how I should vet the quality of these.
What criteria do others use when looking at conferences and judging their relevance to the area they address?
What opinion or otherwise do people have of academic conferences vs industry type conferences vs enthusiast type conferences?<issue_comment>username_1: There are many different types of conferences and many different reasons to go to a particular conference. The most relevant that I would say for your situation are:
* Flagship conferences that *everybody* in a field goes to because that's where everybody goes, and where research presented will get the greatest audience.
* Niche conferences and workshops that serve some particular smaller interest group. They are less prestigious, but are where the communities they serve have a lot of key interactions and get a lot of actual intellectual work done.
* Crap conferences that would like to fool you into believing that they are one of the first two.
Some good tactics for judging the quality of a conference:
1. Where do the people whose work you respect (particularly your advisor) publish and attend?
2. Where are the organizers and program committee members from? Are many of them from high-profile research institutions?
3. [Google Scholar metrics](http://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=top_venues&hl=en)
Given your early stage and breadth of interests, I would recommend going to one of the broad flagship conferences, where you can hear about lots of things from lots of different types of researchers and organizations. Those conferences often have a lot of industry attendance as well. I don't know your specific field too well, but even from outside I know that [USENIX](https://www.usenix.org/conference/atc15) is a large conference with a strong reputation. Still, use the heuristics I suggest and see if it's really the one you want...
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I worked as an administrator for the 21st McGill International Entrepreneurship conference and we listed our conference on a conference announcement directory called PaperCrowd.
It attracted several delegates from around the world. I found out it was in the same city I lived in and I applied for a job there and got it! I am now the proud community manager of PaperCrowd. We are working hard to improve the services for researchers worldwide.
You should try PaperCrowd - a global directory of academic research conferences. You can search by topics, geography and keywords for research conferences you are interested in such as law, legal etc.
Organizers add their events in a couple of minutes and it’s free. It’s restricted to academic research conferences.
It feels good working for a company that I have seen myself was effective.
<https://www.papercrowd.com/>
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/10/11 | 3,836 | 16,237 | <issue_start>username_0: About once a year, I end up with a section with a student who is well ahead of others in the course. Often, these are students auditing the course, but sometimes are senior students attending 100-level courses or students majoring in the subject attending a course for non-majors in a made-simpler-for-non-majors course.
Such students are often eager to learn, quick to volunteer to come to the board or volunteer their work for peers to check (e.g. in a writing course), active in discussions, and they tend to take charge of group work. This does not seem like behavior I should discourage. Yet, in such sections, I notice significantly reduced confidence, participation, and engagement among other students, who seem uncomfortable with having a strong student constantly outdo them. Other sections tend to have active lessons, with many students eager to volunteer or join in a discussion, but in these sections, the class atmosphere is quiet and I'm reduced to calling on names and getting unwilling participants to carry the course along.
What can I do to turn this situation around?<issue_comment>username_1: I'll offer two ideas; perhaps you can use them both:
---
One thing you can do is augment your class with on-line discussions, as a form of blended learning.
One advantage of asynchronous on-line discussions is that it's not as easy for one person to dominate the conversation. Also, if everyone is required to contribute to the discussion, no one can sit back and let the guru do the heavy lifting for them.
If your class is too big for all the students to answer the same question, the class can be put into groups, and each group can have their own shot at analyzing and answering the question.
---
During class time, when I've had a "resident expert" answering a lot of my in-class discussion questions, I've often let that person answer a question or two at the beginning. If they try to keep answering questions, though, I'll sometimes say something along the lines of, "Wait, you've had a turn; we need to get some of your classmates into the discussion now, too." Said in a friendly, pleasant and encouraging tone, it hasn't seemed to alienate the smart guy, and other students pick up on the cue that it's time for them to get involved.
I've also had some after-class discussions with these hard-chargers, to let them know I appreciate their enthusiasm, but it's best for everyone if they don't overdo it. That's usually been well-received.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: When I was a TA, I always found these types of students the most difficult to handle. You don't want to crush their enthusiasm, but you also don't want to let them dominate and make it harder for other students to learn. It's also important to remember that just being way out ahead of other students doesn't cause this phenomenon: you're dealing with somebody who is both ahead and feels a need either to show off or to receive affirmation from you the instructor.
Some tactics that I found effective were:
1. Establishing clear ground rules that people had to raise their hands to be acknowledged, rather than just shouting out. Then you need to become comfortable waiting long enough for other students to raise their hands too.
2. Saying things like "Everybody needs a chance to learn, so I'm going to make sure that we get some folks up to the board who haven't been there very often."
3. Rather than asking for volunteers, actively calling on students who have been silent. It's embarrassing for them, but if you do it kindly and make it into a guided learning experience at the board rather than a test of their abilities, it can be a very good thing.
4. Privately discussing with the enthusiastic student, something like: "I'm very pleased at how well you're mastering the material, and I need to make sure other students have a chance to have the same learning opportunities, so I'm going to call on you less often."
5. Giving "extra credit" work that the enthusiastic student can be working on to occupy themselves.
In all cases, what you want to emphasize is the importance of active learning by participation, and how it's important for all students to have those opportunities.
Addendum: I was talking about this with my wife and she told me about a tactic that she uses that I think is another excellent addition to the toolkit:
6. Divide the class up into rough geographic zones and call on zones round robin, e.g. "Left side answered the last question. Let's get an answer from the middle now."
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_3: Ideally, such a student wouldn't be in your course, they would be in an honors section or a senior/graduate level course that meets the requirements they are attempting to fulfil with your course while still being challenged. If you have an opportunity to identify such a student before the end of the add/drop period, you may recommend they make a change, or work with their advisor to give them an honors section while limiting their participation (so that others can contribute). I did such an honors course while sitting in on stadium hall sized lectures in my first year physics course at FSU, and my extra work consisted mostly of writing an on-topic paper graded by the same professor.
If it is too late for them to switch to a more challenging course, there's not much you can do, except to act fairly towards all of the students. You'll need to work harder at getting the others to participate. You could also give this student the attention they need outside of lectures, perhaps suggest to show up for your office hours, or speak to them before or after class.
Perhaps you could give the class, as an optional assignment, an opportunity to do a minor literature review of seminal works in the field, and you might communicate to your special student your expectations that they would want to do this. However, you can't force the student to do the optional assignment. But another possible upside for the optional assignment is that some of the others might surprise you with their self-motivation and thus build more confidence in their own abilities.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: College students realize that there will always be someone more knowledgeable out there. They know there are going to be people that are majors, retakers, old serious adults, or students with genius parents. If you want to get your other students to participate then just randomly call on people whether they raise their hands or not. Tell them to pick group leaders by rock paper scissors.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_5: I remember *being* that smartarse, and yes, they can be looking for approval or to show off but it depends.
If they're first year undergrads near the start of the year they may not be generally good at a lot of things outside the course, it can be a case of "Finally! finally something I can understand and really be good at." And they may be revelling in that unique experience. I wouldn't be too tough on that.
Further into the course if they're far ahead I'd suggest giving them something tougher to think about. They've read through all the sections you're covering in their own time, they're listening attentively but they're thinking about how it links up to something 3 chapters ahead. This is not going to help the other members of the class when that person asks questions that leave them lost.
My suggestion: Quietly give them something tough to chew on. Really tough. They're probably completing the assignments with ease, give them a challenge. It doesn't have to get them marks. If they're looking for approval or confirmation that they know what they're doing that will give it to them and it has the advantage that it keeps them advancing. If they're putting off other students actually talk to them quietly after class and tell them something similar to what you just said in this stackoverflow question and ask them to consciously avoid things which intimidate other students. They're not babies, they can understand.
Hell, give them a job tutoring undergrads in lower years.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_6: I am not an educator, so please take these suggestions with a grain of salt:
I think existing answers are off the mark, as they're focusing on altering the environment in a very artificial way for the quieter students. College is about learning life skills (not just academic ones) that will allow students to thrive in the real world, and they will need to deal with groups/teams of varying skill levels eventually. Meanwhile, existing answers all focus on punishing (in some way) the most successful students.
Instead I would focus on the root problem. There will always be someone better than us, and someone worse than us. We should see the latter as an opportunity to help another while taking pride in our own skills, and we should see the former as an opportunity to challenge ourselves against a superior opponent, all within a safe and comfortable atmosphere. Look for ways to encourage this sort of approach in the quieter students.
Specific suggestions:
* Perhaps you could do more group work, pairing stronger students with weaker ones so that the former can help the latter. Perhaps even formalize it with a 'peer mentoring' program.
* Observe interactions and insure stronger students are getting and using the opportunity to increase their own confidence by helping struggling peers, not by overpowering them.
* Give all experts the experience of failing safely, even yourself. Creating an accepting environment for mistakes can help reduce the fear of making them; the classroom should accept excellence as well as those at a lower standing, without it impacting their valuation of self.
* If you have the time, find specific skills that the weaker students are strong in, then give them the chance to shine in front of the class; use this to build confidence; consider making a point that everyone is strong in some areas and weak in others, a valuable life lesson.
* As an extension of the former, and alternative to the first, find pairings that allow each student to use their strengths to shore up the weaknesses of the other, and assign group work based on those pairings allowing both to shine.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_7: I was Adjunct Lecturer for some time in a technical field/institution and yes, I came across such type of students and situations.
What I've found out was that not strong students were feared to answer because they **maybe** say something "stupid" or "wrong" or anything that could be accompanied by a synonym of the previous adjectives. And, just by "luck", in such classes there always was a really good student who always knew the right answer
What I did to overcome such situations was to organize the lecture or the lab in order to actually looking for **wrong answers** in order to, on one hand, prove my point, and in other, motivate and make students to think about why I actually saying what I was saying in the lecture, i.e. what problem was solved with what they were going to learn in the lecture. So, if I was to point out the problem then I needed the problem and the problem was found in the wrong answers.
Thus, if the good student yield out the correct answer I accepted it. Actually, I was saying that this was the correct answer. But, just afterwards I asked "Although that this is correct, why is correct? What someone else would do? Why is wrong something else?" and trying to take answers from students that were not active in the lecture/lab. If the non-active students were not saying anything, then I asked "Why you do not say just what it comes to your mind", which most probably followed by "Because I do not want to say anything wrong". Such answer gave me the opportunity to "change the game" by pointing out really hard that "**everyone is born without knowing and there are not wrong/stupid/etc answers from people that learning**". When (finally) I got my wrong answer, I tried to: a) justify the student that gave that answer (because was a common answer, or an answer that was first came to mind), and b) start revealing the flaws of the wrong approach (and provide the path to the correct answer) with consecutive simple questions.
Although that such a strategy may took away some valuable time from a lecture, dialogs like the above were only held once or twice in the semester. Afterwards, most people were active and the good students were trying to actually go "deeper" in the problem than before. But, because "going deeper" required to find out what were the wrong approaches their "learning difference" from other students was diminished. This diminishing was happening because good students were actually waiting to listen my counter argument in the not-so-correct answers of their colleagues. By doing so (i.e. waiting for my counter argument), they do not yield out correct answers, they do not discouraging their colleagues and they learned to think one step ahead.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_8: I think that the biggest detriment to isolating or adopting teaching policies that ostracize the enthusiastic student is that it demonstrates to the quieter students that enthusiasm is discouraged. The best case scenario is that instead of quieting down the top performer, is to discover additional top performers. That way, it's not just one or two very enthusiastic students, but a whole majority. That way, it becomes easier to single out quieter students and approach them outside of class.
From my own experience, I was in awe of a classmate who knew the course and the text very well. It made me look at my study habits and try new ones. I figure, if he wasn't as active, or if he kept his abilities to himself, I would have been less enthusiastic with my studies.
And, as a matter of definition or etymology the definition of student (technically study, however the definition of student refers to the definition of study) is
>
> early 12c., "to strive toward, devote oneself to, cultivate" (translating Latin >occupatur), from Old French estudiier "to study, apply oneself, **show zeal for**; examine" (13c., Modern French étudier), from Medieval Latin studiare, from Latin studium "study, application," originally "**eagerness**," from studere "**to be diligent**" ("to be pressing forward"), from PIE \*(s)teu- (1) "to push, stick, knock, beat" (see steep (adj.)).
>
>
> Martha swanc and becarcade to geforðigene þan Hælende and his þeowen þa lichamlice behefðen. Seo studdede emb þa uterlice þing. [Homily for the Feast of the Virgin Mary, c.1125]
>
>
> From c.1300 as "**apply oneself to the acquisition of learning**, pursue a formal course of study," also "read a book or writings intently or meditatively." From mid-14c. as "reflect, muse, think, ponder." Meaning "regard attentively" is from 1660s.
>
>
>
(All bold is emphasis on my part)
<http://etymonline.com/index.php?term=study>
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_9: Students learn in different ways. Some like to talk out an explanation or answer and others like to reflectively think through their understanding. Sharing in a class of your peers (people who you want to think positively about you) can be difficult for many students, especially in a class larger than 20. One approach that has been documented as helpful for many students (and I use it as a staple approach) is the Think/Pair/Share structure. Ask the question, then have students write down **on paper** their ideas/thoughts/explanations. After a quiet minute, invite them to turn to someone nearby and together construct a stronger answer. After the students talk in pairs for 2-3 minutes, invite a couple of pairs to share their collective answer with the whole class. This is a structure with increasing risk (share with self, share with one other, then pair shares with whole class). I have found that after I carefully require the structure (e.g. keep everyone quiet during the reflective minute) several times, the students can execute the structure well and more students participate. I also am careful to explain why I want to use this structure often, rather than open questioning.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/10/11 | 3,150 | 13,456 | <issue_start>username_0: The primary method of instruction at most colleges is lecturing, where the professor delivers and explains a set of well-established knowledge to the students.
However, there are drawbacks to this: people have different goals, intellectual orientations, and levels of prior knowledge. What's more, the information delivered in these lectures is well established, well documented, and easily available online -- and for far less money than the average college tuition.
Can lectures be more effective than, say, reading a book oneself? I am unconvinced. Instead, I see people learning by imitation, reading, discussion, and practice. If education is a way to prepare for life outside of academia, shouldn't the method of instruction also reflect the ways people learn outside of that environment?
**What advantages (if any) does lecturing have, that make it worthwhile in an age where there are so many other options?** Is there any systematic, empirical evidence that supports the widespread use of lecturing?<issue_comment>username_1: I think the first critical false premise in your question is the notion that lectures are not frequently used outside of academia. Speaking as somebody who sees quite a bit of both academia and industry, as well as some of the government and amateur communities, I would say that the lecture is used nearly universally in every domain where one person is trying to convey information to a large group of people at the same time.
This is not to say that a lecture is always the right choice. There are, as you point out, a lot of different ways of conveying information and many of them are useful in the university setting as well. [Flipping the classroom](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom), for example, is something that many schools are experimenting with at all levels. That very overabundance of information that you point out as a value, however, is also a problem that a well-done lecture can solve.
Here is what a lecture does that is unique: within the sea of related information, a good lecture shows which exactly are the conceptual elements that a particular expert believes are most important about a topic, and then shows a well-developed way of understanding how they relate to one another. The format may be anything from chalk to powerpoint to documentary movie, and many good lectures incorporate elements of audience participation and embedded example problems to help further stimulate learning. In every case, however, the distinguishing feature of a lecture is that the class turns over its collective attention to direction by a single expert, and the way in which that attention is directed is a significant part of the value.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: While username_1's answer is excellent, I will add just two more points.
*Some* university educators simply do not understand pedagogy very well. That is, they spend their time improving their knowledge of their specific domain and do not focus on improving their knowledge about how to best facilitate student learning. *Some* educators also make the mistake thinking that their students have the same ability to "drink from a firehose" and if they just deliver the most important content then the students will be able to sort it out in their out-of-class studying. In that regard, a 1-2 hour lecture might save a student 10 hours of research time, especially if the student is unfamiliar with research (like a first or second year undergraduate). As pointed out in the answer I already referenced, these lecturing sessions could be recorded and moved out of the classroom (flipping), providing more time for discussion in class.
Lastly, and this partially repeats the sentiments of username_1, lecturing is great at some things. For example, I have some classes where we meet in two sessions per week. The first session is a lecturing session where I introduce them to some of the most important ideas they should be aware of. They are expected to then take those ideas, and do some research, applying the concepts to the real world. Then, the next session, is more of a seminar with much higher levels of interaction without any lecturing.
So, lecturing can be done for the wrong reasons but it also has its place.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: As an academic (a professor) I concur with your view. Lectures are not an effective way to transmit information to many students. That said, for some students it is a good way. But certainly for about 20% (just an approximation) of students lectures are a very unproductive way, and might even hinder their academic advancement. The reason for this is that about 20% of the population has cognitive difficulty in listening (e.g., ADD), so for such people lectures are only harmful.
I would argue that lectures are used because of historical reasons, and also because it is non-trivial to come up with a different method which is also reasonably economic (private lessons are better than lectures, but are not economic).
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_4: Inertia/tradition accounts for many things. "Doing things they way they've always been done" [sic] is usually considered defensible, too. Also, people have already-existing mental models for what a lecture should be like, often including specifics about the subject matter.
The fact that information is available on-line is not wildly different from the fact that information was available in universities' libraries. Yes, a sufficiently motivated person can simply go to the internet/library and find lots of information. A potential problem is that there is too much information, that it is fundamentally chaotic (despite our attempts to impose order or develop "search engines"), and fundamentally hard for a non-expert to evaluate. Even worse, a non-expert may fail to realize that they are failing to correctly evaluate information. :)
Still, yes, very many classes/lectures are boring, and attendance is often easily replaced by reading the designated textbook or other sources. However, in several decades of observation, many students (at all levels) either prefer or have become accustomed to a kind of passivity, so that they'd rather show up somewhere at a regularly scheduled time, see their fellow students, and have the pace and content dictated to them by even a fairly boring lecturer.
In my own student days, I did not like going to classes, for the obvious sorts of reasons: for one thing, if one *had* read the book, a slo-mo flawed, re-recital of it seems pointless in comparison to just re-reading at one's own speed. Second, if one found the material interesting, why stop? Why not read ahead? Why not look at other sources, too, for complementary viewpoints? Why not look at related stuff? (This was as feasible in libraries as it is on the internet, with perhaps two added advantages: there really was not much junk in libraries, since it was filtered, and, second, the chances of serendipitous discoveries in libraries was larger than on the internet.) Such a process inevitably makes the "canned" lectures seem crazily irrelevant.
(Also, years ago, libraries were some of the few reliably air-conditioned places!)
But let's ignore the problem of student passivity, and ask why/how a lecture \_could\_be\_ better than just reading a book or searching on the internet. Arguably, a lecture is *not* better if it just amounts to reading from the book, copying from it onto a blackboard, etc. I would claim that trying to make lectures simply present text-book material is a big mis-use of the medium! That is, systematic presentation of all the details belongs in a book or on-line, but not in a lecture. Oppositely, what could be in a lecture that could not be in a book or notes? "Affect", meaning intonation, gestures, facial expressions, theatrical effects, and so on, are hard to put into writing, but (by "lecturers" capable of it) can be put into a lecture. This includes reaction to facial expressions and body language of the audience/students, and conversational interaction if the group isn't too large. For example, lectures can include "pep talks" that would be hard to fit into writing. "Reassurance" can be done live better than in writing, I think.
Another feature is the "live/real-time" aspect: a lecturer (in mathematics, my field, for example) can literally *do* things in the lecture room, live, in real time, with voice-over narrative, in effect. That is, the audience can witness the genuine activity as exercised by an expert practitioner, with accompanying critical and methodological comments. Yes, up to a point, textbooks and monographs *could* be written in such a fashion, but it seems that stylistic pressures move them in the opposite direction, aiming for a sort of artificial perfection that can only be achieved by much editing! Too often it seems that writing aims to create impressive edifices rather than be accessible, helpful ... and a live lecturer can easily do better, if they try.
So, for my own lecturing, I definitely do think in terms of "adding value" beyond what students could derive from written sources, and in terms of using the medium in ways that distinguish it from static written sources (and not having a lecture be a bad re-copying of those written sources).
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_5: >
> Some may argue that lectures are more effective means of instruction than, say, reading a book by oneself. I am unconvinced, since I have not encountered lectures outside the educational system.
>
>
>
I am a bit surprised at this statement.
I work in industry. When I present the results of an analysis or pitch our product to a potential client, either on site or via a conference call, this is a lecture, usually with slides and with questions in between or at the end, but a lecture nonetheless - I *read at my audience*. Same for any earnings call by a CFO or CEO. Nobody disseminates a product pitch or their earnings numbers solely by distributing reading materials.
I would *definitely* "argue that lectures are (often) more effective means of instruction than, say, reading a book by oneself." Note the "often" I added. I fully agree that I'd prefer to get a lot of information I currently have to digest in the form of video tutorials rather in the form of printed matter.
But sometimes, and the math lectures I attended in my dissolute youth come to mind, it simply *is* far easier to learn if the material is presented by an experienced teacher at the blackboard. You can agree or not, but I'd say that the argument is not as outlandish as you seem to take it to be.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: A lecture to a live audience gives the lecturer the oportunity to "read" what is understood and what isn't, to field questions and adjust the material presented to the situation.
True, the lectures started out as a reader reading the text and the students writing it down as their own copy to study (before newfangled stuff like printing presses, or $DEITY forbid, Internet and web pages with class notes), and most are still handled mostly like that. As to why my students show up to class without peeking at the notes, and insist in copying my scribblings when the notes are much better organized, beats me.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_7: Reading a technical book (or any written source) is an art that is not as easy to master as it might seem. One should know (or, better say, feel) what their mindset ought to be. It's some kind of the right “viewing position” that one should learn to have. Simply put: reading a book is an act, not a passive process, and so one needs to learn that art just like one needs to learn doing carpentry. Lectures certainly ought to help with that.
In other words: a human is a guide to a book; before you hear from someone knowledgeable, you may well look at the contents in the book from the point of view of the wrong assumptions, inclinations, etc, and not even realise you had a choice where you in fact made that choice incorrectly. There's a lot of talking about “body language”, “intonations”, “showing what is important”, and so on, but I think the honest answer is that we don't know why it happens. Just that's how it is. Just we humans are able to influence one another's mindsets in ways that are totally unpredictable and sometimes useful. We talk differently than read a completed work.
We still don't know how brains work. So, we don't need to be too enchanted with the assumption that in learning, people just “copy” some “information” from one brain to another. Practice shows that the process is more complex…
PS: I just thought of an example where that matters: a lecturer might often mention, when exposing the material, some “dull details” about how perceive the material, that just don't fit into a completed written work (they would look wrong there, or would be understood incorrectly, or would be blended with the material itself), but are very good for forming the right “point of view” about the subject, and so in conversation (after all, a live teacher talks to live students, therefore that's a conversation, in a way) are not really dull at all. It might be some advice on learning, like for example “*when reading a mathematical exposition, stop right at the first thing that you don't understand and ask a question*” and many others of this kind.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/10/12 | 1,346 | 5,632 | <issue_start>username_0: I've been writing a big grant proposal for the last few months and I am almost done. I asked my advisor to read it and give me advice on content, and he has yet to read it. He's always saying he'll "read it later" or "he's busy".
I finally got a meeting with him this past week and he says he will read it this weekend. As we're wrapping up, he says it will look good on my CV to have "contributed" to a grant that got funded.
Here's the problem though: I've written the entire grant proposal and done all the literature research for it. The only tangible contribution my advisor has made is to tell me which protein he wants to study. He's also an "absentee advisor" and I do all my own experimental design and troubleshooting. Actually,the post doc in our lab has been giving me all the help/advice.
How should I handle this situation? I realize I could just give him the credit, but how would this reflect on my future career opportunities?<issue_comment>username_1: As far as I know, a grant is given almost always to a PI (principal investigator, i.e. head of the lab). Sometimes postdocs can also be listed as PIs, but I don't remember seeing a grad student as a PI on a grant. So even if technically you wrote the grant proposal, the PI will receive the grant.
This means that he is the one that can write in his CV that he got the grant, and you can write that you wrote the proposal. You cannot write that you are the one that got the grant if you are not listed on it, regardless of whether you wrote the grant proposal.
In this sense, a grant is different than a research paper, where you get credit according to your contribution. **A grant is given not as a prize for writing a good proposal, but as funding of specific future work executed by a specific person/lab**. I am not sure what the guidelines are for grant proposal writing, but I would not be surprised if this is considered ok in terms of the guidelines. Of course I am assuming your advisor read it thoroughly and thought it is a good research plan.
Also, it is very possible that your PI actually did have a major contribution to getting the grant. The funding agency takes into considerations several factors such as the grant proposal but also the PI's record.
Having said all this, you should definitely write in your CV that you wrote a successful grant proposal by yourself (you can consult with your advisor on how to write this in the most impactful way).
Disclaimer: I don't have any details on the specific grant, so I may be completely mistaken...
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: The US National Science Foundation [requires acknowledgement](http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/pappguide/nsf14001/gpg_1.jsp#ID3) in the proposal of anyone other than the PI or co-PI that contributed to the writing of the proposal text. I don't know when this criteria was introduced, but it's been around since at least the [2004 version of the GPG](http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/gpg/nsf04_23/1.jsp#ID3). Almost no one knows it's there, though, considering the surprise expressed by folks I've shown it to. I also don't know if other US agencies or agencies in other countries have this requirement, but you should look at the proposal preparation instructions of the agency you are applying to.
I don't recommend starting the conversation with your supervisor by mentioning this requirement, but you should have it in your back pocket.
The US NSF leaves the determination of who is eligible be a Principal Investigator up to each submitting organization. At my university, all faculty are automatically eligible, as are those with the titles Research Associate, Research Scientist, Senior Research Scientist, and Research Professor. Others may be given eligibility on a proposal-by-proposal basis. This sometimes includes graduate students, but it is very rare.
Technically, grants from the US NSF (and presumably other agencies) are not given to the PI, but to the organization for which they work. Traditionally, these grants are administered by the PI and, as a courtesy, awards may be allowed to go with a PI if they leave a university to work for another, but this is not guaranteed.
You should definitely put your writing contribution on your CV, but be clear that you were not the PI or co-PI unless you were.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: Following username_2's comment, I actually ran into the NSF requirement to list all contributors the hard way back when I was a graduate student.
Several of us (faculty and non-faculty alike) had worked together on an NSF proposal. We weren't aware of the requirement and couldn't figure out how to officially list me in an appropriate blank on the NSF forms, so we basically shrugged and let it be, figuring that having my work prominently featured and my closely associated faculty members as PIs would be clear enough.
To our horror, rather than grant reviews, we received an official investigative inquiry into academic dishonesty and plagiarism! The grant reviewers, not seeing my name, were concerned that my faculty collaborators had stolen my work. Since everybody involved was actually well intentioned and close collaborators, we got it sorted out quickly enough, and learned to our great embarrassment how we should have done it (I'm ashamed to say I can't remember the exact details on the forms).
Needless to say, we still didn't get the grant, though the next time around we did it right and did get funded. In my C.V., I most certainly list myself as an author of that grant, while also marking the appropriate other authors as the PIs.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/10/12 | 440 | 2,015 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm a computer science student in my third year of undergrad. I've been taking math classes on the side and will have finished most of the applied math major by the time I graduate.
I'm wondering how difficult it would be to get into graduate school for applied math with a computer science undergrad degree. I could possibly switch over to the applied math major if that would make graduate school admissions easier, but I'm wondering if it would also be fairly possible with a computer science undergrad.<issue_comment>username_1: There's no reason why you couldn't get into an applied math graduate program with a CS bachelor's degree. Some parts of some applied mathematics programs are called computer science in other programs (and vice versa). Many applied mathematics students come from engineering, physics, CS, and other undergraduate programs.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I did this myself (a long time ago, in the 1980's.) I completed the requirements for a BS in Mathematics and a BS in Computer Science, but I took the Computer Science degree because it was more employable. A few years later after I'd had some experience in software development positions, I decided to go back to graduate school in applied mathematics. I was accepted to every graduate program that I applied to.
Some key things to do:
1. Make sure in your application cover letter/statement of purpose to explain that you have taken a lot of mathematics at the undergraduate level. This will help if the reader of the application doesn't bother to read your transcript and see the mathematics course work.
2. Get a good score on the GRE subject test in mathematics as well as on the GRE general tests.
3. Get letters of recommendation from your former mathematics professors, particularly professors in applied mathematics.
4. Connect your background in computer science to applied mathematics. You're in a good position to specialize in numerical computing as a graduate student.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/10/12 | 393 | 1,623 | <issue_start>username_0: In a formal academic writing (in the everyday sense), is it appropriate to use phrases such as "step out on" to titillate the reader?
Since I am not a native English speaker, and since I have not yet accurately catched the general range of humor in the US, I wonder if using such phrases would be instead considered as a disrespect?<issue_comment>username_1: Your first priority should be to convey your ideas to the reader. Given that I, and many others, have absolutely no idea what "step out on" means, I would suggest that you avoid the phrase. On the other hand, I think humour is occasionally acceptable, but it needs to be timeless humour.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: There are many examples of humour in academic writing, both in journal articles and in textbooks. One of my favourite is a note on p. 33 of Gregory's *Classical Mechanics* (Cambridge University Press):
>
> Be a hero. Obtain this formula yourself without looking at the text.
>
>
>
**But:**
1. Especially in a journal article, where the number of pages is limited, the piece of humour should anyway convey information which is relevant to the topic of interest.
2. The piece of humour should not be rude or offensive and should be clearly understandable by the readers without looking up at dictionaries like Urban Dictionary. Many of the word usages reported in Urban Dictionary are local and not very widespread, but journal papers and textbooks are firstly reviewed and then read by people all over the world: How many people would properly understand your piece of humour?
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/10/13 | 1,780 | 7,299 | <issue_start>username_0: Is it an acceptable practice to use simple graphics found on Wikipedia (and hence in Wikimedia Commons) in a conference poster?
From the legal point of view, this seems to be fine, as long as the image is properly attributed. Presumably it should suffice to mention the source in acknowledgements section. Or am I missing something?
How would this be perceived? Would it come across as unprofessional? The poster I am preparing is for an interdisciplinary and not too formal event, and the graphic I'd like to add is meant to illustrate a basic mathematical notion. (However, more general answers are very welcome.)<issue_comment>username_1: The [primary issues](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/19083/are-there-instances-where-citing-wikipedia-is-allowed) with using Wikipedia for academic research are that it's a tertiary source, and there's no credibility/quality assurance.
So, you should make sure that
* If the image contains intellectual content that requires citation, you should cite a primary source for that content.
* The image (including its factual/intellectual content) meets academic standards of quality and accuracy.
Assuming these are satisfied, reusing images from Wikimedia (or a similar source) is not inherently unprofessional. Of course, if the image is of poor quality or doesn't fit in well with your poster, it will look unprofessional - but this would also be true if you had created the image yourself.
This is, of course, assuming that the image you are using *is* in Wikimedia commons ([not all images on Wikipedia are](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Images)), and
* you follow the [license requirements](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reusing_content_outside_Wikimedia) (protects against legal/copyright problems)
* you correctly attribute the source (protects against ethical/plagiarism concerns)
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Adding some details to the previous response, I'd like to stress that many Wikipedia images come from [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org), and Commons is a different project than Wikipedia.
It is mainly a repository of free multimedia files
>
> "that makes available public domain and freely-licensed educational media >content to all, and that acts as a common repository for the various projects of >the Wikimedia Foundation." The expression "educational" is to be understood >according to its broad meaning of "providing knowledge; instructional or >informative". [1]
>
>
>
Thus, it is possible to find great images in Commons, that come from various sources (like NASA, or other institutions like museums, galleries, libraries, academic databases, academic journals). There are [great pictures](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Featured_pictures) on Commons.
Now, you are talking about "simple graphic", and the specific image is "meant to illustrate a basic mathematical notion". [2]
There are many professionals who use their free time to provide Commons (and hence Wikipedia articles) with illustrative, clear graphics.
I can't think of no valid reason **not** to use a graphic meant to illustrate the exact concept you want to illustrate, and meant to be used and shared for free, just because there would be the word "wikimedia" in the credits.
If the images suits your need and you feel it professional enough, please use it and give credit.
[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Commons#Policies>
[2] Here's the [Mathematics category](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Mathematics).
*Full disclosure*: I'm a >10 years old volunteer in Wikimedia projects, and I've also been very active in movement roles like being president of a Wikimedia national chapter.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: Simple: it's unprofessional if you do it unprofessionally.
The first way to be unprofessional is to not respect copyright, moral rights and verifiability. Just use what is useful, always cite your sources and the copyright license.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_4: The answers here are excellent, but a few points. (This from the perspective of someone who knows Wikipedia policy and Creative Commons licenses well; I do not claim any special expertise in academic standards that might go above and beyond the legal requirements, though.)
1. The Wikipedia page or the Wikimedia Commons page will almost always have detailed information about the file's license, about its author, and about its origin. You should consult that information as a starting point, and can have a fairly high degree of confidence in its accuracy -- but to meet an academic, professional, or legal standard, you should also find ways to confirm this information for yourself. The information is intended to be helpful in that effort, but is not necessarily authoritative.
2. When doing that verification, be aware that some of Wikipedia's sources -- including U.S. federal agencies and major museums -- provide deceptive or incomplete information. In a comment thread above, it's been noted that images in the public domain may be marked with "licenses" or other text that indicates they are only to be used for non-profit purposes, or they are not to be modified, etc. Sadly, such cases are not uncommon. Those claims are *inaccurate*. If a file is truly in the public domain, no such requirement can be legally binding. (If you're in such a situation and it's important, you should check with a lawyer.)
3. Many (but not all) files will require attribution (the "BY" component of CC BY or CC BY-SA licenses). However, that attribution is to the *copyright owner*, not to Wikipedia or Wikimedia. As a practical matter, Wikimedia's Terms of Use suggest a link to the Wikimedia page as the minimal/standard way to fulfill that attribution (which is important in the case of anonymous/pseudonymous contributors, whose Wikimedia avatar is the only available method of attribution). But in many cases, a user provides their legal name; and in some, they even indicate a preference for how to write the attribution, perhaps including a business name (as I have done [here](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ward_Cunningham_with_Hypercard_stack.jpg#Licensing "here"), for example). If for some reason you prefer not to credit "Wikipedia" or "Wikimedia", that may be just fine. Look closely. Also, beware of the (thankfully rare) files you may find on Wikimedia Commons that are available under *only* the GFDL license; its attribution requirements are highly arcane and cumbersome!
4. The "Share-Alike" (SA) component of a license commonly used on Wikimedia has not been discussed. It's rare that it would impact a project like this, but it could. If your poster is *derived from* a file with such a license (which is a different standard than merely *including* it), then your poster must be made available with the same license.
Disclosure was brought up in a comment thread above, so a few points about myself:
* I'm not a lawyer
* I'm one of many co-authors of the [Wikimedia/Wikipedia Terms of Use](https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Terms_of_use)
* I run a training & consulting company focused on Wikipedia
* I'm the editor of the Wikipedia Signpost newsletter.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/10/13 | 794 | 3,709 | <issue_start>username_0: I have presented a paper at a conference and received a certificate proving that I was a presenter. The conference does not have an English agenda, so it would not be easy for an application committee to find proof that I was the one who presented it online. I am now submitting the paper as one of my writing samples for a Ph.D. application. Should I attach the presenter certificate to the paper, in order to prove to the committee that I was really the one who presented it?<issue_comment>username_1: As per the answer to your [previous question](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27901/how-to-prove-that-papers-were-presented-when-conference-programs-are-not-in-engl), you are not required to spontaneously supply proof for everything in your CV, and it would look extremely unusual to attempt to do so in this case.
The fact that you *could be* asked to substantiate anything written in your CV, and the consequences of subsequently being caught in a lie, are considered enough of a deterrent to prevent people from lying about their credentials. The standard practice in academia is *not* to include "proof" of everything on a CV unless explicitly asked for proof of some kind.
So in answer to your question of whether you should merge the "certificate of being a presenter" into the paper presented at the conference as part of your PhD application: No, you should not. You should not submit such a "certificate" *at all* unless you are explicitly asked for it, and I have never heard of anyone being asked for such a thing.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: One thing to keep in mind is that certificates from a conference are easy to fake: anyone can make a plausible-looking certificate on their own computer, and the admissions committee will have no idea what a real certificate would look like. (And even if the admissions committee somehow knew what it should look like, an applicant could copy/modify someone else's certificate.) This makes them almost completely useless for verification. The certificates may satisfy bureaucratic requirements among those who use them, but in practice they won't actually prove anything.
I would recommend against including these certificates with your application. It looks suspicious to me, like you're presenting it as stronger evidence than it actually is. In particular, people might wonder whether you are trying to prevent a more detail investigation by preemptively offering a certificate.
However, this isn't a particularly important issue, since the admissions committee probably isn't worried about whether you actually presented the paper at this conference. A conference presentation is not meaningful or worthwhile for its own sake, regardless of quality. There are conference with low standards (where bad work is sometimes presented) or no standards at all (where anyone can present whatever they like). Instead of being worried about whether you presented the paper, the admissions committee will instead wonder whether presenting the paper means anything. That's much more subtle question, since the only way to convince them that the quality is high is if someone knows enough about the conference to judge its quality and is trusted by the committee. In practice, the way this typically works is that if the committee really wants more information, they find a member of the department who has a contact in the country in question and ask them for their opinion of the conference. (This can also lead to verifying attendance if necessary, since the contact will presumably have the appropriate language skills and can also get in touch with the organizing society.)
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/10/13 | 759 | 3,425 | <issue_start>username_0: I would like to know if it is possible to get into top 10 engineering schools for MS/Phd program without any publications?<issue_comment>username_1: The admissions process for graduate school is complicated. I am not aware of any admissions committee that requires prior publications to be accepted. Admissions decisions are not so much based on the presence/absence of publications but on the extent to which the application demonstrates an ability to conduct research. Prior publications can demonstrate an ability to conduct research, but do not necessarily guarantee it. The lack of publications does not mean you cannot conduct research, but does mean you need to demonstrate research potential in another way (e.g., letters of recommendation).
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: In my experience, most undergraduates, even excellent ones with strong research potential, do not publish. The reason is simple: undergraduates usually have to spend a lot of time on classes and don't have much time available for research, even if they're very good at it. The likelihood of both producing a significant publishable result and seeing it in print before applying to grad school is simply not very large. Even if you do get a publication, it's not obvious whether it's due to your research talent or due to your supervisor placing you on exactly the right project.
That said, getting involved in research as an undergraduate is the best thing that you can do if you have interest in graduate school. Not only will it put you in a position where a professor can give you a good recommendation for your research work, but it will also help you figure out if you actually *want* to subject yourself to the grueling realities of a Ph.D. program. And who knows, you might even get some publications!
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: Faculty in those institutions have their own research agendas, and yes, there are very awesome undergraduates who do not have any publications who land the dream of the Ph D. And this is a top institution I have observed my friends get into without the publications. This said, the work performed in undergrad is your CV. The projects that you chose to undertake for grades, the extracurricular activities you chose to participate in--- everything about you that you choose to present in the application process determines how persuasive you are to the potential faculty member.
The more that your interests and skills match the needs and research agendas of the professors, the better chance of convincing them that you're worth their time and money.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_4: Faculty on the admissions panel for a department typically assume that undergraduates did not do any of the "heavy lifting" on any paper they are on. Rather, they assume the PI/grad student/etc. had the idea, did most of the experiments, wrote the paper, and that the undergraduate may have assisted in parts of the experiments that were routine. *This may not be the case*, and if so is hopefully said in the letter of rec. But it is what is generally assumed (and honestly, what is typically true).
So to answer your question: no, publications are typically not required for admission to a good PhD program.
Some fellowships (NSF, Hertz, etc.) do have a bias towards published undergraduates however, although it's also not a requirement.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/10/13 | 874 | 3,681 | <issue_start>username_0: I am applying to PhD programs in the US.
I am wondering if there is a default decision imposed on international applicants. This question may sound ridiculous, but, I still ask here because I have seen someone (a claimed PhD student who has been involved in graduate admission, for now I cannot recall clearly the website) on the internet said that every international applicant is assumed rejected.
What goes on in the admission committee members' heads? Specifically, is it true for international applicants that the committee member picks up an application, and says "Unless I find something good in this application I'll reject it"? (This paragraph is quoted and adapted from Willie Wong's comment below.)<issue_comment>username_1: It is a tremendous generalization to speak of all programs having the same default decision, or all members of an admissions committee in a program having the same default decision, or even to assume the existence of a default decision at all.
In reality, a more likely consideration an admissions committee member might use is, "Does this candidate have similar credentials and experience to successful PhD students we have admitted in the past?" (i.e., no "default" decision.)
However, if we're going to generalize *and* assume the existence of a default decision:
* For programs in which there are a large number of applicants for relatively few positions, the default decision for *any* applicant is "reject, unless the applicant is extremely strong."
* For programs in which there are relatively few applicants for a large number of positions, the default decision is "accept, unless there is some evidence this student is unsuitable for the program."
Programs at top-ranked departments, in fields where PhDs are in high demand, and where PhD students are generally fully funded, are more likely to fall in the first category.
Programs at lower-ranked departments, in fields where PhDs are not in high demand, and where students usually fund themselves, are more likely to fall in the second category.
The nationality of the applicant is not generally relevant in the "default" decision, barring exceptional circumstances (e.g., admissions committees in nuclear engineering at U.S. universities may reject Iranian students by default since 2012 because they will be [ineligible for visas](http://iran.usembassy.gov/reshtehvisa.html).)
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Not at all true. I am from India and I do know people who have joined Stanford, Berkeley, Rice, Purdue, Maryland etc. for PhD
In fact, I myself was offered PhD in 2 universities but I didn't accept it because I wasn't offered any funding.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: The problem that international students face, applying to US institutions, is that they may come from schools that we, in the States, are unfamiliar with, and have letters from professors we don't know. The students who apply from Cambridge, Oxford, Sorbonne, IIT, etc., they get looked over very seriously. But we have no way to judge the quality of these other, less recognizable, schools. So, given this imperfect information, and the finite number of positions, we may elect to take students from second tier, but familiar, US schools, over these unfamiliar international students.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: This is an absurd claim! I am an international student who has got acceptance from 5 US Ph.D. programs. I have my friends who are doing their Ph.D. in top US schools. There are lots of international students in all the US universities! Don't listen to that guy, make a good profile and apply. Good luck.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/10/13 | 1,450 | 5,853 | <issue_start>username_0: Recently, I contacted a publisher about the draft of a book that I wrote about a year ago. I found their advertisement over the net. This is a scientific book that I have worked on for about two or three years and have revised it more than four times.
The publisher proposed that if I pay a certain amount of money that they can publish my book in a month or two.
Does this kind of pay-to-publish or self-publishing of books confer any reputation in academia? What are the advantages and disadvantages to doing so?<issue_comment>username_1: The value of a pay-to-publish book is approximately the same as any other pay-to-publish material.
As described in [this answer](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/7911/11365), the only way for someone to judge a non-peer-reviewed publications is to
>
> Read them, see what they're worth.
>
>
>
So, if this book attracts a large number of readers in your academic community and they are impressed, it will enhance your reputation. This is not likely, unless you are already well-known in your field.
If people read the book and think it's bad, it will detract from your reputation.
If very few people bother to read it (which is the most likely case), it will confer (at best) zero benefit to you and will be a waste of money.
It may also confer negative reputation benefit. People who don't read the book may assume that the book is bad, and that if it was really good, you wouldn't have had to pay-to-publish.
For further reading, there's a relevant article over at [InsideHigherEd](https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/07/17/self-publishing-option-academics-periphery).
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: I would recommend that you ask yourself a question: why do I want this book "officially" published? You could, after all, just make the material free online via arXiv or as a webpage or an archival technical report of various types depending on its contents and your situation.
* Prestige of having a published book? A pay-to-publish press will generally give you *negative* credibility, since there are so many publishers that will publish your book without making you pay (including lots of dodgy low-quality ones that will publish pretty much anything). Pay-to-publish smells like desperation or resume-padding.
* Money from sales/royalties? If they thought it was going to make money, they would be paying you, not the other way around.
* Higher visibility? A pay-to-publish press will generally not be any good at promoting your work. They're not going to invest any real money in promotion if they aren't expecting to make significant money from sales.
Serious and reputable academic publishing houses are always looking for good books to publish. The right ones for your field will generally have booths at the major conferences in the field, with representatives that you can talk to.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: In all areas of publishing these days (academic and nonacademic, fiction and nonfiction, books and periodicals), there is a great blurring of the formerly sharp lines between what used to be referred to as "vanity presses" and legitimate publishers. Even within traditional publishing, things are blurry. For example, World Scientific seems to publish some legitimate academic work, but it also publishes crank material by kooks. Your academic reputation is a vaguely defined thing that exists in the minds of your colleagues. Some of these colleagues will be more conservative and backward-looking than others.
One thing that I think should be much more clear-cut is that it is extremely foolish to pay someone to produce and distribute your book. There are zero-cost options such as lulu.com.
Another no-brainer is to do your homework and make sure that the people you're talking to are not an exploitative or abusive operation. Abusive practices are extremely common in self-publishing.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: Virtually none.
The main difference between academic/university presses and trade presses (including vanity presses and self-publishing) are that **academic presses engage in a process of peer review** before selecting which material to publish.
That is, academic presses will send your ms out to peer academics who then provide reader reports that will be used by the academic presses' board of directors/editors (usually academics themselves) to make the decision to publish the book or not -- usually after revisions indicated by said external readers.
This puts a book from an academic press in the category of peer-reviewed publications.
Note that there are some second and lower tier colleges don't care where a scholar's book comes from. If you suspect you are in one of these colleges -- ask your mentors and senior colleagues what you should do.
p.s. Once you have a certain degree of fame, you can publish with trade presses. <NAME> really doesn't need the CV boost that might have happened if *A Brief History* had been published by U-Cambridge Press rather than Bantam Books. And if you are in fields that view books with disdain (say... physics) then it wouldn't really matter where or even if you published a book.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: Do not deal with publishers who ask money from you upfront.
Never, ever.
If you are an established academic you will be approached by reputable publishers who will pay you (albeit not much).
Your reputation is unlikely to be affected, as the book is likely to sink into oblivion unnoticed. (This remark is not a negative reflection on the book you wrote; it happens to almost all textbooks, including very good ones.) However, as far as your CV is concerned, Oxford (Princeton, etc) University Press will look more impressive than the name of some fly by night vanity press.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/10/13 | 1,455 | 5,926 | <issue_start>username_0: When I look into a specific problem over Google Scholar and simple Google Search, I find many related publications from publishers other than IEEE, ACM, Elsevier, Springer etc.
Usually the authors come from Indian, Chinese, Arabic institutions. My initial instinct is to ignore them, however I always feel as if there might be something important.
What is the right thing to do in such cases?<issue_comment>username_1: There are a lot of good publications in the world that are not published by mega-publishers. Some of them you've never heard of because they are regional or specific to certain subfields, but are still very good. It's also often difficult for people from certain countries to publish in mainstream conference venues due to visa issues. For example, IEEE and ACM usually require at least one author to be present in person, and that may simply be impossible for, say, a group of Iranian authors and a conference being held in the U.S. Likewise, the cost of travel is often prohibitive for authors from the developing world.
That said, there's also a lot of junk publications in junk venues, and even something like [the IEEE stamp doesn't mean you're reading a real paper](http://retractionwatch.com/2014/02/24/springer-ieee-withdrawing-more-than-120-nonsense-papers/).
So how should you evaluate a paper in a dubious venue? Just like you would any other paper:
* Is it on target with what you are looking for?
* Are the results significant?
* Is the data credible?
* Is it part of a network of related papers building toward the presented result?
Publications in dubious venues are just much more likely to fail these tests.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Back in the old days before online publication and widespread indexing of journal articles, readers depended on journal publishers to curate the research papers and select the best papers for publication. Now, there are many more places to publish, and the number of papers being published has grown dramatically. More so than in the past, good papers are published in obscure journals and bad papers are sometimes published in prestigious journals.
In evaluating the quality of a paper, you're largely on your own. However, one thing that you can do now that you couldn't easily do in the past is to check how many other authors have cited the paper that you're looking at. If the paper that you're looking at is widely cited by other authors (and the citations are not negative ones), then there's a good chance that the paper is reasonably trustworthy.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: At this point, for almost any field worth doing research in there is just *too much literature* for anyone, even an expert, to keep up with. In the field that I work in on the order of 100 papers are published a week - I could literally read all day and still not be caught up.
Instead of this, I have found much more use in following particular groups whose work I have found useful in the past (some outside of the US/Europe axis). So, if one of these (approximately 100) groups publishes a paper in a non-major journal, I am more apt to read it. Along with this, I *don't* read everything in the major journals of the field, either. This might help if you don't want to completely ignore non-major publishers but also don't want to spend your whole life reading.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: You should have a basic workflow for assessing the merit of a resource. If it's from an unknown journal or seems a bit dodgy, I would do a quick scan of the abstract, introduction, methods and conclusion (if they don't exist then there's a red flag). Also, what resources are listed in the references/bibliography? If they are all low-quality (the MSM, other unknown journals, Wikipedia) then I'd quickly move on.
*But*, if the writing is clear, the research aim, hypotheses/questions, analysis and findings appear credible, there are good quality references cited, *and* it is relevant to the research you are doing---always ask 'how is this relevant to my question?'---then I'd read deeper and errr... Google the author to find out a bit more about him/her and the institution to which s/he belongs.
As you get further into your reading and your field you will be able to assess the quality of the resource quickly.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: Google has recently done an analysis of citation trends, and found that citations to "less" prestigious journals are actually increasing:
[Rise of the Rest: The Growing Impact of Non-Elite Journals](http://arxiv.org/abs/1410.2217)
An extract from the above study:
*"... now that finding and reading relevant articles in non-elite journals is about as easy as finding and reading articles in elite journals, researchers are increasingly building on and citing work published everywhere. Considering citations to all articles, the percentage of citations to articles in non-elite journals went from 27% in 1995 to 47% in 2013. Six out of nine broad areas had at least 50% of citations going to articles published in non-elite journals in 2013."*
Additionally, in my personal experience (15+ years of computer science research), I've found that the breadth of ideas is considerably enhanced if one makes some effort to go beyond the so-called "top" journals, while still staying aware of publications in "top" journals.
A lot of the elite-type publications can be quite political, in the sense that stuff won't get published in them (ie. get past the reviewers) unless it follows the fashionable-approach-of-the-day and cites the "right" papers. This can lead to a reduction of new ideas and/or only incremental improvements of existing methods.
As a consequence, some of the less "prestigious" journals can in fact be a breath of fresh air, where some of the more risky, newer, and/or alternative methods are explored.
Upvotes: 4 |
2014/10/13 | 1,618 | 6,970 | <issue_start>username_0: Note: I'm not an academic, but I had a student like this as a colleague while in high school (12-18 in a school for students with Asperger's)\* myself and I think that this is a worthwhile subject to discuss.
Sometimes you have one or two REALLY shy students in a class with a small headcount. Students that never raise their hands in class, never ask questions, never notify that they have a problem,... The really severe cases will internally panic when you ask them a question and just shut down completely, not even making a sound or a response.
They aren't bad students, far from it. They make their assignments, score well on tests and succeed in the exercises. They just are REALLY passive in the classroom, to the point of almost starting to cry when the teacher asks them something. They also only have that problem in class: when they're among friends during non-class time, like lunch or break, they're quite open and talk rather freely.
As an example, the student from above was so shy that he couldn't introduce himself during the very first week. In the first 2 years, he couldn't give any public speeches, even after much encouragement from the teacher. You couldn't get any more than 2 consecutive words out of him. When the teacher addressed him because they wanted to involve him, he did the above mentioned shutdown, even after repeated encouragement. He loosened up somewhat over the years, but it was still such a surprise when he first willingly raised his hand (sometime in the 4th year), that he got a positive note in his weekly report just for that.
The problem is that it's not always immediately obvious if the student struggles with something. Sometimes, a student like this hopelessly fails an entire class because he didn't understand something from the first year and was too shy to ask for help.
What methods can a teacher use for students like this?
---
\*While I mention a student from SEN education, this question also can apply to non-SEN students. And while this question mentions a high-school student (which I understand is not entirely on-topic in here), it also applies to higher education with smaller groups.<issue_comment>username_1: I think stating very clearly that you are available to answer questions (and not just while in class) like office hours or before/after class is important. Some students are more comfortable with email, make sure they know they have your email and that it's ok to use it. Give some positive reinforcement when students ask questions.
I teach graphic design so I don't have a lot of students (20 at most usually) and a lot of classroom time is dedicated to problem-based learning and most of my teaching is coaching. I go see every student to check how they're doing and ask if they have any questions. It's difficult for them to get their work criticized in front of everyone at first so I'll do small group meetings instead of whole class presentations.
I think most shy people can open up when they're around people they trust so I think establishing trust with the student as a teacher is crucial. You can make them work in small teams so they get to know each other better and build up slowly from there.
I don't think it's something you can fix in a single course so there is only so much you can do without affecting the whole classroom.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: When you pose a question, have students discuss their answer in pairs or small groups for a few minutes before you call on someone. Thus, students present the group's answer, not their own, so they feel less on the spot. Plus, answers tend to be better, and students have learned from the discussion.
This is sometimes called **Peer Instruction**.
There are other proven techniques for having students work in small groups, too - see **Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL)**, **Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL)**, etc.
Note that "shyness" can also be a cultural issue, not just an individual issue.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Think also how you react to questions or answers from the bolder students. Even the stupid questions. While I was not "shutdown"-type of shy when I was younger, much of my participation depended on how the general atmosphere was.
If I had to fear that my question or answer would get negative reaction, I would not ask or answer voluntarily. Don't trust that students will know what is stupid question and what is not. Shy person might quite likely fear that his/her question is stupid or answer is wrong, even if it would not be. So if they have seen you react negatively to "legitimately" stupid question (and by reacting negatively I mean things like sighing or comments such as "I **just** explained this..." or similar type) they probably won't ask their question.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_4: I am a college student very similar to this. I absolutely love [Piazza](http://www.piazza.com/ "Piazza"),
a web tool that allows professors to create very functional online forums for classes- like Moodle forums, except they actually work. I've used this both in entirely online classes and in large lecture sections, and I find it tremendously valuable.
My favorite thing about it is that it gives the professor the option to allow students to ask/ answer questions anonymously. This is wonderful for asking questions that you think are stupid, which are usually the ones that need to be asked the most. Conversations I've had with other students (or with profs or TA's) on Piazza have saved my grades on many assignments.
Whether someone chooses to use Piazza or something else entirely, I heartily recommend enabling some kind of supervised online communication with (and among) your students. Not all of them will use it, but the ones that need it will be grateful.
EDIT: This isn't an advertisement. I don't know how to prove that, but can you recommend stylistic changes I could make to my response that would sound less like an ad?
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: One method that may work when nothing else does is to give the student a question you are going to ask in class, along with the answer, in advance. This can help the student focus on solving their participation problem because any subject matter difficulties are removed.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_6: I hand out poker chips. When the student has spoken they turn it in. Each student needs to contribute to the discussion as we are doing critiques of work. This helps me easily keep track of who hasn't spoken. The objective and expectation is clear to the student what is being demanded. I've been surprised by how well this works with very shy students. Holding the chip in your hand, helps with the anxiety, and you see you aren't the only one. These are post college students, mostly from foreign countries. More and more I see the tricks from elementary school work really well with adults.
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/10/13 | 1,036 | 4,466 | <issue_start>username_0: I have a PhD in Computer Science and have been working as a "pure researcher" in an academic setting for the past 10+ years. I have a decent publication record, with a large number of citations to my work. As part of the research role, I have also been a co-supervisor/advisor of several PhD students and done presentations in front of conference audiences. I've done a bunch of "guest lectures" in a few undergraduate classes.
I'd like to transition from the current pure research position to a mixed teaching and research role. My motivations are to have more contact with people (as research can be lonely) and better job security. To than end I've applied for several teaching positions (tenure-track associate professor), but I've been told that the lack of teaching/lecturing experience (undergraduate students) is a problem.
Why would the selection committee see the lack of teaching experience as a deal-breaker?
I do understand that teaching requires a different set of skills than research. However, teaching skills can be learned, so is this a case of demonstrating the capability of learning such skills? If so, what would be some acceptable strategies for obtaining such skills?<issue_comment>username_1: Think of it in the reverse direction: Would you hire a person with tons of teaching experience for a research job? I think the same thing goes for someone with tons of research experience applying for a teacher position: It's a mismatch of skills that (like being overqualified for a job) renders you as a potential flight risk from the job. People want to hire candidates who are best fit for the tasks they are to perform; who don't have to struggle to acquire the skills to perform the job well.
You may be trying to reach for something that you're really not ready for yet. However, all hope is not lost. Instead of pursuing a professor position, try being an adjunct (part-time) instructor first. This will enable you to practice teaching and help you to understand if you really want to do this in the first place. If you are able to maintain the position over a period of time, and learn the ins and outs of being an educator, you'll be much more qualified for professor positions in the future.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: It's true that teaching skills can be learned. But some people underestimate the amount of work required to do so, or do not commit to putting it in, or remain tied to ineffective philosophies of teaching, and thus do not become good teachers. Others do, but it takes them some time, and in the meantime they don't do as well.
All other things equal, a search committee would rather hire someone who has already been through this, and will be able to walk in and teach well from day one, rather than needing a potentially long period to adjust (during which they will have to explain to their dean why this new hire's teaching evaluations are so poor). Especially since you are applying at a more senior level (associate professor), your competitors likely have 5 years or more of teaching experience, and evaluations, letters, etc, that show that they are effective teachers. Lacking that, it's understandable that you would be at a significant disadvantage.
It seems to me that the most natural course of action would be to see if you can pick up some teaching at your current institution. Approach your chair and express your interest in teaching a class or two if the opportunity arises. There will likely come a time when the chair just can't get all the classes covered, and would ordinarily consider looking for an adjunct, visitor, or graduate student to teach a class - then she will think of you. If you pull it off with reasonable success, and make it known that you are receptive to continuing to teach, you will likely get more opportunities. Eventually you can build up sufficient experience to be a good candidate for a different job - or maybe you'll find that your existing job, plus occasional teaching, satisfies you after all. (Or maybe you'll find that you don't in fact enjoy teaching, and stick to the job you have.)
I'd think that this sort of gradual phase-in of teaching duties is likely to go better and be less stressful on the whole. Even if you were able to get a full-time teaching job, you'd likely be asked to start teaching 2-3 courses per semester right off the bat - with no prior experience, that can be a pretty severe shock.
Upvotes: 4 |
2014/10/13 | 1,695 | 5,445 | <issue_start>username_0: Is there any resource that lists how much each university pay in journal subscription fees? I am mostly interested in US universities (E.g. Harvard: [$3.5M/year in 2014](http://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/apr/24/harvard-university-journal-publishers-prices), MIT: [$4M/year in 2006 for science and engineering journals alone](http://ent.arp.harvard.edu/AfricaHigherEducation/Online.html)), but still curious about other countries (e.g. French universities [paid 172M EUR/5years to Elsevier](http://rue89.nouvelobs.com/2014/11/10/france-prefere-payer-deux-fois-les-articles-chercheurs-255964), Finnish research organisations paid a total of [27 million euros in subscription fees in 2015](http://tiedonhinta.fi/en/english/)).<issue_comment>username_1: There is, in fact, a resource with the information you asked for, for institutions in the United States.
Detailed information on individual academic libraries' expenditures (by university) is available from the National Center for Education Statistics in the United States, as part of their [Libraries Statistics Program](http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/libraries/index.asp).
The data from these surveys, including the individual responses from each university, are available for download in plaintext format at [this link](http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/libraries/aca_data.asp). The most recent year available is 2012.
To take your example, according to that data, Harvard's expenditures for library resources in 2008 included $9,248,115 for serial subscriptions. In 2012, this number was up to $16,391,638 (the most of any library in the survey).
If you're interested, a set of related information on amounts paid by selected public universities to specific major publishers can be found in
>
> Bergstrom, <NAME>., et al. "[Evaluating big deal journal bundles](http://pnas.org/content/111/26/9425.abstract)." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111.26 (2014): 9425-9430.
>
>
>
(see especially the supporting information for the latter.)
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I don't know for sure whether there's a database that shows total journal spending at a fairly comprehensive list of universities, but I doubt there is. There's not as much transparency around university budgets as one might hope (especially at private universities, but even at public universities). [EDIT: As username_1 found, I was wrong about the existence of such a database.]
There is certainly no large-scale database that breaks down library budgets to show the amount spent for each publisher. In fact, many bundle contracts explicitly keep this information secret. Taking advantage of open records laws, Bergstrom, Courant, McAfee, and Williams managed to collect information about a number of contracts with public universities, leading to a [paper](http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~tedb/Journals/PNAS-2014-Bergstrom-1403006111.pdf) and [further information](http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~tedb/Journals/BundleContracts.html). However, there are still many universities at which this data is officially confidential.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: I know you're primarily interested in the US, but others reading the question title may be interested in other countries. For the UK, see
* [Wiley/Springer/T&F/Sage/OUP/CUP](http://figshare.com/articles/Journal_subscription_costs_FOIs_to_UK_universities/1186832) (collected by <NAME> and <NAME>)
* [Elsevier](http://gowers.wordpress.com/2014/04/24/elsevier-journals-some-facts/) (collected by <NAME>)
For some information about New Zealand universities, see [<NAME>'s blog post](http://mcw.blogs.auckland.ac.nz/2017/12/03/big-deal-journal-bundles-price-information-from-new-zealand/) and [spreadsheet](https://figshare.com/articles/Spreadsheet_of_journal_subscription_costs/5656069/1).
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: Some more data from <https://ropengov.github.io/r/2016/06/10/FOI/>:
>
> **Finland paid in total 131.1 million EUR subscription and other fees on scientific publishing in 2010-2015**. The overall breakup of the
> costs is available as a separate table. The average annual costs for
> in Finland were 22 MEUR in 2010-2015; this is one third of the annual
> subscription costs in **Austria (70 MEUR**; Bauer et al., 2015), and
> two thirds of the annual expenditure **(31 MEUR) in New Zealand**.
> Data for the top-10 publishers in the UK 2010-2014 is available in
> Lawson, Meghreblian & Brook, 2015 (Table 1). During this period the
> **UK paid altogether 4319 MEUR** (rough estimate based on the exchange rate June 12, 2016) for the top-10 publishers. Finland paid 61 MEUR
> for the same top-10 publishers in the same period, which is roughly
> 17% of the UK expenditure per capita (unexpectedly low?). The costs in
> the other countries seem unexpectedly high compared to Finland.
>
>
>
Some graphs from <http://www.vsnu.nl/en_GB/cost-of-publication> showing costs incurred by Finnish universities for books and journals by publisher:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7KMRB.png)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/t8isR.png)
FYI [Why don't major research institutions systematically publish their subscription fees to scientific journals?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/80339/452)
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/10/14 | 766 | 3,460 | <issue_start>username_0: I would like to know does it help if I take a graduate course related to my major in engineering as an undergraduate and do very well in it? will it increase my chance of getting to graduate school in case if graduate school committee sees the graduate course in my transcript?<issue_comment>username_1: Yes, I think most admissions committees would see this as good evidence of your preparation for graduate study.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I would say overall, yes.
My school offers what's called a "project course" and it's intended to get senior students aiming for their masters experience with research and writing a thesis. You speak to a professor in your faculty who's research revolves around a topic that interests you and you will write an honours thesis related to that under their supervision throughout the year. I study Computer Science, so my project courses also contained an application aspect. If I want to get into grad school, they will see that I have built a large program, written a thesis, and worked under the supervision of a professor at my institution. All desirable traits in a grad student.
It is very, very common for students who take these courses to get their position as a masters student under the same professor the very next year. Definitely something an academic advisor will recommend you do.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_3: There are two specific reasons why it will help:
1. It shows that you can work at a high level;
2. If the course is in the area where you are applying to study, it shows that you have investigated that specific area and have some level of commitment to it.
*However*, in my experience the graduate level course *may not* compensate for poor or patchy performance on the undergraduate programme that you're *meant* to be completing at the time (not saying that this is the case, but I've seen some try). Some recruiters see patchy UG performance with additional courses that you didn't need to take as an indication that you can't focus on the most important, immediate task. In either case, I'd expect detailed questions on why you took additional graduate courses, and how you balanced your workload, at interview.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: It really depends on the student and the graduate course(s). Consider two students.
Graduate courses are unlikely to help a student with a strong academic record and a near perfect GPA, but no previous research experience and recommendation letters that only speak about classroom abilities. There will be little doubt from the admissions committee about the ability of this student to learn advanced concepts and the weakness of the application is the limited evidence to evaluate research potential.
Graduate courses may help an applicant with a good record of relevant research experience and recommendation letters that focus on the research, but a weak academic record. The weak part of this type of applicant is fear over the ability to learn advanced concepts. The ability of a graduate course to sway the decision of the admissions committee will depend on both the grade and the content of the course. Anything less than a B in a graduate course is likely a disaster and it may take an A to sway an admissions committee. Similarly, taking a course that is unrelated to your research interests or is viewed as a "soft" topic will likely decrease the value of the course.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/10/14 | 2,178 | 9,404 | <issue_start>username_0: Let me preface by saying I'm studying Computer Science, so I don't know how well this applies to every field but this is what I have heard from. many Computer Science and Engineering majors.
I have heard that, when applying for jobs, a masters degree can be a sign of poor performance. That is, those with a masters in Computer Science are thought to be significantly poorer programmers than those with an undergraduate.
I am interested in getting a masters degree because I hope to one day transition into more analytical and research based positions, but if I get an MSc. could it hold me back? Would it be better to get some work experience, and then get my masters mid-career? I know that some employers may even pay for your graduate studies, but is this significantly better than the alternative in any sense?<issue_comment>username_1: I would actually think it is precisely the opposite: generally, a computer science Masters requires a thesis, and that thesis usually involves writing a big chunk of functioning code of some sort. Accomplishing that indicates that person is capable of a accomplishing a large and complex task with minimal supervision. With an undergraduate degree, you don't necessarily know whether they've ever built a real program that wasn't handed to them as a pre-digested problem as part of their curriculum.
Now, if somebody was a giant company looking for "cannon fodder" programmers to grind out massive repetitive projects, maybe that could be a minus. Likewise, you have to pay people better when they've got a Masters, commensurate with their increase in skill, so if somebody is looking for low-quality coding work, a Masters could make a candidate overqualified. However, if you're thinking about eventually moving toward more research in your career, do you really want those sort of jobs?
I know for a fact, however, that the company group I'm in rarely even considers hiring people without at least a Masters. A number of others I know are similar: the more cutting-edge or research-oriented a company is, the more that they are likely to value that extra education.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: No, the Master's will not hold you back. I received an MSc last year in Computer Science, and I no longer eat ramen unless I want to.
I'm not sure where the rumor began that Master's in CS makes you overqualified. In April, when I switched jobs, I was interviewed by four large companies looking specifically for people with Master's. In fact, I was one of only two candidates at one of the jobs, and the recruiter made it apparent to me that they were having difficulty finding people who had Master's degrees to fill these higher-education positions. Plenty of BS programmers, but not enough people with team capabilities.
A fact of life is that we may not learn everything in school. I didn't. That's okay! It's also true that some of the things you use at work will be covered in classes. For example, I learned how to use servlets in class. Six months down the road, I looked at some software we were using at my old job, and lo and behold, same technology. I ended up making some improvements to that software and even presented that information at a conference.
It's ultimately up to you whether you want to work a bit for experience before or after your Master's. I would say, looking back, the Master's prepared me much more for the real world than just the Bachelor's.
Master's Degrees, like most investments, are investments. Time and money are placed in, and a commodity is produced. In this case, the commodity may not be apparent, as you haven't received your MSc. You don't just learn `programming++` at a Master's level. You learn how to apply programming to research, or the real world, depending on your ultimate career path.
Here's a rough rundown of what each level is. Note that this is for COMPUTER SCIENCE. Other fields may differ drastically from this in what type of content is taught. For example, Physiology Masters are probably not going to be taught project management.
### Bachelor's Level
At the Bachelor's level, students traditionally start by learning the basic concepts of software development and theory. For example, machine language and compilers. Eventually, students get mastery of perhaps a single language. In my case, this was Java, so I'll use that as an example.
For Java, we learn a pretty decent amount of practical use for *grunt work* programming. Your bread and butter skills, for example. In the working world, we would probably label this Software Developer I. Entry-level. You can fill in, but so can a lot of other people. You'll have a hard time getting to show you're out of the pack at this level, because there's only so many ways to create a `for-loop` and "good enough" will usually do.
One of the things that's not focused at the Bachelor's level is working as part of a development team.
### Master's Level
At the Master's level, students have the opportunity to learn much more focused topics of study. Off the top of my head, here are some examples that would be reasonable continuing from a BS with little prior background.
* enterprise web and application development (building large self-supporting frameworks, industry)
* cryptography (cracking or developing encryption, practical both for industry and research)
* neural networks (pattern finding and analysis, mostly research at the moment)
* artificial intelligence (it's really tough to describe what this field is, even for me, but it's both industry and research at this point)
In addition, there are several parallel fields that you also have associated topics of study you can migrate to, for example Information Systems Engineering, or Bioinformatics.
Additionally, concepts are provided in preparation for a management role. The software development cycle, for example, is taught as one of our core courses, and shows us how we enter the design phase and work through to the development and testing phase. Whereas in college, classes were expected to complete one or two-week assignments, most of my graduate classes focused on delivering an entire product at the end of the semester.
Regardless of what you study, there is likely an industry or research institution that will be interested in what you learn. A fresh graduate would very easily qualify for a Software Developer II role, a mid-level developer.
Another major benefit of graduate level courses is the establishment of a *development team* as an entity. Whereas in undergrad most of our tasks are solo endeavors, by Master's we may have to collaborate with other people, or use other people's code. Code reuse is nice at this level, and so is working with people with different backgrounds. No longer are we in the universe where we can't copy people's code (we still have rules about that, like attribution, but now we can use APIs and libraries to simplify our lives!)
### Doctorate Level
As I am not a PhD, nor do I plan to get one, most of this is from familiarity rather than experience. Doctorates will, similar to a Master's dedicate most of their time to study a specific subset of computer science. My adviser in college studied neural networks, for example. Most doctorates gear towards research and/or teaching at this level. Much of it is based on theory and concept rather than software development at this point. Similar to how basic college calculus versus PhD math are on completely different levels.
### Possible Caveat to the PhD
I have heard of these rumors of higher education being a disadvantage. In my opinion, a PhD with no hands-on software development lead in the software development cycle is probably going to be a hard buy in industry that needs a software developer lead. That's hearsay for me as I haven't met any PhDs in CS outside of university, so take with a grain of salt.
### Software Developer Roles in the Industry
I mentioned software developer roles above, but only up to Level II. Traditionally, I have only seen levels go up to III, but at a recent interview for work, I met an SDIV. These roles can be roughly defined as brackets for years of experience.
* SD I: 0 to 2 years experience, likely to have a Bachelor's. Entry-level and most likely the bottom rung of programming and testing. May be tasked to work with an SD II for most work. (This used to be me.)
* SD II: 2 to 5 years experience, or *equivalent*, may have a Master's. Likely to work independently as part of an overall project (i.e. you get assigned a task, usually broad, such as "Implement a user interface to handle XYZ." This is me at the moment).
* SD III: 5 to 15 years experience, most likely have a Master's. Significant experience with the software development cycle. Likely to be a project manager or be assigned to a high-level development or testing team (i.e. in framework management). This would be someone like my Project Manager boss.
* SD IV: 15+ years experience. This person is well-qualified to be a project lead, or may lead multiple projects. This would be someone who is probably could teach a graduate class on the subject and not need to consult a book. You'll rarely encounter these people, since coding languages go out of phase or are brand new. Someone really has to have been an early adopter of the language to get this amount of experience.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/10/14 | 1,877 | 7,435 | <issue_start>username_0: I am an academic at a UK university and have been asked to do some consultancy work for a company who wants to own all the IP for that work. I would only do this work on the weekends. Would my university have some claim over this IP? My university's written rules only say that the ownership of all inventions will be determined by [Section 39 of the Patents Act 1977](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1977/37). This, on the face of it, seems to suggest they wouldn't have any rights over the IP.
I am reluctant to ask my university until I am clear what the right answer is as their initial reaction to all enquiries is just to say no.
Section 39 Patents Act 1977
>
> (1) Notwithstanding anything in any rule of law, an invention made by
> an employee shall, as between him and his employer, be taken to belong
> to his employer for the purposes of this Act and all other purposes
> if—
>
>
> (a) it was made in the course of the normal duties of the employee or
> in the course of duties falling outside his normal duties, but
> specifically assigned to him, and the circumstances in either case
> were such that an invention might reasonably be expected to result
> from the carrying out of his duties; or
>
>
> (b) the invention was made in the course of the duties of the employee
> and, at the time of making the invention, because of the nature of his
> duties and the particular responsibilities arising from the nature of
> his duties he had a special obligation to further the interests of the
> employer’s undertaking.
>
>
> (2) Any other invention made by an employee shall, as between him and
> his employer, be taken for those purposes to belong to the employee.
>
>
> (3) Where by virtue of this section an invention belongs, as
> between him and his employer, to an employee, nothing done—
>
>
> (a) by or on behalf of the employee or any person claiming under him
> for the purposes of pursuing an application for a patent, or
>
>
> (b) by any person for the purpose of performing or working the
> invention,
>
>
> shall be taken to infringe any copyright or design right to which, as
> between him and his employer, his employer is entitled in any model or
> document relating to the invention.
>
>
><issue_comment>username_1: You need to spend a few hundred pounds with a UK IP attorney/solicitor getting some advice about the law in your country. If the weekend contract has any value to it at all, it will be worth finding out from someone who knows the law.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: To broaden username_1's answer a bit: you *definitely* need to get an lawyer involved. You also should make certain that there is date-stamped written communication ensuring that your university's legal/IP staff are aware as well. This may seem like a pain and may make it harder to get started on anything, but it's much better to get any possible conflicts identified and sorted out now, rather than to find yourself in the middle of a complex and lengthy lawsuit later.
I don't know about the UK, but suspect it to be similarly heterogeneous to the US, where there is an exceedingly large range of differences in the IP rights given in employment agreements at research institutions, both within academia and outside of it. Some places are very liberal and basically claim nothing that's not "in the direct line of your duties." Others claim even your dreams and the photos you take at your kids' birthday party (not exaggerating!). In all cases, however, there is often a wide grey area between *de jure* and *de facto* policy, and it's important to get an agreement and understanding written down before you give IP to any second organization.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: More important than the laws surrounding general IP in your country is the contract you signed with your employer.
The contract must detail exactly what work is to belong to the company. The contract probably specifies a body of work and a timeframe. For example,
```
The company shall own all works by the employee related to Tree Bullfrogs created from April 1, 2000 to April 1, 2001.
```
Alternatively,
```
The company shall own all rights to all works produced during normal business hours.
```
Most of time the contract will be designed by professionals to supercede general IP laws your country has. However, no contract can give a company to all things you create on your own time, unless specifically agreed upon.
In conclusion, *read your contract.* Depending on the stakes involved it could make sense to hire a lawyer, but he will also be more concerned with the contract.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: While it is right that it would be helpful for you to pay, what ought to be a modest sum, to an intellectual property lawyer to check that what you are doing is OK (and hence rely on their indemnity insurance) for reasons that will become clear, hopefully I can say something useful here.
Patent law is UK wide, even though the UK is divided into distinct jurisdictions for most purposes. Other aspects of law are different, eg Scots and English contract law differ on a number of points. I suspect that the differences between the various systems aren't relevant to your problem, but when seeking a lawyer it makes sense to talk to someone from your part of the UK (for these purposes: Scotland, England and Wales, and Northern Ireland, are the 3 relevant jurisdictions).
Some UK IP law, for example copyright law, makes the employer the first owner of the IP if it is created by an employee in the course of their employment. The 1977 Act differs from this by creating two possible situations: (1)(a) and (1)(b) above.
39(1)(a) asks three questions:
- is what you are doing a part of your "duties" under your employment contract?
- are they either your "normal duties" or duties "specifically assigned" to you?
- would an invention reasonably be expected to result from carrying out those duties?
These questions mean what they say. Could what you are planning to do in the weekend be fairly said to fall within your duties as an employee? If yes, you need to think very carefully about the other two questions, if no, then they will not fall within s39(1)(a). To answer *that* first question is something that will depend on what your duties are (for which we would have to examine your written contract of employment or statement of terms of employment and also what you actually do) and also what it is you are proposing to do.
And that is exactly something that you should be talking to a lawyer about, rather than asking here, because it may require a delicate and careful examination of the facts.
s39(1)(b) applies to people with a special obligation to further their employer's interests. In commercial companies this would be likely to include members of the board of directors. For a university it would depend very much on the nature of the post (see above).
Universities in the UK can have very strange contractual arrangements. I worked for a university at one time which permitted me to do paid contract work during my "working hours" (which were not enforced). That may have been unusual but should demonstrate why nothing should be assumed and why it is sensible to talk to a lawyer about it.
Hopefully those remarks will help you take advantage of legal advice more efficiently.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer] |
2014/10/14 | 3,126 | 13,390 | <issue_start>username_0: I have a colleague in my group who became TA for a course which we took together, which is taught by our mutual advisor. It is almost a policy that a student can't become TA unless he scores an A in the course, but he was chosen because he asked "first" and the professor is "nice", even though I was the highest scoring student, which usually gets the teaching assistantship. He also knew that I wanted to TA that course, yet he still asked.
Many students come to him for questions or help. He usually tells them to copy the homework (!) or to ask me or a colleague of mine for help because "he doesn't know and [me and my colleague] know the material much better!"
How do I deal with such a person? I mean, my colleague and I try to answer all the questions the students have, but the annoying thing is that we can't be doing half the job while he gets all the money. We spend our time trying to help others where he should do that. We are very busy people and we don't have time for this when we don't have to officially do it.
Should I talk to my advisor about this? I don't want to sound as if I'm envious.<issue_comment>username_1: Being nice is nice, but you also need to set your own priorities. You are not the TA for that course, so you are not obliged to answer any questions. If you happen to have time and feel like answering a question (notice the singular), then fine, answer it. When not, just politely say you don't have time and that they should go see the TA. Also, you are not responsible for (bad) advice given by that TA. Instead I would focus on getting your own research done, or do the TAing of some other course.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: There are two separate issues here that you should mentally separate:
* Your friend got a job you wanted.
* Your friend is not doing that job well.
As for the first point, not much can be done after the fact. Perhaps make your interest in the course known to the professor who will teach that course next time.
As for the second point, you are well within your bounds to refuse to help students since you're not associated with that course. You can tell your friends that you're too busy with research and other TA duties to help his/her students. This dissociates the prior TA-assignment incident with the actual matter at hand.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: The biggest issue, I feel, is how you're handling the situation where your friend asks you for help. Whereas other people have addressed your bounds, I feel like we have to address how you are treating those bounds.
I'm going to say a statement that, up until a year ago, felt very alien.
*"My needs are as important or more important than the needs of others."*
Say that a couple of times in your head. It sounds selfish or wrong to say such a thing. And that's what I felt as well when I was told this statement initially.
But is it really wrong? Of course not. When we evaluate the greater good, we sometimes devalue our personal selves, even though we have a vested interest in it, in an attempt to remain unbiased. This works well in standalone situations, but not in this one.
Consider the scenario you've presented.
Your friend, knowing full well you wanted the spot, took it from you. Then he comes to you to ask you to help his students. And you've gone ahead and helped him and now you're complaining about why you have to do that.
You've, in short, placed his needs above your own needs. You don't get anything out of this relationship. You may have heard of this type of relation: a toxic one. It wastes your time and returns you nothing and gives him all the credit when his students succeed.
You're never going to get the TA job you want if he's in it. And you're helping him stay in it!
You may feel like you're doing people a service, but you're not. If this TA is bad, he should be removed. Your helping him will keep him there and impact the learning capabilities of other students, and waste your time for little to no benefit.
If you really want to help these students, you should be doing this on your own time when you feel like it, not because your friend asks you to help him do something he should be doing by himself. Instead, you're helping carrying your friend's responsibility for him when he accepted a role that traditionally bears all the responsibility alone.
You need to be willing to say *no* to this person.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: I would try to quantify the manifestations which are objectively problematic. How often are you interrupted by students? How many tell you (in so many words) that your so-called friend could not or would not help them? What other tasks suffer because of this, and by how much?
Collect data, black on white, until either *(a)* you can convince your professor that something is wrong, even if not to the point where you can get things your way; or *(b)* you convince yourself that it may not be worth your time and effort after all -- I know it seems preposterous now, but my experience is that sometimes that's what happens when time passes.
Don't wait too long to make that decision. Sounds to me like maybe you should give it a week, maximum.
You might not need your data, but it's a good starting point for objectively assessing the situation, and if somebody should ask you for numbers or other proof, you know you are prepared.
Strive to remain professional. Try to reason about what's beneficial for the students, the department, the collective, in the long run; not yourself or the problematic TA. Still, if you are doing unpaid work, I would consider bringing up the topic of fair compensation.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: I agree that this is unprofessional behavior on the part of the other TA (let's call him X).
I understand your instinct is to try to help the students when they come to you, and that's certainly generous of you. Unfortunately, this sort of thing represents a very common pitfall for young academics. Working with students is very rewarding, in the short term: it feels like something where you can make an immediate difference in someone's life. This is especially true in contrast to research, where work is often solitary and progress is slow and difficult to discern. So spending extra time with students, while helpful in itself, has the potential to become a serious distraction in the long run. Balancing one's time between teaching, research, and other activities can be one of the hardest thing for an academic to do (it certainly is for me).
So I think this is a good opportunity for you to practice "protecting your time". Helping X's students, even if you enjoy it or feel the students really need it, is not something that can take priority over other tasks that are specifically your responsibilities (e.g. your research).
I would suggest having a talk with X and tell him that you're not going to be able to help out his students, and to please not send them to you. If you feel you need a justification for this, you can just say it's distracting you from your research or studies or something similar. If X's students keep coming to you anyway, you can politely tell them "I'm sorry, but I'm not the right person to help you with this. I'd suggest that you ask the professor during her office hours." You don't need to get involved any further; if lots of students start coming to the professor and complaining that X can't answer their questions (and in my experience, believe me, they will), or even that X sent them to you, who couldn't help: she will figure out that something is amiss.
I agree with the other posts that you should not explicitly try to play this to your advantage as far as getting the TA position. That seems to have the potential to backfire. It may work out for you in the long run, but stay at arm's length while things run their course.
On a side note, you mentioned that you've overheard X encouraging students to "copy their homework". I'm not quite sure what that means out of context, but if you mean X is telling them to do something dishonest like copy from each other without attribution, then this is a much more serious matter that I think obliges you to step in - it puts X over the line from unprofessional to unethical. If you feel you have enough of a relationship with X to speak frankly, tell him that's a bad idea: it's likely to get students in serious trouble, and also him if they tell the professor he told them to do it. Otherwise, or if X doesn't seem to take you seriously, alert the professor.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_6: If you have to answer most of questions from students, it seems to me that the TA does not prepare enough the material he suppose to teach and this is a totally unprofessional.
Answering students is not helping them, since you can answer particular questions (about a particular homework,...) but you have no time to teach how to have a global understanding on the material. In this situation, you should speak to your advisor. If you want to make it smooth and keep a friendly relation with the TA, you may warn him first that you cannot continue to answer the students questions and that he has to prepare thoroughly the material.
Of course, noone has a perfect knowledge of everything, so you probably should keep yourself available to answer theoritical questions **from the TA**, not homeworks questions from the students. The TA validated this course, so he knows well part of the material. By ponctually answering the question of the TA, you help him to master it completely and to answer himself to students questions.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_7: It strikes me that the underlying cause of your unhappiness is not the professionalism or otherwise of the person that got the TA position, or the impact of his behaviour on you, but the fact that he got the position you wanted and that seems unfair to you. Here's a lesson that will serve you well I think: life is not fair. The world of work is not fair. Career progression, in particular, is not fair. Good things do not automatically go to the most deserving. If you want something, do not sit back and wait for it to fall into your lap because you think you deserve it for working hard or whatever.
Rather than focusing your anger on him, you should ask yourself: who or what is responsible for this state of affairs? Some helpful information would be to know whether you made your desire to be TA known to the advisor - if you didn't then you must have been hoping the advisor would simply offer it to you. Your colleague meanwhile made his desires to be TA known. Why shouldn't he? Did you really think that he should not pursue his ambitions out of some sort of deference to you because you have better scores? If he (or you or anyone else) adopted that policy they would never get anywhere in life. If you think he should not have been made TA and you should AND the advisor knew of your desire, then the responsible party is the advisor for picking someone else. If the advisor did not know of your desire then either you are responsible for not making your wishes clear, or your advisor is responsible for not asking you whether you wanted it before giving it to someone else. In either scenario, your colleague is not responsible for "depriving" you of the TA position.
So, if you feel something is amiss with him being made TA, talk to the advisor.
With the day-to-day behaviour of the TA it's a different matter - if you are not happy having work pushed over to you in this way then talk first to the TA about it, and if that has no effect talk to the advisor about it. Sitting there complaining and making accusations behind someone's back isn't particularly professional either. If you want things to change, start asking for what you want.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_8: Honestly, your question could be (and probably should be) shortened to:
>
> I'm really good at subject X, and students keep coming to me for help on subject X. How should I respond, given that I don't have time for this?
>
>
>
I'd advise the following response:
*"I really wish I could help, but I don't have time. You really should ask your teacher, or teacher's assistant if you have one."*
And you're done. There is no need to be concerned about how they came to know of your skills, or become involved in petty politics or whether someone is getting a free ride or passing the buck.
If the student indicates that they've already tried those resources, you might remind them that they are paying students, and if their teacher or TA aren't meeting their needs, they may have to have a discussion with them, or bring it up with their guidance counselors. Also suggest that they might want to form study groups with others in their class.
Lastly, if you enjoy teaching them, offer tutoring services. This will give you the ability to receive pay for your work, without all the overhead the TA has to deal with, and you're already receiving free advertising.
Regardless, there is no need to carry bitterness and acrimony into these situations. Treat it as though you hadn't been hurt, and as though the TA and teacher are both acting in the student's best interests, and then decide how to act from that point. The answer should be obvious once you ignore your personal baggage.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/10/14 | 876 | 3,779 | <issue_start>username_0: What is the right approach for sending emails to contact the graduate students in the graduate schools that we are applying to?
Some questions to ask current graduate students are suggested in this [related question](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/353/what-are-some-good-questions-to-ask-current-graduate-students-when-visiting-scho).
When asking such questions by email, what are things to consider to maximize the chances of a useful response?<issue_comment>username_1: Once you have been admitted, the department will typically help put you in contact with graduate students. Of course they will select the most enthusiastic ones, so it can be helpful to reach out to others to get a better sample (for example, students in your research area or who are working with potential advisors). You can generally find contact information for graduate students on the departmental web page or on their personal web pages, and it's reasonable to send a quick e-mail. You can ask whatever you'd like, but you should remember that it's not really their job to tell you about the department. It's best not to ask questions you can get answers to elsewhere (for example, don't ask about degree requirements), awkward questions (such as departmental gossip they might be uncomfortable discussing, especially in writing), or repeated/demanding questions (after all, they are doing you a favor).
On the other hand, I don't think you should contact graduate students before being admitted. Most graduate schools receive substantially more applications than they will be able to accept, and sometimes far more. It's not efficient to spend a lot of time telling people about the department if they are probably not going to be admitted anyway. Instead, that can wait until the admissions decisions have been made. (Plus you'll generally get more enthusiastic responses once you've been admitted.)
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: When I was applying to grad schools, I cold e-mailed some people and got some very helpful responses.
In the first place, you might start by apologizing for cold e-mailing them. If there are any extenuating circumstances, you might explain them. I e-mailed under two different circumstances:
* I was accepted by program X, and got the sense that I didn't want to go X, and wasn't planning to fly cross-country to visit -- but I wanted to hear from a couple of people at X first.
* I was waitlisted by program Y and I was pretty sure I wanted to go there. But things were going down to the wire, and I didn't get the opportunity to visit before the acceptance deadline.
You will optimize your chances by writing your e-mail in a way that expresses your gratitude and a little bit of your personality. Ask them questions that you can't easily learn for yourself by browsing the department's website. And write your e-mail in a way that makes it clear that you are hoping for a response but then won't need anything else from them. (Unless you end up visiting later, in which case I recommend offering to buy them lunch or a beer.)
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: My email has been posted at both my MSc and PhD department's website. I do not mind cold emails, even before applications are submitted. I answer this question maybe 3-4 times a year before applications are even due: "If you could go back in time and start over, would you still come back?". Applications cost money, I don't mind spending an hour or two every year helping people whose shoes I was once in.
Most people are the same I'd think.
Edit:
I'll read anything with my advisor's name in the email, so, if you title the email "Prospective student for Advisor" or something like that, then It will probably at least get read.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/10/14 | 691 | 2,947 | <issue_start>username_0: I am hoping to continue my masters in machine learning or data mining. So as a part of the process I am mailing to professors. I have a decent GPA and GRE score. I have research experience in these fields but no publication. I am not an extraordinary student but a motivated one. If any professor see my profile they may find it very ordinary. How can I ensure him that I will do my best. I know that knowing the research works of the professors will help you to get a professor's attention. Is it natural to grasp his research work completely? Though the track might be same, but the level of research is more deep than my previous experience. Is there any way to show him I am worthy?
I am not sure whether this type of question is appropriate for this forum. But hope that someone will enlighten me.<issue_comment>username_1: Another way to get the attention of the professor is a recommendation email or phone call from your bachelor advisor. This shows you're so worthy for your advisor that he takes time to recommend you.
Note: In case the professor does not already know you, it might be somewhat hard to get his/her attention just by mail as they receive a number of such mails every day.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: To summarize some [other advice](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/40090/using-industry-experience-to-recover-from-bad-undergrad-record/40091#40091), attend weekly departmental seminars and ask questions (during or after) the presentation. These meetings are designed to inspire, and you need not be an official student to attend.
Professors really like what they do, and it is flattering when students ask honest questions about their research. Taking the initiative to attend another department's seminar and being inquisitive will raise your status from ordinary student to extraordinary student. Finally, befriending a faculty is a huge step towards acceptance into any graduate department.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: When applying to graduate school, I read two recent papers of every professor I wanted to work with. Of course, I only picked professors that were interesting to me. Then, I read those two papers thoroughly (which, in itself requires some explanation; basically, produce a one page precis containing a summary, the weak points, and possible extensions) and emailed the professors with questions on it, both clarification and analytical.
If you want to grab a professor's attention, show him that you're a student who is thinking along similar lines, who is competent, and will require little energy to motivate and train. The demonstration of a synergistic relationship is important. Ultimately, that's not only what professors should want out of students, but what students should want out of the professor. Entering into an advisor-advisee relationship is a serious commitment and personality clashes make that difficult.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/10/14 | 677 | 2,842 | <issue_start>username_0: I worked in a research laboratory last summer and some of my work was used in a paper that was published this year at a conference. This is my first paper and I am listed as a co-author, however, my last name was spelled wrong.
I have a capital “i” in the middle of my last name that was mistaken for a lowercase “L”.
Firstly, what steps should I take to correct this? Is it best to contact my supervisor from the lab and ask them to correct it or should I attempt to do so myself?
Secondly, in the future should I change my last name spelling to use a lowercase "i" in the middle to avoid this occurring again? I am an undergraduate student, but I am interested in pursuing a career in research.<issue_comment>username_1: Another way to get the attention of the professor is a recommendation email or phone call from your bachelor advisor. This shows you're so worthy for your advisor that he takes time to recommend you.
Note: In case the professor does not already know you, it might be somewhat hard to get his/her attention just by mail as they receive a number of such mails every day.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: To summarize some [other advice](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/40090/using-industry-experience-to-recover-from-bad-undergrad-record/40091#40091), attend weekly departmental seminars and ask questions (during or after) the presentation. These meetings are designed to inspire, and you need not be an official student to attend.
Professors really like what they do, and it is flattering when students ask honest questions about their research. Taking the initiative to attend another department's seminar and being inquisitive will raise your status from ordinary student to extraordinary student. Finally, befriending a faculty is a huge step towards acceptance into any graduate department.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: When applying to graduate school, I read two recent papers of every professor I wanted to work with. Of course, I only picked professors that were interesting to me. Then, I read those two papers thoroughly (which, in itself requires some explanation; basically, produce a one page precis containing a summary, the weak points, and possible extensions) and emailed the professors with questions on it, both clarification and analytical.
If you want to grab a professor's attention, show him that you're a student who is thinking along similar lines, who is competent, and will require little energy to motivate and train. The demonstration of a synergistic relationship is important. Ultimately, that's not only what professors should want out of students, but what students should want out of the professor. Entering into an advisor-advisee relationship is a serious commitment and personality clashes make that difficult.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/10/15 | 2,567 | 9,947 | <issue_start>username_0: I found in a medical paper from the 1990's a non-citation like this:
>
> The results and terminology by <NAME>, <NAME>, <NAME>, <NAME>, <NAME>, *Journal of Scientific Papers*, 12345-698 (3), are unscientific [Brown, 1997; Lawrence 1985]
>
>
>
So, they want to unequivocally reference the paper by Smith et al; but as they consider it bad, they don't want to give them a citation. I have never seen that before. Also, I am not familiar with the field, so I can't say how bad that paper is.
Citations are considered as a measurement of the impact of a paper, and as such, a proxy for its quality. On the other hand, people cite papers even to criticise them (you did it all wrong, people!).
Is this non-citation ethical? How bad would the paper have to be to justify it?<issue_comment>username_1: >
> "Citations are considered as a measurement of the impact of a paper, and as such, a proxy for its quality."
>
>
>
Many people, including me, agree that these considerations are not appropriate; the second even more so than the first. However, using a practice as you describe, i.e. citing a paper but not adding it to the bibliography, could work in the direction that citation indeed stand a bit more for "impact" and "quality". However, since are so many more flaws with the impact factor and bibliometrics as a measure for anything else than the number of citations (such as self-citations, citations "forced" by reviewers, citations rings in the vanity press, citing without reading the paper…) I would say that it does not make sense to use a practice of citing without citing.
My brother proposed a ["markup" for citations](http://janlo.de/wp/2010/04/04/scientific-citation-markup/) which goes in the same direction, i.e. something like
```
\cite[negative]{PaperWithSevereErrors}
\cite[community feeling]{PopularPaperWithNoSpecificRelation}
\cite[please journal editor]{AnyPaperOfEditor}
\cite[enforced by a referee]{SuggestedPaper}
\cite[proof or evidence elsewhere]{TechnicalPaper}
```
but I guess that this proposal has to be taken with a grain of salt…
In another direction: Citations say on what work you build your own. If there is a paper which you find horrible and which you do not build upon, is there a need to cite it? If you simply want to bash some others work, use a blog post, or probably even don't do it at all. However, if you think that the respective paper is bad but used by others nonetheless and want to emphasize in what way it is flawed than you have to cite it properly as your contribution really builds upon that paper.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: As editor I would not accept this in a publication. If it is published it should be referenced. Yes, it bumps the references for the authors and yes, bad science may attract a fair amount of citations for all the right?/wrong? reasons. But, it is not up to the authors to decide how referencing should be made, journals have guidelines that should be followed. Having the citation properly referenced makes it easier for others to find the article and see it for themselves.
Furthermore, from another point of view the statement that something is "unscientific" is not appropriate either. It is an opinion. The cited paper can be unscientific but the academic way to show this is not to just say it but to prove it.
Your quote is a specific case, of which I know nothing, so the reply concerns the general case but I would react if I saw something like that in a paper I edit and I would ask the authors to stick to facts.
One last point is that if a paper is really bad, then it should be considered for retraction. That is how scientifically extremely poor, bordering on dangerous, papers are handled.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: This looks an awful lot like a reference to a secondary source where for whatever reasons the authors were unable to find primary source (in your example the paper by Smith and colleagues) and instead is relying on the secondary sources by Brown and Lawrence. In [APA style](https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/09/) this would look like
>
> In Seidenberg and McClelland's study (as cited in Coltheart, Curtis, Atkins, & Haller, 1993), ...
>
>
>
and wouldn't have the date and journal of the primary source, but there is substantial variation in citation styles.
If, however, the paper by Smith and colleagues is readily available, then it is bad form not to use the primary source and instead rely on the secondary sources.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: It's most certainly bad form. Let's say you read a paper that you believe is wrong, and you want to write a paper saying how wrong it is.
If you cite the paper, yes, the wrong paper will get the citation, but when people who know how to use the literature (less and less every year -- sigh) look up the original paper, they have a fair chance that bibliographical tools will point them to the new paper. This should help correct the literature, and prevent the wrong paper from being cited for years to come. The citations will eventually die down for the wrong paper.
In contrast, if you don't cite it, it will be harder for the community to learn that its wrong-- thus YOU ARE HURTING YOUR FIELD by not using every tool at your disposal to correct the literature!!
As to ethics, it's certainly not plagiaristic with the full citation appearing in the text. You're not trying to hide anything. It's just wrongheaded and somewhat petulant, but I'm not sure I would call it an ethical breach of real magnitude. It certainly doesn't make the author look good.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: A citation is not a recommendation. One of the purposes of citing a paper is that readers of your paper can check what use you have made of it. I would say that this is at least as important when you are criticising that paper as it is in the contrary case. If you criticise the paper and do not make it as easy as possible for the reader to find that paper, then it could be felt that you are hindering any attempt to tell whether or not it is in fact *your* comments that are "unscientific".
(I am sure you understand that this is hypothetical and I am not suggesting that there is any such intention in your own case.)
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_6: No. If some existing work is really somewhat pseudoscience only, it is unlikely to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, to start from. However if major flaws have only been discovered after publication, such history must be cited properly, including the published reference to the analysis, why unscientific.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_7: One thing to consider is that one way to judge the quality and impact of a specific publication is to actually look at the references that cite it. If you formally cite it, you will appear in such a list:
>
> ### Papers citing "A is good", <NAME> et al., *J. Sci. Pa.* 1, 23
>
>
> [...]
>
>
> * "A is actually terrible", A. Green and B. Black, *J. Sci. Pa.* 4, 56
>
>
> [...]
>
>
>
An unorthodox citation will remove your paper from this, and will deprive people investigating J. Smith et al.'s claims of the chance to easily find your refutation.
I should note that no literature search is really complete until you take at least the key works in the field and look carefully at the papers that cite it, and this is something that people do look at.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_8: It's not obviously *ethically* bad, but it's a poor way of going about things. You cite papers for a number of reasons:
* To place your own work in context (to show the way in which your work relates to that of others).
* To help your readers find other papers in the field.
* (Somewhat more tenuously) To demonstrate your own awareness of the broader field in which you work and thereby imply that there might be a slightly higher chance that you know the subject well enough to make your work interesting. (Of course, work done in isolation can also be interesting, so this doesn't entirely hold water.)
* (Sad, but not entirely uncommon) To avoid your paper being sent back by a reviewer who was saddened that his/her own paper wasn't cited.
In none of these cases does citing a paper in and of itself imply that you endorse the contents of that paper. (In the last case, people have been known to say mildly complimentary things, which do count as endorsing the paper to some extent, but the fact of citation itself doesn't.)
As a result, you should cite all papers that you feel are relevant, and explain your views on them in the text. If you think a paper's relevant but rubbish, you can always say things like:
>
> In \cite{Foo}, Foo et al. described an early method for crawling Bars.
> This work unfortunately had a number of significant downsides,
> including its failure to maximise your whiskey intake per unit time.
> More recent works \cite{Baz} have addressed this issue by focusing
> exclusively on Whiskey Bars.
>
>
>
It's less helpful to say something like:
>
> There was some work by Foo et al. that focused on generic Bars and
> wasn't great. However, the exciting work by Baz and Wibble \cite{Baz},
> which focuses exclusively on Whiskey Bars, has addressed this issue.
>
>
>
As a reader, I might still want to read the sub-optimal work of Foo et al. to better understand the limitations of their approach. By citing it, you help me do that.
More generally, judging the quality of a paper by the number of citations is an inaccurate business at best - you can write a bad paper and get all of your friends to cite it, and you can write a good paper that gets ignored. Number of citations tells you a little about the impact your paper has had (if only on your friends in some cases), but nothing about whether it's any good. A bad paper can have a greater impact than a good one.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/10/15 | 1,029 | 4,401 | <issue_start>username_0: I am currently in a very embarrassing situation.
I have a paper (forgot to say, this paper takes no more than two pages) submitted to a journal. The journal accepted my paper for publication and I saw it online. But today I found that my paper disappeared without notifying me! I emailed them, and a staff member replied that a reviewer asked them to withdraw my paper. The reason given for this was:
>
> Your paper does not meet the requirements for publication.
>
>
>
And I then tracked the publisher and the editorial policy, I found the journal is nearly a predatory one. First, it is a new journal, published only for one year. They require no publication fees only this year, from next year on, they do require! Second, the publisher is in the famous [list](http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/) of predatory publishers. Also, it took only two and a half weeks from submission to acceptance.
On top of this, I may face problems because I have used this paper to apply some scholarship.
What can I do?<issue_comment>username_1: The most important thing you need to do is figure out the copyright status. If you have given them exclusive rights to reproduce the work, then you may not be able to publish it anywhere else. It is likely that the copyright transfer was part of a publication contract where the publisher has agreed to publish your work in exchange for the copyright transfer. Hopefully, the publisher will given up the rights you transferred to them. If they won't, you may need to get a lawyer to explore your options.
Having listed the paper in a scholarship application is problematic. Paper-based journals and journals that generate DOIs create a permanent record of the published papers. In your case, it seems a published paper has simply disappeared. I would write to the places you have submitted an application and explain the situation. something along the lines of
>
> The paper XXX, which I listed on my application, was published by YYY. Unfortunately, YYY is a known predatory publisher and has since made the paper unavailable. I still stand behind the research; attached is a copy of that work. I am currently working towards resubmitting the manuscript to a reputable publisher. I am sorry for any problems this causes.
>
>
>
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: It's hard to give objective advice without knowing more about the case, especially which journal, but this journal's behavior is surprising. Usually fake journals will publish *anything* as long as you pay for it.
Some have as strategy to generously offer free publishing to 'high quality papers' (which tells you something about the papers that don't fall in this category by their standards...) or to Western authors. In the later case, the goal is to give a false appearance of international recognition to cater for the needs of (mostly, but not limited to, India- and China-based) authors to publish in 'international' journals. Of course *they have no real strategy to archive the work that they receive*, they probably have no data management or backup strategy, nothing. I suspect some operate from internet cafés. It's frequent that entire journals just vanish without a trace, and without reimbursing the APCs, obviously.
In your case, why would they not publish your paper is mysterious, but is probably not unrelated to the fact that you didn't pay anything. It's *possible* that they actually evaluated it and found an issue with it (plagiarism, ethical concerns, blatant off-topic, etc.) or that it didn't serve their purpose of legitimating the trash that they accept for a fee, but only you can know if this is an option.
*Or*, they have bad intentions, from which I can think of a few:
1. They will ask for money to publish it.
2. They will want to sell you back the rights.
3. They will sell the content to some unscrupulous scholar who will publish it as his/her own.
At any rate, brace yourself, anything is possible. I would recommend, in the short-term, to upload a pre-print on your personal website to give access to it to your scholarship committee, even if the copyright contract prevents you to do so. Fake journals rarely have the firepower (or enough legal notions) for seriously fighting over copyright issues. You should also tell your story to Beall, at least for the sake of warning other scholars.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/10/15 | 829 | 3,404 | <issue_start>username_0: I've seen many theses with long long title.
I understand that can help to narrow down the scope of the thesis.
Yet, I was recently asked to think of the title of my thesis, and I don't like those long long titles.
Is something in the form of "On XXX of YYY" a good title?
For instance,
* "On the uncountability of real numbers"
* "On the identification of biological systems"
I think this can make the thesis rather straightforward. Is such a title specific enough to attract the intended audience?<issue_comment>username_1: That name made me curious and i opened the Question. But i did not got from name what is it about.
If thesis is about to make people curious, then go for it. but if you want a name that one is real representation of your thesis. Then choose an alternate.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: The title of a work is the first thing that people will use to decide whether to read it or not. You want it to say as clearly and lucidly as possible what it is that you have contributed. If you title something "On XXX of YYY", then that says you've done a loosely coupled collection of investigations regarding the relationship of XXX and YYY. If, however, the important conclusion of your thesis is more specific, it's good to say that in your title.
To make up an example, compare:
* "On the diet of Antarctic seals": this document studied diet exhaustively, and came up with very thorough data but no particularly big surprises.
* "Antarctic seal diet dependent on frozen pizza": this document studied diet, and found something rather bizarre that clearly needs more study.
In sum: short is good, but unnecessarily vague is bad.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: I personally don't care for this style of title. Seeing a title like "On the cromulence of blobs" makes me wonder: What exactly *about* the cromulence of blobs is the author investigating? Why doesn't she just tell me? It tends to leave me less piqued than frustrated, and gives me the subconscious suggestion that rather than producing a specific result, the paper is just going to ramble on about blobs and their cromulence.
But in general, for choosing a title: the first question is, what kind of thesis did you write? Some theses (especially doctoral) are **original** and present new results, others (especially undergraduate and sometimes masters) are **expository** and simply explore existing results.
For an **original thesis**, my advice would be to choose a rather specific title that accurately describes your results, even if it is long. I would use the following rule of thumb to evaluate potential titles: look at all the papers you know that contain closely related work (hopefully you have cited all of them, so all you should need to do is open your bibliography). For each of them, ask yourself: **Does my title make it clear that what I did is different from what's in this other paper?** If not, your title is not specific enough. Other researchers doing related work will want to be able to tell at a glance whether your thesis is likely to address the question they have in mind.
For an **expository** thesis, a more general title is fine: just state the topic that you wrote about. People are unlikely to come looking for such a thesis with a specific question in mind; they may read your thesis more for a general overview of the topic.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/10/15 | 264 | 1,074 | <issue_start>username_0: I have several papers in IEEE Xplore. I have uploaded their pre-print versions in academia.edu. But when I search in Google Scholar, I can't find the links of those I uploaded in academia.
What should I do to show up the link of my free papers alongside with the original published ones in Google Scholar search? Where should I upload the free versions?
I am an undergrad student and I do not have any official website/e-mail.<issue_comment>username_1: If the preprint version of the paper has been indexed by Google Scholar, then Scholar should show that version of the paper as well. Assuming that it's permissable under the publisher's rules, you could post the paper on your personal web site and Scholar would eventually find and index it. However, you can't explicitly add anything to Scholar's index.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: As best as I can tell, your IEEE Xplore papers and Academia.edu papers *do* appear on your Google Scholar profile. You simply need to click "All *x* versions" once you've selected the paper.
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/10/15 | 779 | 3,389 | <issue_start>username_0: I teach a course, every week I assign homework. I put several hours to choose the right homework problems which cover the course material and permit them to be prepared for the exams.
I encourage students coming to my office hours and to ask all of their questions, I may also help them to solve the homework problems. During the class I normally give some hints about the homework's difficult problems (in any).
The homework load is (in my opinion) reasonable: 4-5 exercises, maybe 3-4 out of them are easy and maybe 1-2 is a little challenging. The homework has 10% point.
Today, to my surprise I saw a user who has asked all of my homework problems (including the easy ones) on math stackexchange. And all of them have been answered. Regarding the particularity of my homework problems and the time of posting the questions, I am sure that the user is one of my students, I am not sure which one.
To be precise I had not prohibited the students about posting the homework questions online as I was not expecting this situation.
My question is what is the best strategy to deal with this situation.<issue_comment>username_1: I had this happen in my biostatistics course a few years ago, with Yahoo Answers.
I told that class that every single person was going to get an F for the semester for academic misconduct unless the student(s) came forward and admitted their action.
Then I went to Yahoo Answers, made a bunch of fake accounts, and posted tantalizingly wrong answers to all of my own HW questions. I have told all subsequent students not to google the HW answers because there are wrong solutions out there.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_2: I am not sure what my opinion of this really is.
On one hand is asking on the internet really that different from asking a friend how to do a particular piece of homework, or even just looking up the method in a textbook.
Presumably you think that looking the answer up on the internet will not result in your students learning the material as well working out how to do it for themselves. The result of this is that the students will do worse in their final exams which are worth distinctly more than 10%.
You could give your students a gentle reminder of this at the start of the next lecture/course. Hopefully, they will listen to you and try and do the work on their own. If not, I wouldn't feel bad for them if they did poorly in their exams.
Some people may be concerned that not punishing this behavior is encouraging students to cheat and gain extra marks for their homework. I would say you are quite naive if you think students wouldn't ask each other how to do the homework anyway. It is very hard to police these sorts of things which is probably one of the reasons they have a relatively low weighting.
Personally, I would give homeworks zero weighting as this removes any incentive for students to try and improve their mark this way. The questions would probably still be asked but that is more because students don't like going to office hours.
While you probably could try punish the offending student under your institution's academic integrity rules, I think you will have difficulties identifying the culprit without significant effort and possibly underhand tactics from your part. Even if you could identify them I wouldn't for the reasons outlined above.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/10/15 | 382 | 1,733 | <issue_start>username_0: I have collected some papers regarding the subject of my M.A. thesis, but I have some articles that I couldn't find where they were published. The point is when I Google the title of the article, Google shows me that the article has been cited more than 60 times, but I can't find where and in what journal. How can I find the journal in which these articles were published?<issue_comment>username_1: Sometimes the route that seems most tedious can end up being the most efficient. I would try looking at some of those 60+ references. Any work that's been cited so many times will have to have the source listed in the bibliography sections of those references.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Google Scholar typically offers "Cite" button that will give you its best bibliographic information available on the citation. That will usually give you everything you need. If not, follow the links in Scholar to where it found the article, and there will usually be bibliographic information. And you can also do as @username_1 suggests and look at how others have cited it.
For some particularly odd or obscure articles, however, you may still be unable to find an appropriate set of journal/conference information. For example, technical manuals often have no official publication, but just an online reference site that is being maintained. Another example is the [Carlson Curve](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlson_Curve) is widely referenced but has no official publication beyond a series of blog posts. Still, there is always a correct way to cite: follow the principle of giving the most complete and persistent data that will allow others to find the same information that you found.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/10/15 | 1,189 | 5,075 | <issue_start>username_0: This is a follow up question from [this one](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11149/what-are-the-potential-pitfalls-of-having-a-phd). From what I read in that question I understood that in most cases the PhD is not a good idea to grow a good career in the industry.
However I contacted two people in the industry who have PhDs in machine learning and data mining and they work in Amazon Germany as machine learning scientists or data miners. They told me almost any job in data mining or machine learning requires a PhD.
My question is: do the same pitfalls for other fields also apply for PhDs in machine learning and data mining? If not, then are there still other pitfalls?<issue_comment>username_1: The statement "PhD is not a good idea for a career in industry" is not always true. It depends both on the field but also on the type of job you want to do. For some things, like programming, experience in industry is often considered much more useful than advanced degrees. However, if you are aiming for a position that involves advanced research and development (like some machine-learning jobs), you will most likely be required to have a PhD, or at least have a major advantage.
It is possible that you might earn less or advance slower in a PhD research-type position, but I don't think salary level or rank are necessarily the way to measure career success.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Supply and demand plays a large part into why I believe the "PhD is not a good idea" comes across. To be fair, a PhD will probably NEVER hurt your chances. It's more whether it will HELP your chances. I find what's best is to demonstrate exactly what each degree provides in a theoretical job application.
A BS in CS, MS in CS, and PhD in Machine Learning (with BS/MS in CS) all apply to a job that is asking for computer science skills.
The BS provides programming at a basic level and maybe a few upper level skills.
The MS provides what the BS does along with additional experience in concepts such as the development cycle. He may have also had some work experience.
The PhD provides what the MS does plus a research in the background of machine learning (probably not applicable to most jobs).
The PhD really doesn't offer significantly more in a practical sense. The PhD can still get the job, but the advantage the PhD has over the MS is much smaller than the MS over the BS. If the MS will do, it may depreciate the value of the PhD (it won't hurt you, but it won't help you as much). When you're competing for the same Master's-level equivalent position, you're in a very big pool of potential candidates, given how there are naturally more MS holders than PhD holders.
**Now we'll take the same candidates, and apply the same people to a machine learning job instead.**
The BS has probably never heard of machine learning or taken a class.
The MS may have one class worth of experience in machine learning. It would be quite rare for an MS to have work experience with machine learning as well.
The PhD has dedicated a significant amount of time in machine learning. Probably knows everything about theory, and has written his own software.
In this case, the PhD has significantly more experience simply due to his field of study. Probably the only candidate, or one of a few, and has an actual machine learning background.
If you plan to get a PhD in machine learning and then decide to code general enterprise environment software, it's not going to help. If you get that PhD and then decide to work in a cutting-edge environment that actually implements machine learning, you'll probably be the top candidate. Also keep in mind that there are far more general development jobs than there are for machine-learning.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: As a person who has hired quite a few people in industry, I will simply say that **advanced areas** (or even areas that are *perceived* to be advanced) **often see PhDs being preferable**. In this respect I completely agree with username_1.
I do not, however, agree that you might earn less. **Those with sought-after skills get paid well in industry**. It is about supply and demand but supply (people who can do the job) is not high and demand is growing.
**Machine-learning is hot in the business literature**. That is, managers are *becoming* well informed about the potentials of machine-learning and they are becoming worried that the only way they can compete for the long-term is by taking advantage of this area.
While lower-level programming jobs might not see any benefit from higher qualifications, areas like machine-learning are not seen as lower-level.
To answer your main question, are there pitfalls of having a PhD if you want a job in industry? The answer is no. I am unaware of anyone who has ever thought lower of a job candidate because they have a PhD. Yes, you could get a job without one but for your areas of interest, a PhD will give you lots of advantage when it comes to getting job offers.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer] |
2014/10/15 | 657 | 2,712 | <issue_start>username_0: US universities typically organize visit weekends for newly admitted graduates, after which the latter confirm or refuse the offer. Is there any research/study/survey that looked at the impact of the visit weekend weather on the admitted graduates' grad school decision?<issue_comment>username_1: The short non-scientific answer: YES
My answer is just based on anecdotes and I am not aware of any methodological research on this subject (it is not my field of research). I've listened to an episode of This American Life about this subject, in which they interview professors on the admission committees of different universities. According the the interviews, visiting a university is a good indication that the student is interested in the school and is more likely to attend the school if he/she is admitted.
This is episode "504: How I Got Into College" of the podcast, which you can find here (<http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/504/how-i-got-into-college>).
P.S. I tried to post this as a comment to the question but it was too long. I apologize if this is not the answer you are looking for.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I'm not aware of any research, and we've actually debated this some in my department.
Anecdotally, the biggest factor in whether a prospective grad student decides to attend is whether they come to visit. Of course, that's hard to establish as causal, since students who are inclined to turn down the offer are much less likely to visit. Moreover, we know of a few students each year who *already* accepted our offers who come for the visit weekend(s).
**I suspect *weather* is pretty low on the list of reasons to decline a program.**
We've polled students who declined our offer and generally the reason is either that they preferred an advisor at another school, or preferred a higher-ranked program. I don't have the spreadsheet, but I think that was ~75-80% of the respondents over the last two years of polling. (In our chemistry department, the incoming grad student class is ~30-40, so the statistics are reasonable.)
I do agree with the comment above about significantly negative experiences. We sometimes took students to eat at a cool restaurant that used to be a church. One student, who was evidently, extremely Catholic, was offended, even though we explained the church performed rites and was very pleased with the resulting restaurant.
In short, I'd say major negative experiences and then logical sorts of reasons are much more likely causes. (Now, if you're talking about a hurricane, tornado, freak blizzard, or other "major negative experience" due to weather.. that's a different story.)
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/10/16 | 682 | 2,926 | <issue_start>username_0: When an academic apply for a faculty position, the main criteria of selection are usually his record of research and teaching (and other academic affairs).
For the case of research, it is straightforward: research publications, other research outputs, funding, etc.
But how one can have an exceptional record of teaching and academic affairs?
When someone has many high impact papers, he can be confident about his research records. With what records, one can be confident about his teaching/academic records?<issue_comment>username_1: The following points would contribute to a good teaching record:
* **List of courses** that someone has given. Note that this shows the quantity of teaching, but not the quality. Still, I would consider it the key part of someone's teaching record, and to some extent quality might improve with quantity in this case.
* Undergraduate and graduate **student theses** that one has supervised. Some measure of teaching quality might be how well the theses were done (e.g. prizes/publications), even though this says more about the student than about the teacher.
* **Teaching evaluations** from students. That's probably the best way to really assess the quality of teaching.
* A formal **teaching qualification** and any **teaching prizes** will be a nice bonus, of course.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Defining or even giving an example of an exceptional record is hard. An easier thing is to compare two things, and see which one is more exceptional. So:
* you have only taught one course (perhaps multiple times) or you have taught a great number of courses.
* you have taken over courses that already existed, or you have introduced a topic to your department for the first time
* you have taught only undergrads, or at all levels within your university
* you have taught only your own department, or throughout your university
* you teach in one very narrow area, or a number of difficult topics
in all these cases, the second is more exceptional than the first. Then consider things like being nominated for (or winning) awards or commendations, and you can start to tell a story. Some rare people will have achievements like "so many students want to be in my section of this course that I lecture in a 1000-seat hall" and while this is certainly exceptional, you can construct a good tale of why you're great even if you don't have that particular anecdote.
To me, it's put important to put your claim and the evidence together in a paragraph that starts by asserting your claim ("I have an exceptional teaching record") and goes on to back that up by listing what you've taught - or just stating a number if it's too many to list - and what's exceptional about your record. Don't just include a whole pile of facts about you and hope people will realize this means you're a great teacher. Show that you are and claim that you are.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/10/16 | 3,252 | 13,968 | <issue_start>username_0: I have a problem with the courses I'm TAing. I am a math PhD student at a large (supposedly good) state university where the lower-division math classes are taught in the "discussion section" format (i.e. students go to a big lecture with clickers three days a week, and attend 30ish person sized recitation with a TA once a week). I teach three of these recitations.
When I first came here several years ago, I was shocked by the low quality of the courses I was assigned to. This was supposed to be a good school, yet the students are treated without respect, held to no standards, and come out knowing virtually nothing. Furthermore, there are strict limitations imposed on TAs, to the point where I feel that I am being actively prevented from teaching anything to my students. A breaking point came for me recently when my course coordinator made it mandatory for us to assign online quizzes through a third party "online instructional application," instead of administering handwritten quizzes in class. I have *very* strong objections to this, for multiple reasons that I could elaborate on, but they are not the point of this post.
The point is, I feel gross. I'm being forced to teach in a way that I find unethical and unreasonable, and every attempt that I have made to bring up an issue in the past has been met with complete inflexibility. It seems to be the culture of the department to dismiss the opinions of its graduate students.
I don't know how else to state my objections. I know I'm not in charge, and I don't want to be unprofessional, but I want to be heard. I have given serious thought to resigning with a public letter. However, even with that sacrifice, I'm not sure anyone would listen.
Is there anything I can do? How should I handle this situation?<issue_comment>username_1: A first important note before I answer the actual question:
>
> I don't know how else to state my objections. I know I'm not in charge, and I don't want to be unprofessional, but I want to be heard.
>
>
>
From what it sounds like, you *were* heard (you have been given the chance to voice your objections on multiple occasions). The persons in charge just decided to not follow through with your suggestions, which is, in the abstract, completely ok for them to do (they are in charge, and you are not).
I feel this is an important distinction to make - from what you have written in the post, there is nothing that rings a big alarm bell of grossly unethical behaviour to me. Yes, the thing with the commercial provider could be due to somebody personally profiting from the contract, but it could just as well be that the persons in charge honestly think that handling quizzes electronically will improve class. There are strict limitations on what TAs can do and teach in many big courses in many universities, this is often simply required for coordination between different recitation groups. That you feel the students are treated without respect and "come out knowing virtually nothing" sounds dramatic, but I am not entirely sure whether this is a fact or just your personal impression.
One interesting question would be how other TAs and the undergrads see the situation. Are other TAs also of the impression that the quality in the courses is much lower than it could be? Do the students also feel treated without respect? If you have not done so yet, I would suggest you to verify that your opinion is indeed shared by a majority of the other involved stakeholders - and, if this is not the case, reflect critically whether you are just overreacting.
>
> Is there anything I can do? How should I handle this situation?
>
>
>
It sounds like you did what you could do (bring up your concerns with the responsible persons), and they decided to dismiss your concerns. At this point, you have basically two options:
* *Quit TAing* - some statements in your (well-written) question sound like you have reached a level where you cannot justify working on the course anymore. In this case, the best thing to do is to leave. However, don't make a big fuss with a public letter etc. - I have seen similar things happen on multiple different occasions, and they *never* led to any substantial change and they *always* led to a plethora of public shaming and scapegoating of the letter writer. Don't put yourself into that position.
* *Go on* - you have done what can reasonably expected from you in this position (notified the higher-ups, argued your objections), and they have decided to not change. You do not need to have any ethical concerns about leaving things be for now, and just move on teaching the course *even though you personally would do things entirely differently*. You are, as you say yourself, not in charge, so you don't need to beat yourself up over decisions which are not yours to make.
If you select the "go on" option, you can either resign from your cause entirely (and give up all hopes of change), or play the political game. As you are probably well aware, politicians everywhere (not only in congress, but also in companies, faculties, and any other collection of humans) are able to influence decisions that are not actually theirs to make by slowly swaying over the formal decision makers to their cause. This will only work "from the inside", so if you quit, this door is pretty much closed to you.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: I would strongly recommend against doing anything dramatic, such as resigning or publicly denouncing the course. I feel bad about discouraging acting on your beliefs, but I think it could actually hurt your career. There are two reasons for this:
First, the topic of how to teach low-level mathematics courses has become contentious and politicized in recent decades. Unless this is actually your scholarly specialty, it's safest not to get too dramatically involved, particularly as a grad student. The problem is that you can easily find people who will embrace you as a champion or martyr, whichever side you are on. Even if you are sober and self-restrained (which would probably rule out a public letter), other people on your side will say provocative things and attract negative attention while supporting you. Controversy is dangerous for academic careers, since it's generally easier to veto hiring someone than to generate an offer. So if you acquire equal numbers of friends and enemies, your enemies can hurt you more than your friends can help you. Plus, if you want a research career, being known for inflexible opinions about low-level teaching will distract attention away from your research accomplishments. That distraction can be a problem even for people who agree with you.
Second, you risk coming across like a worrisomely disruptive colleague. Most math departments contain at least one faculty member who regularly takes fervent stands on seemingly minor issues. They feel they have logically analyzed these issues, and they can't in good conscience cooperate with anything other than what they see as the logical option, since that would be a betrayal of the basic principles underlying mathematics. Coordinating with others or compromising play no role in the analysis, and it doesn't really matter how important the issue itself is (what matters is standing up for what's right). These people drive everyone else nuts, since they make it impossible to get anything done without either giving in to them about their pet issues or spending hours debating.
I'm not saying you are necessarily disruptive in this way. You have chosen an important topic to get upset over, and you might be completely right about it. However, if a hiring committee hears that you resigned in disgust upon being asked to administer online quizzes, they will wonder what else you might make a fuss over. This could put them off even if they agree with your concerns about teaching, and there's no way to reassure them that it's really just this one issue.
So what can you do while avoiding these dangers? One approach is to let the faculty handle this fight. If every faculty member disagrees with you, then your cause is hopeless in the short term and it's best just to calm down and finish your Ph.D. program without too much controversy. If some of them do agree with you, then it's not likely that publicly joining them as a grad student will shift the balance of power in the department. Instead, you can try to get your future TA assignments in courses they teach, while encouraging them behind the scenes in their attempts to change the department's approach.
To the extent you take direct action, I'd look for approaches that don't cause extra work for anyone else. For example, if you resign, then someone will have to find a replacement for you (so they'll automatically be upset about it). But you might be able to improve the course by strategic volunteering. Could you prepare optional handouts meant to deepen the students' knowledge? Could you offer a few additional review sessions before exams? These sorts of things aren't going to effect the fundamental changes you seek, but they could at least make you feel better about having done something rather than nothing, and they may build some goodwill with the lecturer by showing that you really want to help the students.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: Many new graduate students have idealized ideas about teaching. You should ask yourself whether your opinions are based on a long experience of teaching at similar schools, or only based on your impressions as a new TA of "how things should be".
In my experience in the math departments at two 40,000+ student state universities, many new GAs have an idealized viewpoint that doesn't match reality. Here are a few important aspects of these schools that I didn't recognize when I first arrived at one:
* The typical student at a large state university is not as strong as many incoming GAs imagine. This is true even at highly-rated institutions. Yes, the students can do something - they are decent students. But the university has no way to find 10,000 "graduate-quality" high school seniors each year to admit as freshmen. Many of the students they do admit will still struggle with calculus, organic chemistry, and other traditionally "hard" courses.
* At a large institution, many of the students who don't struggle with calculus already took it and can place out of it, or will sign up for an honors calculus course if there is one to take. So the calculus classes aren't a representative sample of the student body, which increases the effect from the previous paragraph.
* Especially at large schools, students complain about unequal treatment. If every section of the calculus course ran differently - especially if some TAs decided to impose stricter standards than others - the likely result would be formal complaints by the students, which the departmental administration would have to resolve. So it is often a *goal* of the course coordinator to prevent each TA from making their section much different than other sections.
A new GA only enters the program once, but faculty see a new crop of GAs every year. These new GAs are unfamiliar with the history of the department, and they do not attend the administrative meetings where the relevant faculty talk about how they want the courses to run. But the GAs often have opinions about how the courses *should* be run which the faculty know would be disastrous if implemented. The general tone of the question above sounds to my ear like the type of complaint permanent faculty have probably heard from many previous graduate students, so I'm not surprised if they quickly dismiss it.
From the outside, it sounds as if the coordinator of your class is doing things to try to maintain quality. Using clickers in lecture, and using an online quiz system, are ways to increase student participation.
With that said, let me answer:
>
> Is there anything I can do? How should I handle this situation?
>
>
>
As a TA, do your best in the situation you are in, and learn from your experience. Once you graduate, the format of the calculus course you once taught will be a very minor afterthought. If you end up in a position to decide on how calculus is taught at another school, you can use your experience then.
If you take up a career in academia, there will be *many* irritating things that you have to do, with little flexibility. You can't win every battle, even if you think the other side is completely wrong. So you have to have a thick skin, and keep a focus on what is really important.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: I would recommend two things:
1. Don't take responsibility for what you don't have authority over. For example, if the students ask why they have to take their quizzes online, the answer is "Because Prof. X said so." If they complain, don't try to justify Prof. X's decision. Just say "I have been explicitly told that I don't have any authority over this matter. You should go talk to Prof. X."
Indeed, you have an opportunity to play good cop - bad cop. The powers that be have set up a system and a series of hoops to jump through. Become an expert on how the game is played. If old exams are publicly available, study them carefully and explain to your students what sorts of questions are likely to appear. If you present yourself as the students' ally against "the system", they will believe you when you give them advice and tell them that they really, really need to do their homework.
2. Keep this in mind in your job search. A lot of small liberal arts colleges pride themselves on offering an experience opposite to what you describe. Do a good job even in an environment you hate, and when twenty employers ask you "Why do you want to work at a liberal arts college?" in ten-minute interviews at the Joint Math Meetings, you will have a very convincing answer.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/10/16 | 679 | 3,012 | <issue_start>username_0: I am a PhD student in mathematics, and I noticed that on my peers' CV's, they often list conferences they attended. It seems as if they just attended these conferences, they did not help organize, nor did they give a talk.
**Should I list conferences I only attended on my CV, or does it look like obvious filler?**<issue_comment>username_1: Maybe the customs are different in mathematics, but in computer science I would never consider putting attendance of an ordinary conference on a C.V. Now, there might be certain exceptional cases where there's some sort of exclusive prestigious invitation-only conference, but that would be a rather unusual case. Most of the time, the only thing that attending a conference shows is that you had access to enough money to be able to register and show up. I, at least, would see a list of conferences attended as filler.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: It may not be a big achievement just to *attend* a conference, however participation with the poster and especially oral presentation I think could be mentioned, especially by students who may not have any publications yet.
Conferences should be listed separately, not confusing them with peer reviewed publications that are much more significant achievements. This list must include the header of your poster or presentation, co-authors, not just the name of the conference.
After there are enough published serious works, a list of conferences does not make much sense.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: In general, you can put pretty much whatever you want in your CV (unless there is a template, in which case deciding what to put or not should be pretty straight-forward). The question is: **what is the point of putting a piece of information in your CV?**
Usually, a CV is used in the context of a recruitment process, where the point, in the end, is to give reasons to the recruiter to recruit you instead of someone else. Hence, a piece of information contained in a CV should be instructive, for instance by ensuring that you do have the proper credentials, or by providing evidence that you can be apt to the position you are applying for.
Perhaps attending conferences is something relatively rare in your field, and you have attended more than the average PhD students? In that case, listing all the conferences you have attended could indicate you are very interested in keeping up with recent advances in your field. It could also show that you enjoy travelling. Perhaps you have secure internal or external funding to attend that conference (i.e., the funding was not automatically given)? That's also good evidence. **You could list them if it provides evidence for an aspect that you are willing to emphasise in your application.**
On the other hand, if the conferences you have attended had nothing special, or do not help emphasising any particular point, then you might want to keep the space in your CV for something else.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer] |
2014/10/16 | 1,037 | 4,545 | <issue_start>username_0: I think I have only seen one CV where a photograph of the CV owner was included. I personally wouldn't want to put my photograph in my CV, but I was wondering, **in what situations would including a photo if oneself within the CV be appropriate?**<issue_comment>username_1: First, there is no clear cut right or wrong here and the short answer as I see it is that there is no question of appropriateness, but maybe of impact.
I see quite a few CVs at different stages in academia and the majority lack photos but a fair number carry them. From my perspective, I would say that persons in or aiming for academic education are the ones that to a larger extent add photos to their CVs. People applying for higher academic jobs, after their PhDs, do it less. The latter is likely due to the fact that when applying for such a job it is the merits (publications, teaching experience etc.) and the experience in research which receives all focus. An image is irrelevant.
So why will (mainly) younger persons add photographs? I agree that tradition (e.g. in different countries) plays a role. I can also imagine that it may seem like a good way to present themselves amongst a more anonymous mass. Whether or not this is successful, I am not certain. But, it is true that these applications stick out and are noticed and for good reasons. As social beings we are used to see faces and communicate with persons so an image may have an effect. Unfortunately, due to irrelevant reasons but hopefully in very few instances, some people may also let the picture influence their views of applicants that overshadow the official selection criteria but that is another story.
To add to the picture, most people have personal web pages of a facebook page with images of oneself and other things related to life and activities. A link to such pages (e.g. through a QR patch) could be more efficient to relate personal traits and interests than a photograph in a CV. This does not mean that all will take the time to see the pages.
So for any academic use, I do not see an image as important. Use of a link to social media incl. web pages may suffice, if one thinks there is something valuable to see there. So the appropriateness is not an issue as I see it but the positive effect, if any, may decrease with time since important assessment criteria are progressively filled with information.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: In the United States, you should never include a photo in an academic CV. It comes across as somewhat inappropriate, like you are deliberately drawing attention to your appearance and hoping it will influence the decision. (I know that's not actually the intent, but many people's gut reaction upon seeing the photo will be "Why is the applicant showing me this? Do they think I should know what they look like before making a decision? How is that supposed to be relevant?") If you are from a country in which photos are often included, then that will be understood as a reasonable explanation, but it will stand out as foreign. If you aren't from such a country, then it will look bad.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: If you apply for a job or for grad school in Germany, a photo will be more than appropriate (unless there are other rules or specific forms for the position or school). Indeed it is quite the norm to have a photo on your CV for job applications in Germany (both inside and outside academia). However, if you have a CV attached to, e.g., a grant proposal, then a photo would look strange.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: My rule of thumb is to **put a photo on a CV when there is a chance it will help you**. Have you spoken on a conference and you want to be easily recognised by someone who could have seen you there? Have you talked to someone important, who happens to see a lot of people, and you want your CV to better remind them of you? Is the photo required officially or by local culture\*? Then yes, put your (smiling) face on the CV .
On the other hand, if there is a strict anti-discrimination policy in place at the particular institution, that discourages photos on CVs, then you better avoid sending yours with a photo.
\* As @username_3 mentions, it is appropriate to attach a photo to your CV if the recipient is in Germany (my current employer is a German company and I can say the photos are very useful very often), in the neighbouring Czech Republic, however, a CV with a photo is rarely seen and not really required.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/10/16 | 640 | 2,828 | <issue_start>username_0: I've given many talks at my home institution, at the undergraduate and graduate colloquiums, and in a few seminars. The list is getting quite long.
**Is it appropriate to list many talks given at my home institution? Does it reflect badly on me?**<issue_comment>username_1: First of all, it's great that this list is becoming long! It's good to be taking every opportunity you can as a student to practice presentations, and many students try to avoid this rather than embrace it.
Now, as for what to include in the C.V.: while in principle you can include anything, in practice you want the C.V. to convey "here are all of the things I've done that I think are significant". Thus, it's not the question of home institution per se, but the significance of the talk venue that matters. For example: if you were invited to give a talk in a seminar series where most of the other speakers come from other institutions, that's nearly as significant as giving a talk elsewhere. Giving a required talk in the internal graduate colloquium matters much less.
I would recommend keeping some evidence of the fact that you are giving many presentations on your C.V. To keep it from feeling like filler, however, you can compress the "unimportant" talks into a single bullet point, like "NN presentations in internal meetings, seminars, and colloquiums." That conveys the information without feeling spammy. Once you've built up a significant record of giving talks at external venues like conferences and other institutions, then you can drop that bullet point as being assumed.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Internal talks generally carry no prestige since there usually is little to no competition to get a a talk. In fact, it is no unusual for the organizer of internal seminar series to have to resort to begging. Internal talks demonstrate three things. The first is that you are a good departmental citizen and are willing to participate in something the department deems important. The second is that it shows you are actively conducting research. The third is that it shows a willingness to present your research and receive feedback on it.
When to list internal talks on your CV depends on what the CV is for. For an annual review, listing internal talks from the past year is critical. For a promotion review it is generally useful to demonstrate all of your departmental citizenship activities. For a grant application it is probably not useful since funders do not really care if you are a good citizen. For job applications, it is a mixed bag and somewhat depends on your personality and other activities. There are often better activities to demonstrate departmental citizenship, but many of these activities are more painful than giving an internal seminar.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/10/16 | 468 | 2,003 | <issue_start>username_0: I have a paper submitted to a journal of Elsevier.
From "Manuscript Submitted" to "with editor" took one day; then it was "with editor" for five days, and then "under review". One and a half months later, the status of the paper was still "under review", but the date of status has changed.
What can cause the date in the submission system to change in the absence of a change in status?<issue_comment>username_1: When a paper is assigned to a reviewer, the reviewer may decline or fail to review the paper. In this case the editor will assign the paper to a new reviewer. The status date will change at the day the new review was assigned, but the status will remain the same.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: There could me multiple reasions for the status date to change:
* Reviewer comments are added to the database
* The reviewer changes
* Editor checks the database
See this question: <http://www.editage.com/insights/why-does-the-status-date-of-a-submission-change-periodically-though-the-status-remains-unchanged>
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: For that you need to know how the journal system works. When status is "with editor" it doesn't always implies that the paper is not send for reviews. Because in journals the configuration of online submission system is such that if at least 2 or 3 reviewers have accepted the review request only then status will change to "under review". Also when status is "under review" and status date is changing then it means the reviewers have submitted his/her report in the system (which have led to change in status date). When at least 2 or 3 reviewers reports (this count is configured by the journal) are not come till then status won't change. If they come then status may change to "with editor" or "under editor evaluation" or "required reviews completed". Under these status also the status date may change which implies remaining reviewer(s) have also submitted their reports.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/10/16 | 931 | 4,105 | <issue_start>username_0: I've run into this issue in many fields in which I'm interested in learning about. For the purposes of this question let's assume electricity/circuits/power systems. I find myself starting at the basics and as I try to understand each concept, I start thinking of more of how this concept really works instead of accepting it at face value. In addition to this I also start to ask more complicated questions which I'm assuming I could answer if I would read on. The problem I end up running into is I won't let myself continue until I understand the concept completely. For example: I start learning about how current is always consistent in a single circuit which makes me start thinking about how total current/draw is measured in a household. Then this leads me to think that if everything is connected by wires, then shouldn't this be one large circuit with the same current.
As you see I start diving too deep. This seems like an inefficient way of learning and it usually causes me more stress than understanding.<issue_comment>username_1: A good way to force yourself to focus is to try to actually *do* something with the knowledge that you are trying to acquire. To paraphrase one of my former advisors who I much admire as a teacher, there are three levels at which you can understand a subject:
1. Familiarity with the concepts: able to recognize and talk meaningfully about them.
2. Ability to employ the concepts effectively in solving problems
3. Ability to teach the concepts to another person well enough to get them to level 2.
It's easy to get stuck at mere familiarity if you aren't attempting to actually use the things you're learning in order to do things. From a pedagogical standpoint, this is actually the main value of homework exercises.
Now, what about doing it in the absence of an external forcing function (i.e., grades)? If you can't motivate yourself to do homework-style exercises, why not pick a project that you actually think would be cool and fun, and let that be what forces you to put the learning to work. For example, taking the electricity/circuits example, a nice classic example is to try to build your own FM or AM radio receiver from basic components (transistors, resistors, etc.). It's low enough power to be physically safe and complex enough that you'll probably have to deal with a lot of interesting problems even if you start from schematics found online. Then try to make it better... before long, you'll understand not just the basic concepts but *why* you need to know them and how they fit together.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I'd suggest enrolling in night classes at a community college. I've taken several night classes in subjects I'm interested in, and found that having a prof guide the learning either allowed me to ask my question immediately (they are usually quite happy to have enthusiastic students in class), or guided me to the answer quickly.
I have yet to have a bad experience as either everyone in the class is taking it "for fun" or I have been one of the best students since I'm genuinely interested in the topic. Community colleges also tend to have faculty that is extremely student focused, which was a refreshing change from getting my "day-job" degrees.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: This helps me a lot:
Dont think about the subject matter too much from the very beginning. Read a lot of literature and as you gather more and more knowledge, many questions will eventually be answered, whitout you even realizing it.
Then, when your knowledge of the topic is more profound (it could be after 1 week of reading, 2 months of projects or 1 whole semester of classes) -> depends on topic, how difficult it is and what sources of information you have (dont set any hard deadlines, just let yourself get into it and take as much time as needed).
In my case, many things clear up just after the end of semester, when I am done with exams and I have free time to rethink the things I have studied during semester.
BTW, I am an engineering student (Mechatronics).
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/10/16 | 2,506 | 10,755 | <issue_start>username_0: While it's clear that having a sterling CV with lots of high profile papers will be beneficial to getting hired, I often hear from other faculty that, when hiring, they are looking for someone who "fits in", "could be a friend", and overall is "nice". These, to me, are ways of saying the person is charismatic, or at least quite pleasant to be around. It is unclear to me how much this is actually true, or said in retrospect to talk up the newly hired person. Here are my questions:
1. Have you ever been part of a hiring committee (or just hiring a postdoc for your group) when you and/or the committee chose someone who was "friendlier" over someone who had a better CV and/or gave a better talk?
2. Why did you ultimately make this choice?
3. In hindsight, do you feel it was the correct choice to make?
4. Alternatively, if the most credentialed (but possibly less friendly/charismatic) candidate was chosen, what was the discussion about this? Did the relative charisma of the candidates come up when making the decision?<issue_comment>username_1: The final pre-offer stage of most academic hiring processes is the "on-campus interview". This is when the candidates come, one at a time, spend a day on campus, give talks, speak with faculty, etc.
**By and large, every candidate who receives an on-campus interview is qualified for the job.** Therefore, at this point of the process, it is no longer useful to try to sort candidates by the strength of their CV alone. That has already been done at earlier stages of the process, and the candidates who received an on-campus interview already made it through that process.
Therefore, it should not be surprising that, from time to time, someone with at "worse" CV gets an offer before someone with a "better" CV. There are so many factors that the department takes into account, and the CV is just one. That does not mean that having a better CV is irrelevant at the end - it is very relevant! But it is just one piece of evidence among many at the end of the process.
There is a lot of controversy about "fit". In the worst case, it can be a way to act on hidden biases, which is a valid cause for concern. You can read about all sides of this debate on in the Chronicle of Higher Education or Inside Higher Ed.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: It's not so much about "niceness" as it is about the interpersonal skills necessary for a well-functioning group. Every research organization, whether of an individual professor or an entire department, has a lot of things that need to be accomplished that can't be done by individuals in isolation. Not only is there all of the administration, but people typically want to be able to effectively collaborate with others in their group, write joint grant proposals, help one another in battles with the administration, etc.
If you have a candidate who is excellent in isolation but lacks the interpersonal skills necessary to interact effectively, they may be more burden than they are worth. If they are actively problematic in their interactions, that can poison an organization for years.
For a tenure-track position, I have even heard people compare hiring a new professor to getting married since you potentially are committing to live with that person as a close collaborator for decades (though I think that analogy is a little overly intimate myself).
Of course, it's hard to judge long-term compatibility in the short period of an interview. But given all of these long-term considerations, it is no surprise that people will give a lot of weight to their impressions of the feelings they have when interacting with a candidate.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: I have rewritten this a few times trying to find the right approach to this; forgive me if something ends up mangled in the process (and the length, of course). As non-faculty holder of a recent terminal degree, I wanted to weigh in from the student side of things.
1. there are a lot of intersections between things we perceive to be part of a person's "personality" (charismatic, nice, frank, honest, mean, personable, distant, etc.) and their ability to work effectively with students
2. it's a big concern to me if a hiring committee is picking someone they'd like to have a drink or a dinner-party with over someone who would make, you know, a good member of the faculty; I want to have faith that these decisions are being made with the theoretical student's best-interests in mind, because we the theoretical students may need you to have our backs.
I'll do this backwards and start with the second point: as students, we don't have a lot of leverage regarding who is and isn't faculty, and if serious concerns with another faculty membercome up, it's important that, as students, we know these concerns won't be dismissed because everyone pals around with them and can't see their flaws. This is a balance, of course; I enjoy faculty who get along, and I've learned a lot by being mentored by more than one faculty who are good friends.
To the first point: While I was a graduate student we were asked to attend talks by the three candidates given on-campus interviews and give feedback on the candidates. We debated the tradeoffs between which candidate we felt produced the best work and which candidate did the best job of actually talking about that work in a way that (we hoped) would make them better in the classroom and as mentors.
I recused myself when car trouble popped up and kept me from attending the third talk, but of the two I did see, the more charismatic candidate won the position over a candidate who appeared more insightful, kind and levelheaded but had trouble communicating the excitement and importance of his own work. This was a problem when going up against someone well-known in his field. How much faith can I put in a professor who is uninteresting even with the agency to choose topics and incentive to shine (compare to: when he is teaching something he doesn't want to teach to students he doesn't think he has time for)? At the time, this decision satisfied me, though there were certainly others in the program who thought the decision was terrible.
In retrospect, the candidate hired is a charismatic person who is very successful in his field and isn't afraid to give feedback that we as students may need to hear, but which most professors are too nice to give. He can also be a boor, sexist, bully, and drunk. He clearly played favorites with attractive female students, gave unattractive female students a hard time, while being much more even-handed with the male students (with a notable exception regarding a student interested in the same female student he was...). I won't be surprised if I hear certain kinds of news about him in the future.
I've had nice, friendly charismatic professors who are good at guiding students, mediating conflict, treating everyone fairly and encouraging us to succeed. I've had harsh but charismatic professors who never run out of brutal honesty drive us all the harder to succeed. I never had a professor wow me into being a better student by the weight of their accomplishments. I've also discussed a charismatic professor whose extracurriculars were a distraction to our ability to learn what he's capable of teaching. None of these factors will generally stand out on a CV, and some of them will obviously prove elusive even after a thorough campus interview.
From my distance, I can only hope our faculty and administrators weren't picking a friend, and will be capable of sober reflection and thoughtful advocacy for student interests should a student come to them in need.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: Just a few thoughts. One, you mention "charisma" and "giving a better talk" as different alternatives, but in fact charisma is part of giving a good talk. When people evaluate a candidate's "job talk", they are inevitably evaluating the presentation as well as the content, and the presentation will benefit if the person is charismatic.
More generally charisma goes beyond just being "nice". There are many ways in which a person may or may not "fit in" with a department. A person may be perfectly nice and even fun to hang out with, but still somehow have a personality that doesn't jibe with a department.
I have been on a hiring committee where various sorts of interpersonal factors played a role in the decision. It wasn't a matter of a "nicer" person was chosen over someone with better research chops, though (nor vice versa). However, there was one candidate who, during a meeting with graduate students, made some remarks which stunned them, and made it seem as if he held fringe positions on basic moral/ethical issues. (Imagine someone unjokingly saying something like "Armed robbery, you know, it's not as bad as some people think." That wasn't what he said, but it had a similar effect.) This candidate did not get the job, although this incident was of course only one factor in the decision.
I mention this just to note that, aside from charisma or research credentials, it's possible for someone to raise a giant red flag simply by their interpersonal behavior. What's especially important is that doing something like this can make it so that faculty and students in the department would actually feel uncomfortable being around you. That's an important way that "charisma", loosely defined, can matter. If a candidate behaves in a way that makes people in the department uncomfortable or not trust him, he may not have a productive career in that department (even if he could have one somewhere else), simply because that social tension will prevent him from working well in that environment.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: As part of a hiring panel at a Fortune 500 company where I once worked, we were trained in what to look for in applicants. (The company was acquired so I no longer work there.)
A sobering fact is the average adult American spends two to three times the amount of waking hours with coworkers than they do with immediate family.
We held the motto "Hire for character; train for skill." Simply put, CV qualifications are much easier and more likely to change over time than someone's abilities to work well with, mentor, inspire, and support others.
In general, the abilities of communicating effectively and being charismatic are intrinsic to one's effectiveness. All other things being equal, someone that won't fit into a and organization well can be a disruptive influence that lowers the efficiency and moral of an entire organization, including their peers, subordinates, and especially their superiors who wind up refereeing disputes.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/10/16 | 1,803 | 7,805 | <issue_start>username_0: I am an ABD (all- But-Dissertation) student. I have done all my work, completed my credits, passed my qualifying exams, I passed my oral exams, but I am having trouble finishing my thesis (advisor problems) , and
I was wondering if there may be some variant of the standard post-doctorate for
people in an ABD status.
EDIT: Basically, are there post-doc programs that will accept someone who did all the work but did not finish their thesis? Or are there programs similar to a post-doc for people who have
SECOND EDIT: I am in a Mathematics Program. Does anyone know of schools that will
allow me to transfer with relatively few requirements, i.e., not needing to take years worth of classes?
Thanks.<issue_comment>username_1: Simple answer: you can't be a post-doc until you're a doc.
If you want your Ph.D., what you should probably instead be looking do to is to change advisors, within your institution if possible. I know a number of people who have done that, sometimes rather late in the thesis process. You'll likely need to change your research and take more years to complete, but there's nothing shameful about that. Think of it as no different than finding out that your first research project simply wasn't possible to complete.
Alternately, many institutions will allow you to take a Masters and leave, at which point there are still lots of research jobs available in industry, government, and even non-traditional posts in academia such as project research staff.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: The fundamental misconception is that there can be "someone who did all the work but did not finish their thesis". The thesis is the focus of a Ph.D. program, while coursework and other requirements are nothing but preparation for the thesis and are of negligible importance in comparison. Postdoctoral positions are meant to give people a chance to deepen their research experience beyond what they achieved while writing a thesis. If they haven't written a thesis, then they haven't completed graduate school and do not yet need to move beyond it.
Occasionally people do begin a postdoctoral position without yet having received a Ph.D. This happens when they have completed their doctoral research but have not yet graduated, for example because their institution awards degrees at only a couple of times each year. I've never heard of someone starting a postdoc if their thesis wasn't at least nearing completion, and I think it's so unlikely that it's not even worth looking into (although I can't conclusively rule it out).
Although postdocs per se are not the right program for this, one could reasonably ask whether there is anything else. There are plenty of postdocs intended to help recent Ph.D. graduates gain additional experience, but are there any programs aimed at helping students who are struggling to finish their degrees (perhaps for reasons beyond their control) become successful and productive researchers?
Unfortunately, I don't know of any. The general feeling is that this is the responsibility of the department you are studying in. They know better than anyone else what you have accomplished so far and what your future potential is. If they have faith in you, then they can help you try to find additional funding, transition to another advisor, or whatever might be appropriate. If they don't have faith in you, then it will be difficult to convince outsiders to take up your case. It could happen in theory (if, say, a faculty member somewhere else is impressed with you and helps you transfer), but I don't think it's likely. Looking outside your current department/university will be seen as a sign that they have given up on you, and unfortunately that will tend to put other institutions off.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: You can certainly get hired as teaching faculty at a lot of places with those qualifications. But you're not going to get hired into a research oriented postdoctoral position without the PhD.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_4: I know of at least one person who was hired for a postdoc and began work before his dissertation was officially filed. I also know of someone who applied for and was interviewed for a tenure-track job; she didn't get the job, but if she had, she would have begun work before receiving her PhD (and the people offering the job were aware of this).
However, these were both cases in which the people were clearly on track to complete their PhD and simply needed more time to see it through (e.g., more rounds of revisions). In other words, they were not people who hadn't finished their thesis, but people who hadn't finished their thesis *yet* --- the people hiring them were confident that they were obviously going to finish. Indeed, they basically *were* finished with the actual writing, but were just making some revisions in response to committee comments.
You don't say exactly why you haven't finished, but the phrase "advisor problems" suggests it is not just a matter of needing more time to do another round of revisions. No one will accept you if the reason you haven't completed your thesis because you are locked in some sort of stalemate with your advisor. However, they may accept you if you are clearly on track to finish, even if you may not actually officially receive the degree by the official deadline. I would imagine that in most cases the letter of recommendation from your advisor would be a major factor here. If you haven't received the degree yet, but your advisor says your research is coming along nicely and the end is in sight, hirers may be satisfied. If your advisor mentions that the two of you are at an impasse over substantive issues (i.e., he wants you to do something with the thesis that you haven't agreed to do) that will raise a red flag.
As a side note, my impression is that many hirers would not see a problem if you have not officially received the degree yet due to purely procedural problems (e.g., it has been approved by your committee but not yet officially filed because your margins were the wrong size). I gather that is not the nature of your situation though.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_5: There are pre-docs for people who are in their final year. They are usually called dissertation writing fellowships and are more common in the humanities and social sciences.
That being said, they always require a functioning committee in your home university and a strong sense that you will be able to finish and submit your dissertation (at your home university). The fellowship supplements but does not replace your home committee.
My advice is to scrounge and beg together a new committee at your university.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_6: In the UK it is possible to be hired as a research assistant on EPSRC grants. You receive a lower salary until your corrections (if any) are accepted, at which point you're upgraded. It can be a tough grind though if you discover e.g. a gap in your PhD which needs plugging. Your new boss may not be happy either.
In all cases I know of, there is a expectation that you will complete quickly. I certainly don't think anyone would hire you into such a position if you told them you weren't going to finish the PhD. A postdoc is partly for training future faculty.
I have lots of sympathy for advisor problems but really encourage you to persevere with finishing the PhD. It might take another year, possibly living on baked beans, not talking to your advisor much. [Are there other grad students in your area to chat to?]
Without a PhD, you might get one (or exceptionally two) assistant positions.. but, realistically, long term you'll be scrabbling for teaching jobs assuming you stay in academia. Not sure about industry jobs.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/10/16 | 674 | 2,762 | <issue_start>username_0: Is it common practice within colleges/universities to allow all faculty within a division access to all student records within that same division? (i.e., all Health Science faculty having access to all Health Science student records)
Wouldn't this violate FERPA?<issue_comment>username_1: Reading [FERPA](http://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html), this clause states that it is appropriate given certain circumstances.
>
> However, FERPA allows schools to disclose those records, without consent, to the following parties or under the following conditions (34 CFR § 99.31):
>
>
>
* School officials with *legitimate educational interest*;
* Specified officials for audit or evaluation purposes;
* Appropriate parties in connection with financial aid to a student;
* Organizations conducting certain studies for or on behalf of the school;
These would be closest to those that matched what you asked.
So if, for example, your HS faculty wanted to average everyone's GPA individually, he could potentially do that, as long as he doesn't post all the names in public.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: FERPA allows for "school officials" to access confidential records when they have a "legitimate educational interest". From the U.S> Deprtment of Education [web site](http://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/students.html):
>
> One of the exceptions to the prior written consent requirement in FERPA allows "school officials," including teachers, within a school to obtain access to personally identifiable information contained in education records provided the school has determined that they have "legitimate educational interest" in the information. Although the term "school official" is not defined in the statute or regulations, this Office generally interprets the term to include parties such as: professors; instructors; administrators; health staff; counselors; attorneys; clerical staff; trustees; members of committees and disciplinary boards; and a contractor, volunteer or other party to whom the school has outsourced institutional services or functions.
>
>
>
So it is not *on its face* a violation of FERPA for professors to have access to student records.
In practice, many schools impose their own restrictions *tighter than FERPA*. Sometimes the school describes these restrictions as "FERPA requirements", when they are actually just the (conservative) advice of the school's own lawyers, rather than literal mandates from FERPA.
Due to these local policies, at a particular school, other faculty may not have unrestricted access to a student's grades. You'd have to inquire with a particular institution to find out their internal policies about such things.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/10/16 | 2,887 | 13,418 | <issue_start>username_0: I've heard a few authors whose native language wasn't English complain that they are put at a disadvantage with respect to authors who are English native speakers, when it comes to publication acceptance in English-speaking venues.
Is there any research/study/survey that looked at the impact of the author's native language on the likelihood of having his publication accepted in an English-speaking venue?<issue_comment>username_1: It's probably more a commentary than an answer. I look forward to others' input on this issue as well.
As an ESL myself, I joined the English academic community knowing that language will be an extra barrier. I wrote (or perhaps still write) many awkward sentences that are grammatically sensible but funny to read from the angle of general English usage. To compensate this shortcoming, I read papers and study their styles, I read books on scientific writing, and I coauthor with native speakers. My English has improved somewhat and now I can even throw a couple trivia about academic writing in front of my native speaker colleagues. But deep down, I know it's a never-ending project, and chance is I will not be as fluent as a native speaker, and should perhaps settle for "good enough."
If I were to talk to your author friends, I'd probably ask if those submissions were anonymous. And if they are anonymous, and in multiple occasions comments like "English needs improvement" were given, I would suggest them to spend some time to work on their English rather than complain about unfairness. Non-native speakers having more difficulty to publish in English speaking channels is logical; to expect a fair ground that would totally ignore linguistic difference is unrealistic.
To formally answer the question, I have not come across with any study similar to what you described. And even there is one, I will study the results very cautiously. Native language cannot be randomized, so it's impossible to have a randomized controlled trial. This means what we will likely to see are observational studies, which are prone to missing important confounding variables: Native language intertwines with too many factors (education system, country of origin, culture, socioeconomic status, writing style and syntax construction, quality of English education, existence of equivalent concepts in English, etc.) that probably cannot be fully adjusted for in the analysis. At the end, we will likely see that non-native speakers are at a disadvantage, but the true cause of such disadvantage may be lurking elsewhere, and the true effect contributed by the linguistic difference alone is next to impossible to be parsed out.
Truth be told, I believe discrimination exists. If a reviewer reads that the data were collected in a non-English-speaking country, he/she may pay more attention to the grammar, or be more likely to suggest comments like "Please consult an editor or a native speaker in order to polish the English." I am fortunate enough to be working in the biomedical field in which most writings tend to follow a framework of being succinct, direct, and optimally simple. Most of the time I could easily parse out the ideas from the writing quality and give comments separately to both. Researchers in other fields may feel differently.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Writing a paper is, of course, more difficult for non-native speakers. They have to learn a second language and master it well enough to convey compplex ideas to their audience. And that is no easy task.
That being said, I don't believe there is much of a bias against non-native speakers. I myself have published several papers (authored with other non-native speakers) and never did we encounter any problems with the language. Bear in mind that English is not always the native language of the referees themselves so they usually have some understanding for your struggles (and don't necessarily see all grammar errors you did anyway).
The main catch for non-native speakers lies, in my opinion, more in effectively and clearly explaining their ideas which is, naturally, more difficult if you struggle with the language. This issue can be solved, at least to some extent, by reading other papers and books and studying their style as Penguin\_Knight suggests.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Not being a native speaker of English does of course affect your ability to publish in English speaking journals, but it cuts both ways.
Many journals and conferences these days are dominated by non-English speakers, while the majority have a degree of balance. The transactions style journals in engineering and computing publish shorter papers with a more mathematical flavour and a conventional format, and often have editors and reviewers with an Asian background. In round numbers less than a quarter of the world's population speak/write English with native level efficiency, the major languages/grouping being English, Spanish, Chinese and Indian - and their dialects and relatives.
As a native speaker of English and a linguist, I have sometimes been told by reviewers that I need to improve my English, include more display equations and more references to their journals, and get my paper checked by a native speaker! I can quite easily see their linguistic background from the idiosyncrasies and errors in their review. Although this may sound laughable, there is a message here for both of us, the native speaker and the non-native speaker of English.
As a native speaker and an academic used to using English in a sophisticated interdisciplinary way, I need to learn to write in a simpler way to be comprehensible to readers who do not share this background - whether native English speakers or not. For the non-native speakers, they need to do exactly the same thing. In fact, computers also need simpler language, so for natural language processing, optical character recognition, speech recognition and machine translation systems, the same simplifications will also help.
This simplification includes
* reducing sentence length and complexity
* reducing vocabulary size and complexity
* reducing the use of jargon and idioms
* reducing the use of informal models
Let's explain this a bit more, and I'll draw on some Computational Linguistics background to help here... Parsers can't handle long sentences and shortly before the turn of the century people started to scrap sentences longer than 40 words before publishing statistics about their systems - because they just couldn't handle the complexity and ambiguity. English is very rich, and individual words and phrases can have many meanings and alternative apparent synonyms can have very different nuances. This creates a lattice of possibilities. In English every second word tends to be a simple one, one of the 150 most frequent words, and to have a grammatical function, but often overloaded with different possible meanings (at least two on average). These more grammatical words are called functional closed class words (there is a fixed number), and the others that have more meaning associated with them are called contentive open class words (there are always new words and usages being invented). Many words have a dozen or more meanings (but again assume at least two).
So a 40 word sentence can have a million (2^20) legal grammatical parses and a million (2^20) semantic combinations expressed as a network or lattice of possibilities to choose from. We choose the intended grammar and meaning based on the salience of the concepts in our physical or linguistic context - in the real world, that includes things we know and see and hear in our society/environment, but in a paper it includes the things an expert in the field should know and the ideas expressed in the sentences or paragraphs before. When speaking, we see when someone isn't following, we hear when something is ambiguous, and we adjust accordingly. We might stop a sentence half way through and go back to basics. We might pause and repair with a parenthetic 'that is'. We might simply say 'pun not intended' because we've recognized that there is another meaning that jumps out.
In text we need to anticipate how different readers will understand things, what the ambiguities are, where the complexity lies.
In relation to length, if a sentence is more than 40 words, or 4 lines, chop it up. I tend to make use of participles (-ed and -ing) words and relational connectives (which/that) to join phrases and clauses together. I tend to put in lots of parenthetic comments, often shown with commas rather than parentheses, but these add complexity. So look particularly at the wh-, th-, -ed and -ing words (closed class functional/grammatical words or suffixes that can be used in many different ways). Break these up into separate sentences and that way the non-native reader or writer won't get confused by the subtleties of how they are used. Words like 'to' and 'through' and 'that' can be a problem, and reflect different usages between different brands of English. Sometimes the problem is that a th- word is omitted, particularly 'that' or 'the'. Adding the word in can resolve ungrammatical or ambiguous sentences.
If a paragraph is more than about 10 lines, chop it up. People scan papers quickly with their eyes being drawn to the headings and the first sentence and last few words of each paragraph. Make sure paragraphing is clear and the formatting compact (modern journals don't require double spacing which is designed to slow the proof reader down, and should not be supplied to people are meant to be understanding the content, and inline use of equations or superscripts should not cause line spacing to open and close like an accordion - select fixed mode and make sure everything fits). The first sentence of a paragraph should introduce the idea explained or developed. The last should provide a bridge from that idea to the next. A punchy paragraph may have a single line, particularly the conclusion at the end of a section. A long paragraph may consist of three or four sentences.
Note. Things you have in brackets that make a sentence or paragraph too long can be moved to a note. If you are using (hyperlinked) footnotes or endnotes, yes it can be that sort of a note, but endnotes are archaic and don't really help due to the need to flip back and forth. The comment can simply be moved to a following paragraph.
In relation to content word usage, make sure technical terms and acronyms are defined at first use in the body of the paper, and acronyms are refreshed at the beginning of each section. Definitions of mathematical variables may also need refreshing, particularly around equations or in table or figure captions. That is people forget these things, or skipped over them without taking them on board. They should be able to look at a table or a figure or a section on their own, and make sense of them without (re)reading the preceeding text. Avoid informal speech forms and idioms (phrases that have special meaning to people of particular nationalities rather than following from the standard meanings of the words used). Language teachers like to teach idiomatic phrases to their students to make them think they sound more natural, but it has the opposite effect because they invariably use them inappropriately. Use the appropriate technical terms, but explain them in simple language if your whole audience can't be expected to be familiar with them. Be sure you are using a word of phrase correctly before you use it. Don't just copy things other people have said, particularly authors who are clearly not native English speakers.
In relation to functional word usage, be careful of words like 'this/that', 'the/a'. English normally requires an article or a conjunction or relative pronoun, and while the native speaker knows when to omit them, it is normally grammatical to include one. Also be careful of words with negative connotations, the word 'not' and hedges like 'hardly' or 'quite' - it is easy to miss such a word when scanning quickly, and get the wrong impression, and non-native speakers tend to use the hedges incorrectly. This again is something computers are bad at, and information retrieval, recommender and ranking systems can't currently deal with such words correctly.
It is also important to talk about equations, particular from papers by non-native authors, or in papers sent to non-native editors/reviewers. Don't just copy equations from paper to paper. Always go back to the original source, the originator of the idea, to understand equations, models and assumptions. Always explain the equations and the insights that lie behind them. Many authors/journals use models and equations in a way that obscures their meaning and makes it hard to understand. The non-native speaker is particularly tempted to avoid trying to explain something in English by expressing it in Mathematics. Many students (and all too many academics who should know better) copy equations into their papers that they don't understand (which are thus often wrong, incorrectly applied, or simply inappropriate to the paper). Mathematics should be used to clarify not to obscure. Explanations should always be provided. Don't describe what going on in operation-by-operation words, but explain the insights and the effect of the equations.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/10/17 | 561 | 2,421 | <issue_start>username_0: I have been accepted to present a paper at a conference in a recognised university.
There is no doubt about the 'legitimacy' or public standing of this university as it is recognised worldwide. In addition, it is the management department within the university that is organising the conference. The keynote speakers are recognised and leaders in their fields.
The conference has two streams: peer review and non-peer review. The non-peer review is more like practical / application of theories in practice.
I am located in the non-peer review section and was asked to pay my own registration of $500. There is no assistance for travel etc.
**Is this normal for an international conference?** (I always thought at least the speaker's registration was stand expense that was borne by the conference organisers).
**What are the pros and cons of attending and presenting at such conferences?**<issue_comment>username_1: Most international conferences are paid for by the registration fees of the attendees. The higher the ratio of attendees to speakers, the more registrations the conference can afford to comp (give for free). When a large fraction of the attendees are also speakers, as is the case with a lot of peer-review-centric conferences, then it's often the case that only the keynote speakers have compensated registration and/or travel. If the conference is close on its budget, even the organizers are expected to pay their own way and their own registration fees. The smaller the conference, the more likely this is to be the case, but even very big ones often expect everybody but the keynote speakers to pay their own way.
In short: yes, this isn't unusual at all.
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: >
> (I always thought at least the speaker's registration was stand expense that was borne by the conference organisers).
>
>
>
Absolutely not. Typically, only *invited* speakers do not have to pay registration fees and, sometimes, they get their travelling expenses refunded by the organizers. Conferences may also have reduced registration fees for students and young researchers. All others have to pay full registration fees and travelling expenses.
And these days, probably, not many people attend conferences without being speakers too. Some institutions don't even allow you to attend expensive conferences if you're not a speaker.
Upvotes: 6 |
2014/10/17 | 5,908 | 24,623 | <issue_start>username_0: I find it very difficult to make strong research proposals, where I am trying to convince the audience that my proposal is important (possibly *more important* than the other applicants'). I write "grant applications" in quotes, because that is the most straightforward example: In these, it is typically expected that you not only describe your idea in a way that the reviewer will easily understand and comprehend, but also convince them that the research is important and worth funding (especially with grants where the majority of applications are rejected). This feature is not limited to only grants: I think fellowship applications, PhD applications (whether they require a research proposal explicitly, or implicitly through statements of purpose with concrete research plans embedded in them being more effective), postdoc job applications and perhaps even junior faculty member applications are very similar in that one must propose a research project, and make it sound important besides merely communicating clearly.
Whenever I need to write such a proposal, I inevitably feel stuck. I immediately become anxious that my research is not all that interesting, I'm not really all that great a scientist, and feel that I must work very hard to make my proposal sound like it is more important than it is if I am to have a fighting chance. This is scary, and I end up procrastinating for many days on the writing. I tell myself that I am "waiting to be in the right sort of creative, inventive, intellectual, scientific mental state", but I secretly know this is nonsense. There are 3 very strong antitheses:
1. All the creative persons across the spectrum of fields (from artists to writers to inventors and engineers to mathematicians and scientists) appear in unanimous agreement that it is "1% inspiration and 99% perspiration". I have never heard anyone worth mention claim that "waiting for inspiration to come" is an effective strategy.
2. The inspiration that I supposedly await has an uncanny habit of materializing exactly on the night before the proposal deadline, at 3 AM in the morning, such that if it came just a little later I would not have been able to make it to the deadline.
3. When I do finish the proposal, I am almost universally satisfied that the result doesn't sound unimportant, and could have been brilliant if only I had started a bit earlier and made more rewrites.
I think the more realistic explanation is that at some point the fear of missing the deadline becomes so great that it overpowers my anxiety. However, I think it would be better if I could do away with the anxiety, so I could start work way before the deadline, and have time to make many revisions and avoid having to pull all-nighters.
How can I get over this anxiety? By way of showing *what I have tried*:
* Gaming antithesis #2 above: Setting an early deadline, so that it forces me to get started, then obtaining an extension on the deadline in which time I can make revisions, now that I have gotten over the most difficult initial step. Unfortunately, the moment I obtain the extension, the anxiety comes back and saps my motivation. This happens even if the extension happens as a surprise.
* "Just start by writing *anything*, and rewrite later" - this is very hard to force myself to do, because I feel like my ideas are hopelessly irrelevant and there's no point in even trying. Even if I do force myself to jot down a very rough outline, it is just as hard to motivate myself to keep refining it, because I feel that no matter how much I refine it, it will still be irrelevant.
* Ask friends and colleagues for feedback - very effective for making a mediocre proposal good, but useless for starting out: I get even more anxious because I worry about embarrassing myself to other people.
* Build up tolerance by repeated attempts - I have gone through the proposal writing process quite a few times, but the experience doesn't appear to have made it any easier. I feel like even if I had been awarded a thousand grants, I would still say to myself, "Man, you may have had a good run in your day, but this time you've lost it - this is the stupidest idea you've ever had".
* [How do I overcome fear of rejection when writing academic papers?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/3242/244) - the suggestion to follow the example of good papers is hard to apply, because proposals are often confidential. The remark about "reaching a certain level of maturity" also seems to not apply, because surely a project that is only at the idea stage is anything but mature?
* [What is expected when "novel" and "innovative" ideas are requested as part of a research grant application?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/16198) - very related, but there are many grant schemes which emphasize impact and importance (often without defining them) over innovation.
Oddly enough, I **don't** feel insecure about other aspects of science. I don't hesitate to do research because of self-doubt, I'm not shy about telling other people about my research (so long as the only requirement is that they understand it, and it doesn't matter if they don't think it's important), I think I do a decent job of communicating my ideas clearly and I sincerely believe that given my level of competence I have a good chance of solving the problems I am working on. Obviously, I think my research is worth doing - otherwise I wouldn't be doing it.
It is only when convincing someone else that my research is important that I stumble. I tend to imagine a grant reviewer saying to me, "Okay, this is all very nice and good, but applicant X over there wants the same grant so he can cure cancer and end world hunger. Why should we fund you and not him?" Of course, this is like saying "why should we fund NASA when we could be feeding the poor" - these aren't mutually exclusive pursuits, and just because you aim high doesn't mean you'll go high. But still, there are millions of scientists out there, and just statistically some of them are probably much smarter and more knowledgeable than me. Honestly, it seems very likely that many of them work on more important things than me. Probably some of them apply for the same grant. So how can I sit there and write a proposal, pretending that I seriously think I should be the one to get funded instead of all these other people?
Sorry if this sounds like more of a request for moral support than a question. In my defense, I think that the difficulty of "selling your ideas" is a common problem for at least a non-trivial subset of scientists (captured quite well by "impostor syndrome") and discussing strategies to overcome it would be a good addition to the site.<issue_comment>username_1: My solution is to work with collaborators.
If you're writing a proposal together with others then you can workshop ideas together, pick each others' spirits up when you go down, have somebody who you "owe" progress to as an external motivator, and make writing schedules that you have to keep. You can also aim for much more interesting and ambitious projects when you combine complementary skills and capabilities.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: I suspect any answer will be highly specific to individual psychology.
There have been four things I found useful. The first was to do a good project plan for a grant and to convince myself that *everything* needed to be done to a high standard. Once I have a list of every piece of nigh-meaningless paperwork that needs doing, panic/inspiration tends to flow several months before the due date. And, in practice, it helps cope with writers block because putting together random patient-related boilerplate and laboratory descriptions lets my mind wander while still progressing towards grant completion. Anxiety (or even consciousness) is nigh-impossible while working on a human subjects section.
The second was to read a few granted proposals in my field. There are an awful lot of funded studies that just don't appear at all promising. And the feeling of 'well, I suck', but less than the people who put together grant XYZ is strangely empowering.
The third was to acquire a book describing recommended formats for grant proposals and approach grant writing in a very formulaic way. Okay, a paragraph describing prior work....blah blah blah. Okay, hypothesis... For me, it reduces anxiety by transforming the writing process from promoting my research to filling in the blanks on a long and frustrating form.
The last was to just kind of divorce myself from the whole project and gamify it a bit. Think of writing the grant as preparing a presentation to convince people that something should be done without worrying about whether or not it is actually worthwhile. And pretend you're doing it for someone else. Things also go faster if I reward myself with bathroom breaks upon section completion. Perhaps this is TMI, but it really works.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: TLDR;
In the end, I [highly recommend the book](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0738211702), and the following
1. Be kinder to yourself in your own head - if someone else said to you "they do important work and you do nothing important" you'd probably be inclined to smack them in the mouth. Yet if you say it to yourself, you probably accept it.
2. Accept that this is a complex and real problem, and instant success is not reasonable - so don't beat yourself up when you run into the problem again.
3. Try to shift your view of yourself to be based upon your resilience, creativity, and persistence - which are in your control - rather than factors like "grant approved" that are much less in your control.
4. Realize that you can do better in the future, but only by making adjustments that address your own personal real issue and not merely distract from it.
5. Your importance, intelligence, and abilities were established and verified a long time ago, and are not up for debate or re-interpretation. Problems you face now aren't because of any of these traits or behaviors.
6. Like any good experiment, let results dictate whether or not a method is effective for you, not preconceived notions or rapidly changing feelings.
---
There is no one easy trick that will solve your procrastination - but that doesn't mean it is an insolvable problem. I personally have found that thinking there is some trick actually made the problem worse, because it trivialized the problem.
"This isn't so hard, I just need to do X", I would tell myself. When actually doing X was hard, or didn't solve the problem, then I felt even worse than before - because if I can't even do X, I must an even bigger mess than I thought! This is a terribly cruel thing to do to ourselves - please try not to punish yourself in this way.
Procrastination is not a simple thing, nor is it a sign of stupidity, laziness, moral decline, unfitness, or any other such thing. If this is a problem for you, then I strongly recommend this book: [Procrastination: Why You Do It, What To Do About It Now](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0738211702). I owe much of what I have learned to this excellent tome, and to my own struggles with the practice - it is written by two PhDs who've worked specifically in the area of academic and professional procrastination, and there's a vanishingly small amount of pop-nonsense in the book (I have very little tolerance for such things).
---
You have already hit upon a very important realization, which is that the core of most procrastination activity is fear - fear we aren't good enough, smart enough, worthy enough. But this isn't the only kind of fear a person can have, such as fear of success, fear of being judged, fear of competition, etc. Everyone has their own unique sets of fears.
It is important to understand that procrastination is a sometimes useful, and sometimes mal-adaptive strategy to get what we want. Sometimes we get what we want in the short-term, but not the-long term, and this sort of procrastination is a perfect example - and we need to understand both why it works and why it doesn't work.
One thing that really drew my attention is this phrase:
>
> ...could have been brilliant if only I had started a bit earlier...
>
>
>
This is called "self-handicapping", and ultimately it allows us to protect ourselves from fear. If we wait until the last minute and don't succeed, then we don't need to take that personally- if only we had started sooner, we'd have succeeded! It's not us, it's the delay. On the other hand if we succeed, then we are double great, because we practically phoned that one in and still won - we must really be something! Waiting until the last minute increases the perceived reward AND lowers the perceived risk - no wander it's such a compelling strategy!
But ultimately both reasonings serve to do one thing: protect ourselves from a reality that is frightening. What if we do our absolute best, and still fail?
One way of dealing with this is attacking the fear directly - what if you do your best to write a great grant app, and they still reject you? Go ahead and explain this in a way that is non-threatening - they get a lot of great grant requests, the program directors are morons, they probably just pick grants by throwing darts at a board, budget cutbacks (politicians/administrators/taxpayers are morons)...go ahead and explain the rejection now, in way you believe that doesn't include ripping yourself to shreds.
Or you can accept responsability, but do so in a fair way - you may have failed to communicate the nature of your proposed work in a way they understood, but that doesn't mean you aren't good at your job or smart - you just need to persevere at an inherently difficult task. You can also point out to yourself that you aren't just writing one single grant request (you aren't, right?), and so while the individual chance of each one succeeding might not be great you have a far higher chance of one of your many requests being approved.
In this way you can reduce the fear that this specific grant request is do or die, and so it isn't so bad because it's not scary and you do non-scary things all the time, right? For some people and in some cases, this works nicely, but it's not your only strategy.
---
Another mutually-helpful approach is hit on in your own realization:
>
> I have never heard anyone worth mention claim that "waiting for
> inspiration to come" is an effective strategy
>
>
>
This is a great observation, and I've heard this called "the motivation fairy". The belief is that we just need to lie in wait for the motivation fairy, and it will appear and grant us the motivation we need to work!
The problem is that, as you noticed, this isn't how motivation really works. It turns out that motivation is not really something that comes before the work - **motivation is produced by working!** This seemed crazy to me, but the more I thought about it the more it fit my experience. I never feel the most motivated before I start something, but rather it's while I'm in the middle of doing something and making progress and feeling good about the work I'm actually doing! Motivation fundamentally is not forward-looking thing like "hope", but rather it is like the flames of a camp fire - people gather around it to warm up, but it was created initially by working hard in the cold! First comes the work, then come the flames.
The third and most useful tactic I've personally used is this: realize that how you feel about doing something does not particularly control the quality of output of your work, nor whether or not you should do it.
Much like the previous issue with motivation, I thought I should feel a certain way about my work before I started. This is a version of perfectionism - the feeling that everything should be "just so" before you do something. I mean, I've read that brilliant people eat a balanced breakfast and take an afternoon nap, and I ate beef jerky for breakfast and had to work all afternoon - so surely I should just skip this and try to have a better day tomorrow so I can do this work, right? I mean, I don't even want to do it, and surely the work will be terrible with this attitude.
The truth is that work is more like a game of American Football (or Rugby for everyone else in the world) or a broadway show - it doesn't really matter what the weather is or how you feel that day, the game/show must go on regardless.
With much effort I have begun to realize that I really suck at predicting the output of my own work based upon my feelings, desires, and emotions. Sometimes I produce an A+ paper with a fever and a stomach full of Pepto-Bismal, and sometimes everything is going my way and I churn out 10 pages that had nothing to do with what I was actually supposed to be doing. Sometimes I'm super-excited about a subject and just can't "get it", and sometimes I breeze through material I couldn't care less about.
I was amazed to find that some people hear such an explanation and think, "yeah, that's how life works - how did you think it works?" Well, I thought work was something people got all worked up and excited about, looked forward to, then jumped into and made continual progress on up until a conclusion they were terribly satisfied with.
Apparently people laugh at such a fanciful world-view, but that's how many of us still think work is supposed to go, and we get mad at ourselves and feel doomed or like failures when the reality is all messy and we feel grumpy but we are still supposed to work on something we just don't feel like doing today (or this week, month...).
Decoupling "what I feel like doing" from "what I should do" from "what I am going to do now" is really hard, but over the last decade I think I've gotten better at it. But jeeze, I put in a lot of effort and I often flounder around in my chair and say, "gahhh, I don't wannnnaaaaa!" for a while. Sometimes I get over it and get work done, and then I'm amazed at how quickly I forget about the whole episode and my work output seems to have little relation whatsoever to my feelings at the time.
---
Before wrapping up I want to hit on one more time-honored way we punish ourselves: false disadvantageous comparisons
>
> "Okay, this is all very nice and good, but applicant X over there
> wants the same grant so he can cure cancer and end world hunger. Why
> should we fund you and not him?"
>
>
>
These sorts of comparisons are very common, and notice how incredibly unfair they are? But notice also how they are thrown out there and left unquestioned, as if they are obviously true and we should feel like failures in comparison for our puny efforts.
But that's just it - one of our greatest enemies is unquestioned assumptions, and so we should apply our argumentative skills against these things too.
First, of all, are you in fact competing directly with people who aim to cure cancer and/or end world hunger? If you aren't competing with these people, then that's silly - you're winning doesn't take money away from them, because the grant you want can't possibly take money away from them.
But let's say you are competing with them. Obviously they should win, right? But wait, if a grant request that's competing with you will win, then you have nothing to fear by writing a great request because even an idiot would know they have the better request and they'd get funded anyway. And come to think of it, haven't people been trying to cure cancer and end world hunger for a long time - so why haven't they? Is it because people like me want grants for something else?
It turns out that world hunger is a great example, because without our realizing people did already solve the problem we thought we had. We now have more food in the world than we need, but some people go without - why? Because it turns out that the world is complicated, and things like war, social justice, economic systems, and corruption mean that solving world hunger isn't so clearly solvable. It's going to take a lot of work in more fields than we ever imagined to make more progress, from psychology, sociology, economics, engineering, political science, and probably a lot of more fields than that.
Cancer, too, it turns out is complex and is caused by many things, and we can't cure it because there is a lot about the human body and chemistry we just don't understand. If it was an easy problem, we'd have solved it already. If we spent 100% of our yearly grant money only on cancer research, it's not clear that we could cure any form of it because we might not know enough about basic processes to be able to solve the problem yet.
This is also true of war, social justice, poverty, space exploration/colonization, and any other such major problem. They exist because they are hard problems, and it seems the webs of the world are very twisted indeed. And so we spread out our search for knowledge and advancement over many fields, in the hopes that one day the web will expand far enough to allow us to solve a previously insolvable problem - though we have no idea how long it might take or what field or what person will be responsible for the key insight.
So, with this said, who are you actually competing with - based on successful grant requests - and based on last years winners (when this data is available) surely some will seem amazing to you, and some will seem stupid and unimportant. Grants aren't noble prizes, and some people get money for stuff you couldn't care less about. Some are important, some will turn out to be outright failures, some good things will get funded and some bad ones will too.
And at the end of the day, this might make you feel better or not, but it might not matter because these are often just excuses we tell ourselves to rationalize our aversions to fear and our habits of waiting for the right moment.
---
The book mentioned previously has about 200-300 pages of very useful and helpful tips and information beyond anything I could possibly summarize here, so please consider making it a part of your daily reading routine if quick-fixes prove ineffective or short-lived (they almost always are). It's a process of developing tools, retraining yourself, and building up psyche-muscles.
Procrastination behaviors, anxiety, and fears all have their appropriate place in life, and can get out of hand and become hurtful to our well-being; they can also be put back into their rightful place, and that requires diligent effort over a significant period of time.
Good luck, and fight the good fight!
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: Wow, great ideas here. Here's a small suggestion. It is sometimes easier for me to get a project off my desk if I use it as a way to procrastinate about some *other* project. Perhaps you could harness that idea and cook up some project that you *really should be doing*, but which does not appeal to you -- and then you might feel tempted to work on the research proposal as a way of avoiding the other thing.
My main contribution has to do with how OCD is treated. There are two steps:
1. Name the fear -- preferably something that will help you laugh at it.
2. Talk back to it.
There is a very nice segment on a This American Life podcast that illustrates #2, done in a novel way, as a DIY project, without a therapist. If you don't want to listen to it, you can read the transcript here: <http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/545/transcript>
(Scroll down to Act Four. Mailer Demon.)
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_5: Purely personal top, from someone who had to break through a near-total writing block: Write one to throw away. If you're stuck for a first paragraph, scribble a note about what ideas belong there and move on. If you're having trouble with phrasing, just day it however it's easiest and move on. If you can't find the citation you need, leave yourself a (foot)note with a key phrase like "to be determined" or "Fixme!" and move on. Don't worry about making it elegant, just get it down on paper.
After finishing that rough draft, srt it aside for a few days if possible.
Then come back to it, read it through, and decide what needs to be improved. Remember, the base assumption is that the first pass was just to start organizing your thoughts... bit you may find that very little polishing is needed. On the other hand, even if it's a complete train wreck, editing it into acceptable form is often less stressful than trying to write a perfect document the first time
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/10/17 | 2,426 | 10,482 | <issue_start>username_0: I am preparing my tenure-track faculty application materials for the current hiring cycle, and I'm thinking of replacing one of my reference writers with one of my PhD committee members (I'll call him Dr. Z). In addition to serving on my committee (I successfully defended my dissertation earlier this year), Dr. Z was a co-author on several journal/conference papers and a former instructor for several classes in which I did very well.
I sent an email to Dr. Z asking him if he would be willing to provide a letter of recommendation for me. His reply:
>
> I have been informed that you have [FERPA](http://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html) restrictions on your academic
> records. I cannot provide reference letters for you or speak on your behalf to any potential employers with FERPA restrictions in place.
>
>
>
When I first enrolled at my PhD-granting institution, I placed FERPA restrictions on my academic records. Specifically, I chose to have my directory information removed from my school's online directory. I'm not a control freak, but I do tend to take advantage of mechanisms which help to prevent any of my personal information (such as home address, etc.) falling into unknown hands.
I have no reason not to remove the FERPA restrictions, but I *hate* the thought of removing them under these circumstances. However, I also understand, and appreciate, anyone's right to provide (or not) a reference for whatever reason(s) they choose.
I am left wondering, though:
**Is there a legitimate reason that someone in Dr. Z's position would have for wanting to see my academic records prior to providing a reference?**
---
Edit — For what it's worth, I am seeking out reference writers, such as Dr. Z, who can speak to my *research capabilities,* not about how well I did in their class.<issue_comment>username_1: David Z's comment is dead on: it is an unpleasant technicality that under FERPA regulations, one should not discuss the student's performance in any quantitatively specific way. E.g., one should not say "Mr. X got an A in all my courses" or even "Mr. X was the top student in the course". The exact rules are confusing to many faculty members, to the point where one feels like if one took FERPA too seriously one might not be able to write a suitable letter.
In my university there is, in theory, a form that a student can fill out to **waive the FERPA regulations** on a letter-by-letter basis. In theory this means that if the letter is getting mailed to N institutions, one should fill out N forms.
(The above considerations apply to **all** students, not just those who have asked for special protection. However, a student who places *further* restrictions on their records is precisely going on the record as being especially concerned about their privacy, so in practice it makes a lot of sense to take the FERPA restrictions much more seriously for these students.)
It may or may not be the case that Dr. Z is himself trying to access or view any of your academic records. (I guess he must have done something to find out that your records are FERPA-restricted though.) Whether someone would look up a student's grades in courses taken by other faculty members must depend on the people and the institution. For instance, at my institution I have access to the grades of all undergraduate students -- and I have been informed of the FERPA requirement that I access them only for legitimate, educational purposes -- but I do not have access to the grades of any graduate students, even my own advisees. So in practice when I write letters for students I speak only about their performance in *my* courses -- but again, if they were FERPA-restricted and I was being suitably conscientious then I would even then have to be extremely careful about what I could say and likely be forbidden from including a certain amount of positive information about the student.
Also:
>
> I have no reason not to remove the FERPA restrictions, but I hate the thought of removing them under these circumstances; this tastes a little too much like blackmail to me.
>
>
>
Even assuming that Dr. Z wants permission to access your records and not just to talk about them, I think you are not viewing this in the right way. "Blackmail" seems ridiculous to me: one of the conditions for that is that the blackmailer must have something to gain! What does Dr. Z gain if you waive or even entirely remove your FERPA restrictions? The pleasure of viewing some of your academic records??
For my part, I am curious as to why you chose to place restrictions on your academic records at all: what are you protecting yourself from, really? It sounds like you may not completely understand what FERPA restrictions mean and may have just taken them on as a sort of free insurance. If I were you I would learn more about this. In my opinion, one could argue that "I have FERPA restricted my records" and "Please write me a strong recommendation letter" is already a bit of a mixed message.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_2: By "FERPA restrictions" I assume you mean additional restrictions on the release of directory information, since these are the only extra restrictions I'm aware of. If so, then the professor's reluctance may have little to do with your academic track record per se.
Many professors take a fairly laid back approach to FERPA and consider that an e-mail request for a recommendation constitutes sufficient written permission to release information. However, some universities take restrictions on releasing directory information very seriously indeed. As I understand it (keep in mind that I am not a lawyer), when you invoke these restrictions the university is not even allowed to confirm to anyone that you have ever been a student there. A few students deeply care about this, such as celebrities, the ultra wealthy, or anyone trying to avoid a stalker or abuser. These students have good reason to worry about invasions of privacy, and they want universities to place absolute restrictions on even apparently innocuous information. For example, you can imagine social engineering attacks in which a private investigator, tabloid reporter, or stalker forges an e-mail to a professor asking them to serve as a reference for a job or internship, and then calls them to dig for information.
For most other students, FERPA restrictions can be problematic. For example, if a company contacts the university to try to verify your resume, the university isn't allowed to drop any hints. They are supposed to give exactly the same response as if you had never been there, so your resume should fail to verify, and the company may not give you a chance to explain. (You'd think they should, and they might if they really want to hire you, but big companies can be pretty callous about quickly dumping applicants whose resumes fail to check out.)
In my experience, universities differ in how vigorously they enforce these rules. For example, lawyers are more influential in some administrations than others, and some universities simply have more celebrities enrolled and thus face greater pressure to be strict.
As for how the professor could find out you have these restrictions in place, I'd guess it was from looking at your records. However, there are other possibilities. Some universities specifically notify everyone whose class contains a student with extra FERPA restrictions, to remind them not to reveal that this student is in their class, so the professor might remember receiving these warnings.
So my interpretation is that your university has you on a short list of students for whom everything is supposed to be completely confidential, and this professor doesn't want to risk upsetting the administration by violating these restrictions (while your other letter writers may not have been paying attention or may be more relaxed about such things).
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: >
> Is there a legitimate reason that someone in Dr. Z's position would have for wanting to see my academic records prior to providing a reference?
>
>
>
Yes - I usually look up the academic records of students when I write a letter for them. This is so that I have more data about their academic success when writing the letter. For example, if they did well in classes that I know are particularly difficult, I can mention that somewhere, and if they have a high GPA, I can mention that somewhere.
In general, you should try to give your letter writers as much info as possible. This includes not just access to your academic records (which they likely have anyway) but also at least your CV. If you have them, it doesn't hurt to send your personal statement, teaching statement, research statement, etc. as well. Not every reviewer will be able to speak to all of these in their letter, of course.
Remember you have already trusted the person to write a confidential letter about you which you are very unlikely to ever see. This requires some amount of trust in the letter writer. For that reason, if a student told me "I would like you to write a letter of recommendation, but please don't look at my academic history", I would find it very unusual.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: Here is what I tell my own students; my guess is that Dr. Z. is thinking along much the same lines:
"Federal law requires that I have a FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) release from you before I tell anyone other than a school to which you have applied anything about your education at this institution. For most of you, all I know about you is your performance as a student, so without that release, the most I can say is that you were my student, period. Because those asking about you are likely to interpret such a stark statement negatively, I won't provide any reference at all (except to other schools) without that FERPA release."
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_5: From that quote, it seems like that person is not on friendly terms with you. If s/he had the good will in him/her to recommend you, s/he would write something like "Oh, I'd gladly oblige you, but you have this FERPA restriction we would need to get past because of blah blah blah; so why don't you do XYZ to take care of it?"... but s/he did the opposite of that basically.
I'd seriously reconsider whether I want his/her recommendation in the first place.
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/10/17 | 1,608 | 6,873 | <issue_start>username_0: Ok so first off a bit of background. I've been working professionally three years in a software engineer position after my BSc. in Mathematics and Physics. At some point I realized I missed doing true research so I enrolled in Masters in Financial Mathematics, which seemed to me the ideal trade off between maths, programming and well finance which is quite interesting.
So now, here I am, first year, with full time lectures. My first reaction was to be disappointed by the amount of team work, since in my BSc days all homeworks were individually graded. For some mathematics courses it's fine, since there's a single good answer. However, there are some instances where it's definitely more research-like, almost like a lab report actually.
What however is unnerving is that I'm stuck with teammates with whom I don't exactly share the same work ethic. For instance, I had to insist on writing formal proofs. Anyway, I just feel that if it wasn't for me we'd keep to the bare minimum. AFAIK this is quite different from the industry where, if a team screws up, then either someone is going to get fired or at least the team is going to be split by the management. Here, the prof just won't care and will assign a global grade and go on to the next team.
So I'm not sure what's the right path. On one side, I really want to make sure our team performs well, this is quite a big move I made here, but on the other side, I just don't want be *bossy* with them, yet here I am writing emails where I detail clearly what I'm awaiting from each of us. Also, well, I haven't talked openly with them about this issue, I'm not certain how I can bring it.<issue_comment>username_1: As scaaahu commented: This happens ALL the time in industry (one could say it is the rule, not the exception). We do not always get to pick our teams and it is common for high-performers to be stuck with those who do not really care about the quality of their work. Will someone get fired in industry? Maybe...maybe not (complex issue).
The thing you must understand is the difference between management, where someone has formal authority based on their position in the organization, and leadership, where someone's authority basically comes from the followers.
If your team is fill with under-performers you need to figure out if you can use some leadership skills to motivate them to do better. This is the same when studying and when working. If you cannot motivate them then you must decide if someone else can (perhaps you need to encourage someone else to act as the leader). If it seems the team simply cannot be motivated, then you should do your best to find another team.
A team can only be successful if the team feels like a team and that means, in part, that everyone believes in the same goal and are willing to sacrifice to achieve that goal.
The solution is to develop some leadership skills and have a direct talk with the team about what they hope to achieve.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I had the same thing happen to me during my MBA; it was heavy in group projects.
I was trying to keep a perfect GPA and my team mates just cared about passing.
There is no really way to complain or rant. I just couldn’t trust them to do anything. I would take over the project, assign them a BS part and do the lion work and writing and editing and all.
Yes it is not fair to do the work of 6 and letting others profit from your work but you do get something from it. Besides you can’t teach a donkey to fly.
You do learn a lot more than your classmates. You get more out of your degree. You learn to handle bigger multipart projects. You learn to manage a group effort by pretending that everyone is contributing. You learn to bypass sponges by pretending they don’t exist. You learn to bite the bullet. Etc.
Also, at the end of the day, they do know who did the real work and most likely the teacher does too.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: I've faced the same situation in the past. And that was during a semester-long project. At the time I was stuck in a team of 4, where I ended-up doing over 70% of the work.
The problem in such setup is that, no matter that you try to voice your concerns, the other party will only hear what is convenient to them and not more. So to say, they may nod their head as if they care about your concerns but it is hardly that something else will be done in practice. If you are lucky in your team might be another person who barely shares the same work ethic with you, and that person may show some effort to provide some help.
My situation was different from yours in the sense that the grades were assigned individually and there were supervisors who monitored the situation actively. They could tell who has done what by the style of writing and the activity during meetings.
I don't know if you have a supervisor, or if you have a flat hierarchy in the group. First talk to the other members of the team and make a separation of concerns by assigning tasks. In this stage do not tell explicitly that you expect each one of them to work hard, but say it implicitly that everyone is thrilled for this group-work and you are all looking for great results. Also it would be nice if you establish a hierarchy since the beginning. Assuming you are the "best" make yourself the head of the group.
During the separation of tasks, do not assign tasks to the others, let them choose themselves, so they don't blame later that the task was too hard for them.
Establish weekly meetings where everyone will tell about the progress he has done with his task.
At some point (lets say 3-4 weeks) you will see that things aren't going as expected (assuming from the description you provided). In that case make a new emergency meeting where you will voice your concerns explicitly. Also make sure to have a mild talk with your supervisor (if you have one) about this problem.
In 1-2 weeks if you see no improvement overall, have a serious talk with the supervisor, and consider if you should stay in such a group (for many reasons). Eventually, you will be investing much more time that you are supposed to on that group (both for organizational overhead and completing the tasks), on top of that you might be frustrated all the time and even worse have health-issues afterwards.
Bear in mind that I have made some hard assumptions in this answer, however I believe you are smart enough to modify the suggestions to fit your situation. Also, do not forget that studies are meant to teach you scientific stuff but also intangibles, such as learning when to say "I'm not going to do this anymore", raise your voice nicely etc.
If you wonder what happened with my case, well I got the top grade, but my supervisors blamed me for not raising the concerns much earlier. I learned the hard way...
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/10/17 | 649 | 2,832 | <issue_start>username_0: I am applying to phd programs in the US.
In preparing for the statement of purpose, I consulted some native speakers. I was suggested to add some anecdotes in my statement.
Nevertheless, after a moment's further thought, I found anecdotes occupy the space! And, I am under the impression that, since I am NOT applying to undergraduate programs nor master's programs, simply focusing on introducing my thoughts and research is the best policy.
So would a statement of purpose such that it is specific but it contains no anecdotes be considered less suitable (in whatsoever sense)?<issue_comment>username_1: This is only second-hand information, since I am a PhD student in Europe, but I have friends who are now engaged in various US institutions, so I am somewhat familiar with the differences in those application matters between the US and Europe.
The main idea when writing a statement of purpose is to be concise and to-the-point. The admissions committee gets a lot of applications and are typically not interested in anything besides the narrow scope of the document before them. So anything that is longer than a few paragraphs needs an exceptionally good reason to be that long. Since you are limited in this way, it is advisable to make these paragraphs count and stick to your research (both done and planned) and recommendations. I've been even told that it is a good idea to bold out the most important catch phrases, like the names of the professors you collaborated with or papers you may have published.
On the other hand, at least in Europe, the interview is the place to show your eloquence and present your personality in the best light (among other things of course), so a few short well-placed anecdotes don't hurt.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: In writing, there is a general principle of "show and don't tell" which applies.
It's not the question of to anecdote or not per se, but whether the illustration provides some insight into how you are unique. If a (short) anecdote can illustrate something important about your creativity, initiative, or problem-solving skills, then it will help you stand out and can be useful to include.
For example, compare these two statements:
* I founded a student group that teaches underprivileged high-schoolers to program.
* When I was growing up, an important turning point in my education was when a friend's older brother taught me programming. I wanted other people to have the same experience, so I organized some friends and reached out to local teachers. Together, we founded a student group that teaches underprivileged high-schoolers to program.
The second is longer, but it tells a lot more about why what the writer did was significant and shows how they expressed initiative and motivation.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer] |
2014/10/17 | 1,750 | 7,609 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm a PhD student in Physics with one year and a half to go. My project is at the border between physics and computer science (I am developing a new method to analyse materials). I'm fascinated by computer science and I would prefer not to work in a research center, which seems to be the natural prosecution of what I'm doing. I did research in a number of different field (biophysics, x-rays, neutrons, algorithms), finding out I'm not super talented, but I learn fast and I have some intellectual stamina. I also have some experience as a reporter/journalist.
I like doing research, even if sometimes I find the academic environment a bit boring and alienating. I don't have much working experience outside academia, but I don't exclude the possibility of a non-academic job. I started studying machine learning books to expand my computer skills and employability.
Is there anything you suggest to do to maximize my possibility to land a nice postdoc (ideally in physics/computer science, which should be a way to keep open the possibility to work in the industry, and ideally in the US) or a job as a data scientist?<issue_comment>username_1: From what I can tell from your question, the industry seems a logical choice. For the remaining time, I'd advise you to look into branches that might interest you and then focus your development on skills required there. There is a plethora of various opportunities for your type of background, whether in the research sector or in engineering.
That being said, if you don't plan to stay in academia, doing a post-doc seems not to be the best investment. People usually do a post-doc in order to improve their chances for a professorship (or as a kind of placeholder until they get one).
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Postdocs are typically useful for two types of things:
1. They build experience as a (semi)independent researcher that is now typically required before you can be considered for a faculty post
2. They are a chance to broaden or shift focus of your research
For example, I know somebody working in robotics whose thesis worked was entirely in simulation due to grad school circumstances, and used the "focus shift" opportunity of a postdoc to get into hardware. So a postdoc is worth considering if you feel that your current work is too narrow to be noticed by the type of organizations you might like to join.
As for where to go next: if you aren't absolutely driven to try to do a faculty job, don't try for it. There is a huge world of non-traditional scientific opportunities out there, which are often hard to be aware of from inside traditional academia. Some things to consider, with a lot of strange ecological niches that you can't even be aware of until you start talking to people in them. Do note, however, that if you aren't a US citizen or permanent resident, then many of these opportunities may be harder for you get due to visa issues.
For pursuing all of these questions, however, the big thing you need to start doing is networking. Get to know more professors in your department than your advisor, especially any ones who have had non-traditional career paths. Go to conferences and meet people. Look for events in your field that are also attended by non-academic researchers (this will likely be more in computer science or material science than physics), and look for the more informal and discussion-oriented attached events like Ph.D. symposia and workshops. If your advisor can help you get introductions, that's the best help you can possibly get, but since you're interested in a non-standard path they might not be able to.
As you meet people, be honest about your situation. There are always a lot of people trolling for good possible hires for non-faculty positions, both in academia and out of it, and there's a word of mouth network. If you've got good core computer science skills and don't come off as needy or desperate, there are a lot more possible matches out there than you might imagine.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: With regard to:
>
> I did research in a number of different field (...) finding out I'm not super **talented**, but I learn fast and I have some **intellectual stamina**.
>
>
>
I will try to focus on "talent" and "stamina", two self-evaluation criteria you mention which have not been directly addressed in the comments so far. You set up a contrast between stamina (which I interpret as a combination of curiosity and persistence) and talent (which I interpret as the ability to do more original/creative work with less apparent difficulty). You also mention several specific disciplinary sub-fields of research: xrays, etc.
I wonder if your perception of your "talent" might be more a consequence of the switching you have done between different areas of research, rather than your innate capacity for original research in one or more of these fields.
Research in learning and expertise development suggests that it takes about 10 years of concentrated work in a particular discipline (whether it is chess, car racing, or an academic field) to develop expertise. Once developed, such expertise may be mistaken for talent by a less-trained eye. Your words suggest a judgment formed by comparing yourself to others. If these others happened to be more experienced in a given area of research, then the difference in "time on task" may partly account for your perception of lesser capacity for original research in some ways.
A couple points seem worth making:
1. You probably do want to eventually identify, develop, and apply your talent in some field. Whether it is CS or Physics or something else, it has to be something you should be willing to apply yourself to for an extended period of time.
2. As you decide on your post-PhD path, consider the *disciplinary area* that you think could hold your intellectually engaged for a while. If your interest in research is such that CS is a means to answering questions in other fields, then CS is a means rather than an end for you. This will take you down one particular career trajectory. However, if your interest is in questions in CS proper, this might imply a different trajectory (e.g. a research scientist/programmer in a physics lab, vs. a research scientist in a research center that focuses on computational questions like algorithms, etc (sorry, CS is not my area).
3. Finally, saying that you "like doing research" is a starting point for some deeper reflection. Think about *HOW* you like to do "research" - stated differently, what are the characteristics of a research project that make it exciting and fulfilling to you. A big part of this has to do with the level of "agency" you are comfortable with. Some people find satisfaction in carefully nurturing their own research agendas. They do this by working in a very specific niche for a very long time, spearheading (as a PI) their own grants and building partnerships and communities around a specific theory and/or methodology. Others are less comfortable leading, and prefer following -- rather than agonize over what grant to apply for, they are happy supporting on-going work, where the decisions about the direction of inquiry have mostly been made for them. While both kinds of people may (justifiably) consider themselves "researchers," the differences in approach can lead to very different career trajectories in terms of the role one is shooting for and the kind of institution (size, mission, etc.) that is compatible with each of these roles/goals.
Good luck!
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer] |
2014/10/17 | 573 | 2,548 | <issue_start>username_0: I prefer paper documents when reviewing manuscripts and grants. While these are confidential documents and generally sent to me electronically, they generally do not come with any instructions not to print them. Am I required to shred them or can I throw them out in my office or put them in the communal recycling bin?<issue_comment>username_1: If it is a bulky document I have just shredded the first few pages and recycled the rest.
Anything with any confidential information I shred or avoid printing off, especially student data.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: When if comes to reviewing grants and publications, from an ethical perspective, my understanding is that you have three duties:
1. To not compromise the authors' priority in their investigation of their ideas and their ability to capitalize on investments in preliminary work.
2. To not compromise any intellectual property claims through premature release of information.
3. To not expose the authors to potential embarrassment due to the harsh and mocking comments scrawled all over the place in red pen.
If you personally are behaving ethically, then it really comes down to how much you trust your recycling waste stream. Is there any likelihood of a student, colleague, or other malicious agent going through the bin and pulling out the information, either intentionally or just in a search for scrap paper? Shredding is definitely safe, but a low-priority piece of information in a big communal recycling bin with a latch is also certainly exercising a reasonable standard of caution unless you have reason to believe that you or your institution are being targeted for industrial espionage (yes, it happens).
Honestly, though, in most cases the information just isn't important enough to worry about. An incremental paper presenting the next step of a well-established program, a badly written manuscript on its way to a well-deserved reject, a grant proposal filled with "you should totally fund us to keep doing what we're doing"---these sorts of things just aren't of much interest to anybody except the authors and their close colleagues in any case, and are probably perfectly safe in the recycling bin. It's not ideal, but it's also very low risk.
Beyond ethics, I believe that there are also sometimes legal requirements, particularly when it comes to being an external reviewed of grant applications for government agencies. In that case, the best thing to do is to ask the program manager involved.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer] |
2014/10/17 | 554 | 2,490 | <issue_start>username_0: I am just curious, do they make the decision before the conference?
Or do they watch the presentation of potential candidates first and then make the decision?<issue_comment>username_1: It depends on the conference, though most of them in my experience make the decision after the talks.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: It depends.
Some conferences, such as ACM CHI, announce them before the conference even starts. This has the advantage/disadvantage of letting people know which talks they should see. And in my experience, these sessions are packed!
Other conferences announce them at the end of the conference. This has the advantage of keeping everyone at the conference until the very end (people might try to leave after their own presentation...) so they don't miss their own award!
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: Best paper awards are awarding the best *paper*, not the best presentation. They are common in **archival conferences** (i.e., conference that publish proceedings and that "count" as publications) like those that form the primary publication venues in computer science.
Because they are geared towards papers, they are almost always decided on well in advance of the conference. Often they are decided at the program committee meetings where the final decisions are made as to which papers will be accepted! When they are announced varies from conference to conference even within fields. Sometimes awards announced at the conference with a ceremony. Often, they are announced well in advance.
Conference that award papers earlier often do so that they can mark best papers on the conference program. In some conferences that list awarded papers in the program, best papers are not even formally announced. One year at *Computer Supported Cooperative Work*, I found out that one of my papers had received an award when I browsing the public program!
In most non-archival conferences (e.g., social science and humanities conferences) awards for papers are given for any work that was published in the field in the previous year. These papers nominated ahead of time and are not necessarily (or even often) work that is presented at the conference.
I've heard of best presentation awards given at the very end of conferences based on presentations given at the conference but I believe these are exceeding rare and, in my experience, have mostly been in the context of special conferences like doctoral colloquia.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/10/17 | 742 | 3,133 | <issue_start>username_0: I have a part-time outside job in addition to being a full-time professor. I'm struggling with performing an analysis that I believe a graduate student would be able to help me with. I suspect the student would be happy to do so, both because of having a nice demeanour and also they enjoy interesting problems and are also applying to PhD programs, so being able to state that they helped me with my research would be to their benefit. I'm not able to easily get my outside employer to hire them as a consultant. Would it be ethical for me to ask for their help with this problem? If I did, should I offer to pay them out of my own pocket (outside salary)? Should I insist on doing so? I'm thinking it would take a few hours. FWIW, I'm not their official advisor, although my colleagues and I share that role in practice.
FWIW, one of the two outside organizations involved in this project is a non-profit, for which some people volunteer the time. (I'm being paid by a for-profit company to do work with a non-profit organization they support.)
UPDATE
After posting the question but before getting any replies, I emailed the student, asking them if they wanted to help, including a link to this question and cc'ing the director of the graduate program and the Provost, as a check on myself.
I just figured out the technical problem I was struggling with, so I no longer need help, and this question is moot. I'll leave this question up, in case it's useful to future readers.<issue_comment>username_1: I may sound a little strict about this, but when a guy does partly the job you are paid to do, he should get paid for it. Period. It does not matter if he is a graduate student or he thinks he must owe you a favour in exchange for a future reference letter. Slavery has been abolished (at least in civilized countries). You must pay him for his effort's worth. Where this money comes from (your pocket or your outside employer) is for you to decide.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Before anything else, you need to be certain about the legal ground on which you stand:
1. Is the external work that you are doing bound by any sort of non-disclosure agreement or other agreement to which your interactions with the student would be subject?
2. Do the university's terms of employment for the student state anything that whether a student can work externally and under what conditions?
If it's clear from both sides, then if the student will be doing a non-trivial amount of consulting work, they should get paid just like you are getting paid. Almost certainly, they should get paid by the company you are paid by, and not by you (unless you are doing your own work as an LLC or some such entity). A good litmus test is: would **I** be doing this work for free? Clearly, you aren't.
If it were five minutes of work, that might be different. But if it's complex enough that you are struggling with it, it's likely to take hours, maybe many hours, and could impact your students progress in classes or other research projects. In that case, pay is clearly deserved.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer] |
2014/10/18 | 1,098 | 4,343 | <issue_start>username_0: **Edit**: I met with the prof and she agreed that it wasn't my responsibility or place to teach my group mates the foundations they were supposed to have learned. A direct quote was that "everyone has to fend for themselves."
There are several similar (and very helpful) questions which address some points of this question, but I feel this question is a bit different and thus merits being asked.
(1) [How to handle team member who is unable/unwilling to collaborate](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17865/how-to-handle-team-member-who-is-unable-unwilling-to-collaborate)
(2) [How to handle a colleague who hasn't pulled their weight](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/19952/how-to-handle-a-colleague-who-hasnt-pulled-their-weight)
(3) [How to make group work work?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27154/how-to-make-group-work-work)
The first two questions do not apply because each of the collaborators wishes to contribute and not just ride the wave so-to-speak. I attempted to follow some of the suggestions of the third question, but the group thought it was insulting.
>
> add more structure to the group project. This increases the workload
> on your end but it mitigates the most common issues you'll see in
> groups during group projects.
>
>
> Use and quality based hierarchy, assign the hard-working students as
> group leads.
>
>
>
I am in a group to complete an assignment. The teammates are very willing to collaborate and work, but the problem is that they did not actually learn the course material when they were supposed to. Therefore, they cannot actually help out without a **significant** amount of learning.
The group expects me to sit down with them for many hours (whole days) to teach them and collectively complete the assignment together. I feel that this is far too much responsibility, effort, and time required on my part, since my teammates lack the skills to contribute because they were unsuccessful in keeping up with the course material.
How should I proceed?<issue_comment>username_1: You don't really have many options. As I see them:
1. You can talk to the instructor, explain the situation, and ask to move to another group
2. You can talk to the instructor, explain the situation, and ask to do the project individually
3. You can actually sit down and teach them
As far as which you should do, there are too many variable for us to answer here. However, it seems the best would be start with (1). If that fails, try (2). If that also fails, do (3) and try to find the pleasure in teaching others.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: If a professor truly relies on group work, or if it is common or necessary to a field, then it is the professor's responsibility to teach students how to do it. That doesn't help you, of course, if the prof is avoiding this responsibility.
But, it is a common misconception among unskilled students that "group work" means dividing up the work equally (what ever that means) and then combining the parts into a whole. This is both inefficient and ineffective.
In a group, different people can have different "roles". One can be a researcher, another a writer, another a manager. Roles can be shared and can overlap. More than one writer is good if they work together, not independently, sharing ideas. People should have a say in what their role should be, or at least their principle role. But not all jobs are glamorous and still need to get done.
In your case, you might consider taking on the role of manager and calling a lot of meetings and giving a lot of assignments. Assign someone to a task (What does Aristotle mean here, really?) and give someone else a role of assisting. Have a lot of all hands meetings and some subgroup meetings. Let the work *coalesce* into a whole.
Imagine the opposite. Two of us want to write the next crime blockbuster novel. I'll write the odd numbered chapters and you write the evens and we'll work in parallel and then just smoosh it together. Or, I'll write the first half and you the last, working simultaneously. Yeah, that should work.
Teams means teamwork. Not all members of a sports team have the same role, of course.
But note that you aren't "teaching" but guiding. Teaching by example, perhaps.
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/10/18 | 250 | 1,097 | <issue_start>username_0: I am applying to graduate school in US for MS and Phd program. I wonder is it a good idea to ask for a letter of recommendation from someone that I took his course and I did amazing in his class and he knows me very well but he is now professor at another prestigious institute ?<issue_comment>username_1: It's not just a good idea, it's an excellent idea. Your professor is still in just as good a position to speak to his experience with you and his assessment your abilities as he was before. You say he has moved to another good institution, so there is no reason for his opinion to be discounted just because he moved---changing institutions is not unusual. In fact, if he is happy to write you a good letter, it will look even better than if he was at the same institution, because *even after changing institutions he still remembers you and cares enough to write*.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: It doesn't matter where the professor works now, but you should state clearly that the professor once taught you at your university.
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/10/18 | 1,591 | 6,554 | <issue_start>username_0: Ok here is the situation: My advisor gave me a paper about new model X. After reading and researching in X, I became very familiar with X and had many interesting ideas to extend its capabilities.
One thing I noticed with my advisor is the lack of deep analysis over my ideas. By this, I mean a roadmap on how to get these ideas published, what are the things I need to polish/sharp/add to get it (most likely) accepted in top conference/journal.
I handed him one draft of a paper, he didn't even doubt its findings; all his concern is to get it published somewhere in ranked C conferences; all he did was praising my writing (which is poor IMHO). What makes it even worse is the fact that I have seen some papers published in top conferences/journals with the same ideas I have (actually three ideas).
>
> This makes me wonder: Does he really know X?
>
>
>
if yes, then why he did not provide constructive ways to sharp the ideas to get it published in a top conference? or maybe I am asking for something that he can't offer!<issue_comment>username_1: I suppose it is rather hard to give a satisfying answer to this question with the amount of information available. I mean, it's hard to estimate all the unknowns in this particular case.
>
> if yes, then why he did not provide constructive ways to sharp the ideas to get it published in a top conference?
>
>
>
One could speculate in so many different ways; that he does not have the necessary grasp of the field to give meaningful critique is one speculation. Here's another plausible explanation; maybe he wants you to try flying on your own a bit, as a sink-or-swim approach. My supervisor did (and still does) this very often, I have almost too much freedom as to how I write, and what I write and to where I submit, then when the replies and reviews come in we sit down and improve on what I have done. Could be a similar approach
But to come back the question of how to know whether the supervisor is knowledgeable in a particular subject, here are some things that could be useful in the general case:
* checking your supervisors publication record. Maybe the s/he has published articles on about this model before you even came to the group. Or maybe he was involved with an older but related model Y?
* inquire you supervisor for his interest in the subject. If s/he gives you a paper about model X, all of a sudden then there is certainly a goal with that. To-the-point, effective communication might help you figure out his/her grasp of the field.
**EDIT:** In reply to the comment:
>
> if I have too much freedom as to how I write, and what I write and to where I submit, **then whats the point of supervision!**
>
>
>
My supervisor often says that his job is to teach me how to do research, not provide me with knowledge or make sure I become successful/famous/rich... Your supervisor has ZERO responsibility in **providing** you the means to publish in *top venues*, IMHO. He merely has a responsibility to make sure you get the tools you need to be able to do the research you want to carry out, later on in life.
As a side comment, I think your perspective to research might cause your frustration with your supervisor. Getting published in top venues is not a birth-right to all hard working grad students; and quite frankly, as a grad student where your articles get published have little to do with you or your work (at least in biomedical research).
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: This is more an extended comment, but here goes.
My PhD advisor had me work on a topic (in applied probability) that he knew little about. I survived and got a PhD, but it was not pleasant.
He's seems to have thought that the area was much more interesting/useful/productive than it was, and had wildly unrealistic/inflated expectations about applying it to mathematical finance, which unsurprisingly came to nothing in the end. I suppose in part because he didn't know much about it. It is a pretty obscure branch of applied probability that enjoyed a brief wave of popularity in the 90s, and quickly went cold again because, as it turns out, the area has formidable and (thus far) largely unsurmountable technical difficulties. At any time this area has had a handful of people working on it worldwide. I think with some breakthroughs it could become a useful area, but nothing like this has happened so far.
I learned later from other people (I was pretty naive about how academia worked) that faculty may try to use their students to try to learn about new areas. I've no idea how common a practice this is, but I have no reason to believe it is uncommon. I recall that the people I talked to seemed to think it was quite reasonable. I think it is wildly irresponsible.
In any case, I suggest you don't let your advisor do your thinking for you. If you like the field you are working in, and think you can be productive in it, then by all means continue. However, if you think your advisor doesn't know what is going on, it is quite possible he doesn't. Researchers are only flesh and blood, they are not omnipotent. If he doesn't know what is going on, he will probably be of little help to you. It is possible for your advisor to learn about the topic alongside you, but you are the best judge of whether he is doing that. If he doesn't seem to be, he probably isn't. And frankly, it is not a good thing for a graduate student to have an advisor who views his PhD as a learning experience. Ideally a PhD topic should be well within the advisors area of expertise. If he does not seem inclined to go into details and talks about generalities, that is a bad sign, in my experience.
Bear in mind that finding a auxiliary advisor who knows more about the topic is a possibility, but if want to go in that direction, I'd do something about it sooner rather than later.
Other people have commented here that it is reasonable for you to end up knowing more about the topic than your advisor does. That is a fair point, but that should not be the case at the outset. Maybe that is Ok after a few
years of you digging into the topic. And really, it depends on you. If you are comfortable going it mostly alone in the topic, perhaps communicating occasionally with other researchers, then that is Ok. If you are not, then it could end up being a bit of a baptism of fire. We don't know what your topic is, exactly, so we can't say anything more about that. And research topics vary wildly in level of difficulty, of course.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/10/18 | 1,164 | 5,164 | <issue_start>username_0: Some journals (specifically on biology or chemistry) accept only MS Word files as manuscripts, while many journals on mathematics or physics prefer LaTeX.
Even *Science* prefers MS Word.
Why do they insist on proprietary MS Word, instead of accepting PDF + plain text?
I don't think they typeset papers on MS Word.<issue_comment>username_1: I cannot answer for all journals but can provide insights into a few. One issue concerns the authors rather than the journals themselves. If a community has little need for equations then the need for LaTeX is also perceived as small. Hence a journal would not implement something that they think has no use.
In my own field of Earth Science, the usage of LaTeX varies between sub-disciplines. In Glaciology, being a quantitative subfield, a majority use LaTeX while in other more descriptive subfields no-one uses LaTeX. It is easy to see that this is also reflected in what formats the journals accept. Since the editors of the journals usually come from the sub-disciplines their journals cover, the editors are used to using the same authoring tools as others which further cements the existing structure.
On top of that the individual publisher may add capacity to journals. Elsevier, for example, has a LaTeX-class that can be used for their journals, while Wiley, for example, do not. This can help journals take the step to also include LaTeX contributions even though editors may not be users themselves.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: The main divide that I notice in preferred input format is between journals that routinely reformat your paper and those that do not.
* Journals wanting Word generally ask the author just just send a pile of text and figures, which they will stitch together to look precisely how they want it to look, with special fancy styling, etc.
* Journals that want LaTeX generally ask the author to send a PDF file looking almost exactly as it will for publication, plus the LaTeX so they can recompile with the right page and issue information.
The first is essentially a leftover from the days before computer formatting, when a journal would be getting a bundle of paper, which would need to be typeset by hand in any case. These days it is most likely to be preserved in either high-end journals that can afford a significant paid staff or else in subfields that simply haven't made the cultural transition. Word is then a "lowest common denominator" that, unfortunately, the world has generally settled on for styled documents (though some places will also accept non-proprietary formats: for example, [PLoS ONE also accepts rtf](http://www.plosone.org/static/submissionInstructions))
LaTeX lets a journal run much more leanly, since it places more burden on the authors. When something goes wrong with LaTeX, however, it's likely to go much more problematically wrong because it's possible for authors to include some awfully fancy programming in LaTeX (I know a person who wrote a piece of database management software entirely in TeX). To handle that, you need a much more programming-savvy journal staff, or else a large and well-maintained automated backend like [IEEE's PDF eXpress](http://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/publishing/pdfexpress.html) to help you detect and manage the problems that come with freedom.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: Similar to username_2, username_1, and this <https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1046940> website. I would propose the reason for format is usually based on the end goal, which determines why someone prefers a format. Some journal or conference that uses professional graphic designers or wants the comfort/freedom of an easily formatted manuscript may want to use inDesign (one of the standards for making book layouts).
Even if inDesign is not the end point, it could just be easier to layout a microsoft template, or could just be easier because the typesetter for a journal is accustom to those options.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_4: It is much easier to find copy-editors with Word skills than Latex skills. I am aware of two journals that used to accept submissions written in Latex that switched to Word-only because they could not find editors with the skills needed for Latex, and of another that is considering this switch.
There is a big problem with Latex as an authoring format, which is that it is a sophisticated and not terribly readable programming language, one that encourages people to hack up idiosyncratic macros for use in their articles. If you have 10 papers to be edited into an issue of a journal, life is much harder if each of the papers defines its own macros to do roughly similar things in incompatible ways, with possible and hard to deal with namespace collisions. This also means that the skills needed for editing in Latex are higher than those needed for editing articles written in Word.
That said, journals that can handle this problem gain freedom from vendors in their publishing operations. It is no accident that Latex is more popular with smaller publishers than with the giant publishers.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/10/18 | 497 | 2,105 | <issue_start>username_0: How do you capitalize the titles of references in a math paper? Would you rather write:
>
> Global smooth solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations
>
>
>
or
>
> Global Smooth Solutions of the Navier-Stokes Equations
>
>
>
? The latter capitalization is the usual capitalization, where every non-grammatical word, and all names, are capitalized. But the former variant seems to be common in the references. The only exception seem to books, which are usually capitalized as on their titles.
I have been skimming over the list of references in mathematical papers by well-regarded researches, but I have not found a definitive pattern. In fact, in many publications, neither the author nor the editor seems to actually care.<issue_comment>username_1: Every journal has its own preferences for this. Use a citation management package like BibTeX or EndNote, and follow the style guide of the journal you submit to. In the end, it doesn't truly matter as long as your readers can find the article, but it's best to follow the journal's instructions in the case that they do actually care.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: username_1 is right in that this choice is typically made by the journal's style files and/or copy editor, not by the author. However, just in general, my experience is that the first form (capitalize only first word and proper nouns) is more common when referencing papers, while the second form (capitalize all but "little" words) is used when referencing books.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: You are right: in math, neither the author nor the editor is likely to really care. Most math papers are prepared with specialized software (TeX or LaTeX, using BibTeX of AMSRefs) which formats the references automatically. So we just trust the software, and focus our attention on more important things.
This must sound crazy to people who are used to fretting over some particular style - APA, Chicago, etc. Their concern over something so minor, which can be so easily automated, is equally mysterious to us.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/10/18 | 291 | 1,173 | <issue_start>username_0: Can somebody suggest what should be the optimal font size of text like axis ticks, axis label, legend etc. ?<issue_comment>username_1: Your institution's thesis template may specify this - some do and some don't.
If not then it's really up to you. Typically, you want it to be smaller than your main text so that it doesn't stand out inappropriately much. Beyond that, it's a balance for efficacy of communication: larger sizes are more legible, but smaller sizes can help avoid visual clutter. Remember also that many of your readers may be older or have imperfect vision and have a hard time with smaller fonts.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Try to use the same font as what you use for **image captions**. Then it should be easy to read and it does not stand out in comparison with the rest of the document.
For example, if your text is 12pt Times and image captions are 11pt Times, then all text in your images is 11pt Times. If both text and image captions are 12pt Times, then all text in your images is also 12pt Times.
(In exceptional cases you can try to save space by using a slightly smaller font.)
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/10/18 | 512 | 2,091 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm looking through a few journal articles and I notice that they have cited an article that has been retracted (based on invalid conclusions).
If I cite that article that cited the retracted one, would that be valid? Moreover, should I check the references of every article in that article to see if they cite any retracted articles?<issue_comment>username_1: Ultimately, it doesn't depend on the retracted article, but on the one that you cite.
Is the science in the article that you cite valid, despite the retraction of its reference? After all, most references are for context not critical dependencies. If it's still valid, there is no problem with the citation. If the science doesn't stand, though, then it doesn't stand and you shouldn't cite it.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: When you cite an article it does not mean that your work stands on the cited article in its entirety but rather it might be a particular result, an interpretation or an interesting question someone else has come up with before you.
Let look at it like this:
* you (Y) cite a finding (*f1*) by a person/group in some paper (P1),
* who in turn cites another finding (*f2*) some other person/group in some paper (P2).
* later turns out that something in P2 does not add up and the paper gets retracted.
The interesting question is *whether or not the mistake or error etc in P2 is related to your work*. If:
* scientific grounds for *f2* is still valid despite the error that causes the retraction, or
* your *f1* is independent of *f2*
then you are essentially safe, since the reasons for retraction does not reflect on your work/findings. In other words, you have not built your work on erroneous foundation.
That beings said, I can only assume that citing a retracted paper isn't particularly nice, and if you can avoid it (if someone else has also mentioned that same finding without going through the retracted paper) then it's probably better.
Hope this wasn't all too convoluted.. I had to rewrite it a couple of times already :)
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer] |
2014/10/18 | 1,641 | 6,948 | <issue_start>username_0: My supervisor wants us to meet 3-5 times in a week with another PhD student of his. Every meeting is on average more than couple of hours. I don't know about the other student. But I feel like we are wasting too much time in meeting; it's hurting my productivity. How can I tell my supervisor to keep the amount of meetings and duration limited? To make matter worse, he also wants us (me and other PhD student) to meet separately besides these meetings. I am spending on avg. 12-15 hours per week doing these meetings.
I can answer questions why I think these meetings aren't productive, but that may turn into rant and I may put them into another question. So I want to keep it short and precise; let's just assume these meetings aren't productive for me.<issue_comment>username_1: I think this is a time to be direct and honest: just say you are spending too much time in meetings and it should be reduced. Say what you should be doing instead. A reasonable person should not be offended and should know that meetings can hurt productivity.
I also recommend considering changing the way the meeting works to align it with your needs. When I am in a meeting, if nobody is taking charge, I will try to be a leader and give the meeting some direction. Remind participants of the agenda. Add the things you want to do to the agenda. But be tactful.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: Volunteer to prepare the agenda for these meetings. The day before, send everyone email asking for agenda items. If you get none, suggest to your supervisor that the meeting be canceled as there are no items to discuss.
If you do get items, make sure "Adjournment" is the last item on the agenda.
Edited to add: There are two groups for whom time is literally money. They physicians and lawyers. I spent my first career working for one such group. I learned that meetings need not be a time sink. As I've said in a comment, the way to make meetings productive is to have an agenda and *stick to it.* Meetings run by people who know what they're doing accomplish what they are supposed to accomplish and *stop.* This is what username_1 and <NAME> called "aligning the meeting with your needs."
One of the things that chaps my buns about academia is waste-of-time meetings. Happily, I am low on the academic totem pole and not tenure-track, so I can blow most of them off.
Another edit: I never had a meeting with my own dissertation chair that did *not* have an agenda. I prepared them and he seemed happy to have them. Early meetings were formal and ended when we reached the end of the agenda. Toward the end we met at a Chinese restaurant and the meeting gave way to lunch, but we never rambled.
Last edit, I promise: What I am suggesting is the difference between telling the advisor/supervisor that the meetings do not fulfill the needs of OP and telling the advisor/supervisor that, but following up with a suggestion that my experience says will improve the meetings and may result in fewer of them.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: Since my comments trigger such negative rating, I might as well turn this into an answer :-)
The point I would like to make is focussed on the fact that you complain about your supervisor spending ten hours a week wanting to talk to you. I would like to say, as a former supervisee and a current supervisor, that you should consider yourself a priori lucky. Now it might be that your supervisor is also clueless, this I cannot judge. But think of this in the following way: the PhD is the last time in your life where you are being tought, in particular tought about how to do research, something books are not so good at doing. Should you consider a career in your field, you will have plenty of time to focus on being productive.
Think of your PhD -- and of the time your supervisor is spending helping you go through it, as an investment for future productivity. Of course you will most likely be faced with endless numbers of essentially boring meetings in your life.
You might feel it is already the case, but a meeting with your supervisor should not be of this type. My advice would be change the nature of the meeting, not the number of hours dedicated to them.
On the more general issue of being productive in research, personally I do not feel research is about productivity. Engineering might be, but engineering is not quite the same as research. Some people obviously think differently, which is fine by me.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: Tips on approaching your supervisor:
1. Offer an alternative to the meetings: Perhaps meeting once a month, or a "lunch and learn". This sets you up as a solution oriented person rather than a "complainer".
2. Give specific instances of what is not productive. I measure the value of a meeting on whether I changed something I do because of the meeting. If I did not change, then the meeting did not have an effect on me and the value of the meeting is questionable.
3. Ask for an agenda for the meeting. This will force the person hosting the meeting to organize what they will talk about.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: I think it unlikely that you will convince them to reduce the number of meetings; from my experience, people do not realise that you can do with less, until they have experienced the productivity boost themselves. In my experience, requests for fewer meetings are typically turned down by people who believe in the management model that regular meetings act as engine of progress.
If it is a purely scientific rather than a "waffle" meeting, though, then I recommend, just enjoy it. That's what you are in university for, after all.
But if the meeting is really unproductive (which means, it doesn't advance neither your direct work, nor your knowledge), then this is a classic instance for "manage your manager". Avoid directly criticising the number/style of meetings. Even at more advanced stages than a PhD, one will be looked at a person that is not ready to play ball.
Rather, be proactive: By you deciding what you want out of the meeting, preparing an agenda, preparing a list of expected outcomes, and writing down a mandatory "action list" at the end (which is checked against at the beginning of the following meeting), you can focus the meetings and help organise the thoughts of your fellow participants. You have a certain control of the agenda, this way.
If you push on the action list in a disciplined form, especially if you yourself act with discipline on it, but it not acted upon by the others, it may make the others in the meeting uncomfortable and lead them, in turn, to ask for fewer meetings on their own. Plus, you will be seen as manager/organizer of the meeting, and a disorganised supervisor may actually appreciate that, if it's done in a careful way. Don't castigate others for not doing theirs, just ask them if they have done their part.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/10/18 | 759 | 3,384 | <issue_start>username_0: During a lecture (and a separate presentation) my instructor told us about bibliographic software, how it composes references automatically and is able to correctly cite articles in many formats. The software is freely available to everyone.
However, many others did not use it and were penalized on incorrect formatting when the assignment was due. Why would one not use software to compose references and citations? Is there advantage in learning how to cite articles manually?<issue_comment>username_1: All bibliographic software has a learning curve. You have to invest time and energy up front to learn the system and set up your database, and only reap the benefits later in the decreased amortized cost of maintaining correct citations.
If somebody doesn't think the tradeoff will be worth it (e.g., thinks they "aren't good with computers" or doesn't think they'll write many papers that the software would be useful for or is in a rush and isn't thinking about the long term), then they may manage a bibliography by hand.
For example, I'm a devout LaTeX/BibTeX user and would never consider doing something by hand---except that I have done so on a few occasions when forced to use an incompatible format where it wasn't worth setting up a new toolchain (e.g., putting a few citations at the end of a PowerPoint deck).
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I think is the type of things you need to do by hand once, in order to know the basic idea of it. After that it should be left for computers to do, just like determinants or matrix multiplication.
Doing it by hand is extremely time consuming and prone to errors. There are too many citation styles for anyone to master them anyway, even within a specific field.
This is just another thing better left to automated algorithms.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: I can think of at least three real-world advantages we gain by learning how to cite articles manually:
1. It compels us to become familiar with the syntax and form of citations, which makes references to articles easier to read and parse ... something that we all still have to do manually.
2. If you only need to jot down or reference one article you can do so without troubling with software tools.
3. By knowing how citations should be formatted, you are in a position to recognize errors and correct them (i.e. you can tell when your bib software malfunctions).
Pocket calculators are cheap, reliable, and widely available. Why do we insist on learning addition? The answer is, there are a lot of times you might want to use addition and you don't *always* want to depend on a calculator for that.
Of course we should take advantage of software tools for compiling references and bibliographies, but this is not always viable or always necessarily better than doing it manually unless we can assume that bibliographic software:
* correctly cites articles in the desired format.
* composes references with little effort (automatically).
* is freely available to everyone (i.e., at no cost).
In my experience, all three of these assumptions break down much more often than one would like. For instance, it might be difficult and very frustrating to make a small change to a standard format in your bib software, which is required by the journal or funding agency you need to work with.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/10/19 | 858 | 3,976 | <issue_start>username_0: Me and another PhD student, we are first two authors in a paper. We had a disagreement with our supervisor about submitting our paper to conference. We both opposed the submission as we think it's too early to submit our result and the paper will most likely be rejected. Our supervisor said, academically he has the full authority to submit the paper even if we oppose. My question is does a supervisor have the right to submit a paper from the point of view of the university?<issue_comment>username_1: Ethically, a paper should only be published with the active consent of all the involved authors. Thus, from an ethical point of view, your supervisor should not submit without your consent. If your supervisor does so, that is a clear breach of scientific ethics and needs to be treated very seriously.
On the other hand, are you sure that you are right in withholding your consent?
You say that you think that it is too early to submit your result to this conference. Are you sure that you have a better idea of the size of contribution expected by this conference than your advisor?
You don't say how far along you are in your program and how much you have published before. It is common for early-career researchers to overestimate the size of a result necessary for a good paper. In my graduate program, for example, Ph.D. students were expected to produce a Masters thesis first, and a common failure mode was for students to essentially try to do a Ph.D. worth of work already.
It is natural to want to be able to submit a paper that definitively solves the whole subject, but in some areas, particularly engineering fields, it is more common to have a sequence of conference papers that build up piece by piece, followed by a capstone journal paper that ties it all together into the complete and thorough package. Conference papers can thus be reports of a significant step toward a result, rather than the result entire. You supervisor may be seeing a step of that sort in the results that you have so far, and it would be good to ask and see *why* your supervisor thinks the work so far is significant enough to publish.
Take a close look at your situation, compare with other papers published in the conference (not the award winners, but random papers in random sessions), and ask yourself how the size of your increment compares with theirs. You may find that it's reasonable to submit after all (the criteria is not: "Am I certain to be accepted?" it is: "Will the reviewers be annoyed that I am wasting their time?"). Or you may gather evidence that will let you make a stronger case for why you think your paper is not ready, and be able to convince your supervisor.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: Your supervisor does not have the right to submit a paper with your name as a coauthor without your consent. By making such a submission he would be making a false representation that all coauthors have agreed to the submission, thus essentially committing a form of minor fraud or certainly dishonest and unethical behavior that is considered completely unacceptable in the academic world.
Note that you write "from the point of view of the university", so technically there is a chance that your university has unconventional standards in such matters and in their eyes your supervisor is correct. If that is the case (which I strongly doubt), I would suggest getting the heck out of that miserable institution and going to a real university.
Finally, while it is absolutely possible that you generally have better judgment than your supervisor (a possibility that does not occur to many graduate students even when perhaps it should), he does have more -- probably a lot more -- experience than you in matters of publications, so I agree with username_1 that it is worth questioning whether your objection to the submission is a good idea, and maybe consulting other experienced academics from your field.
Upvotes: 5 |
2014/10/19 | 2,224 | 9,659 | <issue_start>username_0: I received a rejection letter from an Editor after I revised and resubmitted my paper by addressing all comments from two reviewers.
The first reviewer has no feedback meaning that he accepted all the responses given.
The second reviewer say that he confirms that all his comments on the previous version of the paper have been addressed. However he still feel that the paper does not contain an adequate level of originality for it to be published in a journal like "xxxxxxxxxxxx" with a very high impact factor. He did not utter any doubts regarding the originality during the first round
Is it still possible to write an appeal to the Editor-in-chief against the decision?<issue_comment>username_1: >
> Is it still possible to write an appeal to the Editor-in-chief against the decision?
>
>
>
Sure, it's always possible to do that. Whether the appeal will get you anywhere is a different question. In this case, I feel like you think what you told us is grounds for an appeal *which has a reasonable chance of being successful*....but I didn't see anything in your post that would make me, if I were an editor of your journal [disclosure: I am not a journal editor; but I have dealt with journal editors regularly for some years now], reconsider the decision.
Basically they are saying that after addressing the comments they agree that your paper is solid and publishable, but is not worthy of publication *in their journal*. More specific words like "originality", "difficulty", "novelty", "value", "depth" all amount to this same judgment. Does a journal have the right to reject papers that they think are perfectly sound and publishable but not good enough for them? Of course they do!! The journal's right (and even obligation) to do just that is what allows the entire system -- in which some journals are more prestigious than others, and for which publication in the most prestigious journals (e.g. *Nature* and *Annals of Mathematics*) is a career-making accomplishment -- to function.
Unfortunately it is quite hard to *successfully* appeal this kind of verdict. In the rare case that you happen to know that the editors lacked some specific, objective, important piece of information that would have impacted their decision -- the referee's report dramatically mischaracterizes your work, say by neglecting to mention that you solved an important and well-known problem -- you can bring that to their attention. More often you suspect that they didn't properly appreciate your work, but your recourse is to resubmit to a journal of equal or greater prestige, and look forward to the (usually implicit!) "I-told-you-so" when your paper gets published there.
Maybe you thought that being asked to make revisions meant that the paper would be accepted conditionally on making those revisions in a way that satisfied the referees? Well, if you were specifically told that, then: **Yes, appeal. You have a strong case.** Otherwise: unfortunately, no, that need not be the case. If a referee feels that even if you made the revisions she would still not recommend the paper for acceptance, then the ethical thing to do is to reject the paper and make clear that the suggested revisions are for a version of the paper to be submitted elsewhere. However, even if the referees recommend the paper, then the decision to accept rests with the editors. As a general rule, the better the journal the more likely it is that a paper which was satisfactory to all the referees will still not be published. Some of these journals presumably don't even have the space to publish all the papers that their referees recommend them to publish, so they have to make hard choices.
There is one small word in your post which shouts to me: **still**. This suggests that one of the referees mentioned in her original report that your paper did not have enough originality to be published in the journal you sent it to. Is that right? If so: well, then is it really true that you addressed all the comments of the referees? In my experience, lines like this are often hints that the referee is not going to want to publish your paper even if you make some revisions which in your mind measurably improve the paper. Since "originality" is quite subjective, it is very hard to be confident that you are adding originality, and when you get a report like that it is often a good idea to check in with the editor to see whether s/he views that comment as a deal-breaker. (I can think of one instance where I got a comment like that, was asked to revise, and wrote back to ask the editor whether he really wanted me to revise the paper under the circumstances. He said yes and the paper was published. However the journal, while solid, was very far from the top one in my field.)
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: There may be an appeal process (the details vary from journal to journal), but it is generally a venue for complaints about the fairness of the editorial process, not a second scientific evaluation. Based on the information you give, this is not your case.
I would suggest you use the input from this journal to improve your paper and submit it elsewhere. Choose your battles wisely.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: Disclaimer: I have never been involved in a comparable situation, and thus the following is based on thought only.
In addition to the scenario depicted by username_1, I think you have a good point if all of the following applies:
* Neither the reviewers nor the editor gave any hints regarding a lack of originality in the first round.
* The second reviewer did not state that she or he could not evaluate the originality of the paper unless some aspect had been clarified or something similar.
* No new information affecting the originality of the paper came up since the paper was first submitted. For example, if one of the improvements in the revised paper was a better context embedding, this may have shed a new light on the originality of the paper. Or you might have attenuated your claims for some reason.
* The second reviewer did not gave a (good) reason why she or he did not raise objection regarding the originality during the first round.
* The paper was actually rejected due to the second reviewer’s criticism.
**If all this is true** – and I strongly recommend to carefully check this as far as possible and have your assessment confirmed by a somebody else, e.g., a colleague¹ –, then I would consider the behaviour of the second reviewer questionable, as she or he
* unnecessarily lengthened the review process;
* wasted the time of everybody involved: the other reviewer, the editor and you;
* caused your paper to be rejected on basis of a point of critique that you had no chance to respond to (though lack of originality can be an incontestable killer argument anyway due to its inherently subjective nature);
* can not excuse this as an honest mistake (e.g., like failing to spot a hole in a mathematical proof), because evaluating the originality of the manuscript is one the main jobs of a reviewer and should not depend on details
* created – by using the word *still* – the wrong impression that the lack of originality was an old and unaddressed point of critique, though it was not.
Moreover, this could actually be a malicious strategy to delay the publication of your paper (for example because the reviewer is in the process of publishing a similar paper): Delay the paper as long as possible² with strong, but not rejection-causing critique and only then raise the hammer argument (here: lack of originality).
Thus, in this case, you would have a good point. However, this is only half the battle. The editors and the journal can still do as they wish³ and can be disgruntled as it was them who accepted the second reviewer’s critique or at least missed that lack of objectivity had not been criticised in the first round – unless the journal assignes somebody else to evaluate this situation.
---
¹ unless this is a breach of confidentiality
² which may be one round for a high-impact journal
³ unless you have such a strong case that they have to fear the loss of reputation if you make this public
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_4: As I learned from my good friend who is very well published:
1. Whenever you're planning research, plan to have publishable results no matter your research results. (Set up your experiments so both the positive and negative cases will be interesting, however it works out.)
2. Plan and understand your field's journal hierarchy. If you don't succeed at your top journal, then go on to the next. Go for quantity and quality of your research, there's always the next paper.
Can you appeal to the editor? Of course, but it is a ["Hail Mary"](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hail_Mary_pass) pass. You're telling the editor that he or she has a problem (the process that led to the non-acceptance of your work) and that a fix is needed. No one welcomes or appreciates that kind of request and the tendency is to dismiss the biased complainant (you), unless the problem is egregious.
Remember that you also don't necessarily want to start your relationship with the journal's editor as a complainer.
As an alternate course of action, why not try the next journal down on your list? You'll be bringing that editor a great paper and perhaps other research in the future will cite your work in journal #2. (Thus demonstrating over time that your paper was truly high quality.)
With your next project, not only may you be accepted at journal #1, perhaps you'll be asked to be the guest editor someday.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/10/19 | 620 | 2,414 | <issue_start>username_0: I would like to know whether to escalate the issue when my masters thesis advisor is very careless, disorganized and does not provide anything useful to me.
I have started with him around 9 months ago. Following [some disappointment over his choice of research topic](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27779/i-found-out-my-masters-thesis-topic-has-already-been-done-exactly-and-my-adv), I have worked very hard, and now, after 9 months of my research, I am almost done.
However, my advisor is very unresponsive to me:
* I have sent him tons of emails with no responses.
* I have requested to meet him more than 15 times and I was only able to see him 3 times. However, he has confirmed most of these appointments and I ended by wasting my time waiting him in front of his office for 30 -60 minutes before I got the same exact answer every time (I have emergency case sorry)
* Last week I was able to meet with him, and he did not remember the topic or when I have to defend my thesis. (I have sent him more than 10 drafts of my work during the last 9 months.)
* Now, he promised to review my work and give me his feedback by end of Saturday. today is Sunday and I still did not hear from him.
Is it better to escalate the case? Or live with it for the time being and wait for my thesis result?
If I try to escalate later, will they ask me, why you did not speak before, it is too late now?<issue_comment>username_1: I think you should find a new advisor. You should definitely discuss the situation with an appropriate faculty member, perhaps the one in charge of the master's program, so that nobody will think you were not proactive in solving your problems.
The word "escalate" is vague and negative. Don't use it.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Escalation usually works out badly for the person lowest in the hierarchy.
(That feels like *such* a truism but apparently it bears repeating.)
Your department should have an academic tutor with whom you should consult. Some departments have a "no fault" policy where students are allowed to switch supervisors, quietly. However, there are students who do not do any work until the very last week when it finally dawns on them that it was all the supervisor's fault. To guard against this, there is often a point of no return. After x weeks, you have to make it work with the supervisor you have got.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/10/19 | 1,455 | 6,223 | <issue_start>username_0: I see some offers on the Chronicle jobs website (such as [this one from UC San Diego](https://chroniclevitae.com/jobs/0000852185-01)) for non-tenure-track assistant professor positions.
Is the work of a non-tenure-track assistant professor exactly the same as the work of a tenure-track assistant professor, e.g. in terms of teaching/research ratio?
Also, would taking on a position of this type be more, less or equally helpful compared to, say, taking up another postdoc, for someone that would later want to apply to a tenure-track position?
Forgive me if this question does not make sense to you, but I have taken the impression from some sources that whatever professional decision one takes that is slightly outside the "normal" progression of an academic career can be harmful.<issue_comment>username_1: The most important point is that jobs vary significantly by discipline. If you are in the field of Cognitive Science, or in a related field, you are in a better position to know what a job ad in that area is actually looking for. Unfortunately, the job ad linked in the question is written in a way to make it hard for those outside the area to know what it wants - it does not directly say whether they are looking for research or teaching. There is no way to tell without asking what the teaching/research ratio would be.
In general, there are two common uses of non-tenure-track "Assistant Professor" positions in the U.S.:
1. Postdoctoral positions. These are not usually considered "harmful" to your career. In many fields they are a standard part of the academic job progression.
2. Teaching-oriented positions for which the candidate has a PhD. These may be full-time positions (as in the linked ad) or part-time.
The second type of position could be helpful, or harmful, depending on what sort of tenure-track position you are looking for. You have already narrowed down the type of institution where you would like to have a tenure-track position, and started honing your CV to be a perfect fit for that type of school, right?
* If your type of school is an elite research school, then another postdoc seems more likely to be helpful than a teaching position. This is the type of school where leaving the standard progression is most likely to be harmful to tenure-track chances. If you are a likely candidate for this type of position, you probably know it already.
* If you are looking at non-elite public universities, which have more of a balance between research and teaching, a single non-tenure-track teaching assistant professorship is not a mark of certain doom for your tenure track hopes. You can use the job to hone your teaching, move your research forward a little, and you can use the time to apply for tenure track jobs.
* If you are looking at teaching-first institutions, or at community colleges, then you need to make sure you have excellent teaching credentials. You might be able to use a teaching-oriented term position as a way to do that.
Unfortunately, because of the excess of candidates relative to the number of tenure-track positions in many (most?) fields, and because the number of tenure-track jobs is not increasing, many academics work multiple term positions in a row. This is especially common in the humanities, and it can be "harmful" for tenure track hopes, unfortunately. I was fortunate to find a tenure-track position, so I can't speak too much to how to handle the situation of multiple term teaching positions, but you can find a lot of discussion about it on the web.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Actually, in this specific case I think it may just be a mistake in the ad.
The application page linked from the Chronicle ad just describes the position as "Assistant Professor" and doesn't say anything about tenure one way or the other. Certainly the default for an assistant professor position would be that it is tenure track.
Also, I attended UC San Diego as a grad student (in a different department) and don't ever remember hearing about any non-tenure-track assistant professors. Full-time teaching-oriented faculty at UCSD have the title "Lecturer".
So I think there's a good chance that these are ordinary tenure-track assistant professor positions, and that someone just clicked the wrong box when submitting the Chronicle ad.
I would suggest getting in touch with the department for clarification.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: After reading the advertisement, my opinion is that this is most likely an error in posting the advertisement, and that these actually are tenure track positions.
There are at least three situations in the US where I commonly see non tenure-track assistant professor positions:
1. Limited duration "Visiting Assistant Professor" positions. Here the candidate will be expected to cover the teaching load of a regular faculty member, typically because the regular faculty member is away on sabbatical leave or on an administrative appointment or unavailable due to health problems. It's not uncommon for such a position to exist for a year while a department searches for a permanent tenure track replacement.
2. Permanent or limited duration "Research Assistant Professor" positions, typically funded by grants. Here the candidate will be expected to perform research and bring in the grants to support their salary but won't have a regular teaching load.
3. Permanent "Clinical Assistant Professor" positions. These are full time teaching positions with no possibility of tenure. A similar title often used is "instructor."
The advertisement linked to by the original poster doesn't seem to fit into any of these categories, which is why I believe that the "non tenure track" on the listing is simply in error.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: In my department, postdoctoral appointments, usually for a 3-year, non-renewable term (and thus definitely not tenure-track), carry the title of assistant professor. Postdocs are listed on the department web page as "Post-Doc Assistant Professor" but in the university directory simply as "Assistant Professor of Mathematics" (with no indication that they are not on tenure-track).
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/10/19 | 872 | 3,845 | <issue_start>username_0: I have a little computer science background. In one of my statistic courses we did significant data analysis with SAS and R coding. I'm getting this professor to write a LOR for me. He wants me to draft the LOR for him.
How should I write this letter so I don't come across as someone who confuses computer science with coding?
In other words, I want to convey how this course makes me a good candidate for a computer science graduate program.<issue_comment>username_1: Let's ask the right question first.
Do you think this is a situation where *you* should know, and know, what the application committee at the target program wants to hear, or where your *professor* should know these things? If the latter, then you're in a very difficult situation. My personal recommendation would be to discuss the matter frankly with the professor, and try to develop a constructive understanding. If the professor says something like:
>
> yes you should emphasize X Y and not Z, all of which I would give you glowing praise for, and I'll make sure the committee is receptive to it. I just don't have a lot of time and want you to help out a bit, so thank you for asking since that saves me time too.
>
>
>
then you are in very good shape.
If you don't know, and they don't know, then you need to find another writer.
Now, asking your original question is actually off topic here (although I think why it is off topic and what to do about it is very on-topic... nevermind the meta). You *cannot* answer this question without domain-specific knowledge. It would need to be answered, basically, by someone who has done admissions work at a CS graduate program. Not a physics graduate program nor a biology graduate program. Furthermore it will probably depend on the nature of your target school. Some schools are engineering focused (and programming ability may be more important if not a sign of brilliance) and some schools are theory focused (and programming is a necessary nuisance). This is why I'm emphasizing that it's more important for you to use more general resourcefulness to solve this question, as it's far more specific and situational than you may realize.
In particular, **ask this question to your rec letter writer.**
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: Let us put aside the question of you vs. your letter writer, because the same question could apply to your statement of purpose.
The notion of "programming ability" per se is a bit of a red herring. The problem is: how do you actually measure what a "good" programmer is? The only meaningful answer that I know of is to illustrate what somebody has accomplished that required programming. Any other assertion of programming ability, I regard as a red flag. In fact, one of my litmus tests for whether somebody is a good programmer is to ask what languages they know: if they can readily and simply answer the question, they probably aren't a good programmer (the logic behind this: getting significant things done with software tends to, over time, involve being forced to deal with lots of random types of code in order to get things done).
Thus, I would recommend you instead focus on emphasizing *what you have accomplished using programming.* This way, you will show not just "programming ability" but also personal organization, ability to accomplish difficult and complex tasks, ability to think in a computer science manner about problems, and other such qualities that actually matter a lot more for demonstrating your potential in a program. If you did a cool and complex project in the class, that is what you should be talking about, with SAS and R being mentioned in passing as the tools you used. If all you did was problem sets, well, I would have a hard time seeing how this could be a strong LOR in the first place.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/10/19 | 757 | 3,123 | <issue_start>username_0: In my PhD studies I have **slipped off my original track of research**. This was also caused by the fact that I found out that my work can be generalized to a broader scope. It is not so bad, during this detour I did a lot of work.
But then I tried to get back to my original subject and did a lot of work there too. So now after 3 years of studying, I have several papers and a lot of data **for both tracks**. I don't think that the results in any one of these tracks are sufficient to graduate, but together they are.
Should I:
1. try to find a **unifying** theme and try to make my thesis seem unified on the outside, or
2. should I transparently say that my thesis is about these **two subjects**?<issue_comment>username_1: This really appears to be about titling your thesis (and maybe writing the introduction). The question, then, I guess, is: who is going the read your thesis and title? Do you want to have a highly descriptive title (Description of topic 1 & description of topic 2), or could you just say (Vague title that sums up both, broadly). In general, I'm not sure if one is objectively better than the other - the audience matters.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: You should consult with your advisor. Seriously, this should be very obvious to you.
Your advisor is very (solely, perhaps) responsible for the development of your research into a defendable thesis topic. I'm sure that whether this is "usual" highly depends on the idiosyncrasies of your field, but even *that's* not relevant: from the standpoint of completing your thesis, all that matters is the idiosyncrasies of your advisor with the thesis committee.
I really do hope that your advisor has been signing off on your research to the point of assuring you that these two research tracks together can constitute a defendable thesis, unless I'm misunderstanding and this has been a fairly recent and serendipitous development in your work, in which case "ASAP" would be the best time to introduce this question to your advisor, because you *may* be wasting time.
Your question may be just about titling or packaging your research - that has been supported by your advisor to the ends of completing your Ph.D. - in which case that's a more docile problem (that I cannot answer). I would recommend posting a new question focusing solely on that or amending this question, if that is the case (IMO new question is better since amending it would change the content of this Q/A thread so much).
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: Option 1. At least in computer science, it happens often (but not always) that someone works on several somewhat disjoint but somewhat related problems. It's all about the glue and the story; if you can sell the cohesiveness of the thesis in the abstract and introduction, you're golden. Be upfront about the fact that there may be some disjoint problems, but try to find and highlight the unifying themes.
Here's a quote my advisor always tells us which has relevance to this: "all wells, when dug deep enough, lead to the same water source."
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer] |
2014/10/19 | 541 | 2,385 | <issue_start>username_0: I am just finishing my computer science PhD. It has five research chapters. The first four pose many research questions and answers all of them; they are complete in this sense.
The fifth chapter is a bit odd. We have just launched a three-year field trial of vehicles. I was responsible for many of the field trial design parameters: Who are the participants, how do we measure and gather data, how do we transmit data, what hardware/software do we need, etc.? Most of the chapter is methodology-focused and talks about all of these design decisions and how we made them. However, I am graduating (my defense is in a few weeks), and many of the interesting research results of this trial won't be available for months/years after a significant amount of data is collected.
So my question is, is it odd to have a chapter of the following form? “Here are a bunch of really interesting research questions, and here is how I helped design a trial to answer them, but that said, I do not present all the answers here because they are not known yet.”<issue_comment>username_1: Your dissertation is not supposed to solve all the world's problems. Presumably your chair and committee have been following your work and will understand why there are unanswered questions. Your own question tells us you've described how the remaining questions will be answered as the experiment progresses.
With that said, the best advice I can give you is *ask your committee chair.* It is your chair's job to guide you to a successful defense. Your chair can guide you on how to present research that no one expected to be complete.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: The posing of "open" questions is quite common in doctoral dissertations, usually in the final "conclusions and outlook" section.
However, your situation is a bit different, in that you have an actual project that is designed to address these questions, but the study is too long for you to wait to include the results in your PhD thesis. Given this, I would basically do what you've said: introduce the basics of the case study you've designed, what it's designed to do, and so on. You just won't be able to present the *actual* results of the experiments. If this is clearly communicated to your committee by both you and your advisor, then this shouldn't be a major problem.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer] |
2014/10/20 | 698 | 2,748 | <issue_start>username_0: When I was a freshman in the university, I was a member of my university Olympiad team to compete on the Student Physics Olympiad. And I failed to get a single medal. Although the results weren't good, the fact that I had a chance to go to the competition is one of my competitive points. How can I write that down on my CV?<issue_comment>username_1: Firstly, you did not 'fail' - you were part of a team and competed - so congratulations on that.
Secondly, it can't hurt to include an entry in you CV under a heading like 'Other Achievements', something along the lines of:
>
> (Year), Competed as part of (Team) for the Student Physics Olympiad.
>
>
>
If you have space, briefly describe positive aspects of your participation.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_1: >
> the fact that I had a chance to go to the competition is one of my competitive points. How can I write that down on my CV?
>
>
>
You almost wrote down exactly what you need.
* was selected to go to SPO, [*...which is an accomplishment why?*] an extremely selective program admitting only [top X% of, Y hundred, etc.] physics students nationwide
And it's always fine to say "placed in the top 1/2 of students" if true. Just from a resume writing standpoint anything worse than top 1/2 wouldn't add value to include.
As an aside, you are completely right that this is huge lauds. In high school I placed #8 in a similar state-wide competition. What if the top 10 were invited for an even *more* competitive competition and I came darn near in last? Don't fall for the Russian doll effect which more or less just tells you you're not #1 in the world (...but even the best undergraduate programs admit more than one physics student!) Obviously the admission would be an accomplishment.
Quantification *is* important. Numbers are best for a corporate resume, but perhaps just establishing the prestige of SPO is sufficient. Check their website for info on how prestigious it is to participate. Perhaps they have recognition from the U.S. President or something - whatever it is they'll be sure to brag about it somewhere. If the reviewer does not know of SPO, they will have no way to tell this isn't just an email list with 30 students submitting problems and answers with a leader board.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: When you go to an interview, the interviewees often read your CV beforehand looking for subjects they can talk to you about. They are often very interested in anything that will let them explore how good your are at team work etc.
So yes you should list it, but be ready to give positive answers to questions about it, what you learned, and how you help your other team members etc.
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/10/20 | 162 | 655 | <issue_start>username_0: If someone scores quite high on the GRE, how and where would they list it? Or would they even list it at all?<issue_comment>username_1: A C.V. should list everything that is significant in your accomplishments at your stage of career. Before you get into grad school, a good GRE score may be significant. After you're in, not so much.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: Copying my comment:
I don't think you should. I can't recall ever seeing test scores listed on a CV. Nobody really cares about GRE scores except graduate admissions committees, and they get the scores straight from ETS anyway.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer] |
2014/10/20 | 1,215 | 5,110 | <issue_start>username_0: I have a feeling this question has been posted before, but I wanted to ask as my situation is slightly different. I've recently decided to leave my PhD program in the social sciences in order to look for work. I've basically come to the conclusion after completing 3 full years, courses, and fieldwork that I don't want to be an academic but would rather put my skills to use with NGOs, non-profits, or the public sector. In many ways, the last hurdle of the PhD (i.e. writing the dissertation) seemed more like a barrier to what I wanted to do, rather than something that would bring me closer to it. I left because I wanted to go in a new direction, not because I wasn't sure that I was capable of finishing.
Anyways, my main concern right now is how to present this discrepancy on my resume. As I've been a TA and doing research projects since getting my MA, I've decided to list my years as a TA, and the rest under the position of "Researcher." I figure that the situation is a little too complex to really explain in a resume or cover letter, and that most employers will be able to read between the lines that I was probably in a PhD program. I've basically been marketing myself on my resumes/cover letters as a "researcher" with lots of research projects under my belt, without specifically stating under the "education" section that I have a partially finished PhD. My motivation behind the "researcher" title is that during my graduate studies I designed, proposed and carried out individual research on a number of projects.
I guess I should qualify this by mentioning that my PhD studies were in the social sciences, and there seems to be a bit more leeway in terms of describing what we do. All of my dissertation research was funded by a fellowship, and all of my various other research projects (where I wasn't principal investigator) were the result of competitions funded by grants. I have always designed my own research projects, which is why I didn't think it was a bad idea to go with "researcher", and my references could verify that.
It looks like this title would be a little confusing given the circumstances, so I think I'm going to use "Graduate Student Researcher", "PhD Researcher" or something similar in the future. I guess this seems like it gives a more accurate representation of what kinds of things I was doing.
I figure that the 4 years of MA/PhD work on research projects gives me (and any other former graduate student) skills that are valid to most employers. I just want to be able to address this discrepancy honestly and enthusiastically in an interview, rather than clumsily addressing it in a cover letter/resume. What do you guys think? Is this the right strategy to take?<issue_comment>username_1: I think it is a really bad idea to list your time as a grad student as "Researcher".
As a general rule, it's usually considered unwise to make up stuff on a resume, and this includes job titles. I think the only title that really fits your status is "PhD Student" or "PhD Candidate" (or, if you want to focus on the job, "Teaching Assistant" or "Graduate Research Assistant" or the like - whatever was on your pay stub).
The title of "Researcher" would normally be attached to a full-time (non-student!) staff position, generally someone who works on a research project led by a faculty member. Although the duties may be somewhat similar, the hiring process and level of responsibility could be rather different, so it is really a misrepresentation for you to claim this title.
Suppose a prospective employer calls your university, checking references, and asks "Was Unsure a Researcher at your institution during the following dates?" The university is going to answer "No, he/she was a grad student" (or even worse, maybe just "No"). Then the employer tosses your application in the trash because your resume is inaccurate (or as they might say, "falsified"). And if they don't check and you get the job anyway, but they find out later, they could easily consider your application was fraudulent - that gets you fired for sure, and is possibly career ending.
If you think employers are going to figure out anyway that you were in a PhD program, why not just go ahead and put "PhD Candidate" on the resume?
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: If I understand your question correctly, you've decided to look for a position where a PhD is not a requirement. In that case, there really is no reason to try to hide or "spin" the fact that you were a PhD student. The world is full of people who left a PhD program for one reason or another. The fact that you were in a PhD programme, even if you decided not to complete it, will probably be a "plus" on your resume, or at least not a negative.
I suggest you *briefly* explain your situation in a cover letter/email. Rather than focussing on why you left the PhD, phrase it in terms of what you decided to do *instead*. For example, "I've decided to leave my PhD because I want to put my skills to use as soon as possible with NGOs, non-profits, or the public sector".
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/10/20 | 550 | 2,329 | <issue_start>username_0: I am enrolled in an on-line graduate course. The course is not available in the classroom format.
For the past few weeks, the instructor has ignored every question I sent him. I've asked for:
* help in understanding specific course content.
* clarification on upcoming assignment instructions.
* clarification on the problems in my papers.
I used the recommended contact method described in the syllabus and all other tools on the course Web site, but he sent no replies to these.<issue_comment>username_1: The first two kinds of questions should be asked in the course's public discussion area so that the answers will benefit all students. Since you've used "all the other tools" in the course, perhaps you've done that.
I suggest a concerned phone call to the department chair. If the professor is not present in the course at all, ask, "Is Dr. X OK? He hasn't been in the course in several weeks." If he's around, but ignoring you, ask, "Do you know whether I've somehow offended Dr. X? He hasn't answered any of my questions in several weeks."
The point is to give the chair a chance to make corrections without having said anything like "ignoring me." If it has already been several weeks, I'd suggest doing this very soon. Be as specific as possible about dates when the instructor stopped responding, how other work such as quizzes is handled, etc.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: As far as I understand, your question is pointing into the completely wrong direction.
Please reword your question to contain that:
* you didn't "send him" the questions, but posted them to an online board which is the official platform for that course.
* he didn't answer ANY question which was posted to that online board.
This means it has nothing to do with your person, or the question content, at all. It is a more general problem.
First, make sure that the "instructor" knows that there is an online forum where students can ask him questions. Maybe he doesn't. So, if you have other, more foolproof, means of contacting him: Do it. Be friendly. Ask him to have a look into that forum and answer the student's questions.
With "more foolproof", I mean personal contact, telephone calls, instant messengers, publicized email addresses, or just send him a snailmail!
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/10/20 | 501 | 2,160 | <issue_start>username_0: There's a prospective graduate student visiting my adviser and I was asked if the student could come with me to an undergraduate class I'm taking at another college within the university. Is it acceptable for me to just show up to this class with the prospective student or should I email the professor and ask if the visitor can sit in? The class is lecture-based and doesn't require student discussion, relatively large (~40 students at both the undergrad and graduate level), but the professor will likely notice that the visitor isn't in the class.
Edit: I'm in the US and the prospective student and I are both from here, but the professor is from the Netherlands.
Update: I ended up emailing the professor three days in advance to make sure it was fine.<issue_comment>username_1: E-mail a few days in advance.
Just showing up puts everyone on the spot, and could end poorly. It could also turn your visitor off.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I suspect the right answer to this question depends very much on the country you are studying in.
To give one example, in Finland it is determined by law that all university lectures are public and free for anyone to attend. Nobody would notice an extra attendee, unless there were normally only a couple of students in the class. Emailing the professor would just seem odd.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: I have taught a lot of small classes where I know most all of the students.
I also host office hours for my local Python group in a conference room, where people are expected to come and go at will, and new faces show up all the time.
In the former case, a new student showing up out of nowhere would have definitely raised my eyebrows, and an email in advance would have been sufficient warning to avoid any awkwardness. But in either situation, I would greet the new face warmly and welcome them.
Some schools may have more restrictions on access than others, and what you mostly want to ensure is that your guest has permission to be on campus, usually registering their presence at a visitor center before going elsewhere.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/10/21 | 345 | 1,531 | <issue_start>username_0: I am about to finish a PhD in computer science and am on the job market. I'm mostly interested in small liberal arts schools, and have been working on application materials directed towards SLACs for the last month or so.
Almost every search committee wants a teaching statement, a research statement, and a cover letter and I've found plenty of resources for writing and honing these documents.
However, one position wants a teaching statement, a cover letter, and a description of professional interest. What is a description of professional interest? I cannot find any information as to what this document should contain, how long it should be, etc. And I haven't seen any other positions that ask for it. Is it just my research statement? Or is it an expanded version of the cover letter?<issue_comment>username_1: I ran into the same, I was assuming it was a research statement, but as this school is mainly focused on teaching I am not 100% confident. I feel that it is the research statement but more focused on how it can support teaching as a whole......maybe.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: It's legitimate to contact the school and ask how they define that term, you know. There's nothing wrong with admitting that you haven't run into this particular phrase before, or that you're concerned that their definition might not be exactly the one you're familiar with.
"Better to ask and have them suspect you're a fool, than to assume and remove all doubt."
Upvotes: 2 [selected_answer] |
2014/10/21 | 871 | 3,554 | <issue_start>username_0: I am looking for some sort of website that shows/illustrates current research strides across several academic fields. It would be pretty cool if this existed as a interactive interface like google maps (e.g. one could click and drag into different research areas and zoom in and see which problems are getting solved). The interactive part seems unrealistic, but I would at least like to be able to see a list of topics (perhaps a word-cloud of recent research papers per academic field would be okay) per academic field.
Can anyone show me something similar to what I am looking for?<issue_comment>username_1: In principle, [Microsoft academic search](http://academic.research.microsoft.com) seems to fit your question. They have a list of research fields on the start page. You can then browse these fields by for example authors, keywords, or organizations, and find articles related to specific keywords. You can even interactively browse a coauthorship graph or citation graph.
Unfortunately, the database seems a bit outdated in parts. In my field, it seem's they didn't index any publications after 2012.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: I would not normally say Reddit is a good tool, and may get downvoted for suggesting such a maddening thing, but [/r/science](http://www.reddit.com/r/science/) aka The Reddit Journal of Science provides a surprisingly high-level view of science research that is considered interesting, while also fitting your requirement that it splits information by field (the entire right side is dedicated to individual fields).
For example, these are some of the [top articles from the past month](http://www.reddit.com/r/science/top/?sort=top&t=month).
* Environment: NASA now says vast methane cloud over US southwest is for real
* Social Sciences: The secret to raising well behaved teens? Maximise their sleep: While paediatricians warn sleep deprivation can stack the deck against teenagers, a new study reveals youth’s irritability and laziness aren’t down to attitude problems but lack of sleep
* Health: Gut microbe found in people with eating disorders (bulimia, anorexia). Experiments show it produces a human hormone mimic that affects feeling of satisfaction, energy use, and mood. The severity of eating disorder symptoms is positively correlated with immune reaction to the mimic.
* Neuroscience: Scientists have found “hidden” brain activity that can indicate if a vegetative patient is aware
* Physics: Researchers have developed a new method for harvesting the energy carried by particles known as ‘dark’ spin-triplet excitons with close to 100% efficiency, clearing the way for hybrid solar cells which could far surpass current efficiency limits.
Obviously, you'll still have to do work of digging through potential garbage or low-quality sources and fact-checking. If it holds water, then you can dive into the related literature.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: While not necessarily interdisciplinary, [emerging research fronts](http://archive.sciencewatch.com/dr/erf/) from <NAME> (the one of the Web of Knowledge) could be helpful. E.g. [here](http://sciencewatch.com/sites/sw/files/sw-article/media/research-fronts-2013.pdf) is a PDF with list of 2013 research fronts. The idea is basically taht they keep track of the paper that are highly cited and keep gaining new citations faster than usual. I guess one should be able to filter (unfortunately probably by hand only) the ERFs that are multi- (or inter-) disciplinary in nature.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/10/21 | 800 | 3,367 | <issue_start>username_0: I would like to share under a Creative Commons license some course material (slides) I created. However, I used (abused?) of duly cited non-cc sources such as books etc. to prepare the course material.
Does using copyrighted material to prepare a course prevent to distribute the slides and source under a CC license? What would be the best way to deal with such a situation, which I believe is quite common in academia?<issue_comment>username_1: The copyrighted material must be omitted or replaced in your course material before you can [release](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27557/how-to-publish-under-a-creative-commons-license) it under a [Creative Commons](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/) license, except in cases where you have express permission to distribute the copyrighted work. In many cases, it is not especially difficult to get permission for this kind of use, just send a letter to the copyright holder. Most publisher's are willing to grant permission for limited use and distribution.
The materials distributed for [MIT OpenCourseWare](http://ocw.mit.edu/terms/) are distributed with a CC license and are full of examples of both use cases (use with permission, and omission of copyrighted material).
I am not certain, but it may be that your use (release under CC) of copyrighted material with permission could change the licensing status of the included material depending on how it's incorporated in your work.
It's also worth noting that CC licenses cannot be revoked. Thus, if you release your course material under a particular CC license, others will always have the right to use your slides under that license.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: >
> I copied 1 or 2 figures verbatim (with proper citation) from statistics books.
>
>
>
You cannot release these figures under a CC license. Even if we assume that you have the right to use them in this case, for example under fair use, you don't have the right to authorize others to use them in potentially very different ways.
However, you can easily get around this by excluding the figures from the CC license that applies to the rest of the slides. See, for example, [this blog post](http://blogs.library.duke.edu/scholcomm/2014/09/25/fair-use-open-access-incompatible/) for further discussion of this issue.
>
> In some parts, I followed (and cited) the content/organisation of the class textbook quite heavily (not copied though).
>
>
>
This is a trickier issue. The fundamental question is whether your slides could be considered a [derivative work](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work) of the class textbook. If so, then they are themselves a copyright violation if done without permission. If not, then I think you're OK.
I'm not a lawyer and do not know how to draw a clear line for what constitutes a derivative work. My understanding is that summarizing or explaining another work is not necessarily a derivative work, but for comparison an "abridgment" or "condensation" is a derivative work (under U.S. law, at least). Where your slides fall on this continuum presumably depends on exactly what you did. As a non-expert, I'd guess that you're fine unless you followed the book rather closely, but you should consult with an expert about the details of your situation if it really matters.
Upvotes: 4 |
2014/10/21 | 593 | 2,336 | <issue_start>username_0: I think much research would not be very successful if the subjects knew the purpose of the research. When researchers gather human subjects for a trial, can they provide the subjects with misleading information about the purpose of the trial?<issue_comment>username_1: [Standard 8: Research and Publication](http://www.apa.org/ethics/code/index.aspx?item=11) of the "Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct" of the American Psychological Association pertains. Specifically:
>
> **8.07 Deception in Research**
>
>
> (a) Psychologists do not conduct a study involving deception unless they have determined that the use of
> deceptive techniques is justified by the study's significant
> prospective scientific, educational or applied value and that
> effective nondeceptive alternative procedures are not feasible.
>
>
> (b) Psychologists do not deceive prospective participants about
> research that is reasonably expected to cause physical pain or severe
> emotional distress.
>
>
> (c) Psychologists explain any deception that is an integral feature of
> the design and conduct of an experiment to participants as early as is
> feasible, preferably at the conclusion of their participation, but no
> later than at the conclusion of the data collection, and permit
> participants to withdraw their data. (See also [Standard 8.08,
> Debriefing](http://www.apa.org/ethics/code/index.aspx?item=11#808).)
>
>
>
Whether or not a planned study satisfies these requirements is for the Institutional Review Board to decide, which must review every proposed study before it starts.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: I recently participated as a volunteer subject in a psychological experiment, where it turned out that the experimenter had deceived me about the main purpose. At the end of the experiment, she told me about the deception, and offered to show me the paperwork from the ethical review board that had approved it. This was in the UK, and I presume that it was all in accordance with the standard UK rules. For me the experience was quite interesting, but it could have been upsetting for people with a particular (and uncommon) set of life experiences. However, it seemed clear that that kind of issue had been carefully considered by the review board.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/10/21 | 720 | 2,972 | <issue_start>username_0: Is it OK to include a personal note telling intention of hard-work on the topic,
>
> e.g. I am looking forward to work on this problem
>
>
>
in the Conclusion slide of a presentation related to possible research topic in the future?
I believe the Conclusion slide is used to collect the scientific conclusions about the work in the end of the presentation as a takeaway message, how would such a statement stand in the end?<issue_comment>username_1: I think that writing on the presentation that you'll be looking forward to doing something is somewhat out of place.
In addition, it appears that you may be confusing two separate definitions of `conclusion`.
The first is the scientific conclusion, which you have defined. This is, as you've described, the takeaway message from scientific research, i.e.
>
> This research shows us that potatoes are actually tasty.
>
>
>
The second is a presentation's conclusion. This can be the scientific conclusion in a presentation about an actual study. However, you're referring to a proposal, which has no conclusion, or perhaps to a slide mentioning future possible research topics.
In this case, your conclusion should be a summary of what you've covered during your presentation, preferably onto one slide, i.e.
>
> Conclusion
>
> - This research will establish whether or not potatoes are tasty
>
> - Important to humanity as it helps determine whether or not further investment into discovery of potato recipes are practical
>
> - Funding this project will be cheap as potatoes are grown a lot already
>
>
>
>
Then, when you present your situation, you can mention `I look forward to performing this research with your support.` and it flows cleanly.
If I've interpreted anything incorrectly regarding your situation, OP, let me know.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: While it's generally OK to add a personal thought, it's important to be careful with what sort message you add at the end of a talk. What do you want the audience to get from this extra message, and will it conflict with the rest of the talk?
Some examples I've seen that worked:
* A mention of how the science links to some sort of outreach or broader impact goals that personally motivate you.
* A cute / funny vaguely related image that lets you end on a light note, e.g., the speaker's child interacting with a robot at the end of a robotics talk.
Some examples I've seen that didn't work:
* A declaration that all of this work was in service of the higher glory of Christ (caused a rather awkward silence in the highly diverse and international audience)
* Not actually stopping, but just rambling about unrelated things until the session chair actually physically shut off the projector.
Something bland like, "I'm looking forward to working on this project" is so normal and unexceptional that the audience may not even notice that you said it.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/10/21 | 2,076 | 8,579 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm a CS master student in a German university currently writing my thesis. Three months ago I saw an advert from a PhD student in the group where I'm doing my thesis asking for a student assistant (HiWi) to work on a programming project. I went and said I'm interested in the job but specified I can only work 5 hours a week since I must work on my thesis. It was agreed saying "I don't care how much time you will take to finish it".
Since I'm writing my thesis and was about to finish when asked: "how long are you staying here" and I said that I don't know yet and asked why; the reply was "because now I'm concerned that you might leave me if you finish soon" and I mentioned that I will stay to do my PhD.
So I started working. After the first week I noticed that the Phd student is actually quite weird. Once I mentioned that I'm going to use framework "X" for a particular part of the project, and was told: "No I want you to use framework Y, because **what if you die** then I have to continue doing the project". I didn't like how it was said, but I considered it a joke. Then the weird stuff continued. I won't mention them because it will take too long.
Because of administrative issues they couldn't start my contract for two months, so I worked two months for free. It was said that for the coming months they will put more hours in my contract and I can skip some weeks without working so I can make up for the two months.
However the most annoying thing happened 4 weeks ago. I was told that we need the project done earlier than thought (never mentioned any deadline previously). Then I thought OK I will work twice the time (10 hours a week) for two weeks and then once I finish the main functionalities in the project I will ask to skip two weeks so I can make up and work on my thesis.
Surprisingly after those two hard weeks I was told that the project is wanted done by the end of next week! I said that I was already working overtime and was replied "I don't care I just want it to be done by the end of next week because I have a workshop and I need to present it"!
That was the time I made the decision to quit since it was known very well that I can't do this because I have to work on my thesis, also because of the Phd student's weird behavior. However after receiving the shock I decided that it's not professional to quit at this stage since there is a deadline for the workshop. Also I finished 60% of the project and we made the deal to finish only until 70% for the deadline.
However I want to quit after the deadline but I have the following concerns:
1. The atmosphere in our work group is very familial. I have lunch with all PhDs and postdocs and jokes and everything. I'm now concerned that quitting would make the atmosphere negative between us.
2. Whenever I think about quitting I remember when I was asked about how long I will stay because of the worry that I might leave, to somehow not to screw up things. It's the main concern since the project will be 70% done and hiring a new student would be painful since they would have to read what I did and so on and will delay the project.
3. The professor is also concerned about this project and now I'm afraid that quitting this project at this stage would make my image look bad as a quitter.
So how do you recommend me to quit this job?
Edit:
One way I thought of quitting is to go after the deadline and say that I won't work for 2 weeks because I need to work on my thesis. Now if told that I can't do that, then I will tell say "then I'm probably not a good fit for the requirement of this project and I don't want to be an obstacle for its progress. I think it's a good idea to find someone who is a better fit". Then I will pray that the response is "Yes you are right". The issue is that we have a lack of student assistants so he might still want me to work under my conditions, but I don't want to continue working for them!<issue_comment>username_1: It sounds to me like you don't exactly need to *quit*. Remind him of the conditions under which you took the job, and ask him to stick to the agreement. If he can't do so because his requirements have changed, then that's his choice. You might say something like this:
>
> As you recall, when I accepted this job, it was under the condition
> that I would only work 5 hours per week so it wouldn't interfere with
> working on my thesis. Because of your workshop, I have been working
> far more time than we agreed. I'm concerned that you need more support
> than the 5 hours a week I am able to provide. What do you think?
>
>
>
Note that I said "5 hours per week" twice for emphasis. Give him a chance to respond. At this point, if he promises to stick to 5 hours per week in future, and allows you to take the next few weeks off to catch up on your thesis, then perhaps you might give him one more chance.
However, if he indicates that he needs you to work more hours, or be available whenever he has deadlines, then you might say something like this:
>
> Unfortunately, I can't work more than 5 hours per week, and it sounds
> like that just won't be enough. Perhaps the best way to solve this is
> turn the project over to someone else. I'll do what I can to ensure a
> smooth transition.
>
>
>
Instead of "quitting", you're working with him to solve *his* requirements. If it turns out that the only way to meet those requirements is for you to hand off the work to someone else, then that's his choice.
As for the time you worked for free at the start of the contract, I think it is going to be difficult to get paid for that without burning bridges. Of course, you are entitled to be paid, and you could pursue that legally, but you may not want to. In future, remember never to work without a contract.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: German university students leave *HiWi* positions all the time; essentially all universities have forms that allow you to break a running contract (*Auflösung*) for essentially any reason that you so choose, given the requisite notice; typically this is one month before the new end date of the contract.
Your situation is not that unusual, in that you're doing a HiWi in the same group that you're doing a master's thesis (and intend to do your PhD in). Since it's clear you really don't want to do the HiWi work right now, you can mention, as you suggested, that you're worried about finishing your master's thesis on time and doing a good job with it. However, leaving this position in this manner means you won't be able to take another *HiWi* position within the group (although you might be able to accept something else in another chair).
However, you shouldn't worry about quitting the position because of time constraints. This happens fairly frequently for lots of reasons. A good graduate student and research group will understand this and not be bothered by it. (If they *do* have a problem with it, then you should reconsider the wisdom of doing your PhD there!)
[On a side note, though, it seems your PhD student supervisor had unreasonable expectations of the position and what you were supposed to do. Most of the issues are on his side—particularly since he agreed that you could work just five hours per week in the first place!]
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: Agreed with @Davidmh re: going to professor. Things to bring up: 1. Change in deadline conditions (you took the job under a condition of open deadline, which then changed to specific dates); 2. Change in hours (you took the job with a cap of 5hrs/wk, which then increased and began to interfere with your thesis work which should be your #1 priority as a student; 3. Change in project scope (e.g. frmwrk Y) If the grad student will feel that you went behind his back, let him know you felt the professor was best positioned to answer a funding-related question since he is the one ultimately paying.
Also, be sure to mention to the professor the issue of working without pay (same as delayed pay) for 2 months. Make sure he is aware that YOU are aware of this and that you expect reimbursement in accordance with the contract. Be sure to remain calm, courteous, and overall professional in this discussion, and ground your arguments in principles (e.g. getting paid for work) and not people (e.g. the student not paying you on time). This will position you as someone who is in control of the negotiation and speaks from a more objective position of fairness rather than individual-specific nuances.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/10/21 | 617 | 2,660 | <issue_start>username_0: I have contacted a professor, looking for a PhD position. He replied that my field is so near to his research field, and to consider my application; he needs to know more about my masters thesis.
>
> I need to see your masters work.
>
>
>
My thesis and most of my publications are in a non-English language. I have one English paper published in a nation-wide conference's proceedings, and this only presents no more than a quarter of my master's thesis.
How should I reply to this professor to better describe my master's work?
PS: I have a detailed CV in which I have brought all my transcripts of my BSc and MSc, translated titles of my publications and projects and all my job experience.
---
**UPDATE**: I sent a copy of my English paper, my CV, my thesis abstract and some parts of my thesis besides to a research statement in which I wrote some research topics I am interested to work on.<issue_comment>username_1: I think that you should send the professor your thesis, pointing out the obvious that it is not in English. Perhaps they actually know the language or have a trusted student or postdoc who does?
You should also offer to send an English summary and/or any papers that you have written related to the subject in English.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: The reason he might be asking to see your thesis is to get familiar with what you did, and to evaluate the quality of your work. If all the application materials (your CV etc) have English titles, he might not realize that the thesis is in any other language.
So, I would respond to him addressing what he needs, and not what he asked for literally. I would write an extended abstract (summary) of your thesis in English. I would send the following, the extended abstract, conference paper, and thesis. He can gain insight into all of your work from the thesis abstract you just wrote. Your conference paper evaluates your writing. And finally your thesis is sent just because maybe he understands the language. Even if he doesn't speak the language, the references, figures, tables, formulas etc. in the thesis should give him additional information about the content and quality of your work, especially in the context of your abstract.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: Don't second guess the request. You do not know his motivation.
Do you respond promptly? Does he speak that language? Does the document actually exist?
You obviously have command of the English language. Provide him a copy of the thesis in the original language, give him a synopsis in English. He/she will follow up as appropriate..
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/10/21 | 1,938 | 7,691 | <issue_start>username_0: After reading a comment (now deleted) saying
>
> My university's policies does not allow me to share my thesis PDF file completely.
>
>
>
I was wondering why some universities do not allow dissertations to be publicly available over the web? (by any means - free or through subscription)
This seems a fundamental right to the students (to share their dissertations) and to the community in general.
Thus, I thought I may get some inputs/examples, from different academic cultures, for possible reasons to not to have dissertations over the web (i.e. top secret?).
**Update**: The user whose comment prompted this discussion mentioned in a comment on this thread:
>
> I consulted one of the professors at my university and he told me there is no prohibition on sharing my thesis's PDF file. It was my own mis-understanding of the copyright statement on the copyright page.
>
>
><issue_comment>username_1: As the one whose comment triggered this question, I figure I ought to answer: one of the foundational principles of science is that it should be freely and publicly available.
At the same time, there are a lot of human interests that push in the opposite direction. Some examples:
* A nation may want to restrict high-technology in order to promote its own interests. For historical examples, consider the British empire's secrecy around timekeeping for navigation, or Bavarian secrecy on methods for making high quality optical glass.
* Information may be considered dangerous to release to the general public, such as regarding atomic weapons or the DNA sequences of deadly pathogens.
* Commercial companies invest in technology in order to gain advantage over their competitors.
* A scientist may want to avoid publishing patentable research until after the patent is filed.
A lot of science that is done is thus never openly published, or openly published only long after it has been completed. The question then is, how should universities relate to this, particularly regarding dissertations?
To the best of my knowledge, in all of the high-ranked U.S. universities, a Ph.D. dissertation is required to be entirely public, as a matter of scientific principle and integrity. This wasn't always the case, particularly during the convergence of scientific research and military funding around World War II. As the country became more uncomfortable with that association, however, the elite universities began to remove classified research from their campuses and require that theses be publishable. In many cases, classified research still goes on in association, but through a separate entity, such as Lincoln Lab for MIT, SRI for Stanford, and LBNL for Berkeley. Likewise, sensitivities have developed around commercial research.
The general principle that is followed then, at least for elite U.S. universities, is that the research leading to a dissertation may involve unpublished or restricted information. The dissertation, however, must be public and substantial enough to stand on its own without depending on other non-public research that may have been done in association.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: I'ts done to protect sensitive materials. As a rule, dissertations were made openly available at the Harvard Archives. This changed a few years ago, when the deans, responding to doctoral students’ fears, allowed embargoes broadly. As a result, as a search in ProQuest reveals, an unprecedented number of dissertations (almost one in three) produced at Harvard in 2012 and 2013 are embargoed. These dissertations are now secret and the authors can decide how long to keep them so. <http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/9/10/Harvard-dissertation-secret/>
Just wanted to add, that many universities partner with corporate firms where the research is funded, so probably either the university hopes to apply for the patent or the firm.
Colleges and universities own the ideas and technologies invented by the people who work for them, including professors and graduate students who are paid to do research
* [Who Owns Your Great Idea?](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/education/edlife/whoseidea-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)
* [University patents limit access to medicine. These students want to change that.](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/11/22/university-patents-limit-access-to-medicine-these-students-want-to-change-that/)
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Based on most comments on the question, I know this answer may seems odd but at least it may elaborate more details on the [comment](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30327/how-to-answer-a-professor-asking-what-your-masters-work-is-about-when-my-thes/30328#comment66482_30328). As much this may be surprising, I was surprised when I saw online dissertations for the first time.
Where I study, only the hard copy texts are available in the libraries and students can **read** them, but they can not make a copy of them. Students can write down some notes in a paper and only take that note out of the library. Also the time you can access the dissertations is limited.
As I have seen a lot, the copy right page where I live is something like this: *All rights reserved to the respective initiatives and innovations resulting from research studies subject of this thesis is owned by X University*. So the University *thinks* they are the ones who own the results not the student who generated them.
With this in mind some reasons may be:
* You can easily copy the dissertation from another university and sell it in black market or foist it as your own work. The reason is dissertations is not available online is your adviser can't or won't bother to check every library in different universities or he/she has not enough information on your field. So, it would make it easy for the student to copy the results of others.
* Some dissertations may have some flaws or weak results. If they publish it online, it would compromise the fake reputation of the university. So it is in best interests to not publish it online.
* Sometimes, the student or adviser wants to publish the results in a journal but they have not decided when to do so. So they prefer to keep the results for themselves for the time being.
* Only published papers in journals and conferences would help the scientific degree of a teacher, so why bother to publish it online when it is non-English and it won't be cited by elite universities in US or Europe.
Keep this in mind that these are irrational response of some universities in order to solve their problems.
**ADDED**:
Some universities have different opinion about ownership. For example:
>
> ... I pledge not to publish the results of this thesis without permission of my adviser and I am not allowed to disclose any information regarding of my thesis with anyone without permission of my adviser.
>
>
>
* About the first point: I am saying it make it harder for students to plagiarize. It's like erasing the problem. If a student wants to plagiarize he/she will do it one way or another and of course as I can see, it hasn't helped both parties but it is an irrational response to this problem where I live.
* About the third and fourth points: Again I reference to manuscript of another university not a person.
>
> All the papers based on this thesis should have the name of X university.
>
>
>
So it is not just a decision of a person for his/her profits.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: Diploma mills (fraudulent "universities") will refuse to disclose dissertations because the dissertations do not actually exist or are obviously inadequate.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/10/21 | 374 | 1,550 | <issue_start>username_0: I have finished my master's thesis and graduated from the university in which I used to study for my masters degree. Now I have two or three months free time and I am searching for a PhD position; in this period of time I want to work on research topic, I see two professors at that university, whose research fields are really interesting to me. Their research field is really near to that of my master's thesis advisor.
Is it considered impoliteness to my master's thesis advisor if I ask another professor in his department (with similar research field to him) to help me work on a research topic?<issue_comment>username_1: No. You finished your master's. Therefore it is okay to work with a new group. In most situations it is okay to ask people to help you.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Not at all. You are not committed to doing your PhD with the same advisor. Even if you did want to work with the same advisor, he/she should encourage that you talk to others to hear out their ideas. I highly doubt your advisor would be offended to hear that you were interested in speaking to other professors about their research interests. After all, a PhD is a long road, and you need to be really happy with your advisor, and your work, to survive it.
In fact, I think it looks positive, even to your advisor, knowing that you have multiple options. I once had a job interview where, upon disclosing that I was also interviewing at other places, that "they would be worried if I wasn't".
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer] |
2014/10/21 | 327 | 1,341 | <issue_start>username_0: I am surprised by the fact that a journal published an article that I have had in arXiv for a few months. The date of publication is after the date that I posted on arXiv. The submission date in the journal is not mentioned. What procedures I should follow?
Some information to clarify the situation:
* The article published in the journal is a total plagiarism. They changed only the name of the title.
* The article is published in a journal in the name of other authors.
* My article (that is in arXiv) is already accepted in another journal (but not yet online) and the date of acceptance is before the date of publication of that of the other authors.<issue_comment>username_1: I believe the first thing you need to do is to **contact and email the editor in chief** of that journal and give him/her a link to your arxiv paper.
He/She a long with the editorial board have to *retract* the article (hopefully, with a big red X stating that the authors have plagiarised citing your arxiv work).
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: Copyright Status
================
Perhaps you gave away your copyright.
Review your [copyright status on arXiv](http://arxiv.org/help/license). Copyright status can vary as described [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArXiv#Copyright) including public domain.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/10/22 | 510 | 2,094 | <issue_start>username_0: My undergraduate is in Biology, I'm a US native.
I'm thinking about going back to school to study a more quantitative discipline like statistics or computer science.
Does anyone know of any scholarship websites, fellowships, or other ways to pay for school expenses?
Right now I'm looking at taking out more loans. If I work for the government, I'll qualify for their "Public Servant Loan Forgiveness" program which will help.
If anyone has been in my position please let me know how you managed to retrain while not owing your soul to <NAME>. Already having a graduate degree really hurts when it comes to finding financial aid.
Thanks in advance!<issue_comment>username_1: In the U.S., graduate education in a STEM field at a good university is typically funded by the university, not the student. In addition to your classes, you are expected to "work for your keep" as a research assistant or teaching assistant. In exchange, your tuition is covered and you are paid a stipend to cover (cheap) living expenses. Pretty much every Ph.D. program in a STEM field works this way. If you are only looking for a 2nd Masters' degree, it will depend on the institution.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: The only thing I can add to username_1's answer is that, it is generally only true for STEM *research* masters. Most coursework degrees, even in STEM, are not funded. It was unclear from your question whether you were thinking about doing a second masters with a research component, or just looking to get a coursework masters.
That said, if you are looking for a research masters, I agree with username_1. However, I don't know of any school or organization that will fund a coursework masters.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Even in cases where you're not in a research college, you can sometimes find TA positions, which give you a small stipend and will comp some of your classes. Of course, you would have to show the department that you are capable of handling such classes, both in terms of workload and knowledge of the topic.
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/10/22 | 841 | 3,153 | <issue_start>username_0: I am in a university in the US. I need 10 subjects for a 2-hour experiment. The compensation is 100 USD. If a subject is an international grad student on an F1 visa in my university, will it go against the terms of his F1 visa, which restricts his ability to work in the US?<issue_comment>username_1: You need to ask the international students' office at your university, because
1. It's a delicate legal issue of the type they are trained to navigate, and
2. The answer may depend on the particulars of how the university handles its students and how your experiment handles compensation, and
3. The answers to these questions change frequently, as visa and immigration regulations mutate.
Even if somebody on this site could give a correct answer and take legal responsibility for it, it would not be safe for somebody else to rely on it in the future.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: The safest and correct answer is to ask your international student's office, immigration attorney, or customs and immigration themselves.
Seems like a lot of work for $20 (our standard 'enticement' at my university). Your enticement is $100 which is much nicer....
The pragmatic answer is to inquire whether you will need to fill out a W9 before being paid. If you do, then they are reporting the enticement to the government as taxable income. In that case, GOTO LINE 1.
If not, then the enticement is so low as to not being reportable and/or not being reported. In that case, follow your conscience and/or risk adversity.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: It depends on whether the student on the F1 visa is already working 20 hours / week, which is likely to happen if he is an RA or a full-time TA (typically grad TA), but unlikely if he is on a fellowship or pays the tuition fees himself. If the student is already working 20 hours / week, then he is not allowed to work, either it is on-campus or off-campus.
Given the amount of experiments or other small jobs I see paid either in cash, Amazon gift cards (sorry RMS), ice creams, and other kinds of compensations, the immigration law forbidding F1 visa holder from working more than 20 hours per week is broken every day.
I am impressed so few people seem to care about this situation, given that violating the 20-hours-per-week rule can be a cause of visa termination and other troubles (e.g. green card obtention).
(I need to check for volunteering work, but to me that's work too. Any idea?)
>
> [Are there exceptions to the limit of 20 hours a week for on-campus
> employment?](http://www.ice.gov/sevis/employment/)
>
>
> The only exception is if the Secretary of DHS suspends this
> requirement, by means of a Federal Register notice, due to emergent
> circumstances. The student must demonstrate to you that the extra work
> is necessary because the emergent circumstance has affected his or her
> source of support.
>
>
> Endorse the student’s Form I-20 with a reference to the Federal
> Register notice that announced the emergency exception before allowing
> the student to work more than 20 hours a week.
>
>
>
Upvotes: 2 [selected_answer] |
2014/10/22 | 2,759 | 12,326 | <issue_start>username_0: What is the inherent idea of having a recommendation letter/ "letter of reference" requirement in academia, especially while applying to grad schools?
I understand that if the person giving the recommendation letter is a bigshot or even fairly well-known, people would be ready to take his word regarding the applicant's caliber.
However, if the person recommending is previously unknown to the university you are applying to (of course, they may use Google to dig up some information, or they may not want to), what weightage does his word carry? If I am on the other side, I won't be inclined to trust the judgement of a person whom I don't know. What I would want to do is to judge the caliber of the applicant for myself, but that's a separate issue altogether. (Judge yourself, or trust some metrics...)
Now, in general, if "*the other side*" is a decent enough university, it will have applications coming from all parts of the world. Then, situation no. 2 (above) is more likely than situation no. 1. So, **what is the intent of having a recommendation letter requirement** in the second case?<issue_comment>username_1: At a minimum, a letter of recommendation is no worse than, say, a Yelp review. The person who rated Joe's Hamburger Shack 5 stars is a total stranger to you, but knowing that that person liked it is still more data than you previously had about how good the place is.
For a grad school application, there are few sources of concrete information. Hard data like grades, GPA, and GRE scores cover only a fraction of the relevant qualities of each applicant. It can certainly help if the admissions committee knows the recommender, but even if they don't, the mere fact that that the applicant is considered qualified by an active researcher at an accredited instituion is a significant gain over the other information available in the application.
Also, as <NAME> mentioned in a comment, a good letter will not just state the belief that the applicant is qualified, but will give reasons. These reasons, again, come from a person who is presumed qualified to evaluate them, and are therefore more valuable.
It is true that if not only the recommender but also their institution is totally unknown to the committee (e.g., a recommendation from Prof. <NAME> at East Podunk Community College), the information may not be helpful, and could even be viewed skeptically. But I don't think this is a common case. Even if no one on the faculty personally knows or has collaborated with any professors at, say, Harvard, you can bet that it means something to have a Harvard professor recommend someone. Although that's an extreme case, the same principle applies to other schools in varying degrees: even knowing that the school exists goes some way towards establishing credibility.
How much weight these are or should be given is debatable, but there is simply no other way to get the information in recommendation letters, namely a qualified professional's judgment of the applicant's quality. It may indeed be that in some cases the committee views the letters as unhelpful because they are too vague, but if many letters are informative, then vague letters are already "bad" in comparison, and provide a means of winnowing the applicant pool. Even in a hypothetical case in which only a few letters were helpful, the school doesn't really stand to lose anything by having them, and stands to gain useful insight that they can't get any other way.
Also, I would be interested to see some numbers on how often the admissions committee really does not know and has never heard of any of the people writing the letters. An important thing to consider is that in many cases one or more of the letter writers will have been consulted by the applicant to get advice on where to apply. Thus, there can be a self-selection process at work: professors know professors at other institutions, thus they advise their students to apply there, and then they write a letter of recommendation. I would guess that this significantly increases the likelihood that some of the letter writers will be known to the admissions committee. In effect, the same people are not only recommending the applicant to the school, but recommending the school to the applicant (by suggesting that they apply there).
A little edit: Based on your comments, it seems you are also worried about situations where, e.g., the letter writer is "biased" towards recommending the applicant. There are two responses to this: one is that everyone knows that. The recommender wouldn't be writing the letter if he were biased *against* the applicant. The recommendation is not supposed to be "impartial" in the sense that it mechnically assesses some attributes of the applicant. It's just supposed to be the honest opinion of a real person who interacted with the applicant in a real academic context.
More generally, there is simply no getting around the fact that virtually everything in academia operates on trust. When you submit an article to a journal, the editor has no way of knowing whether you plagiarized the text, falsified the data, etc. When you apply for a job and list dozens of publications on your CV, the search committee probably does not look up every single one ot make sure it really exists. For better or for worse, academic procedures are built on the notion of receiving "credentials" that indicate you are to be trusted. When someone receives a letter signed "Prof. <NAME>, XYZ University", they assume that Prof. <NAME> really is a professor at XYZ University. It is of course possible to fabricate such credentials, but to handle that problem would require a complete overhaul of academia. The basic reason people trust a letter-writer is because academics trust each other not to tell brazen lies about who they are, where they work, etc. They understand that the recommender may not be totally objective in his or her assessment of the candidate, but they nonetheless assume that the assessment is made in good faith by a qualified judge; that's all that matters.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I wholly agree with @username_1's answer.
From the comments it seems clear that the question is also suggesting that there is a bias for a faculty member to write a good letter in the interest of the student over the interest of the other department. I would like to argue that this is faulty reasoning (even if it happens). I think this amounts to a little bit of game theory.
At the outset, we assume a faculty member has no relationship with the department s/he is writing the letter to. Assuming the faculty member writes a compelling letter, it may get noticed and there is some chance that that letter will lead to the acceptance of the student.
If the student is accepted and performs well, the faculty member's word will be more valued by the department during the next round of selecting PhD students and the faculty member may receive an email saying "Send us more students like Joe- he's done really well in our program" as per @Brian Borchers' comments. If the student is a flake, the faculty member's word is now (what is the word?).
This means that the next time that faculty writes a letter to that department it will be dismissed, even if it is compelling. Moreover, this may reduce the stature of the faculty member's entire department in the eyes of the other department.
So, in the end, I guess my answer is that to some extent faculty letters can establish a relationship between different departments. To the extent that they do, such letters are valuable.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: I agree with username_1, but perhaps it will be useful to express things slightly differently.
To understand the purpose of letters of recommendation, it's important to think about the context. In my experience, the default assessment for a graduate school application is "not enough information" or "insufficiently compelling case." Most of the time, a rejection doesn't mean the committee felt there was enough evidence to prove the applicant was unworthy (although it can mean that for particularly bad applications). Instead, there just wasn't enough to justify admitting this applicant rather than the competition.
For example, grades are not very useful. The ceiling is low, the standards are inconsistent, and in any case getting good grades is a quite different skill from doing good research. Undergraduate research can be a more useful indicator, but it's still pretty limited. Some students have much better access to high-quality research opportunities than others do, so it's hardly a fair comparison. Plus many undergraduate research papers consist of straightforward work on specialized problems, done with considerable guidance and under some time pressure. That's a little closer to professional research than classwork is, but still not so close.
So the basic setting is that admissions committees are desperate for information. Judging research potential is really difficult, and it's at best loosely correlated with most of the hard data in graduate school applications. This is the context for letters of recommendation. If you have interacted closely with the applicant on a substantial undertaking in this field over a period of months or years, then you are in an excellent position to judge their suitability for graduate school. If you can convey this information to the admissions committee in a trustworthy and reliable way, then it can be far more valuable than anything else in the application.
Of course not all letters are useful. A letter saying "Joe got an A in my course" reveals nothing beyond what the committee could have learned from the transcript. More depressingly, some letter writers say substantive things but are not in a position to do so compellingly. If you are completely unknown to the committee, with no reputation or track record of prior students, then your letter will carry less weight (and even less if you don't at least have the excuse of being young).
This isn't as much of a problem as you might guess. Many people in the field have a reputation, even if they have never met anyone on the admissions committee, and they have an incentive not to hurt that reputation by writing foolish or biased letters. If necessary, someone on the committee can get in touch with them to ask further questions. Plus there are all sorts of opportunities for consistency checks (for example, if someone repeatedly says each year's top student is the best in years, that will be noticed).
However, there's still a genuine problem. A small fraction of applicants just aren't in a position to get compelling letters of recommendation, no matter how talented they are. They are going to be rejected through no fault of their own.
That's a sad outcome, but it seems to be unavoidable. If we had a more reliable way to judge research potential, we would eagerly use it. The point of letters isn't that they always help with the decision, but rather that they often help. When they don't help, the application joins the pile of rejections due to lack of information.
For comparison, one of the comments reads:
>
> Now, ideal case, if A=B in ability, two possibilities arise - (1) If recommendation letter matters, then A gets picked over B (which is not fair),
>
>
>
Indeed, it's not fair, but it's impossible to gather enough information to make fair and reliable judgments in every case. Ultimately, the admissions committee has to accept that some wonderful applicants will be rejected because they couldn't prove how wonderful they were. (Not using letters of recommendation would reduce this type of unfairness, but at the cost of greatly reducing the information available to make good decisions in the other cases. It would amount to partially randomizing the decisions, which would not be in the department's best interests.)
To put it rather starkly, fairness is not the admissions committee's primary goal. Instead, the primary goal is to admit as strong an incoming class as possible. Letters of recommendation greatly help on average in achieving that goal, at the cost of disadvantaging certain applicants. This is a price departments are willing to pay.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer] |
2014/10/22 | 678 | 2,625 | <issue_start>username_0: I am preparing slides for a conference.
And I struggled (a bit) for what to put on the title page.
I know the paper title is a must, maybe the conference name, place, date.
How about authors and affiliation?
Should I put all the authors name on the title page?
Or only the presenter?
How about if they are from different institute?
Should I put all the institute names on the first page?<issue_comment>username_1: >
> Should I put all the authors name on the title page?
>
>
>
Yes, of course, unless there are tens of authors (common in particle physics: I dunno how they handle it... maybe with a group photograph). You can then highlight the speaker's name.
>
> Should I put all the institute names on the first page?
>
>
>
Frequently, one puts institutes' logos instead.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I usually include:
* Title of talk
* Name of presenter (me)
* Names of coauthors
* Date
* Name of conference
* Title of conference session (if applicable)
* City of conference
* My institution's name
* Maybe my institution's logo
I don't include the coauthors' affiliations.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: To answer from a slightly different perspective: As somebody *watching* the presentation, I would like to see the following:
* A title (if possible, one that reflects what you're actually going to talk about, rather than what you thought you would be talking about a year ago when you submitted the abstract ;-))
* The authors' names and affiliations. Make it clear who is speaking, in case I don't know you personally.
* An email address for queries (put it at the end as well, but if it's at both ends there's a stronger chance that it'll remain up for long enough to note it down)
Try to resist the urge to turn it into a dense mass of extraneous information and logos. Do not include the following unless you have to:
* The name or city of the conference
* The date
* Funders' logos
If I am at a conference I *know* where I am. Unless it's been a very long and tiring conference I probably know the date as well. These things may be useful metadata for archival purposes, but it isn't needed by the audience - so put them in small grey text somewhere on the slide, invisible (or at least not attention-grabbing) from a distance.
Similarly, if I'm watching your presentation I probably care about the research, and maybe who did it - not who funded it. Don't include funders logos on the title page unless required to do so; instead, put them on an acknowledgements slide at the end, with anybody else that you owe acknowledgements to.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/10/22 | 1,435 | 5,998 | <issue_start>username_0: Researchers might take different paths other than staying in academia after completing their PhD, postdoc or even later. This happens for a number of reasons. The most compelling of all is that there is not enough room for everyone, but it could happen that these people lose interest in research, find a good opportunity in the private sector, or (more often than we'd like) get burnt out.
For a typical researcher, there is a body of work that they have done and is susceptible to be published by people who they were collaborating with after they have left. However -beyond possible personal satisfaction- they do not have the motivation or time to publish this work anymore. This leads to poor communication between the authors that stay and the person that left, usually motivated by the latter not replying (perhaps reading) emails concerning the work or taking too long to do so. These people will usually be fine with having their names on a new publication even without the need to go through the manuscript before submission (this might also be true for reckless researchers in general, but that's another story...) because they might not be concerned about their (former) career in academia anymore.
How should this situation be dealt with? Is it ethical to submit a paper when a coauthor that left academia has not actively taken part in the preparation/proof reading of the manuscript, considering he/she has contributed significantly to the work?<issue_comment>username_1: This is in fact very common especially after the PhD.
>
> How should this situation be dealt with?
>
>
>
First talk to the person. Does he want to be included? Does he want to be an author (possibly even the main author)? Or doesn't he want to have anything to do with it?
>
> Is it ethical to submit a paper when a coauthor that left academia has
> not actively taken part in the preparation/proof reading of the
> manuscript, considering he/she has contributed significantly to the
> work?
>
>
>
In my opinion it is ethical, as long as the coauthor is fine with the published work and the fact that he is a coauthor. In addition, anyone that is listed as a coauthor should have contributed in an extend that entitles him to be an author (which is very different in different fields).
If he says: I don't care, just leave my name on it and don't bother me anymore. Than, in my opinion, it is fine to just publish it on your own.
However, if he says: I want to be a part of it and then just vanishes it is another story.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: First of all, it doesn't matter where, how, or even if a person is employed. Science can be done by anyone, anywhere, "academia" or not. Assuming the person has made significant contribution by the standards of your field, the only things that matter are:
1. Is it possible to contact them?
2. Do they want to be an author?
If they have contributed significantly and want to be an author, it is **dishonest** to not list them as an author. If they've dropped out of research entirely, you may find yourself doing the writing work without their help, but they still should be an author. If you can't contact them, err on the side of inclusion.
In fact, this is a place where I disagree with the letter of the Vancouver Protocol, which states that somebody can only be an author if they are significantly involved with preparation of the manuscript. The spirit of the Vancouver Protocol is to prevent "gift authorship" and other unethical types of inclusion. Imagine, however, writing an acknowledgement that says: "<NAME> did all of the experimental work, but the long hours burned him out, so he left for a job at Netflix and we cut him out of the author list." To me, at least, this feels like denying credit inappropriately.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: >
> This leads to poor communication between the authors that stay and the person that left, usually motivated by the latter not replying (perhaps reading) emails concerning the work or taking too long to do so.
>
>
>
Then maybe it is time to think how this communication could be improved. My main idea would be to offer a answer mechanism that basically takes no effort at all. Make sure they know that all you really need is their permission to submit (see below).
---
>
> has not actively taken part in the preparation/proof reading of the manuscript, considering he/she has contributed significantly to the work?
>
>
>
* There's no need that one has to change text or something like that in order to become a coauthor, and significant contribution to the work is given here.
(Think of a coauthor who thoroughly reads the paper with the intention to improve it but decides that the text he got is fine as it is)
* But: All **coauthors must agree to the submission**. So IMHO the minimum communication you need to get is the coauthor's OK with the submission. Whether and to what extent they (proof)read the text or not is their decision. Usually, it is in their interest to read and know what is to be published under their name.
However, IMHO it is perfectly OK if the coauthor gives you a blank permission (i.e. they state they implicitly trust you wrt. the submission), the same as your signature under a contract is legal even if you *chose* not to read it before signing.
I'd somehow be inclined to do a phone call that explains that
* you need their decision whether they want to be named as coauthor,
* and if so, you need their permission to go ahead,
* but that it is up to them to decide how much further work they'll want to put in: they already delivered a substantial contribution.
Make clear that you'll email unasked the manuscript so the co-author can file it, but in the end all you need is the statement that they are fine with submitting it.
If you're afraid of loosing contact with someone who's about to leave, discuss the procedure while they're still at hand.
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/10/22 | 1,382 | 6,016 | <issue_start>username_0: It is generally acknowledged that one should try to get recommendation letters (for grad school, jobs, etc.) from well-known experienced members of your field, if at all possible (for e.g. see some of the answers to this related question: [Do letters of recommendation typically include a biography of the writer?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1035/do-letters-of-recommendation-typically-include-a-biography-of-the-writer)). Of course, sometimes this is not possible.
I am a first-year postdoc (in mathematics, but perhaps this is not relevant), and a masters student in the graduate-level class I am currently teaching approached me to write a letter for them when they apply for PhD programs. I am a natural person to write a letter for them since they are interested in the field that I teach (topology) and I'm teaching one of the three courses they are taking (since application deadlines are quite soon, they won't have taken any other courses here before applying). Of course, I am also a poor choice (which I mentioned to them) as a relatively unknown person with little experience.
While it makes sense to me that recommendation letters from senior research-focused faculty are worth more (since they have greater experience interacting with graduate/soon-to-be-graduate students), there are a fair number of students from relatively obscure 4-year universities who apply to graduate school. They might not have had any access to senior research-focused faculty.
>
> What are some things I should keep in mind when writing a recommendation letter for graduate admissions as a new entrant to my field, or perhaps as an instructor at a relatively obscure primarily teaching-focused school?
>
>
>
Statements like 'they are in the top 7 of all graduate students I've ever taught' carry little weight, since I've only ever taught 7! For what it's worth, the student in question is doing quite well, and my goal is to write a well-deserved relatively glowing letter; I would like to make sure, as much as I can, that my letter is not ignored.<issue_comment>username_1: My advice is to start your letter by explaining who you are and your background. For example, you could mention where you went to graduate school and that you think the student could succeed in that graduate program. This will give the reader a sense that you have some idea of what will be expected of the student in graduate school.
Beyond that, you should focus on the same things that more experienced letter writers do.
You need to explain how you know the applicant and give the reader some sense that you've had enough interaction with the student to be able to judge their chances of success. Simply having had a student in a large class isn't really enough here. On the other hand, "I was Johnny's instructor in a senior level topology class with 12 students. Johnny frequently met with me during office hours to ask questions about aspects of the subject that we were not able to cover in class." tells me that you have had many discussions with the student and really know the student well.
You should comment on both the applicant's intellectual ability and their work habits. Ideally, we want applicants who are smart and work hard. An applicant who isn't very smart but smart enough and who works very hard might be a good candidate for admission to a master's program but might be a very poor choice for a PhD program. An applicant who is brilliant but lazy might start to work harder in graduate school and could turn out to be really successful. Some faculty are willing to take a chance on brilliant but lazy students.
You should talk about the applicant's personality and how they get along with other students and faculty members. No one wants to work with a student who is not fun to be around because they're argumentative or depressed all the time.
You should talk about the applicant's communication skills (both writing and oral presentations) and in mathematics you should comment specifically about their ability to write mathematical proofs.
If it's relevant (and it would be for any area of applied mathematics) you should comment on the applicant's computing skills. What languages and specialized packages have they used in their work with you? Have they been able to produce programs of any substantial size?
You should check that what you've written matches up with the student's transcript and their statement of purpose. For example, don't say that they're one of your top 5% students if their GPA is 3.0. Don't say that Johnny would be a great master's student if he's applying to a PhD program. If the "story" told by the applicant's application file isn't consistent, then I'll be much less likely to admit a student.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Providing an anecdote about your interaction with the student which highlights his or her competencies will make your letter stand out, as well as making your letter more readable.
Choose an anecdote that will resonate with the desires of the reader - in this case, finding an articulate, self-motivated and talented researcher.
Far from being inappropriate for reasons of formality, a properly constructed and relevant anecdote about the student will speak volumes to the reader.
"Alex came to me with a particular problem he was facing in understanding elliptical functions. I wasn't able to help him greatly at the time - as it was grant-writing season -- but I suggested that he review Walker et al on the topic and we would discuss it more fully later. Alex returned having not only read Walker, but had downloaded the relevant open-source codes and had made a start on amending them to his problem, solving his original problem and actually identifying a serious flaw in the code which he had started to address".
(Completely fictional. I don't even know what an elliptical function is. Or if there is, indeed, a Walker et al. on the topic.)
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/10/22 | 724 | 2,903 | <issue_start>username_0: A PhD student in our school recently passed away unexpectedly, to the shock and grief of a large number of research students and academics, including me.
I had little to do with him on a daily basis, and he had little to nothing to do with the content of the thesis, but nonetheless it occurs to me to make a mention of his passing in the acknowledgements of my own (Honours) thesis.
Is this appropriate, or could it come off as disrespectful?<issue_comment>username_1: The social etiquette of acknowledgments sections vary from school to school. It would never be rude or disrespectful. I thanked family and friends in mine - and made reference to an internal lab jokee. Check previous theses to get an indication of etiquette in your school, but I don't see any reason this would be inappropriate.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I certainly don't think it's "crass", and I have a hard time seeing who could be disrespected. In general, you can acknowledge whomever you want in a thesis and the only crass thing would be to say something negative about them.
However, there is possibly a bit of room for misunderstanding here, because the ostensible purpose of the acknowledgments is to recognize people who helped you out in some way. Based on what you write -- you were not close, and he did not help on your thesis -- it doesn't make sense to *thank* this person in the acknowledgements.
I might instead suggest going for a dedication or commemoration. Some ways of wording this are given [here](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/18025/whats-the-proper-way-to-dedicate-a-paper-with-a-to-the-memory-of). You could either end the acknowledgments with a dedication, probably in its own separate paragraph (and you can dedicate the thesis to more than one person, if you like), or you could include the dedication on its own page separately in the thesis, e.g. "For X", "In memory of X (19xx - 20xx)", etc.
Speaking personally, I like the look of the latter, and I find it to be the opposite of crass to take time out to remember the departed, whether they had a special relationship with you or not. You are doing your part to make sure that your fellow student will not be completely forgotten for some time to come. Good for you.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: You might easily look like someone who is seeking public attention.
Dedicating a publication is a privilege you should leave to close friends or the faculty staff.
Consider your best friend died, you wanted to commemorate him in your thesis, and then found three others had done the same before you. Could feel strange, couldn't it?
Or think about the mourning parents. They might spend days to find your phone number, cause nobody they know knows it, and then call you, expecting to find someone who is as sad as they are. Do you want to risk that?
Upvotes: -1 |
2014/10/22 | 698 | 3,181 | <issue_start>username_0: I've asked three professors from the school I did my undergraduate studies at to write letters of recommendation for me. However, one of the schools I'm applying to is that same school.
In other words, lets say I went to Harvard as an undergraduate, asked three Harvard professors for letters, and then applied to Harvard's graduate program.
It seems kind of weird to me that my letter writers will review the letters they wrote for me as part of the committee review of my application. And I know at least two of them are for sure on the committee, the third I'm not sure about.
Undoubtedly, this is something that happens all the time, but I was curious how this situation is handled by the committee.
Of course, there are more committee members than the three who wrote recommendation letters for me who don't know me as a student as well, so it gives them a chance to learn about me.
I'm just wondering how this influences their decision, or, rather, how they can prevent it from influencing them too much. I know being accepted won't be a guaranteed thing, but how can you not accept someone that you yourself have recommended?<issue_comment>username_1: I don't see that there necessarily is a conflict of interest here. As a letter writer, the faculty member's job is to describe you and your qualifications. As a committee member, they are trying to evaluate your qualifications. Why are these two in conflict? I've been on a few such committees, and if there is a committee member who knows a particular applicant through a course or some other means, we have always listened to what that member has to say in order to augment our understanding of who the candidate is. (I gather that in some situations there are stricter rules about what criteria may be used to evaluate candidates.)
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I've seen this situation. In our department all faculty vote on admission decisions (we don't have a separate committee that is delegated to make these decisions.) The faculty who have written recommendations have typically argued in favor of admitting the students they've written recommendation letters for, but it would also not be surprising if a faculty member who recommended a student felt that other candidates were better qualified when it came time to make final decisions.
It's one thing to say "I think student A is well qualified for our graduate program and a TA." This is not inconsistent with "After reviewing all of the candidates, I feel that students B and C (with BS degrees from elsewhere) are the most deserving of the two available TA slots." or even "After discussion with other faculty members, and reading all of the recommendation letters, I've agreed that student A should not be admitted to the program."
It's important to understand that these are group decisions, and that faculty committees often operate by discussion and consensus rather than by simple vote counting- a lot can happen during such a discussion.
As an applicant, there really isn't anything that you can do about this- the faculty in the department will deal with it as they choose.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer] |
2014/10/22 | 1,340 | 5,711 | <issue_start>username_0: When I refer to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) I mean either the federal act or similarly implemented state laws. Clearly the validity of such requests would have to be limited to institutions which have received government aid in at least some way. In addition, there is the argument that such data could be considered a trade secret, as is the case in [Mississippi](http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/southeast/2014/04/01/324937.htm).
However, the case in Mississippi is meant to protect findings themselves rather than raw data. In addition, there are many cases in which the data itself could be considered to have been public information to begin with, as is the case in archaeological excavation.
Some institutions already have an open data policy, such as PLOS, which requires all data relevant to a paper to be published:
>
> PLOS strongly believes that, to best foster scientific progress, the underlying data from an article should be made freely available for researchers to use, wherever this is legal and ethical. Data availability allows validation, replication, reanalysis, new analysis, reinterpretation, or inclusion into meta-analyses, facilitates reproducibility of research and extends the value of the investment made in funding scientific research. Thus, PLOS believes that ensuring access to the underlying data should be an intrinsic part of the scientific publishing process. Furthermore, by getting data into the right place on publication we can reduce the burden on authors in unearthing old data, retaining old hard drives and answering email requests.
>
>
>
This is, at least in part, a purpose of FOIA: verification of claims. So based on the letter of the law, would such a FOIA request be considered valid and assuming the institution simply rejects the request, would there be legal recourse?<issue_comment>username_1: Yes, it could. "Could" is a very broad word. Keep in mind that FOIA applies only to executive branch government agencies and has nine exemptions. Additional laws apply in particular states and in other countries. As other commenters pointed out, this is not legal advice and you should consult a lawyer.
<http://www.foia.gov/> also see Wikipedia.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: The original Freedom of Information Act applied only to information in the possession of government agencies. That means that the release of reports and proposals submitted to the funding agency could be compelled under the FOIA. But it did not apply to data from the research, if in possession of the PI and not the funding agency (as is typically the case).
A later amendment (Shelby amendment) expanded the FOIA to apply to *some* federally funded research data in the possession of a non-profit institution, as follows:
* The release of "research data relating to published research findings produced under an award *that were used by the Federal Government in developing an agency action that has the force and effect of law*" may be compelled under the FOIA, *if*
* the data is not "trade secrets, commercial information, materials
necessary to be held confidential by a researcher until they are published, or similar information which is protected under law."
Also, the requestor may be charged a "reasonable fee equaling the full
incremental cost of the agency, the recipient, and applicable subrecipients."
So the general answer to your question is that **in most cases, the FOIA does not compel the release of data from federally funded research.**
Regarding state law, it seems from the appendix to this report mentioned in [another answer](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/29192/11365) that at least one state does have an open records statute that may apply to research data produced by employees of the state university system:
>
> "[Measuring Reproducibility in Computer Systems Research](http://reproducibility.cs.arizona.edu/v1/tr.pdf)." <NAME>, <NAME>, <NAME>, <NAME>, <NAME>, <NAME>. March 21, 2014.
>
>
>
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: **First:** If you are seriously concerned about this, you should consult with a lawyer. Period. Only lawyers can give legal advice, and you shouldn't call others unhelpful if they point this out. By the way, academic institutes and universities can really kick your balls if they think you hurt their trade secrets even if you done it with good will. There are examples about people who got jailtime esp if it was something patent related. So err on the safe side if you are not sure what data you should share.
**Second:** ".. the underlying data from an article should be made freely available for researchers to use, wherever this is legal and ethical. Data availability allows validation, replication, reanalysis, new analysis, reinterpretation, or inclusion into meta-analyses, facilitates reproducibility of research and extends the value of the investment made in funding scientific research."
or from PLOS:
"PLOS defines the “minimal dataset” to consist of the dataset used to reach the conclusions drawn in the manuscript with related metadata and methods, and any additional data required to replicate the reported study findings in their entirety."
It sounds nice and fluffy, but technically speaking all this hold for present publications, too. Off course, no one publishes every single experimental results, but any data that needed for replication, validation etc should be part of your publication. Results without reproducibility are useless in science, even if reality is a little bitter. I guess these policies are coming to push people a little more in the direction.
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/10/22 | 729 | 3,344 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm all for publishing my own work of course. Since I have coursework and new projects during the semester I have temporarily put aside my manuscript and I have communicated with the former (Master's) supervisor about this. But now she kept contacting my current PhD supervisor and he in turn has written to me a few times regarding this matter.
I feel my former supervisor's behaviour is quite innappropriate and this is the third time she does this. There have been two very similar instances previously--her asking my PhD supervisor whether I could depart later than my planned date to start my PhD program; then about two weeks before the final thesis submission, she contacted my PhD supervisor while I hesitated to let her use my thesis for grant application--both times behind my back with me only learning what she did from my PhD supervisor. I called her the second time she did this asking her very politely not to do such a thing again and hoping to remain on good terms. She agreed. But now this happens again........
What can I do to stop her from doing this? While not having my relationship with the current supervisor damaged but also I guess not having to be coerced into doing what she wants?
Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated!<issue_comment>username_1: First of all, good on you for taking a calm approach, particularly when you asked her stop directly. However, her persistent actions, especially after you have asked her politely and directly to stop is bordering on harassment. Not only that, she is undermining you with your present supervisor.
A good course of action I can suggest is to firstly speak with your current supervisor about the situation, your concerns and especially the recent event. Depending on what your current supervisor and you come up with, you could consider a discrete message to your former supervisor's Dean, asking for their assistance in this matter - particularly with her going behind your back.
However, in saying this, negotiate and stick to a timetable to have the manuscript completed - ensuring that your time constraints are also considered. It may be a good idea to have your current supervisor help with this, as it coincides with your current research.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: One thing you should understand is that in this crazy world, she may benefit from having your thesis published more than you, especially if she is currently under considerations for reappointment or promotion, so don't be too hard on her: rather blame the entire screwed up evaluation system in academia that has made much stronger people panic and do ridiculous things.
With all that said, the usual advice applies: be firm but polite and show some good will. Think of when you can realistically finish the job (it is in your own best interests to finish it *eventually* regardless of anything), and tell the plan to your current adviser. That should settle your scores with him and, most likely, he'll no longer bother you with that anymore. If you want, you can tell the target date to your former adviser as well.
Don't forget to give yourself some leeway, so that you can keep your word no matter what. Remember that promising less than one expects from you won't hurt your reputation, but failing to keep your promise will.
Upvotes: 4 |
2014/10/22 | 1,054 | 4,473 | <issue_start>username_0: I am an EU citizen, and 27 years old. I completed my Bachelor's and Master's in Electrical Engineering in the UK, now finishing up my PhD (in EE as well) in the USA.
I am currently applying for postdoc positions everywhere (EU and USA). I have, for the most part, adapted to life in the USA over the four years that I've been here. However, I am motivated by the idea of doing a postdoc in Europe, partly because I believe the overall culture there suits my personality more, and partly because all of my family is there too. I also want to experience the European way of conducting research (since a Master's in the UK didn't really involve all that much research).
My question is: now that I am still in the USA, and can get a work permit for 2 or so years easily, I am thinking that it would be a good chance to stay a bit longer and experience a postdoc here instead.
In general, I am quite adaptable and I don't have too many set expectations. I just want to conduct interesting research and have a somewhat decent social life to keep some sort of a balance. Money is not really an issue. Also, although I do not like to plan too much into the future (because you never really know what happens), I guess being considerate of the opportunities/prospects a position can offer in the future is healthy.
Given this information, what do you are the pros and cons of Europe vs. USA for a postdoc? Answers to this question probably require some over-generalizing, so I apologize in advance for that.<issue_comment>username_1: Let me list a few pros of doing postdoc in the US:
* In many EU countries a postdoc in the US is considered to be more prestigious than a postdoc in Europe (assuming that the places you do the postdoc in the US and Europe are at roughly the same level), so a postdoc in the US is in general not likely to harm your academic career should you eventually decide to return to Europe
* If you give staying in the US a really serious thought, the postdoc in the US allows you to initiate the application for green card; getting the latter will give you unrestricted access to the job market in the US (academic or otherwise), in addition to the EU one, which comes in handy on many occasions.
* Given that you have your Ph.D. (and hence the largest part of your academic network) in the US, you have somewhat better odds at succeeding in securing a postdoc in the US (e.g. because the US people you will apply to are in general more likely to know your advisor than people in Europe, and the people in the US will be less hesitant to, say, give a phone call to the authors of your recommendation letters to find out additional details if need be).
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I would also like to add some aspects of choosing between US and EU groups as a postdoc. I have obtained two postdoc offers (in experimental physics) from both a European institute and a US university. They are both well-known in our field. When I was making the decision, I considered the following aspects:
**Research style:**
In Europe, the research projects seem to be more task-driven while there might be more freedom on studying unexpected phenomena in the US. Moreover, US researchers' style might be more "hands-on" than EU. Especially in experimental physics, you may have to fix a broken equipment or solder a circuit by yourself in the US. However, in EU, a team of technicians will take care of all the maintenance and refinement of the equipments. You do not have to know how to build a measurement setup as long as you know how to take data. As such, you may publish faster in EU. However, if your future goal is to be a faculty that you will ultimately set up your own lab, the "all by yourself" experience in the US may be a plus.
**Funding:**
Research funding situation in EU may be better than the US, at least it is stably increasing but it strongly depends on fields and supervisors.
**Group Culture:**
The European groups are usually huge that you might be just one among 30+ researchers/PhD students. It may require much more effort to take more responsibility in such a huge group and get noticed by the famous PI and even a good recommendation letter from the PI. In the US, the group sizes vary a lot. In most cases, you will be one out of zero to three postdocs. You are expected to have more responsibility like mentoring students, writing grant proposals and thinking new research plans, etc.
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/10/23 | 1,384 | 5,746 | <issue_start>username_0: I am an undergraduate student being paid a (relatively speaking) hefty monthly research stipend. I need only some of this money to pay off my university fees and living costs, since I have wonderfully generous parents.
The research projects I work on officially revolve around applied problems in math biology. Lately, I have been interested in [Baez's work on "network theory"](http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/networks/networks_1.html), but because of full course load, along with the research project I am responsible for, I don't have the time to explore these ideas as I'd like to.
I have some ideas for pure math projects that involve extending Baez's nascent network theory ideas to problems in biology. I also have some ideas for tools that could be made in order to help a researcher formally analyze interaction systems.
These ideas are completely tangential to my own work (for the moment), although if I were able to set up the groundwork for them to the point where I am able to see that they do have potential, I'd love to bring it up with my professor.
One idea I have had recently is that I could hire my own "research assistants" out of my stipend (I am allowed to spend it as I like, right)? I could provide them with my motivations, and give them "guidance" (I don't know how capable I would be of this) through ongoing communication. This way, I would be able to explore my ideas, even if I don't personally have the energy and time to see them through right now. The alternative of course, is that I buckle up and find time from *somewhere* (e.g. by not writing this post) to work on the ideas, or put them away for a later date when I do have time.
So, is hiring my own research assistants at this time ethically questionable?<issue_comment>username_1: All that jumps out at me is that you won't be able to find and supervise someone capable enough for the amount of money you have, which I assume is on the order of tuition or less. You know research is really, really expensive right? People like Ph.D. students - and yourself - do it for cheap out of extreme valuing of their own educational and research experience.
You can't provide a six figure salary (what an industry researcher costs), you can't hire out your own research passions to someone; you have no play.
This, in theory, comes up in the professional world too. As a rule you can't really hire someone better than you to solve your problems... you'll run out of budget for them as they bleed your personal checkbook, or they'll get hired and take over your work (which is probably very bad for you). There's no "ethics", it stops at the pragmatics.
I think the ethics of this are kind of a moot point because there's cultural reasons this can't really come up. A more practical ethical question might be if you can hire researchers to work on parts of your project for you. That's a pretty different question, but I'm pretty sure the answer is yes, that's what a research budget is for (and your undergraduate underlings would of course appear as co-authors, which is a big part of why they took the opportunity).
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: **No**, there are no *ethical* concerns, as long as whoever you hire is given the appropriate credit for the work she/he did.
There are *economic* reasons why this situation is unlikely to be fruitful, but that is another question.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: If you are doing this for course credit or if this is part of your undergraduate thesis, you should ask your academic advisor or director of undergraduate studies. **The assumption is that all work that you hand is is your own.**
Many students have writing or math tutors to help them with basics or fix errors, but the underlying principle is that you did the work.
The question is what your 'staff' will be doing for you. If it is similar to what a writing tutor or math tutor is doing (checking for errors, helping you with argumentation, etc.) then it is likely kosher. However, if it is tending towards what a paper-writing service is doing (you provide the topic and money, they provide the paper) then it is likely illegal and will get you in trouble.
Again, if what you are doing is kosher then you should have no concerns in being open about this with your faculty advisers. It behooves you to clarify this now as you don't want to be accused of plagiarism or fraud (presenting work that is not your own as your own) later on.
If this is for a project that has nothing to do with school, then: 1) you're posting in the wrong stackexchange; 2) you have nothing to worry about as long as you don't try to present it as connected to your school work.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: This is a very good moral question. It addresses the authority of an undergraduate researcher with respect to other students.
In my experience, as an undergraduate researcher, I found that there were times that I would have appreciated outside help that I would pay out of pocket for. Something along the lines of a consultant with regards to certain technical aspects.
I like <NAME>' comment that you put your own idea at risk and someone run with it. Also take into account that instead of focusing purely on the task, you have to manage someone which is a heftier plate to be responsible for —and it already seems you have a sizeable amount.
Perhaps, as a compromise, if your advisor can promote you to a role that would take into account another researcher, e.g. senior undergraduate researcher, then probably this would work well.
To reiterate: paying someone out of pocket leaves many questions to interpretation, as far as roles and responsibilities go.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/10/23 | 1,360 | 5,630 | <issue_start>username_0: I've just been contacted by a friend's friend who decided I'd make a great adjunct professor at a community college, IT department, application development. Suddenly I heard myself agree to an "informal" job interview, and now am freaking out. What am I getting myself into?
I have all the hard skills necessary, in fact probably overqualified as far as the hard skills go. Soft skills, different matter. I am shy and fear public speech. Counselling one-on-one is no problem, but I do get a bit shaky in the knees thinking about standing in front of an audience. Which is why a part of me wants to do this job - to overcome my fears, to develop leadership skills, which I could then use in private sector. I also have a few interesting curriculum ideas I'd like to try. From tutoring my nephew through his university years (different school), I saw much in the Comp Sci curriculum that I think could be improved.
I wonder though whether this will help or hurt my career in the private sector. First of all, the very fact of being an adjunct professor at a community college (one of the weaker community colleges actually) - is it a resume builder? From looking at the faculty, it just might be.. the staff seems to have good bios.
Then there is the RateMyProfessor.com. As a newbie, and a pretty anxious one at that, there is a non-zero chance of me screwing up and getting a bunch of low reviews that will then haunt me for the rest of my career. The HRs do google job candidates' names.
My current career as a software developer has had its ups and downs: have worked for a few prestigious, big name corporates, left for a startup of my own, the startup is imploding, time to get a day job. While the bottom of my resume (where the old jobs are) looks great, I need to build up the recent part of my resume, need references. Would this be a good move or not?<issue_comment>username_1: Without wanting to sound harsh, this whole post is all about you and how it will benefit your further career (after leaving this job). You seem to forget that you will be teaching real, young people that need a good teacher, in order to get the education they deserve. So, unless you refocus on them first, perhaps you should reconsider getting this job for simply "overcoming your fears, developing leadership skills, which you could then use in private sector" and leave it to someone more passionate about it.
To directly answer your question: Getting a job you are not sure you are going to like and risk being bad at it or prematurely leave, always looks bad on any resume. So, unless you are really passionate about this, perhaps you should stick to what you already know.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Cons: Adjunct teaching at a community college may be a poor way to get references because you will mostly be working with students, not professionals who can serve as references. I taught one class at a CC and met my department chair a total of twice.
I would not worry about ratemyprofessor.com. Most people don't take it seriously. All students are different, so you are sure to get one occasionally that does not like your teaching. You can use a different name for teaching if you are really worried.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: As a full-time I.T. employee with a CS background at a community college, I feel I may be able to chip in here. We have a lot in common -- great hard skills, shaky soft skills, a desire to overcome our limitations, and a desire to better educate the next generation of programmers.
As username_1 said, first you need to focus on the students. You've pointed out that their CS material could use revision, so I think you're already on the right track there. The best CS professors I've worked with have one thing in common: they all had prior or concurrent industry experience. Current, real-world experience gives you an advantage when it comes to curriculum development that can really benefit the students.
As for the class size, I'd have a hard time imagining 100 students in a CS class at a community college. Our class sizes tend more toward 10 than 100, limited apparently by interest, not class size caps. It's still more than one-on-one, so you'll still have to get over that, but just remember why you're there.
Don't worry about how badly you might screw up. Even the best professors get occasional low ratings and the internet is full of anonymous jerks spewing vitriol. You're not in middle school anymore, just don't worry about it.
As for how it looks on your resume, I can't personally speak to this with any great experience, but as a hiring manager I'd look favorably on it, particularly if you teach only one or two classes per semester for awhile. It shows that your soft skills are maybe stronger than the next guy and that you're comfortable conducting training and writing documentation within your field of expertise. Those are all desirable qualities that are a little harder to find in the software industry. The only negative point I can think of for it would be if they thought you might be trying to get your foot in the door as a full-time professor, they might not want to bring you on full-time. Not a lot of places think like that, though.
Finally, regarding benefits: I can't speak to any other school's policy, but adjuncts here are simply part-time faculty. As part-time employees, they don't get medical/dental benefits. They're hired on a per-class basis, so if you want to teach one or five classes, that's up to your desire and their needs. We're pretty flexible, I expect that's pretty standard.
Upvotes: 3 |
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