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[ { "answer_id": 752, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>At least in the US, I can't think of very many fields where there are shortages of applicants for available faculty positions, especially in this day and age with the current economy.</p>\n\n<p>Even when times were booming back in the mid-90's and in the 2000's, you'd still have dozens or even hundreds of applicants for any available faculty position. With the economy still somewhat depressed, you still have lots of people chasing after an even smaller number of positions than before. So I still think that in any viable field of academia, you'll still see applicants outnumbering vacancies. It's only in subdisciplines or departments that probably should not have been separated out in the first place that would end up having gluts of available positions.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 753, "author": "Lars Kotthoff", "author_id": 12, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>From what I've heard the situtation is really good for statistics in the UK. If you get a PhD and want to stay in academia, you're basically guaranteed a faculty position. This is certainly not the case in general though.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/749", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/439/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 755, "author": "Suresh", "author_id": 346, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>It depends on the structure of the group, and the research area. I'm in computer science, in a specific subfield, and so I know when the main conference paper lists come out. I try to publicize these lists, and have meetings where we discuss papers that sound interesting - I also point out papers that have done something significant. </p>\n\n<p>This only works well though when the research group is relatively homogeneous. If different students are working in different areas, then the basic principle is the same as above, but the sets of conferences tracked might vary. </p>\n\n<p>The same could be done for journals that tend to release issues on a regular timeline. Or even with the arxiv. </p>\n\n<p>Ultimately, the goal is to instill some good habits, rather than actually keeping the students aware of the literature. They have to learn to do it on their own. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 756, "author": "Lars Kotthoff", "author_id": 12, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>If you really want them to keep up to date, just forwarding things will not be sufficient. You could organise something like a reading group where people present advances in the field. This would make sure that they not only know of new literature, but have also read and understood it to some extent.</p>\n\n<p>What actually works will depend on your group though. If people can't be persuaded to take part in a reading group, you'll have to do something else.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 758, "author": "bobthejoe", "author_id": 319, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/319", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<p>As a current student, I find that the constant barrage of requests makes it very hard for me to keep up with the literature unless it is very pertinent to my staying afloat. Thus, reading should be tied to my staying afloat.</p>\n\n<p>The most effective way seems to be a journal club with the advisor with the duty of presenting rotating between the advisees. As a side note, a journal club without the advisor falls apart rather quickly. There should be mechanisms to make sure that attendees actually read the papers as well as the presenter doing a good job with reviewing the prior literature. I've personally learned quite a lot in this format.</p>\n\n<p>The other method would be to set up a system to share papers. Using an RSS feed is pretty effective along with using NCBI's email updates. Internally, Mendeley groups or Google+ work well.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 790, "author": "David Ketcheson", "author_id": 81, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/81", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>At the beginning, I require the student to read certain papers and explain them to me, as preparation before starting any research. Afterward, I consider it the student's responsibility to keep up (and even to help me keep up) with the literature related to the thesis topic. To make it easy, we usually establish a Mendeley group and each of us posts relevant papers there.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/754", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 762, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<p>This is a \"Goldilocks\" problem—you should try to schedule an internship late enough that you have enough experience to be of interest to a potential internship sponsor, but early enough so that it can have an effect on your long-term development (if you feel it was a sufficiently positive or negative experience to sway your sentiments).</p>\n\n<p>As a result, I would say that you should typically do this in the middle of your PhD—probably around your third year or so (assuming that you're in a typical US graduate program that runs five to six years for a PhD). If you're in a European-style system, where the coursework has been done before the PhD starts, then it should be done somewhat earlier—perhaps from the middle of the second year on.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 764, "author": "Suresh", "author_id": 346, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346", "pm_score": 5, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think you're creating a false dichotomy by saying </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>the internship is certain to eat into vital amount of time he could\n otherwise spend thinking about research problems</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Internships are places where sometimes REALLY interesting problems come up. Especially in engineering, while it's not critical, it's very important to keep a finger on what's happening in industry - the industry/academia divide is a matter of time-horizon rather than fundamental nature of the problem. </p>\n\n<p>Of course you need to have enough experience to recognize interesting problems, which goes back to @aeismail's answer. I will also say that doing it late in your career isn't that bad either, because then you get a three-month interview for a job. That's how I got my first one :)</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 55641, "author": "Arash", "author_id": 42217, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/42217", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Although the answers above are great, I would like to share a different perspective mainly because I disagree with necessarily waiting until the 3rd year of your Phd. \nIn a lot of internships, you're exposed to new areas or new perspectives in the same area which can affect your current interests. \nAlthough school is good and working on research is even better, still, you learn work mainly at work.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 55722, "author": "Sayan", "author_id": 39125, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/39125", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think internships are an accessory to research. I believe that the positioning and frequency of internships doesn't matter as long as they are relevant to one's PhD [by relevant I mean that if work done on internships could be written down on the final PhD dissertation and/or lead to meaningful publications]. Finding/Securing the correct internship that could positively propel one's PhD is a challenge, but it is doable.</p>\n\n<p>I believe having the wisdom to decide whether an internship could contribute to one's research depends on where you currently stand in the PhD timeline. There is a distinction between a PhD student and a PhD candidate, which I want to point out as you mentioned both the terms. </p>\n\n<p>A PhD candidate is an advanced PhD student, which means he/she is aware of the fundamental concepts of a particular research area (since a PhD candidate has successfully qualified the core requirements of a dept., which involves getting satisfactory grades in certain key courses for his/her specialization track). So he/she is in a better position (in terms of judgement) to not settle for just any internship (as there are significant amount of internship opportunities for PhD students [this of course depends on country/funding/discipline]), but only the ones that ties well with one's PhD goals. For instance if someone's specialization area is compilers, then doing an internship on quantitative research might not be very useful in the near term.</p>\n\n<p>For PhD students (in first or second year), since they are (relatively) new in the field and learning the ropes (as majority of their time is spent on courses, reviewing/reading papers, and doing research in whatever time is left), seeking counsel from mentors/adviser regarding internship is fruitful. They could help in a multitude of ways.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/759", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/411/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 767, "author": "Suresh", "author_id": 346, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I've never heard of this happening at all. Most people don't have that kind of memory, and even if they did, it's irrelevant. I know of at least one person who was </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>rejected from high rank school X for UG</li>\n<li>rejected from X for grad school</li>\n<li>got a faculty offer from X (and turned it down) :)</li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 770, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<p>What was written down on an application years ago will generally not come back to haunt a faculty candidate later. However, actions that might have been taken on a faculty visit—or in later interactions with faculty members at a department—could have repercussions.</p>\n\n<p>If the reputation that someone builds is being a person who \"doesn't play well with others,\" that will be a tag that follows that individual for the rest of the career. It can make life a lot more difficult, because that person will have to work <em>a lot</em> harder and be a lot more successful than someone who is able to interact with current and potential future departmental colleagues in a civil and cordial manner.</p>\n\n<p>But what's written in an application? Unless it's fraudulent, it shouldn't have a bearing on future ability to get hired somewhere.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 772, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Applicants who apply with poor credentials (low grades, no experience, etc.) are judged at the time of application based on their <em>current</em> credentials. Unless either them or the admissions committee does something exceptionally stupid during the interview process, the subsequent rejection/admission is simply a sign of how good of a fit the person is <em>at that time</em>. In the same way that a grad school application does not \"guarantee\" a future professorship post, a grad school rejection does not automatically imply automatic future rejection for other positions.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 777, "author": "JeffE", "author_id": 65, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Speaking from direct, personal experience: <strong>NO</strong>. Once you're admitted to a PhD program, your undergraduate record effectively ceases to exist.(*)</p>\n\n<p>First, professors' memories are just not that good. It's been five years since you were rejected, and we reject many hundreds of applicants every year. Why would we remember your application?</p>\n\n<p>Second, at least in the US, rejected applications are probably destroyed/deleted a few months after all the decisions are made, to conform with federal privacy laws. So it's unlikely that anyone could dig up your old rejected application even if they wanted to.</p>\n\n<p>Third, hiring decisions are being made by a different committee than admissions decisions, using very different standards. Graduate admissions committees are looking for strong research potential. Faculty recruiting committees are looking for strong research, with the potential for worldwide impact. If you've actually done good research, why should we care whether you looked like you might not have been ready to do good research five years ago?</p>\n\n<p>(*) With one exception: Since I hit the job market, it's become much more common for deans to request undergraduate transcripts, presumably to check whether the candidate has the right academic experience for teaching. But I've never heard of a faculty candidate being rejected because they had a weak transcript.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 781, "author": "InquilineKea", "author_id": 77, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/77", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>It could - if they learned that you committed fraud on your application, which could potentially reveal character problems down the road (and which is not easily forgivable). </p>\n\n<p>Now, I had some pretty painful rejections from programs that had openly courted me pre-application, and they really hurt not only because I'm in a small field, but also particularly because I'm not the type of person who people easily forget - I was very possibly one of the most unusual applicants in the entire history of earth &amp; planetary science graduate school admissions, and I intentionally made each of my applications extremely risky (stuffing as much information as I could humanely stuff into them, and taking great care to link them to <strong>all</strong> of my social media profiles), because I knew that I was fighting an uphill battle (due to my GPA and Attention Deficit Disorder). While it turned out to really help with Brown (where I got a top student fellowship too), it probably annoyed the hell out of most of the other schools.</p>\n\n<p>But in the end, I think it will all be fine, because at worst - everything I did can be attributed to immaturity or poor judgment - all of which can be improved with time and with actual publications in the future.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/766", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/411/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 769, "author": "Suresh", "author_id": 346, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<ul>\n<li>You could defer admission, but it's a little unusual to defer for a year. Check with the departmental grad advisor and make sure everything is absolutely clear on this front</li>\n<li>It's a risk: admissions pools vary from year to year, and maybe the professor who wanted to take you on doesn't have funding, or already hired another student and doesn't have room for more. </li>\n<li>I doubt any advisor would look down on you for working a year. I don't see why, especially in computer science. </li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Other questions to ask:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>will the job make your application look stronger next time ? </li>\n<li>are you ok with not being able to get into this university and having to reapply and get in elsewhere ? </li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 771, "author": "Bravo", "author_id": 411, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/411", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>If I were to make an opinion out of whatever you have said in this post, I will say go for B without further thought :) </p>\n\n<p>Reasons: 1) A one year industry job is hardly helpful as an experience anywhere, let alone for a prospective PhD. There is another question on this forum analysing the worth of job before PhD.</p>\n\n<p>2) You have said you are not too much into money and also live frugally. Bravo, you are tailor-made for the academia! You could surely earn more in the one year after PhD, and ensure you begin graduate coursework at the earliest.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 773, "author": "Sylvain Peyronnet", "author_id": 43, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/43", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I will advise exactly the contrary of what bravo just said in another answer : go for A ! If you don't, there is a good probability that you will ask yourself continuously \"was my choice to go for a PhD the best one?\". With this year of experience, you will know for sure what you want, this is priceless. And this is the best way to be really focused on your thesis, if you finally decide to go for it.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 798, "author": "Joanna Bryson", "author_id": 384, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/384", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I'm afraid I have contradictory advice.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>If you've been offered a funded place, there is no guarantee the funding will still be there in a year. What you know is that you are good enough to get into a grad school, but there is a luck component too. The school I went to told us that 1 in 10 applicants was good enough to get in, but less than 1 of 3 of those \"good enough\" could have places any particular year. This is both because of funding constraints &amp; because supervisors can only supervise so many people well at one time. So you are very likely really deciding whether to work before going through the application process again.</li>\n<li>Nevertheless, I agree with Sylvain that it is not a good idea to do a PhD always wondering whether you would have liked industry better. I worked for 5 years before doing my PhD, and now I'm an associate professor. Two things make this route hard though: 1) getting used to making money (I addressed this by putting most of my salary in savings) and 2) getting used to being treated as an adult. But there is a big win when you hit the hard parts of your PhD &amp; think \"would I be happier in industry? Nah, that was boring.\" Friends that were academically stronger than but lacked that certainty had a tougher time during the troughs than I did.</li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 808, "author": "lynxoid", "author_id": 476, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/476", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>This decision strongly depends on your character and goals, so you should ask yourself what you will gain and loose while working in the industry for a year / going to grad school right away. What skills will you learn while working that will help you with PhD later? Will you have enough motivation to complete your PhD if you do not take a year off school? Will your college wait for you / defer acceptance? Are you a kind of person for who it takes a while to get into a routine (of a job - or of taking classes)?</p>\n\n<p>I guess these are just more questions rather than answers, but I do not think anyone can (or should) give you a definite \"A\" or \"B\" answer.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/768", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/455/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 794, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 6, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I had a similar situation. In this case, we did exactly what you did: we indicated that the participant (not a team leader, but a team member in this case) was a co-author, but that he was deceased. I think this is the only fair way to recognize substantial contributions. </p>\n\n<p>Of course, the difficult comes if there is a challenge to the work of the deceased. In our case, however, we had a very substantial paper trail which was audited and reviewed, so the individual work could have been sorted out and dealt with appropriately. </p>\n\n<p>So, I think the best defense is generally to keep good working notes and use version control.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 12970, "author": "F'x", "author_id": 2700, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2700", "pm_score": 5, "selected": false, "text": "<p>aeismail's answer is definitely good advice, but I'll add two more bits:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p><strong>Check the journal policy</strong> and author guidelines. There may be something in there that can guide your choice, like the <em>Journal of the American Chemical Society</em> has:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Deceased persons who meet the criteria for inclusion as coauthors should be so included, with an Author Information note indicating the date of death.</p>\n</blockquote></li>\n<li><p><strong>Check with the editor</strong>, if in doubt. He has the final say in the matter, and these things are probably best run by him if no official policy is established.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>In terms of papers with deceased authors, I think the record holder is probably <a href=\"http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ic001137t\" rel=\"noreferrer\">this one</a>:</p>\n\n<p>               <img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/UYkkCm.png\" alt=\"enter image description here\"></p>\n\n<p>Can you spot it? One author died in 1919, and one had her PhD in 1911: while no date of death is provided for her, I don't think she's still around. (Also, it was probably quite an achievement for a woman to get a PhD at the time.)</p>\n\n<p>As we say: old chemist don't die, they just reach equilibrium!</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/776", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/92/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 779, "author": "Charles E. Grant", "author_id": 464, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/464", "pm_score": 7, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I know from all too personal experience that it the easiest thing in the world to say \"I could totally ace these assignments if I tried, but I can't be bothered to try.\" Talk is cheap. You may be different, but when I said stuff like that I was completely deluding myself.</p>\n\n<p>You may be being too hard on your profs and TAs. CS departments generally don't cover specific development platforms in their classes because platforms come and go, sometimes in a shockingly short period of time. A good CS department is going to try to educate you in the foundations of CS and software engineering. Stuff that is not in the tech headlines now, but is more likely to still be relevant 10 years from now. Still, it may be that they aren't very good, in which case the solution is not necessarily to drop out, but to find a better department.</p>\n\n<p>That said, if you aren't applying yourself in school, and aren't getting much out of it, then you probably should't be in school. However, if you are not going to be in school, you still have to move forward with your life. You can't just hop on the bus back home and let your parents support you. The accelerator sounds great, but it's a roll of the dice, so you need a backup plan. The obvious choices are joining the military and finding a job. I've never been in the military so I can't advise you about that. If you find a job that pays all your expenses, then your parents may be upset, but they can't really stop you. They probably will be less upset with you if you have a job in hand as you announce that you are leaving school. If you can't find a job that will support you, then that's a pretty critical piece of information, and it means you've either got to suck it up in school or join the military.</p>\n\n<p>My suggestion would be to completely put aside your personal projects for the rest of the year. Focus on your schoolwork, and prove you aren't just blowing smoke, when you say you could excel at it. Prove it. At the end of the school year, start looking for a job. If you find a job that will pay all your living expenses, or if your accelerator works out, then take a leave of absence. If you prosper in your job or startup, great. If it doesn't work out or seems like a dead end you can go back to school. If you really want to pursue your projects as an entrepreneur, then live on Ramen, save every penny, and bankroll yourself for a couple of years.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 780, "author": "zzzzBov", "author_id": 466, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/466", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<blockquote>\n <p>Should I stay in school?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<h1>No</h1>\n\n<p>You're a big boy now and can make your own decisions. As condescending as that sounds, it's the simple truth. If you get a job and find a place to live, you will be just like the majority of people in the world who don't have a college degree, but are self sufficient.</p>\n\n<p>American high schools tend to bully students into applying to college because it's The Right Thing To Do&trade;, whether or not you have any interest in learning something that can actually be taught at college. We have a serious lack of skilled labor, and learning to weld is better done as an internship/apprenticeship than as an Associates where you only focus on the <em>theory</em> of welders.</p>\n\n<p>Programming can be the same; having a mentor instead of a professor can get you on track to making money sooner, without the large bills associated with a 4-year program. Long term, however, your salary will probably be lower than someone who has a college degree.</p>\n\n<h1>But don't quit either</h1>\n\n<p>If your parents are encouraging you to continue college, and are helping you through it financially they should be receptive to the idea of you taking a moment to step back from academia to reassess your abilities, life goals, and options. If they're <em>not</em> helping you through it financially, then they don't have the right to decide how you spend your money (beyond paying for rent if you're living with them).</p>\n\n<p>To most graduating highschoolers, I recommend taking some time off from learning. One year flipping burgers turns out to be a really strong motivator to get back into academia, and also gives a sense of perspective that most college freshman tend to lack.</p>\n\n<p>If you decide <em>yes, I need a degree</em> you should then focus on finding a college that suits your personality. Don't just go for the big college because they have expensive new equipment; if you can connect with an experienced professor early on in your academic career, you will find yourself on stronger footing. If you don't like your classes, professors and TAs, continuing your college education at that particular school only serves to give away free money.</p>\n\n<h1>Unless you want to</h1>\n\n<p>If you decide <em>no, I don't need a degree</em> you should then focus on building up your skill set while you still have a strong family safety-net. Join a company that's working on stuff that you find interesting. You might need to start as a part-time unpaid intern working 60 hours a week between a job that pays and a job that teaches. Either way, success isn't easy.</p>\n\n<p>If it costs <code>$20,000/year</code> for <code>4</code> years to earn a BS, you're spending <code>$80,000</code>, assuming you complete the degree in 4 years. If you've got the drive, you could start a small business with a small portion of those funds.</p>\n\n<p>And remember that failure is always an option. It's ok to fail. You don't learn from getting things right, you learn from getting them wrong.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 783, "author": "Piotr Migdal", "author_id": 49, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/49", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Formal education is more and more overrated in the current fast-paced world.</p>\n\n<p>And especially in IT, were they are less traditional and more meritocratic than virtually anywhere else. They care more for you experience that your academic degree (or lack of it). And more years doing coursework means less years gaining real experience (unless the courses are really great <em>and</em> you can benefit from them).</p>\n\n<p>Bill Gates, Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg may be only a few stellar examples. There are many programmers at any levels who dropped out because of their start-ups... or even regular jobs.</p>\n\n<p>However, there are good and bad reasons for leaving studies (there was a list somewhere but someone clearly more competent than me). Good when you see that the university is stealing your valuable time from your job/start-up. When you currently have no, then it may be not the best idea.</p>\n\n<p>Some random links:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.good.is/post/turn-on-code-in-drop-out/\" rel=\"nofollow\">Turn On, Code In, Drop Out: Tech Programmers Don’t Need College Diplomas</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://blogs.hbr.org/schrage/2010/07/higher-education-is-highly-ove.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">Higher Education Is Overrated; Skills Aren't</a></li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 785, "author": "No One in Particular", "author_id": 469, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/469", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>(From my iPhone, please excuse typos)</p>\n\n<p>It appears from my position that getting a BS is becoming more important as time goes on. Many large/midsized companies won't even look at candidates without a degree. (I have been around over 30 years working in startups to multinationals.)</p>\n\n<p>It could be that you aren't mature enough yet for college. Maturity can manifest itself in many ways. One in particular is the idea that something long and difficult is not needed. This kind of rationalization needs to be studied long and hard before acting on it.</p>\n\n<p>I would suggest staying in school and getting that degree. If you decide otherwise, then get a leave of absence from school for one year. This saves your place without having to reapply. You should also check a number of companies to determine their entrance criteria. You will see that the industry is maturing and that your competition is jumping through the hoops in order to sustain their careers.</p>\n\n<p>Finally, do as others have suggested, put the side projects away and start getting a good deal of As on tests/homework to be sure that you aren't just competent in CS. </p>\n\n<p>Good luck and keep the faith.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 791, "author": "ESultanik", "author_id": 92, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/92", "pm_score": 5, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I worked as a software engineer for a number of years before I decided to pursue a full-time BS in CS. Getting a degree is one of the best decisions I ever made.</p>\n\n<p>Given that it sounds like you already have a fair grasp on the principles of programming, it's not surprising that you haven't learned much in your first year. But that will quickly change! More advanced classes like Artificial Intelligence, Formal Language Theory, and Datastructures &amp; Algorithms are very interesting. In retrospect, the things I learned in those classes would have been immensely useful in both my side projects and my previous professional work as a software engineer. They're also the types of things that would be incredibly hard to teach one's self outside of a classroom setting.</p>\n\n<p>Also, remember that your professors are experts in very deep and specific areas in their sub-disciplines. They're about as interested in teaching intro.-level CS classes as you are in taking them. But once you start taking more advanced classes, you'll notice a much greater interest from the professors because they're teaching the state-of-the-art on the area in which they're specifically interested and expert.</p>\n\n<p>As others have already noted, it also depends on what type of job you ultimately want. If you want to start your own company and you already have all of the skills you need to do that, then a degree might be a waste of time. If your dream is to work at a company like Google or Facebook, though, that will definitely not be the case. I interviewed at a number of companies—including Google—after I graduated, and I can tell you that I would have never passed the technical interviews without what I learned at University. </p>\n\n<p>Therefore, I'd say give it at least another year. Talk to your academic advisors first and explain your situation. Talk to some professors who are teaching more advanced classes and see if you can get them to waive the prerequisites so you can take them earlier. Alternatively, universities often let you audit classes (<em>i.e.</em>, sit in on the lectures for little or no credit without having to do the homework or take the exams). I'd recommend sitting in on some of the more advanced classes to get a taste of the light at the end of the tunnel.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 793, "author": "JeffE", "author_id": 65, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65", "pm_score": 5, "selected": false, "text": "<blockquote>\n <p>I am most of the way through my freshman year.... Going away to school has been rough, and I have been pretty depressed for most of the time there.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This strikes me as the most important part of your question. I strongly encourage you to find help with your depression before you make a decision. Talk with your faculty mentors, with friends, and with family. Take advantage of your university's student counseling services. Transitioning into adulthood is <em>hard</em>, whether you do it in school or out; you don't have do it alone.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 5766, "author": "earthling", "author_id": 2692, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2692", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>There are many answers already but I'll add one more for future generations looking for an answer to a very important question.</p>\n\n<p>I've worked with a lot of people who either dropped out of university or never went so they could focus on working writing software. In general, they've done pretty well. Some have difficulties recently because they were bad at managing their money but they made A LOT because they were following their dream and worked 80 hours per week on their dream. This accumulated effort built into a very solid skill-set which was in very high demand from employers. Some started software companies, some just consulted. All ended up making a lot of money (not all of them kept it).</p>\n\n<p>I think programming for the business world is a bit different from other academic pursuits. In my experience (having consulted to the very large, the very small, and everything in between), businesses really care about one thing: How can you make me money. Academics care about much more. So, if you want to write software for the business world and you don't see the benefit in university, then forget it. You can always go back.</p>\n\n<p>All that said, an education is always a good idea. Of course, you don't have to get your education formally, it can be on your own, but a formal education is cared about by some...but in business, people generally care more about your ability to make them money.</p>\n\n<p>If you want to be conservative/safe, then you should stick it out in school. However, since you're young, roll the dice and prepare to pick up the pieces in case it doesn't work out. Don't give up on your dreams. Dreams drive us to put in more effort and to learn more and that is where the fun is.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 5783, "author": "racoo", "author_id": 4328, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4328", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Exactly I had the same feeling like you except in a 3rd world country. The school was bad, professors were not teaching properly and I also had a good income by doing freelance jobs. But when time passes and when you reach upper division courses you will want to stick to school. At least this was how it happened to me and now I want to continue with grad school to further get involved with the field.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 5794, "author": "Paul Hiemstra", "author_id": 4091, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4091", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>My 2cts, do note that I have a number of degrees, so I might be biased towards getting degrees :).</p>\n\n<p>Getting a degree shows that;</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>You have acquired some technical skills (algorithms, software design, data structures), and skills how to learn new things. Ofcourse, you can get these outside an official school, but a degree shows that after a few years a (relatively) objective source (the school) says that you have these skills. Unless you have developed some groundbreaking piece of software that everyone knows, it is hard to convince a potential employer that you really can do what you say.</li>\n<li>you can finish something you started. Getting a degree takes three years of work and perseverance, more if you go for an MSc or PhD. </li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 18214, "author": "zxq9", "author_id": 13156, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13156", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>TL;DR:</p>\n\n<pre><code>If you want to learn things you would never be exposed to otherwise\nand actually have some grokness without strings attached:\n Stay in school, but deliberately seek difficult courses on old-fashioned\n topics such as compiler design, operating systems, electrical engineering\n media fabrication (actually way cool), graph theory, set theory, etc.\nElif you just want a paycheck for the next few years working in some cool\nframework or other flavor-of-the-week:\n Drop out *in good standing* and get a job in some startup company with\n the prior knowledge that it will fail, and if it doesn't a little\n success will transform the place you liked into a place you don't, and\n if not then you will eventually go from solving trivial problems you do\n know how to solve to solving non-trivial problems you lack the grokpower\n to tackle because you neglected to pay your intellectual dues.\nElse:\n Change major, because this stuff just isn't for you, and I can't bear to\n knowingly recommend that someone of obvious intelligence relegate\n themselves to being another member in the Mole Man Army.\n</code></pre>\n\n<p>There are some interesting responses here; I can only tell you what I have experienced myself. What follows is a huge digression, but one that will hopefully illustrate the fact that you can't know the future, opportunity is entirely random, and old-fashioned hard work (often academic in nature) is the only way to satisfy the \"preparedness\" part of the luck/genius equation.</p>\n\n<p>I got involved in phreaking and computers when I was quite young, wrote quite a bit of useful software as a kid, never did homework but aced all my tests in school, did well in sports by hiding my inner geek from the rest of the team, etc. I was (and still am) obsessed with the idea of eventually starting my own computing services (hardware, software, everything) company. I studied a lot on my own on subjects not taught in my school and my grades (ironically) sometimes suffered from it. An emotional/social rift opened between me and the idea of school, me viewing it as worthless, the system viewing me as a misfit. Probably not entirely different from you, though the threads of the tapestry no doubt differ.</p>\n\n<p>Recognizing this wasn't a sustainable situation I requested that my father send me to a military school so I could be forced into a regimented program. I wound up attending a great military high school where the high school classes were taught by the same faculty as the college classes and learned a great deal about myself, the world, and the nature of opportunity. I also learned just how amazing great educators can be -- a lesson that didn't stick until a decade of reflection had passed. I also decided to not attend college against the advice of my mentors and advisers. My parents, however, let me do whatever I thought best.</p>\n\n<p>My family is a bit plain: if I fail they won't help me because I've proven that I was a bad egg; if I succeed, however, I will be celebrated and given responsibility. I thought this terribly cold when I was younger, but have come to realize this is how the successful parts of the world work, except in the real world there is a strong chance nobody will subsidize your food or shelter (and if someone does it is usually a sign of an impending systemic failure). Though this has seen me in a few tight situations I have to say it has taught me a lot, and if my siblings and our general family relationship are any indication, it seems to work amazingly well.</p>\n\n<p>I didn't land an awesome programming job after turning down university acceptance letters. I got interested in the larger world and spent almost the next two decades traveling, teaching (yeah, weird), or in this or that military (most recently involved in the whole GWOT thing, first in the Army, then in a few different contract organizations). My ultimate goal of running a computing company was always in the back of my mind, but the time was never right and I was so involved in other things it just seemed like a different world.</p>\n\n<p>Until I got out. Now I have started that company, things are finally beginning to pick up (after a long dry stretch, survivable mostly because of the community surrounding my ex-military relationships), and I can see a tiny bit of light at the end of this long, extremely difficult, <em>lonely</em> tunnel.</p>\n\n<p>Which brings me back to school and my not having been exposed to much of it. Because I didn't go to school I didn't even know there were canonical references to a huge set of problem spaces. I didn't know how freaking important it was to learn the precise differences between analog and digital data before trying to solve a really expensive customer problem that requires a customized hardware solution (and before you think that is a simple difference, go study up on it). I didn't really understand that the hyped frameworks are basically giant cake-sacks of leaky abstractions which fail the moment a new real-world requirement is thrown at them (usually something innocuous, like a customer saying \"in the next version, we <em>really</em> need screen X to show Y\" -- and of course you, not realizing how scary a statement that is, simply say \"sure!\"). I had no idea how prolific operating systems are, or how fleeting their lives in the market. I didn't understand exactly how software is the thing that lets us emulate different machines within other hardware machines, and why that nugget of esoteric knowledge is so incredibly central to everything I will likely be doing for the next few decades of my life (and I say \"life\", not \"career\", deliberately). I hadn't even matured enough as a programmer to develop a healthy baseline disdain for all programming languages.</p>\n\n<p>But I also realize now, after having interviewed and hired people, that most schools simply do not teach the things that need to be taught, and most people are simply too dull to grok the things I need them to grok and would have failed out of the courses I wish they had attended. And that sucks.</p>\n\n<p>So looking at it from the other side of the table, I would urge you to <em>not</em> go on a 20-year action adventure as I did (unless that's your thing; I have no regrets) but not simply \"stay in school\" for the sake of getting some worthless paper that conveys nothing about your actual potential to a prospective employer such as myself. Instead I would urge you to seek out the hardest, most difficult low-level <em>and</em> high-level courses you can find that deal with computing. This may require that you achieve decent grades in some courses now to be eligible for the interesting stuff later, which may simply be the universe giving you a lesson in humility and due-paying (hint: it is easier to control your own expectations about life than to control the outcome of each phase of it).</p>\n\n<p>You'll never \"finish\" in this field, so what you should seek is a strong foundation in leading concepts and underlying principles. You'll do a lot of learning/discovery by composing new ideas from seemingly unrelated concepts you've picked up by way of association with stellar people in your studies, but long after the base ideas were acquired. Being in a good comp-sci or engineering department is one of a very few ways of guaranteeing that you will constantly be exposed to such people. I view this as one of the most important elements of official schooling, and something online education will probably never be able to replicate (and hence I view resumes full of online degrees with suspicion; actually, I have my minions black out those lines before I get the resume if they think the rest of it is worthy).</p>\n\n<p>But all of this is dependent on your goals, of course, which is why I wrote the if-elif-else clause above. I might be misjudging you, but I can easily imagine myself writing a very similar question two decades ago on Usenet, and wish someone would have written this sort of post out then (come to think of it, I may have had just such a conversation back then, and disregarded the advice as I was so wont to do).</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 18267, "author": "I Like to Code", "author_id": 8802, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8802", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>In spite of the large monetary and time cost of getting a college degree in CS,\nI believe that it is still a good idea to get your degree.\nThe main reason (to me) that a college degree is valuable\nis that in order to get a degree,\nyou must learn the critical skill of <a href=\"http://www.toolsofthemind.org/philosophy/self-regulation/\" rel=\"nofollow\"><strong>self-regulation</strong></a>.\nRegardless of your future employment, \nthere will be times when your work is going to be boring,\nbut nevertheless the boring work needs to be completed\nfor you to move forward in your life.\nAre you able to discipline yourself in order to do what needs to be done\nrather than what you want to do?</p>\n\n<p>Another useful workplace skill that you can develop during college is\nhow to organize your time,\nhow to work in teams,\nand how to juggle multiple classes + projects + assignments.</p>\n\n<p>Finally, another way to look at this decision is in terms of maximizing your minimum level of achievement.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>If you achieve good grades at school or quit school now,\nit may hurt your chances of getting a job at Google or Facebook in the future.\nSo you may regret this decision if your future desires/circumstances change.</li>\n<li>Conversely, if you go to school,\nyou would find yourself slightly more qualified\n(by being certified as having a degree)\nthan you would be without a degree.\nYour worst job offer with a good degree is probably at least as good as\nyour worst job offer if you drop out of school now.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>In the language of optimization,\ngetting a good degree is a more \"robust\" strategy.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 26426, "author": "Community", "author_id": -1, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>You should stay in school if you enjoy being in an academic environment. College isn't just a path for a career. It's about engaging with others, collaborating in projects, making connections.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/778", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/463/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 784, "author": "mac389", "author_id": 28, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>One goes to graduate school to work in a field or with a certain researcher. That person, accordingly should have specific enough goals before applying that tweaking a scattershot approach shouldn't apply. In the extreme, you are trying to get into only one place and so the focus is more on developing a relationship with the \"target\" there.</p>\n\n<p>That said, at least I have found my self in similar situations. As to bluffing. I think the best advice, if you feel the admissions officers are plumbing for advice is to say that you haven't found out yet. The advantage to bluffing is that it makes you look better inasmuch as one school will want another school's candidates. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 786, "author": "Community", "author_id": -1, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>As a first very generic rule, academia is very small world, and it's not unlikely at all that the members of the committee responsible for the interview know if the results for another school have been given or not. They might not know the results, but they might know that you know. </p>\n\n<p>As a second generic rule, lying is extremely badly perceived in academia, where the probity of a scientist is very important. If I were to interview a student, and if I suspect that the student is bluffing or lying, that would be an immediate no-go. </p>\n\n<p>As a third generic rule, competition is normal and welcome in Academia. When you apply for a school, or even later for a position, it's normal and even expected that you will apply to other places. If no-one asks, you don't necessarily have to put on your CV the list of schools from which you've been accepted/rejected, but if the question is asked, there is no shame in telling the truth. </p>\n\n<p>So, long story short, you don't have much to gain by lying or bluffing, but you have a lot to lose. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 787, "author": "David Ketcheson", "author_id": 81, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/81", "pm_score": 6, "selected": true, "text": "<p>As someone involved in graduate admissions decisions, I can say unequivocally that knowing a student has been denied admission at another program does not negatively influence my admissions decisions. I have all of the application materials from the student, and (assuming the applicant is strong) the decision is sufficiently important that I will certainly look at and evaluate all those materials. The decision of another school is not a useful indicator of whether I should admit you.</p>\n\n<p>Indeed, if you tell me you have an offer from another top program, I might even be more cautious about offering you admission. Why? If I make all my initial offers to students who end up going to other schools, then I have to go back and dig through the applications and find the ones that didn't already accept an offer, which by that time will be lower quality applicants. I know of one program where this happened last year and they resolved to make more strong offers to the second tier of (still quite strong) applicants this year.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 795, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Personally, I make it a point <em>not</em> to ask about alternate schools and programs that a candidate might be applying to in addition to my group. In this way, there is no bias on my part. If the candidate freely offers that information, I will of course take it into consideration, but I have not solicited it, and therefore there should be no compulsion on the part of the candidate to admit to things, one way or the other.</p>\n\n<p>That said, it's not in general a good idea to lie openly to academic institutions. As several other respondees have pointed out, it can be easily caught—particularly if you're in a small field. Moreover, there have been a number of high-profile cases in recent years of academics losing their jobs over misrepresentations of their credentials. So anything that even hints at dishonesty can get you into trouble. (Moreover, many schools do have an \"ethics\" clause in their admissions policies—and <em>intentionally</em> lying, either in the application or during interviews or a visit, can be construed in some cases as sufficient to lead to a retraction of an offer of admission!)</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3467, "author": "Pete L. Clark", "author_id": 938, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>You should be truthful in all your professional endeavors. Lying is unethical and unprofessional behavior which could be grounds for dismissal or worse. I say this as a blanket statement and stand by it, but obviously ethical standards and practices vary across different careers and walks of life. In academia, the feeling that lying is unethical bordering on repugnant is very strong. One should avoid it at all costs.</p>\n\n<p>The fact that you use the word \"bluffing\" is slightly distressing and shows that you may not yet have internalized the ethics of academia. <strong>Bluffing</strong> is something you do in poker. More generally, it is a game theoretic strategy designed to minimize information given to one's opponent. Saying that you've been accepted by a program when you have not been -- or, especially, when you have been rejected there -- is not bluffing, it's <strong>lying</strong>. </p>\n\n<p>People who feel strongly that lying is unethical also well understand that you are not obligated to give full information just because it is asked for. In some social situations an innocuous lie is more acceptable than a refusal to answer a question, but academia is not one of them. If someone asks you for information about your applications to other programs and you have any concerns that it may not be to your advantage to give out this information, simply say something like, \"I'm sorry, but I'm really not comfortable discussing that right now.\" As above, sometimes it feels impolite not to answer a question, so it is worth practicing a bit so as to be able to do it in a relatively graceful way.</p>\n\n<p>As for the question of whether different academic programs communicate with each other enough to make it a realistic chance that someone lying in this way will be caught out: absolutely yes. Academic circles are small, are populated by the same people for years and years on end, and almost invariably tend to contain at least a few people who are ridiculously -- almost preternaturally -- in the know about all kinds of personnel decisions.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/782", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/411/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 796, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<p>This is quite common in American universities, and there are probably thousands of start-ups that have arisen out of university-based research. The question of financing such a venture is of course a challenging one to answer, but with the right contacts, is usually available. </p>\n\n<p>I can think of at least four or five such start-ups in the department I attended for graduate school, and I imagine there are several more in the planning stages.</p>\n\n<p>As for how enthusiastic industry and VC's are, well, I think it depends entirely on the strength of the idea, and how \"market-ready\" the concept is. The sooner it's ready to go, the more enthusiastically people will flock to it.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 14917, "author": "Hedge Fund", "author_id": 10098, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10098", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think the main issue is that a lot of entrepreneural mindset is eliminated from faculty, but if the faculty has the right mindset there is no limitation to a venture, especially if the faculty has tenure. </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/792", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/411/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 807, "author": "lynxoid", "author_id": 476, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/476", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I have seen reading seminars done like this: in the beginning of the semester, professor publishes a full list of papers + a little extra that (s)he wants to cover. Each student then picks a paper or two and the date when they will present it. Then the student reads the paper, prepares a presentation on it, and speaks about it to the rest of the group. Presentation can be formal or informal (depending on the size of the class) and encourage other students to ask questions about the material. What I like about this approach is that 1) students get to pick a paper that will engage them 2) they have to read it and understand it so that they could present it to the group and be able to answer questions about it.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 13839, "author": "PhD", "author_id": 407, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/407", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Although it's quite a while since you posted this question but here's what I've seen been extremely effective (when I was a student for those courses).</p>\n\n<p>Course 1: A theory course with reading and understanding of advanced material</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>The professor took great effort in actually explaining everything using a chalk and board (better than PowerPoint for theoretical course IHMO). Of course, we were told to read the papers but he explained as if teaching in a chapter/concept in the lecture. Thereafter, he'd assign us some homework problems and we were allowed to do them in groups. Now, these HW problems were really innovative. They weren't part of any book. He would actually \"create\" them based on the ideas he was teaching. He would cast an existing problem, either from something he was working on or just create one and ask us to solve it. THAT was the master's stroke, IMHO. The entire class would bang their heads against the wall to solve them and learn a lot as a result. We could solve the problems but not always, but the fun part was applying what we learned, consequently requiring us to understand the material really well.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Course 2: Exact same format as you mentioned as well as that suggested by @lynxoid</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Nothing learnt. Honestly. Only the people assigned the papers actually read them. Maybe a few questions here and there but very little interaction other than some from the professor. Overall, the students weren't really happy with it. I barely even remember half the things from that class. But for the former, remember almost everything.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Another variation you could try with style #1 (I read about this somewhere): Tell them that you are going to tell one \"lie\" (false information) when explaining the material. They have to spot the lie by the end of class. If they don't, they have learned something that is not true. If they spot it, a small reward like a chocolate else, it's a HW due next week. This drives them nuts. You can make the lies progressively complex and sometimes not lie too (You can say that you lied when you told them that every lecture would have a lie :) I haven't tried this variation but will do so soon. I feel this is an excellent way to get them to master the course content.</p>\n\n<p>Hope this helps</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 37438, "author": "Sumyrda - remember Monica", "author_id": 13138, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13138", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I haven't been in a class like this but my husband recommends the following (as a student - he says he learned the most in this format):</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Professor assigns reading (1 paper/meeting)</li>\n<li>At the beginning of the meeting, more or less randomly select one student to be the advocate of the paper and one to criticize it.</li>\n<li>Have the two selected students lead the discussion - the others are encouraged to participate, too, after the selected students have given an overview of the paper together and each made their opening point.</li>\n<li>If the group runs out of material, the professor may help.</li>\n<li>If there are grades, students are graded on their participation in all the discussions - not just the ones they lead.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>The trick is the random selection. The students have to believe that they can be chosen to advocate or criticize the paper in any meeting, so they'll at least read it far enough to find one good point and one point to criticize.</p>\n\n<p>You can roll dice or draw straws at the beginning of the semester - toward the middle, you should pick the students who haven't had a turn yet, then after everybody had a turn, go back to straws/dice.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 111522, "author": "Adrian", "author_id": 94164, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/94164", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Best proseminar: </p>\n\n<p>Long list of papers and book chapters, about three per week, carefully chosen to be easy to read at first, then more wiley. </p>\n\n<p>We all had to write a précis on the same one of the papers each week. The other papers were related, usually contradicting each other about the same topic. At least everyone had read one of the papers so we could discuss.</p>\n\n<p>I learned how to read papers that way.</p>\n\n<p>At the end of the semester we all had to assign three papers to the class once and lead that discussion. </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/797", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 801, "author": "Henry", "author_id": 8, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>At least in my field (mathematics), there are people who do almost all their work collaboratively. Academia <em>can</em> be a good place for such people, but:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>It varies a lot, not only by field, but by subfield, so you'll want to take that into account when choosing a specialty. (Math has a lot of single authored papers, while the lab sciences have very few. I gather CS is somewhere in between, and that it depends on the area. Even within math, it depends on the particular subfield, sometimes for reasons that have more to do with culture than anything intrinsic to the subject.)</p></li>\n<li><p>If you're in an area where single authored papers are common, you'll eventually be expected to produce some, just to demonstrate that you're not be carried along by your co-authors.</p></li>\n</ol>\n" }, { "answer_id": 804, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The issue of independence is an important one, but it doesn't obligate you to work in isolation. Instead, what it means is that you are capable of generating and pursuing your own research ideas. This can be done in collaboration with others, but there's still needs to be some evidence that you can lead the effort.</p>\n\n<p>Some ways to show independence are to have some collaborative efforts where you are in the \"leadership\" positions—first or last author. If you can do this across multiple independent collaborations, preferably in multiple disciplinary areas, that will show that you have some lateral flexibility, which is among the hallmarks of an independent researcher.</p>\n\n<p>I don't see, in this day and age, the desire to work in teams as ruling out a career in academia. I might not lean towards it as a first choice—instead, I'd probably steer such a person into a research institute like a Max-Planck-Institut here in Germany, or a DOE lab in the U.S. Those offer more collaborative environments which would be a better \"fit\" for someone who prefers to be a team player than a team leader.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 805, "author": "Artem Kaznatcheev", "author_id": 66, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/66", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think I have a similar mindset. I like independent work, but I find that I am more motivated when working with others. However, I don't think that will hinder your ability to show that you are an independent researcher. As mentioned by @aeismail, the defining point of <strong>independence is that you are able to generate and pursue your own research ideas and agenda</strong>. If you do it alone or with others is irrelevant.</p>\n\n<p>In a lot of cases, like when you applying for positions, etc. You will have <strong>reference letters</strong> to accompany your CV. Thus, the author-list is not the only place to show your independence. In the letters your coauthors and mentors can attest to your independence.</p>\n\n<p>A <strong>research statement</strong> or cover letter also is a great place to highlight your independence. If you work with lots of different people, then you can show how all these projects tie into a broader theme which is distinctly your own. In computational science it could very well be a theme like \"I like developing information theoretic explanations for neural and multi-agent activity\" and then work with an auditory group, a cognitive group, and a population biologists can be great supporting evidence of the fact that your ideas and approach are unique and independent, not to mention widely applicable.</p>\n\n<p>Taking a <strong>leadership and organizational role</strong> is another clear way to show your independence. A personal example: I prefer to read and discuss papers with others, so I organized a reading group that meets weekly (ideally). A bit of my time gets consumed in organizing and managing this group, but it is more than made up for by the extra motivation I get to stay on top of the literature.</p>\n\n<p>As for the atmosphere; <strong>group-work is not an antithesis to academia</strong>. It is very important to show that you 'play well with others' and frequent collaboration is a great way to do so. Especially with the large push for multi-disciplinary work, being able to work with people of various background is a great asset. Further, as a faculty in a research university, one of the things you will be expected to do is supervise and teach students. This means you need experience in sharing and developing your ideas with others, something that working in isolation does not nurture.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 806, "author": "JeffE", "author_id": 65, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65", "pm_score": 6, "selected": true, "text": "<p>Collaboration is generally seen as a major strength in computer science and computational science, not a weakness. One of the biggest questions we ask about any faculty candidate in my department is \"Who in the department/college will they work with?\" We do occasionally hire faculty that work alone in their cave and occasionally emit theorems, but they're rare exceptions (and even they still work with their students).</p>\n\n<p>The most important thing is to <strong>establish a reputation as a leader</strong> in your collaborations, rather than a follower. You need to establish your own research agenda, instead of just following someone else's. More importantly, you need to be <em>seen</em> to have your own research agenda, instead of just following someone else's. Your agenda must be visible in your publication record, in your recommendation letters, and (eventually) in your funding record. To this end, it is <em>very</em> important to do a few things:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Limit your collaborations with more senior researchers, <em>especially</em> your advisor, <em>especially between getting your PhD and getting tenure</em>. As I've suggested elsewhere, publishing at least one paper without your advisor before you graduate is a strong signal of independence, even if you have other coauthors. Once you have your PhD, <strong>DO NOT</strong> publish with your advisor for at least a few years.</p></li>\n<li><p>Do not always publish with the same set of coauthors. It's fine to have two or three different groups of people that you always work with, as long as you can wind a consistent story that ties most of <em>your</em> work in those different groups together.</p></li>\n<li><p>(Once you have a permanent job:) Get at least one grant as a principal investigator, not just as a co-PI. Definitely join other grants as a co-PI, too, but you <em>must</em> have at least one grant with your name on top to get tenure.</p></li>\n</ul>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/800", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/386/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 811, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<p>Not necessarily. Copyright prohibits you from presenting the work as yours under any circumstances. In addition, it prohibits you from publishing or recopying large segments of the work, without securing the permission of the owner of the copyright.</p>\n<p>However, the existence of copyright does <em>not</em> exclude you from citing the work of others, nor mentioning what their key ideas are. Such use of copyright is covered by <a href=\"https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">fair-use guidelines</a> <a href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20210605143659/https://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">(archived version)</a>. Under these circumstances, though, you are still responsible for following the proper citation procedures of your university or the journal to which you are submitting the work under question. Note, however, that this is a tricky balance, and you should be careful to directly quote only the material you absolutely need to duplicate, as fair use is not an absolute guideline.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 819, "author": "JeffE", "author_id": 65, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>No. Copyright covers the verbatim text and figures, not the ideas.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 820, "author": "Jez", "author_id": 358, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/358", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The short answer: unless the document is marked \"confidential\" you can probably quote short passages verbatim and you can certainly make use of the <em>ideas</em>.</p>\n\n<p>To expand on some of the other responses given here: In most jurisdictions, copyright allows the protection of the <em>expression</em> of an idea (e.g. as written down in a book or article) but not the idea itself. Legal protection of ideas is covered by patent law, which is much more restrictive than copyright, with much shorter periods of protection.</p>\n\n<p>It's also worth knowing that phrases like \"All rights reserved\" are partly redundant these days in most countries – all works are copyrighted automatically, whether or not they include this phrase or similar. However, it's still useful to know who owns the copyright to a particular work.</p>\n\n<p>What is referred to as \"Fair Use\" under US copyright law may not exist or may be very different in other jurisdictions. For example, in the United Kingdom there is a rather more restrictive version called \"<a href=\"http://copyrighttoolkit.com/fair.html\">Fair Dealing</a>\".</p>\n\n<p>If you have some time to kill, <a href=\"http://www.law.duke.edu/cspd/comics/digital.php\">Bound by Law</a> is a useful comicbook-style introduction to copyright.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/810", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/90/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 815, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I'm afraid I'm not familiar enough with the structures for funding mathematics research to comment directly. However, there could be the possibility of doing research as a part-time \"job\" to help earn some money. Since it's part of the university, it's normally allowed under the immigration rules (although you should check this for yourself, and this does not constitute legal advice!).</p>\n\n<p>I would suspect, however, that in mathematics, this would be primarily the applied mathematics groups who would need such work, as they are more likely to have computer codes or experimental apparati to prepare and use. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 818, "author": "JeffE", "author_id": 65, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<p>Find the hallway where your department's faculty have their offices.</p>\n\n<p>Knock on the first door.</p>\n\n<p>When the professor answers, say \"Hi, I'm [name]. I'm a master's student, and I'm interested in doing research. Do you have some time to talk?\"</p>\n\n<p>Repeat for the remaining doors.</p>\n\n<p>(It also helps to have some idea what <em>kind</em> of research you want to do, and to do some background reading on the professors' research before you talk to them. We like it when students say \"I read your paper on X, and I have a few questions.\")</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 8876, "author": "Sara", "author_id": 6475, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6475", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>take a look at <a href=\"http://www.projectnudge.com\" rel=\"nofollow\">projectnudge.com</a>. They have a website that allows researchers to post and apply to research opportunities. I think in your case you can post a statement that you are a master's student interested in XXX and looking for collaborators to write a paper. If you want a collaborator who is a grad student or interested in a particular topic, just say so in your post.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/812", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 816, "author": "TCSGrad", "author_id": 79, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/79", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I'd say it depends, on how tangential the research field is from your primary focus, and how you came to work on that field. Researchers working on interdisciplinary fields often have this kind of a scenario (which I would label as an advantageous one) - it would help you in case you ever wanted to change your research focus, as the grant agencies could see from your publication track record that you have done publishable research on more than one research field.</p>\n\n<p>But, it might not be a very good idea to use funds/grants from your primary research focus for working on a different field. You should be able to show that these publications were <em>in addition to</em> the work that you published in your principal research area.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 817, "author": "JeffE", "author_id": 65, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65", "pm_score": 6, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I'm honestly surprised at the question. \"Primary\" does not mean \"only\"!</p>\n\n<p>If it's a good paper, then <em>of course</em> you should publish it. Aside from the obvious personal benefits of making you look more diverse, increasing your visibility in another field, and possibly creating opportunities for future collaboration, you're doing what research is for: expanding human knowledge. And if it's not a good paper, then <em>of course</em> you shouldn't publish it, even if it is in your primary field.</p>\n\n<p>But to echo shan23's comment: Don't use grants in area X to fund research in area Y.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 110448, "author": "user93360", "author_id": 93360, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/93360", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>This is an interesting question. I recently was interviewed for a job and one of the interviewers asked me about a couple of papers which were clearly outside of my field of specialization. She wanted to know 'what these papers say about me and my professional capacity'. I was not prepared... and I said something along the lines of that ... I observe everything and try to identify problems and give solutions, even in a field that I am not directly studying... which, by the way, is my true reason to venture outside of my field. Now, looking at some of the responses maybe I was not wrong to go out of my field and produce some publications. </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/814", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 822, "author": "Suresh", "author_id": 346, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Miniconferences and workshops are usually considered to be satellite events to a main conference. Often, these are on specialized topics, and often what starts as a workshop becomes a spin off conference of its own. </p>\n\n<p>So it's tricky to say that it's inferior, but depending on the workshop/miniconference it might certainly be more specialized. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 823, "author": "Lars Kotthoff", "author_id": 12, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<p>For the value of the publication, it will matter more how it is published than whether it's a workshop or conference. If the proceedings are published by a well-known publisher (i.e. with ISBN/ISSN), a workshop paper might be as \"valuable\" as a conference paper. If on the other hand there are no formal proceedings or just something like a folder, it would be less \"valuable\". That usually leaves the opportunity to publish the same paper elsewhere though.</p>\n\n<p>Most workshops in CS don't have formal proceedings, so in general it would be better to publish at a conference. That said, in some cases the reviewing process for a workshop/symposium might be more stringent. As smaller events are more specialised, the feedback you get on your work might be better than at a bigger event.</p>\n\n<p>I personally would always go for publication at a conference if I thought the content of the paper to be good enough.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1198, "author": "ESultanik", "author_id": 92, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/92", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I agree with everything that has been said so far, but I'd like to add that one way to more quantitatively judge the \"value\" of a publication is by looking at the acceptance rate of the venue. Many conferences in Computer Science are considered \"terminal\" publications because of their extremely competitive nature and low acceptance rates. There are other conferences, however, that have 50% or higher acceptance rates. Likewise, some workshops are very competitive while others have near 100% acceptance rates.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/821", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/411/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 825, "author": "Suresh", "author_id": 346, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The most effective way to shoot up the rankings is to <strong>focus</strong> on a few areas, make a number of high-profile hires in those areas, and aggressively publicize the institute and recruit students. This is exactly what places like IST Vienna and KAUST in Saudi Arabia are trying to do, and is also what various departments have done in the past to boost their profile. </p>\n\n<p>And yes, this takes a lot of money power. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 826, "author": "Fomite", "author_id": 118, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/118", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<p><strong>Money</strong></p>\n\n<p>First, there's very little way - I think - for a university to improve its standing across the board. Institutional reputation on the level of say, an Ivy League school, where everyone assumes each department must be excellent because they're at <em>Ivy</em> is a tall order, and one that I suspect is impossible.</p>\n\n<p>But in a particular field (or a particular School)? Money. And the willingness to take risks. A few ways to help:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Find a few key faculty members. Established researchers with very solid reputations, and see if you can poach them. This might not just be a question of \"how big of a check do we need to write\"? There are other factors. A considerable bump in prestige. Quality of living perks. The chance to shape a promising new department in ways that you rarely get in established departments - a chance to be the formative voice in something.</li>\n<li>Be looking for promising potential new hires. Maybe they're coming out of the universities you hired these key faculty members from. Maybe they're coming from top schools generally. A generous start-up package, extra lab space and internal funding, a generous tenure process - these are things that might lure top candidates away from a harder path at a more prestigious institution. It represents a risk for both parties - you might get a dud researcher with a good degree, and they might get a department languishing in obscurity. But if it works, it works very well for both.</li>\n<li>Buy something big. Are there no Expensive Piece of Equipment equipped centers in the region? Become the people who have one.</li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 827, "author": "Sylvain Peyronnet", "author_id": 43, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/43", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>In some countries, faculty members are public servants, since the state cannot give them more money, others ways have to be found to make positions attractive!</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Extra funding for PhD students and postdocs. The state gives \"free\" funding to universities (=outside grants), it is conceivable that, to be attractive, a university decides to give this funding to a freshly arrived faculty member.</li>\n<li>Less lectures/responsibilities. This is more touchy, but again, we can imagine that a new faculty member will have less lecture hours for a few years.</li>\n<li>Hiring in the same field. When you arrive in a lab where your field is not represented, it can be depressing. If your field become a priority, then the position become attractive (better to be with \"friends\" in a challenger university than alone in a top one).</li>\n<li>Preservation from bureaucracy. In some countries (France for instance), the administrative burden is heavy and a lot of faculty members are ready to sign up in any place that guarantees \"zero\" administrative tasks. </li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 828, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>@Sylvian raised many good intangible benefits, and I just wanted to add another one: <strong>Lab relocation.</strong> Labs take a while to set up, and training new techs takes a lot of time and effort, which translates into lost productivity. Offer to sponsor bringing over everyone from the old lab, including techs and large equipment, to speed up time to productivity.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1042, "author": "Langor", "author_id": 607, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/607", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Oftentimes PhD graduates from top schools join very low-ranked schools because their spouse or partner have tenure there or work in that region. Find a way to accommodate both of them and you have a winner.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/824", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/411/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 830, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>To answer some of your questions:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>While there's no set guideline, education often comes first. You should include the university where you earned your BS/BA (list major, GPA, and any honors), masters university (field, GPA, and thesis title if applicable), and doctorate university (field, GPA, thesis title). High school and similar degrees (including A-levels) should not be listed. Note that a brief (one to three sentence) explanation of your masters and thesis work may be useful here; most people in industry won't have any idea what \"Detailed Sprockification of Remonstrantized Grommits in Hypernormalized Framistans\" means, so a short layperson description will show (1) that you can communicate and (2) that you did cool stuff that they can understand.</p></li>\n<li><p>Work experience should include company, position title, responsibilities. You can summarize responsibilities in bullet points or short (two to three sentence) paragraphs, it makes no difference either way.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>To answer some things you left out:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Strongly consider adding an Objective Statement to the beginning of your resume. It should summarize your career goals in a sentence. Check out <a href=\"http://www.broward.edu/career/GetJobReady/Resumes/ObjectiveStatements/page5456.html\">this website which I found on Google</a> for some discussion of what this is.</p></li>\n<li><p>Include publications, teaching experience, grants awarded, trainees mentored, and notable community service (awards received, board memberships, etc).</p></li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 831, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>If you're living in the US or Canada, an important question to ask yourself is: </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Is this a résumé for industry and business, or is this a CV for a research-oriented field?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Pretty much all of the differences between the two boil down to this key difference.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>If you are applying for jobs in industry or business—essentially, any non-research-oriented field—your CV should be converted into a résumé format. This format will generally put work experience before education, and will be in general much briefer. A résumé should in general not exceed two pages in length; a CV can be as long as needed. With respect to your questions, you would need to list your high school diploma, although you wouldn't need to go into a whole lot of detail (list the type of degree, plus any major awards). I would list dissertation title if it's relevant to your work. For your job descriptions, I would include key duties and accomplishments in bullet form with active verbs (\"Directed X project.\" \"Completed milestone Y.\")</p></li>\n<li><p>If you are applying for further jobs in academia, then you need to maintain the CV format, so education should remain first. Your high school credentials don't really matter anymore, but the dissertation information remains important, and should be in the information section. Your job section doesn't need to be very detailed, even for the previous jobs: just the major areas worked on, and the major skills and accomplishments could be briefly summarized.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>If you might go in both directions, you should keep versions of both up-to-date; if you're staying in one side or the other for the foreseeable future, then you can focus on that. But in general, I would recommend keeping it up-to-date at all times!</p>\n\n<p>(Note: if you're living or working in Europe, then as Blundell comments below, and is corroborated <a href=\"http://theundercoverrecruiter.com/content/cv-vs-resume-difference-and-when-use-which\" rel=\"nofollow\">by some web sites</a>, you probably only need a CV.)</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/829", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/486/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 833, "author": "Suresh", "author_id": 346, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The process varies from place to place but in most places the technical determination is made by the department and to some extent the college. Higher levels of approval focus mostly on whether proper procedures have been followed. </p>\n\n<p>Having said that, when things go wrong they could go wrong at any level. Usually it's politics that derails cases at the higher levels rather than straight technical merits. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 834, "author": "JeffE", "author_id": 65, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65", "pm_score": 6, "selected": true, "text": "<p>Here's how it works at my university. There are several layers of votes; I've seen faculty turned down at almost every level. Once a negative vote is taken at any level, it is essentially impossible for the candidate to recover without an official appeal. (The appeals process is complicated.) On the other hand, I know of negative decisions that were successfully appealed at almost every level.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>April: the candidate submits their CV and other supporting materials.</p></li>\n<li><p>May: The department's promotion committee makes a go/no-go decision about whether to pursue the tenure case. <strong>A very small number of negative decisions are made here</strong>, but only in truly egregious cases.</p></li>\n<li><p>May: The department head chooses a subcommittee of three or four faculty from the promotions and tenure committee to shepherd the case through the department.</p></li>\n<li><p>June: The department solicits recommendation letters, some from people proposed by the candidate, but a majority from people chosen independently by the subcommittee.</p></li>\n<li><p>August: The subcommittee writes an internal evaluation of the candidate's research/teaching/service accomplishments/potential.</p></li>\n<li><p>September: The subcommittee presents the complete case (candidate's CV and statements, internal evaluations, and recommendation letters) to the complete departmental committee. The committee votes whether to recommend tenure. <strong>Most negative decisions are made here.</strong> Having a positive recommendation turned down at a higher level is fairly embarrassing for the department; it indicates that either the department did not do a thorough evaluation or (worse) tried to hide or excuse an obvious gap in the candidate's record. So this level tends to be the most stringent.</p></li>\n<li><p>October: The department head writes a one-page letter summarizing the case and the department's vote, and forwards the complete package to the dean.</p></li>\n<li><p>November-December: The college promotions committee does its own evaluation of the candidate and votes whether to recommend tenure. Evaluations are more likely to be based on measures of reputation and impact (reflected in publication record, citation patterns, funding history, and recommendation letters) than on actual quality of research. Faculty in the candidate's department are recused from any discussion. <strong>Some negative decisions are made here.</strong> </p></li>\n<li><p>January: The dean writes a one-page letter summarizing the case and the committee's vote, and forwards the complete package to the provost.</p></li>\n<li><p>February-April: The campus promotions committee does its own evaluation of the candidate (mostly, but not entirely, focusing on whether proper procedures have been followed) and votes whether to recommend tenure. Faculty in the candidate's college are recused from any discussion. <strong>A very small number of negative decisions are made here.</strong> Negative decisions at this level are more likely to involve problems with teaching (or raw politics) than with research, since measures of research quality and impact vary so wildly across campus.</p></li>\n<li><p>May: The provost writes a one-page letter summarizing the case and the committee's recommendation and forwards the complete package to the chancellor and university president. The provost also informs the candidate of the committee's recommendation. Officially, this is the first news that the candidate receives about their case.</p></li>\n<li><p>July: The chancellor and the president rubber-stamp the provost's recommendations, and then pass them up to the board of trustees, who rubber-stamp them again. (Officially, I think any of these three can overrule any recommendation for promotion, but I've never seen it happen, and it would probably cause a faculty <a href=\"http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-03-16/news/ct-met-u-of-i-letter-20120316_1_senator-in-anonymous-emails-faculty-chancellor-phyllis-wise\">revolt</a>.)</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Yes, the whole process really takes 15 months.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/832", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/77/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 836, "author": "Sylvain Peyronnet", "author_id": 43, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/43", "pm_score": 6, "selected": true, "text": "<p>My policy : the first time you contact the person, go with Mr. Doe (or Ms. Doe), but sign with your first name. The latter is a signal that you are OK with a \"first name email relationship\", from this point it will be so most of the time.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 838, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>You should follow the traditions in the region where the recipient is located. For an American or Canadian, I would probably follow @sylvain's advice, as that is the usual standard in the US—formal at first, but becoming less so as time and familiarity grows.</p>\n\n<p>However, here in Germany, I would continue to use the greeting \"Dear Mr./Mrs.\" until such time as I was <em>directly</em> invited to use their first name (this would be the same as the \"Sie\" to \"Du\" switch).</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 841, "author": "mindcorrosive", "author_id": 255, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/255", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>In Sweden, and I believe other Scandinavian countries, email communication is very informal, and communication is mostly on a first-name basis, even if you haven't met in person previously. I can call anybody by first name, even the CEO or an esteemed professor, and nobody would frown upon. Even students address (or at least should, nothing makes me feel older than somebody calling me Mr T., or worse, Sir) their tutors by their first name. </p>\n\n<p>I'd almost never use Mr/Mrs in an email when writing in Swedish, but I would do it more often if the recipient is foreigner and is not familiar with the small power distance in Swedish companies and universities. However, I'd usually be more formal when the circumstances require it -- applying for a job/grant, or sending official documents, for example.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Pro tip</strong>: -- <em>never</em>, <strong>ever</strong> call a Professor \"Mr. Smith\", if you are adressing them by family name. Always use appropriate academic titles, when applicable. I'd spare this for associate professors or below, but some academics in the country where I'm from are pretty prissy about this. </p>\n\n<p>Some academics are prideful, and you need to play to their weakness. Gain favour of such people by addressing them with a higher title than they currently have. A certain (then associate) professor which some would describe as \"a cerberus in a skirt\" was very friendly to me and helped me with administrative matters on a few occasions since I consistently addressed her as \"Prof. S.\", especially in front of other people.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/835", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/77/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 847, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Frankly, I don't place much weight on an isolated number; it doesn't tell me much in practice about a student's teaching abilities. That would have to be judged via direct interaction—watching them teach or otherwise interact with students. It's really impossible to expect students to be honest in their evaluation, unless they've provided comments; then you can at least see how much they've written; the more extensive the comment, the more likely it is to be sincere.</p>\n\n<p>As for what to do when a professor does a bad job, I don't think that it really makes that much of a difference in the nature of the TA's responsibilities; the main change is in the intensity of the work required. The TA, <em>along with the professor</em>, is responsible for helping students learn the material. If the professor isn't doing an adequate job, then that means the TA will probably need to work a bit harder and dedicate more time to achieve that goal. However, the TA should make sure she is taking care of her other requirements and needs at the same time. The TA position shouldn't consume someone's entire life (unless they are paid accordingly!). </p>\n\n<p>One possibility for how to do things, though, might be to prepare review sheets and guides based on the lecture material (or what the lecture material should have been). This will be good review, both for the TA and for the students!</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 852, "author": "JeffE", "author_id": 65, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<p>This is an <em>excellent</em> question, for faculty as well as students!</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><em>How important are these points in evaluating the teaching capabilities of a student?</em></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Obviously this varies significantly in different departments and institutions, but in my experience, the scores themselves are not that important.</p>\n\n<p>My department does pay attention to these numbers when allocating future TAships, but definitely not in isolation. Narrative reviews from the instructors carry significant weight. The people doing the assignments also know which courses are unpopular, and which instructors are irresponsible, and adjust the evaluation accordingly, at least in principle. In practice, there are only three evaluations: (1) truly outstanding TAs, who are considered for teaching awards; (2) truly abysmal TAs, who are not rehired, at least without retraining (and since we have a TAship requirement, this has teeth); and (3) everyone else.</p>\n\n<p>When we evaluate tenure-track faculty candidates, teaching ability is usually a second-order concern, but it is a concern. Poor evaluations on an applicant's CV are a red flag—why didn't they just omit them? Good evaluations are mostly a signal to look further. Teaching awards carry more weight. Recommendation letters that directly praise the applicant's teaching ability — with concrete and credible details — are even better. Similar issues arise when evaluating faculty for tenure, with one big difference: omitting the teaching scores is not an option.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><em>How does one ensure that the students are sincere in their evaluation?</em></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>You can't. Sorry.</p>\n\n<p>However, I <em>believe</em> you can increase the fraction of sincere (and positive) responses by consistently treating your students with respect. Make your expectations clear from day one, and enforce them consistently. Invite feedback throughout the semester, and respond to it quickly and appropriately. Apologize quickly for mistakes, thank students publicly for useful suggestions, but do not buckle on high standards. Give timely, consistent, and useful feedback on coursework. Above all, <strong>do not waste your students' time</strong>; the correlation between hard work and low evaluations is much higher if the students don't see any benefit to doing the work.</p>\n\n<p>&lt;Insert standard confirmation bias warning here.&gt;</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><em>How does the TA make the best of a bad job [if the instructor is irresponsible]?</em></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>First, do your own job as best as you can.</p>\n\n<p>Second, raise your concerns with the instructor; be respectful but brutally honest. If the instructor is unresponsive, raise your concerns with your instructor's boss; be respectful but brutally honest. (Note: Disagreement is <em>not</em> the same as being unresponsive.) If your instructor's boss is also unresponsive, your department doesn't really care about poor teaching; they're likely to ignore your evaluations, even if they are low.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><em>Apart from holding weekly office hours and lenient grading(!), what is the maximum a TA can do, after all?</em></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>There are many more things that TAs <em>can</em> do. At a minimum, hold office hours that the students actually find useful; don't just show up. Distribute practice problems, and offer feedback on the students' solutions. Hold weekly review/discussion/problem-solving sessions. As aeismail suggests, write review notes. If the instructor covered too much, distill down their main points; if the instructor didn't cover enough, expand on the key ideas they missed. Offer to give a few guest lectures, and then give <em>fantastic</em> guest lectures.</p>\n\n<p>More self-servingly: <strong>Make sure the students see you working to overcome your instructor's shortcomings.</strong> If the students <em>don't</em> see you fighting on their behalf (even if you are), they'll write you off as yet another useless academic, like your instructor. But if you can make them believe you're on their side, they'll reward you. I think this is why students often reward \"lenient grading\"; if the students think the coursework is a waste of time, they'll see lenient graders as their allies.</p>\n\n<p>Obviously this all takes time. As aeismail says, TAs usually have many other responsibilities, especially to their own classes, projects, research, families, and sanity. It is frighteningly easy for committed and caring TAs to find themselves being abused by less committed instructors (or even departments). <strong>Set limits.</strong></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 853, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>From my experience, student evaluations are simply a measure of how well the <em>students</em> think you are doing in teaching them. Keeping in mind the phrase attributed to Henry Ford,</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would have said \"a faster horse\".</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>note that the students can often give feedback on your current teaching methods, but they rarely suggest <em>better</em> teaching methods. From my experience, the evaluations are not viewed as important, but are meant more for the TA to improve their teaching skills. You can ensuring sincerity by being sincere in your teaching. If you're appropriately enthusiastic about teaching the material, the students will notice and appreciate it. Beyond that, some students will be cynical and apathetic to the process, and there's really not much you an do about it.</p>\n\n<p>The best way to make use of the situation is to use it as a learning experience, as it's intended! Chances are, you'll be asked to teach in the future, may as well use this opportunity to try out different teaching methods to see what works for you.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/846", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/411/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 850, "author": "Community", "author_id": -1, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Most universities are fine with having PhD students working as instructors/lecturer/teaching assistant at the same time, and it's actually quite common. I have personally been teaching at undergrads level while doing my PhD, and most of my friend who did a PhD were in the same situation. </p>\n\n<p>However, it depends on the amount of hours you are spending a week with teaching: if it's taking all of your time, you might not be able to do research in good conditions, and it might be hard to find a professor that would agree to supervise you if you're not available to work on your PhD. Basically, if you combine a part-time teaching/part-time PhD, that should be fine, but if you combine a full-time teaching with a part-time PhD, that might not reasonable. </p>\n\n<p>Concerning where you should apply for the PhD, in general, you can do it in a different university than the one where you're teaching. However, in some cases, it might be more interesting to do it at the same place because you might not have to pay the tuition fees. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 851, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Following up on Charles's answer, I think the situation depends strongly on what discipline you are in.</p>\n\n<p>Working as an instructor or lecturer as a <em>primary</em> instructor in a course suggests to me that you are working in the humanities; in general, such positions do not exist in the sciences and engineering (with the exception of courses taught by \"visiting\" or \"adjunct\" industrial lecturers, who may have work experience but not the normal Ph.D.). </p>\n\n<p>In contrast, in the humanities, it is, as Charles said, quite common for people with master's degrees to teach courses, although again it is, in my experience, more common for them to teach \"seminar\"-style courses, rather than large lectures. </p>\n\n<p>It may or may not be the case that the instructor of such a course is enrolled in the department to study for a Ph.D.; it depends on the specific policies of the department, and you should ask if this possible at the time of application. </p>\n\n<p>(These are my observations on what is \"standard\"; of course, there are exceptions to every rule!)</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/849", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 855, "author": "Mike Lawrence", "author_id": 139, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/139", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>If you want to sync refs across multiple users but don't want to host in the cloud, you should check out <a href=\"http://sparkleshare.org\" rel=\"nofollow\">sparkleshare</a>. You'd set up a git repo on a local server to host a bibtex file, then have your users install sparkleshare on their computers and connect to the git repo. You would then use Mendeley, which has a bibtex syncing option. This will achieve a system that will distribute new refs added by any user.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 856, "author": "Andy W", "author_id": 3, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/3", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>For small scale projects, such as you and a few other authors working on paper(s), I would just consider plain text file (with standardized fields) in a location you can all access (plus version control). Bibtext would be an obvious solution (and most reference software that I know of can import bibtext files). Easy and minamalist to implement and update. Mike's answer seems like a better solution than this, but this is dependent upon all the members of the group utilizing such software, which sometimes isn't worth the effort to get people to convert.</p>\n\n<p>For large scale operations (like you need to enter in over 1,000 papers for a lab) I would consider rolling your own database + user forms to enter in data. Fields you want from papers are fairly easy to delineate, so setting up the initial database is not too dificult. Here are a few other reasons this is nice;</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>You can have flexibility to put what you want in the database. For instance if you were conducting a meta analysis you may want to extend forms to include relevant statistics.</li>\n<li>Querying on a variety of characteristics becomes trivially easy. </li>\n<li>If you are saavy enough with the database, you can write some scripts to export the data in whatever format you want. For instance, I use the one statistical software I am most proficient in (so not a true database, but several seperate tables) to write my bibtext library, plain text citations in approximate APA format, and VBA code to find-and-replace latex like citations in word documents. </li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Alot of flexibility with your own database, and if you are doing a very large project it might be worth the upfront effort to develop and customize to suit your own needs.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 858, "author": "David Ketcheson", "author_id": 81, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/81", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I accomplish this using the groups feature of <strong><a href=\"http://www.mendeley.com\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Mendeley</a></strong>. It works on all three major OS's, allows you to share bibliographies easily with both your group and external collaborators. It also allows something that I think is very important -- lots of bibliographies on particular topics within the realm of what my group does. See, for example </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.mendeley.com/groups/1045561/runge-kutta-stability-regions/papers/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">http://www.mendeley.com/groups/1045561/runge-kutta-stability-regions/papers/</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.mendeley.com/groups/1070421/nonlinear-hyperbolic-pde-solvers-on-gpus/papers/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">http://www.mendeley.com/groups/1070421/nonlinear-hyperbolic-pde-solvers-on-gpus/papers/</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>I should mention that Mendeley's web interface to bibliographies is awful. But the desktop interface is quite nice and (most importantly) can export Bibtex.</p>\n\n<p>Mendeley does store your data in the cloud (if you consider a bibliography to be \"your data\").</p>\n\n<p><em>Update</em>: I stopped using Mendeley when it was bought by Elsevier. I haven't found a satisfactory replacement.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 859, "author": "Suresh", "author_id": 346, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Why not just use vanilla git ? Everyone sets up their private repo and you can use github for shared syncing as needed. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 860, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>If you're using LaTeX, you can set up a .bib file on a shared drive and everyone can reference and add to it as necessary using whatever program they like. I'm a fan of <a href=\"http://bibdesk.sourceforge.net/\">BibDesk</a>, personally.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 862, "author": "Community", "author_id": -1, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>If you have a PHP server running somewhere, I would definitely recommend <a href=\"http://aigaion.de/about\">Aigaion</a>. From the website, they say:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Aigaion provides a bibliography management environment that supports a user in just this: Organizing and managing a complete bibliography, from small personal bibliographies to bibliographies for e.g. a complete research department.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I've been using it in the past on a project, and it's really helpful to manage a bibliography for an entire group: you can define collections, you can annotate each entry, and you can export easily the bibliography at least to Bibtex and RIS (probably more, but I don't remember exactly, as I was using only Bibtex). You can at the same time manage references to be read by students, and publications generated by the group. Plus, it's open source :)</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 5224, "author": "gerrit", "author_id": 1033, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1033", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>We used to maintain our own list on our (sadly now defunct) group website when I was a PhD student. The sources for the group website are in a shared (internal) version control repository to which we all have access. We maintained three shared bibtex-files:</p>\n<ol>\n<li><p>one for internal references — everything any of us ever published</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>one for external references — anything not internal any of us has ever cited or found otherwise useful</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>one for new references; we go through them at our weekly meetings, then merge them into (2).</p>\n</li>\n</ol>\n<p>Simple, but works very well.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 8508, "author": "Jonas Stein", "author_id": 4142, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4142", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The solution is the open source <code>I, librarian</code> server. It manages bibliography for groups. You can try it out online here: <a href=\"http://www.bioinformatics.org/librarian/\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://www.bioinformatics.org/librarian/</a>\nLook for \"demo\"</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/854", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 864, "author": "recluze", "author_id": 501, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/501", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I've had great experience with Google Scholar Alerts. To use them, go to scholar.google.com and search for any term. In the results page, you will see a link to <code>Create Email Alert</code>. Click on that and create the alert to send you notifications. </p>\n\n<p>One very good use of this is to follow specific papers. For example, I have a star paper of mine that I'm currently extending and I like to keep track of who is citing this paper. So, I search for the paper on scholar. In the results page (just under the result for the paper I'm concerned with), there's a link <code>Cited by 'n'</code>. Click on that and you get results for only those papers that cite this article. Now, create an alert on this page. This way, whenever someone refers to this paper (and Google finds out about it), you get an email. Do this for all the important literature in your field and Alerts will make sure you are kept abreast of your field. </p>\n\n<p>Never miss out on an important finding! </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 869, "author": "mert", "author_id": 399, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/399", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Recently I found out that Microsoft Research can be really helpful for people in academia. You can subscribe to conferences, journals, institutions or even authors by the subscription at the right top for the page. For example, check <a href=\"http://academic.research.microsoft.com/Conference/40/icse-international-conference-on-software-engineering\" rel=\"nofollow\">this page</a> for ICSE.</p>\n\n<p>Plus, in the <a href=\"http://research.microsoft.com/c/1043\" rel=\"nofollow\">Publications</a> section you can sort/filter publication in various ways. <a href=\"http://academic.research.microsoft.com/\" rel=\"nofollow\">The Academic Search</a> section gives significant information about professors and even colleges.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 133541, "author": "EssenceBlue", "author_id": 110305, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/110305", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"https://www.semanticscholar.org\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Semantic Scholar</a> got all you want and constantly improves using SOTA technologies. Far better than google scholar.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/861", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/121/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 865, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<p>It may not be necessary to wait until you've reached the end stages of your career to have time to explore your research. </p>\n\n<p>If you are able to get fellowships to fund your graduate career—or to find a suitably understanding advisor—then it may be possible to \"slow down\" your graduate career. In such a case, you'd be able to handle things at your own pace (within reason). That's how I managed to take my time doing my Ph.D., and it allowed me to work on problems I was interested in, rather than other problems.</p>\n\n<p>Similar funding does exist at the professional level, such as \"named\" fellowships at the US Department of Energy (DOE) laboratories, and through grants like the MacArthur Fellowship (also known as the \"genius grant\"). It is certainly not easy and straightforward to do, but it could be a way to get the freedom to work without additional responsibilities.</p>\n\n<p>Outside of academia, I don't think the situation improves much. For instance, at the DOE laboratories, you're only able to pursue your own research if you're able to secure your own funding to do so (or have moved so far up the chain that you are a laboratory \"fellow,\" and can do what you want). Similarly, in industrial research institutes, I suspect similar issues apply (you might not have to worry about writing grants the same way you do in academia, but you'll still be expected to \"justify your existence\" on a fairly regular basis.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 2046, "author": "Dan C", "author_id": 1069, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1069", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Some of the slower pace and autonomy that you're looking for may be available to you once you finish your classes and pass your prelim (or qualifying exam; the name may vary, but most PhD programs have some sort of exam, after which you are \"all but dissertation\"). This is an important aspect to consider when choosing your PhD adviser. </p>\n\n<p>My adviser allowed me quite a bit of freedom to work on problems that I picked. As a result, grad school took me a little longer, but I think I was better prepared for life afterward, when I did not work closely with a supervisor. Through high school, undergrad, and the start of grad school I had a \"get through fast\" mentality. Once I got a few years into grad school, I changed my view more to \"take time to learn the stuff you want to learn\". If you do stay in academia, the clock really starts when you finish your PhD.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/863", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/505/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 871, "author": "Bravo", "author_id": 411, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/411", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>From what I could glean from this story, one thing is clear: you are confusing yourself a lot and your thinking is quite muddled possibly because of a few adverse experiences. Think on these lines:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>What is the 'new' area to which you want to move to? Do you <em>really</em> love the challenges it poses? \n<ol>\n<li>If yes, find some nice professors to work with, mail them asking about positions. Forget about your age, the number of years it will take and a host of other details: if you are passionate, the passion will carry you through the doctorate.</li>\n<li>If no, ask yourself if you are passionate about the one you are working on. From what you have written you do not seem to be so. Even your publications seem to carry this 'ulterior' motive of getting a better grad school. If you do not love your PhD, then you should seriously consider moving to the industry.</li>\n</ol></li>\n<li>You have publications under your name, so it is unlikely that a professor <em>can</em> \"sabotage\" your application and more unlikely that he <em>will</em>. Get over the bad experiences with your first professors soon! Don't call yourself a \"quitter\", instead admit you have been working on a few research problems but do not want to work on them for a doctorate.</li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 872, "author": "Community", "author_id": -1, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>That might depend on the field, but you don't have to <em>love</em> your topic to get your PhD. You are not defined by your PhD topic, and it is usually possible to change topic later in your career. For instance, the topic of my first postdoc was quite different to the topic of my PhD. </p>\n\n<p>So, of course, it's better to do a PhD on a topic you love with an advisor you love, in a university you love, but it's not always possible, and since you already have some papers in your current topic (which somehow says that you have at least some interest in it), and you appreciate your current advisor, then you can consider doing your PhD on this topic, and once you got it, then you can move on. You can also try to establish collaborations during your PhD with professors working on the topic you love, for instance by attending summer/winter schools on this topic. </p>\n\n<p>Getting a PhD is not like taking an oath to work on the same topic for the rest of your life, it's simply getting a degree stating that you're able to do research. That being said, if you are accepted to a program that is exactly what you love, then there shouldn't be any harm in going for it, but it might not be worth to jeopardize your current situation. </p>\n\n<p>EDIT: To illustrate that a postdoc can be indeed on a different topic than the PhD, I can for instance refer to aeismail's answer: <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/844/102\">https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/844/102</a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 883, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>To answer your direct question, I can only think of two reasons:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>You began your research thinking you'd be interested in a particular topic, but as the research progressed and you became more familiar with the field your interest waned.</li>\n<li>You have an end goal which requires familiarity with a particular area, and there are a number of ways you can approach that goal. You pursue a PhD in a field where you think it would be easiest to become familiar with that goal, despite the fact that you're less interested in the PhD than the ultimate goal.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>The first reason, from my educated guess, is very common. The second probably much less so. Do note, though, that as Charles said, your degree is often very portable; someone with a math degree can likely successfully apply for positions in other related fields (engineering, statistics).</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 898, "author": "dearN", "author_id": 21, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/21", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>No, it won't prevent you from continuing elsewhere but from personal experience it would be easier to move laterally perhaps in your own university. However there are some questions that you must ask yourself:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>How far into your PhD program are you?</li>\n<li>What about the current topic don't you like and is there anything you can do to develop an interest in this? Very often, the more time you spend with a topic, a better sense of the same you have which can help in looking at it from a <em>better</em> perspective.</li>\n<li>Is it your subject area that is bothering you or do you really want to move to an other university?</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Moving schools has it's downsides:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Course requirements would need a reboot for you.</li>\n<li>You may have to take your qualifiers again.</li>\n<li>Building new relationships and networking will be a challenge (not impossible, just challenging)</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Did you talk to your current adviser about your quandary? </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 16964, "author": "h22", "author_id": 10920, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10920", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Nothing is preventing you from trying PhD in another laboratory at least one or two times. It is appropriate, in some cases may be recommended and is usually accepted as a normal case.</p>\n\n<p>Maybe if it is an adjacent laboratory next door, a potential new supervisor may not want to conflict with your former supervisor, but this seldom expands outside one institution, and even there largely depends on personalities involved.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/870", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/514/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 878, "author": "Andy W", "author_id": 3, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/3", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>You may be potentially interested in <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropology\" rel=\"nofollow\">anthropology</a> programs. Although anthropology can be a very diverse field, all I am familiar with (not many FWIW) have a devoted concentration for archaeology related studies/methodology. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 888, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>At least at American universities, there are very few majors that require specific preparation beyond the \"standard\" high school diploma program. That would generally mean something like: four years of English, three years of math and science, two or three years of social sciences, and other courses as needed to round out the curriculum. </p>\n\n<p>Schools in other countries may (and generally do) have different requirements. So you'll need to look up the specifics of the departments and programs you're interested in to find out what courses you'll want to take.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 889, "author": "Sylvain Peyronnet", "author_id": 43, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/43", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>It is very difficult to answer with very little information. Archaeology is a very vast transversal field. It can be decomposed by techniques, by periods or by the targeted cultures. So the first question you need to ask yourself is whether you want to be an archaeologist (expertise in techniques) or a specialist of a period or culture (egyptologist for instance).</p>\n\n<p>In the first case, scientific majors in high school is probably better than others, but this is not very important after all. However, be advise that excavation techniques are related to \"dirt on the hands\" techniques, but also to some top notch scientific techniques (specially for the analysis, where you may need knowledge of stats, paleontology, zoology, botany, chemistry, etc.).</p>\n\n<p>In the second case, I would advise to start quickly to acquire a strong background in art history and ancient languages (starting with greek and latin). I will be easier to learn linguistic and semiology afterwards. I guess that both art history and ancient languages can be learned at the high school level in most countries.</p>\n\n<p>At the university, students usually progress concurrently in archaeology techniques and culture specialization.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 899, "author": "mankoff", "author_id": 185, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/185", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Anything skill can be used in archeology from comp sci to law to anthropology to zoology. Cross boundary is good. Pick something you like (mobile phones and CS from your bio?) and tie it in. If I wanted to work in archeology I would use my CS and Kinect hacking skills to make 3D models of sites, for example. </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/877", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/447/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 880, "author": "Suresh", "author_id": 346, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<p>Assuming the mentoring has a measurable successful outcome (student goes to grad school, student writes paper), the NSF would definitely look kindly on such mentoring. Whether the time spent doing this will (minute for minute) be a better value than writing an impactful paper - probably not. But that reasoning is of course flawed - you don't know ahead of time whether the time you spend writing that paper will pay off :). </p>\n\n<p>As with most other things, do it if you care about the mentoring process and enjoy working with undergraduates. Don't do it if the primary goal is to get the bullet on your CV. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 881, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I don't know whether your grant or job applications will benefit from the experience. However, it will provide you with some immeasurably useful management experience, which you may not be able to gain otherwise. I know that my experience managing undergraduates during my graduate career - directing their research project with them, helping them design and put together experiments, and helping them write papers (or, more likely, having them help you write papers) - was an excellent first experience for me in dealing with issues that professors managing a lab have to deal with on a regular basis. For that alone I would strongly recommend mentoring.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 886, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I have to take a middle road between Suresh and eykanal's answers: mentoring of undergraduates will most likely help you in job applications; I'd believe this to be true whether you're applying to academia or industry or to non-traditional jobs. The reason is that supervising students provides you with direct <em>management experience</em>, which is almost always beneficial when being considered for employment.</p>\n\n<p>However, it is less clear that mentoring an undergraduate would help you in a meaningful way on a grant application. The reason for this is that, in general, there's no logical place to bring such information up in the grant application! In a standard CV, you could list \"students supervised\" as a normal part of the document; however, according to the current guidelines <a href=\"http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/pappguide/nsf11001/gpg_2.jsp#IIC2f\" rel=\"nofollow\">for the NSF reduced CV format</a>, the only real way that they can be counted is if they wrote a thesis under you, and perhaps as an aggregate count. In the long run, though, the NSF is really interested in graduate students and postdocs supervised.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 936, "author": "bobthejoe", "author_id": 319, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/319", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I've sat on graduate student committees that have met with faculty candidates for our department in a research university with a sizeable undergraduate population. The mentorship track record and the result of that mentorship are probably the most important factors that we considered after the intellectual capacity of the candidate.</p>\n\n<p>In our case, dealing with whiny grade-obsessed premeds who don't understand basic concepts is part of the job description. There is also a noticeable volume of undergrads who do research. A future PI who doesn't want to be in a teaching environment is already in the wrong place. A future PI who hasn't considered the fact that they would be in a teaching environment doesn't have a clear vision of where they want to be.</p>\n\n<p>As a potential faculty mentor, they are a potential mentor to a graduate student like yourself. An ability to mentor undergrads without a high attrition rate tells you that they are able to create an environment that doesn't scare the student away as well as an environment that keeps the student to come back. Sounds like a faculty advisor that I would want to have available for future students like me. Conversely, an inability to mentor suggests that they mentor either drove their student into pieces or wasn't able to or weren't patient enough to design suitable experiments to teach difficult concepts to a young mind. If one wasn't able to do this with an undergrad, what would happen with a 1st year PhD student who may be stuck with them for the next 6 years? </p>\n\n<p>Mentoring undergrads provides a solid and universal metric of a candidate's ability to mentor. They are probably the most difficult type of advisee to mentor and the past history of mentorship does provide a nice projection to one's path as an academic.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/879", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/386/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 887, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<p>The reason for using \"her\" more frequently nowadays is to correct an ongoing imbalance: in general, for a long time, \"his\" has been used, even where a more neutral pronoun (\"one\") should have been used instead. </p>\n\n<p>Grammatically, however, any of the recipes you suggest would be appropriate: it is only the matter of the particular taste of the author. I would recommend, though, that when using both \"he\" and \"she,\" that you use one consistently throughout a particular usage. Don't write \"she/her\" in one sentence, and then \"he/his\" in the one after. A few paragraphs later won't be a problem, though. </p>\n\n<p>The reason \"one\" is not nearly as popular is that it is somewhat awkward-sounding; too many \"one\" and \"one's\" in the same sentence makes it feel too stiff and impersonal. (It's a bit of a catch-22, I know, but that's the way it is!)</p>\n\n<p>One other option that you did not mention, though, may be the simplest route of all: simply use collective plural pronouns: use \"they,\" \"their,\" and \"theirs.\" It gives you the benefit of including everybody, without having to contort your writing to do so.</p>\n\n<p>(I would also comment that some books go out of their way to be gender-neutral, particularly through the use of \"gender-neutral\" names: Chris, Sam, Pat, Jean, and so on.)</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 895, "author": "Tangurena", "author_id": 109, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/109", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Some authors alternate sexes between chapters or sections in an attempt to sound more gender balanced. </p>\n\n<p>While \"they\" has historically been the correct pronoun to use when sex is unknown or irrelevant, some grammarians took offence to the usage of \"they\" as it is also a plural pronoun while he/she/it are singular. </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/885", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/411/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 891, "author": "JeffE", "author_id": 65, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65", "pm_score": 6, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I don't think there are any \"official rules\". (I can't even find a clause in my employment contract that officially requires me to list my university on my papers.)</p>\n\n<p>But as long as you are a student, it's a good idea to list your university as an affiliation. Even if the university isn't paying you, you do benefit indirectly from the intellectual environment and resources that the university provides: professors, fellow students, library, internet, health insurance, nearby coffee shops, and so on. It costs you nothing to be generous. Also, for better or worse, <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/306/is-it-possible-take-take-part-in-a-research-project-if-im-not-a-part-of-a-unive\">readers will take your paper more seriously</a>.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 26175, "author": "Marxos", "author_id": 19703, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/19703", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The student should talk with their department and let a professor advise, acting on behalf of their Institution. This would be to help the Department find interesting work by students as well as helping the student with professional advice.</p>\n\n<p>In any case, they can list the university they are enrolled in without suggesting that it was <em>sponsored</em> by the university. -- unless the University has explicitly set policies otherwise (for some boneheaded reason).</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/890", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/58/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 893, "author": "Pedro", "author_id": 495, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/495", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<p>As a graduate student I had to grade exams for the courses my supervisor taught. We had a very intricate system of establishing what would be a passing grade:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Prepare a set of questions.</li>\n<li>Let all the Teaching Assistants (TAs) solve the problems, keeping track of how long they took for each question.</li>\n<li>Distribute an arbitrary number of points over the questions relative to how much time, on average, was spent on each question by the TAs.</li>\n<li>Let the students take the exam.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Let me be very explicit that until this point, <em>no grading scale has been established</em>!</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Mark the exams. This just consisted of going through the questions and assigning points for correct solutions, partially correct solutions, etc... Every question was marked by a different TA and this TA was free to distribute points as he/she saw best. Usually we would go through a pile of 10-20 exams, see how the problems were solved, e.g. what pitfalls were encountered or how far most people got, and then establish a scheme we would use for the rest of the exams.</li>\n<li>Every TA hands in an exact description of how they marked their question, i.e. how points were assigned.</li>\n<li>With this list, go through the questions one by one and decide what constituted the minimum requirement in each question. This decision was signed-off by my supervisor.</li>\n<li>Using the marking schemes written by the TAs, calculate how many points the minimum requirements would have given if they had been handed in as an exam.</li>\n<li>The number of points for the minimum requirements constitute a passing grade. Anything below that fails, anything above that passes.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>In my university, grades were on a scale from 1 (fail), over 4 (pass), to 6 (perfect) in steps of 0.25 grade points. This gives us three grades to map zero, the minimum requirement, and the maximum number of points to respectively. This can be fitted to a function $G(p) = ap^2 + bp + c$ which maps points $p$ to a grade $G(p)$.</p>\n\n<p>The advantage of this approach is that it is, in principle, independent of the TAs specific style of marking, as the marking is taken into account when computing the minimum requirement points. It is also completely non-competitive in that it's independent of the students' actual performance during the exam. To make sure our decisions were sound, my supervisor and I would go through the 10 exams just below and just above the passing grade and see if they were all clear pass/fails. They usually all were. When not, it was usually just a matter of tweaking the rounding.</p>\n\n<p>There is an open question regarding the amount of time given to the students, e.g. is it possible for them to solve all the questions, and thus is the mapping of maximum points to maximum grade justified? Here we played it safe by choosing only a few questions to make sure nobody would run out of time. The point is that if you do or don't know how to solve a problem, time won't be an issue. We also had two-hour exams, which gave the students ample time to show what they could, and what they couldn't do.</p>\n\n<p>This system also works if you're the only person marking all the exams.</p>\n\n<p>I would be very interested if anybody could suggest improvements or detect amendable flaws in this scheme, as it is what I plan to use myself, now that I'm a lecturer.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 894, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The alternative is to assign grades based on non-curved performance, with cutoffs for each letter grade. That's pretty standard in many universities. The problem is you may have to wait a few semesters to optimize what the cutoffs should be, as you'll be failing or passing too many students in the beginning.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4790, "author": "Leon palafox", "author_id": 2806, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2806", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>In Mexico, the grading system is a scale that goes from 1-10 with a passing mark on 6-7 (depends on the professor)</p>\n\n<p>Also, some professors would do global test averaging at least once in the semester, that is, make everyone take the test, and the average of the whole class is the mark for each student for that test.</p>\n\n<p>One particular professor wouldn't say which test was this going to be (the first, second or third) so you had people making sure everyone knew the bare minimum to get a good mark for every test.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4806, "author": "Community", "author_id": -1, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I was a TA last semester for a professor, and we had a pretty good system for giving out grade.</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Make the exam rubric.</li>\n<li>Grade the exams. The people who did great, the rubric was not applied to. They were just given full marks.</li>\n<li>For people who did not do so well, we used the rubric to award as many points as we could.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>With this system, there is no direct competition, e.g., someone doing better does not make you worse off. In fact, with this system, it is possible for a class of good students to all make A's. Of course, that doesn't happen in practice though, since class performance is almost always a bell curve.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 47277, "author": "user0721090601", "author_id": 35918, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/35918", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>What you're calling a competitive grading system is known pedagogically as <em>norm-referenced</em> assessment. There are a number of ways to do this, but is based in the principle that a sudent's performance is judged in reference to other students.</p>\n\n<p>The opposite is known as <em>criterion-referenced</em> assessment. Its name is quite appropriate — you set up criteria. If the student meets the criteria, they get the grade. </p>\n\n<p>Rubrics are one way to do this that gives off a strong air of fairness (although sometimes might not jive with what holistically makes sense…see clustro's answer for one way around that). </p>\n\n<p>But most people I know think when designing the methods of assessment think about three things (maybe not consciously, though):</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>What performance would indicate that a student is competent in the material I have taught, such that they can adequately take follow-up courses and succeed there? (grade: C)</li>\n<li>What performance would indicate that a student has mastered the expectations for the course? (grade: B)</li>\n<li>What performance would indicate that a student has gone beyond mastery of the basic expectations for the course? (grade: A) </li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>For example, let's say we have an exam on the preterite in Spanish (where there are both regular and irregular verbs). A C-level student ought to get most, but not quite all regular verbs, and have mixed performance on irregulars. A B-level student ought to have all the regular verbs, while having mixed performance on the irregulars. An A-level student would excel in all, consistently. </p>\n\n<p>On the other hand, a D-level student might demonstrate cursory knowledge of verb formation, but not be able to apply it any remotely consistent manner. And an F-level student would be clueless.</p>\n\n<p>What criteria you use will depend greatly on the topic, and there are many ways to design exams. For the aforementioned verb test, you might give 60-70% regular verbs and 30-40% irregular. Based on the criteria given, you could expect grades to fall in the appopriate letter category (based on a 10pt scale).</p>\n\n<p>For a longer mathematics problem, you might distribute points in a rubric over things like, does the student how to set up the problem? do they know how to solve it? were the calculations accurate? Obviously a student who can understand how to set it up and solve it, but makes a few calculation errors has met the criteria for passing — but they haven't demonstrated the perfection needed to get the highest level of achievement.</p>\n\n<p>A good instructor will constantly reevaluate the criteria (to see that they meet the needs of the course) and the assessment (to see that student performance numerically lines up with observed performance) and make adjustments as necessary.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/892", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/522/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 903, "author": "Anthony Labarre", "author_id": 26, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26", "pm_score": 6, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I don’t know your field, but in mine (theoretical computer science), you have to get used to long review processes. My personal rule is to contact the journal six months after submission. Given recent events, my new, additional rule is to also state upon submission that I can suggest referees if need be.</p>\n<p>As EpiGrad commented, the four weeks time certainly refers to the time allowed to the referee. But additional stages take longer: a first quick scan of your paper to decide whether it’s worth troubling an editor with it; then the editor has to find referees; and, assuming they all complete their reviews in time, the editor also needs a little bit of time to reach a decision based on the reviews. Moreover, your paper might not be their top priority.</p>\n<p>As for the “how”, something like this would do:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Dear Editor,</p>\n<p>I understand that you must be extremely busy, but I was wondering about the status of my manuscript [title, reference number] that I submitted on [date]. Have you heard back from the referees yet?</p>\n<p>Thanks a lot for your time.</p>\n<p>Best regards,\n[name]</p>\n</blockquote>\n" }, { "answer_id": 904, "author": "Dirk", "author_id": 529, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/529", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think an answer to this really depends on a lot of things: at least on the journal and the field you are in.</p>\n\n<p>I am from mathematics and there I usually ask after 6 month. Only for journals which are known for long refereeing times I sometimes wait for 9 month.</p>\n\n<p>By the way: The American Mathematical Society publishes a list of expected waiting times and backlogs for some mathematical journals (see e.g. <a href=\"http://www.ams.org/notices/201010/rtx101001331p.pdf\">here</a> or google \"AMS journal backlog\").</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 907, "author": "DQdlM", "author_id": 248, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/248", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>If done respectfully, it is never unreasonable to request the status of your manuscript.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 11327, "author": "nancy", "author_id": 7845, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7845", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I would say after six months is reasonable to ask for a status check. I am from engineering and I often politely ask after six months. If I don't hear from them with a final decision within the next two months I decide to withdraw the paper as it seems that the whole process will take too long and either the journal or the reviewer(s) is not very professional. Eight to nine months is very long response time for a first inquiry. Sometimes you just cant wait that long, you need to know whether is rejected or not because you need to present something on your PhD career, change a job, or as part of a funded project.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 64524, "author": "Atilla Ozgur", "author_id": 333, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/333", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I believe that accepted answer is too informal for some people. I prepared following template for myself. Using following <a href=\"http://www.editage.com/insights/how-long-should-i-wait-for-a-response-from-the-journal\" rel=\"noreferrer\">link</a> and <a href=\"https://www.coursera.org/learn/professional-emails-english\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Coursera professional email course</a>. I waited 4 months before sending this email.</p>\n\n<pre><code>Subject: Inquiry about my submitted article (#XXXX) to Journal - JOURNALNAME\n\nDear Dr. EDITORNAMESURNAME\n\nMy name is NAME SURNAME, and I am first author of article #XXXX (TITLE).\nWe submitted our article to journal JOURNALNAME on SUBMISSIONDATE.\n\nWe have not received an update regarding the status of our manuscript.\nCould you let us know when we can expect notice regarding the decision of the editorial board?\n\nThank you for your time and effort.\nBest Regards,\n\n\nNAME SURNAME\n</code></pre>\n" }, { "answer_id": 67666, "author": "Jim", "author_id": 53123, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53123", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>As the saying goes, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.</p>\n\n<p>In my experience, it is reasonable to politely request an update after ~2 months of review. With most manuscript trackers, it is possible to see where the manuscript is in the pipeline and send a gentle reminder if the manuscript is stuck in one stage for too long (e.g. reviewer section, review, editorial evaluation, etc). Keep in mind that most editors are volunteers and they may forget to follow up with reviewers in a timely manner due to their busy schedule. I find it hard to believe that a polite email would antagonize the editor since journals want to publish high quality papers in a timely manner.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/900", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/344/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 915, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I would normally choose the two-year program, for exactly the reasons that you cite. One of the few reasons why I would consider the one-year program is if there is a particular individual you want to work with, or if it is your first-choice school for the PhD program <em>and</em> it offers a path of lower resistance to already be a student there.</p>\n\n<p>Otherwise, as JeffE points out, you won't really save much time by going to the one-year program over the two-year program. (Besides, if it's a coursework-based program, you'll probably get more out of the two-year deal!)</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 923, "author": "Community", "author_id": -1, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Well, I originally posted the following as an answer to your post on stackexchange, and since you're posting it here, I'm posting my answer here as well in hopes of it being helpful to a wider audience (not everyone on this site is necessarily a frequent visitor of stackexchange--especially *math.*stackexchange). </p>\n\n<p>Posting as an answer, because it is too long for a comment; however, treat what follows as a 'comment', please.</p>\n\n<p>I can only say what I'd do. I would go for the two year program, would try to impress people to obtain good recommendations, would learn as much as I could, would explore my interests, would try to work on some projects with some faculty member(s) (which would also help with exploring interests and obtaining good recommendations), and, assuming good academic standing, would try to apply to top schools.</p>\n\n<p>Now, in the process, I would also explore my strengths and weaknesses on the emotional side. Let me clarify... We all work differently, are most productive under different circumstances and see our place in life differently. When you go for a PhD, as was mentioned above, you'll be on the clock, you'll be under pressure to write a dissertation and, if you're planning a career in academia, to write papers (and try to publish them), make connections with professionals in the field (mostly by attending conferences and dissipating your research results through talks), you'll be trying to impress people and so on. I would use my time in the masters program to explore my strengths and weaknesses in regards to all of the above (as much as possible, at least). For example: 'is mathematics really my thing?'; 'what kind of environment is best for me - a big, top ranking school or a smaller department?'; 'what can I do to be more productive?'; 'what inspires me (especially about math or some special field in math)?'</p>\n\n<p>By working with a faculty member on a project, you can also ask and (more importantly!) try to answer questions like 'what kind of a relationship with my adviser should I expect in a 5 year program, and what should I look for in my adviser?' By developing closer ties with faculty members, you can have some of your questions answered by the faculty members, such as: 'what should I expect in a PhD program?'; 'given my interests, how should I choose the school for the PhD program?'; 'are there any faculty members in potential PhD departments that I can communicate with before I actually apply to the program (this can really help sometimes with your application and chance of acceptance)?'</p>\n\n<p>Last but certainly not least, you'll be gaining a solid knowledge base (but, as implicitly implied above, you can only learn as much as you want to learn). You shouldn't look at it as \"losing a year\", since it may very well compensate for the first year or two in graduate school when you're studying to pass the qualifying exams. Speaking from personal experience: a year and a half in the masters program helped me to get done with all the formalities (qualifying exams, identifying field of interest, choosing adviser) by the beginning of my second year, and from the middle of my second year in the program I was actively reading papers and thinking about potential research problems.</p>\n\n<p>Good luck with whatever you eventually choose to do!</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 932, "author": "dearN", "author_id": 21, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/21", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I would choose the two year program as a Master's program is just that: You'd want to MASTER a certain topic and two years or so is generally a decent amount of time in which you could hone your skills and defend your research (if you would opt for a thesis option).</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 934, "author": "Nobody", "author_id": 546, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/546", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>If you are certain that you will continue on PhD program after you obtain your master degree, then you should choose the 2 year program. Others already explain why. I am not going to repeat the reasons. </p>\n\n<p>However, if you are not 100% sure about obtaining PhD after you get a master, I would take the 1 year program if I were you. A plan is just a plan after all. How do you know what will happen 1 year from now? Why not get a master degree first? You will have other options after that, such as teaching at a high school, get a job in industry, etc. A master degree may be worth 10% more of the salary.</p>\n\n<p>So, the bottom line is your desire to have a PhD in math. You are the only one who knows the answer.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/901", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/527/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 905, "author": "Ana", "author_id": 322, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/322", "pm_score": 5, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Anecdotal, but: I was 31 when I started my PhD, and it wasn't an obstacle at all. There were more than 80 applicants for two places. I have the impression that what matters a lot (at least in neuroscience, at least at my institute) is how much training the supervisor would have to invest in you. I've seen many times that the applicant who already did some similar research gets the position, even though there might have been someone else who is in principle just as good. Previous research experience carries a lot of weight.</p>\n\n<p>From what you write, it seems to me that you would have a very good chance in getting into a program - publications and good GRE scores are both a big plus. Recommendation letters are also important. I would be surprised if your age would be an obstacle. But beware that it might be an obstacle for some sources of funding! I don't know if it is the case in the US, but I'd guess that's the only potential problem with your age. </p>\n\n<p>...And now we wait for someone on the other side of the application process to give their answer :) </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 909, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Again, anecdotally: age is simply not a factor in applications. That being said, you'll also be expected to do all the things grad students would do; put in the hard work, write the papers, be available for conferences and such, take courses, act as a TA, and put in the necessary hours to get the work done. Given your description above, though, you're familiar with what the requirements are, so that shouldn't be a problem; if anything, you can put it to your advantage that you're more familiar with the experience than all those inexperienced undergraduates. Good luck with the application process!</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 911, "author": "Suresh", "author_id": 346, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346", "pm_score": 5, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Age is something we might notice, but is rarely an issue. In fact, there are many schools where the added maturity you'd have would be a major plus, because you'd be able to articulate some clear research directions and would be able to get into research directly. If so, then you should be clear to say so in your statement. </p>\n\n<p>While this is unlikely to come up in the application process, it might also be helpful to think about what your post-Ph.D career plans would be. Would you want to move into a research job (in academia or elsewhere) or is a Ph.D just something you'd like to do for the purpose of research exploration ? Because this age discrepancy issue will come up again and again in the academic line of work. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 914, "author": "dearN", "author_id": 21, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/21", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I have a friend who worked in the automotive industry (all the bigwigs in the US) for about 7-8 years after his Bachelors degree. He joined a university for a PhD at 31 about 2 years and he is well on his way now having finished his qualifiers etc. </p>\n\n<p>Although he isn't working in mathematics, I think it's fine to start your PhD in your 30s. You might actually have an advantage because you have several years of practical/research experience and also maturity that 20 year olds <em>may not</em> have.</p>\n\n<p>Good luck!</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 916, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I do have to say that I have seen the age issue work both ways:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>I do know of programs that are biased <em>against</em> older applicants, <em>unless</em> they have remained \"active\" in research-related fields; these tend to be \"cutting-edge technology\"-type programs where out-of-date knowledge is essentially useless for research purposes. These locations have also been international, where the funding situation is quite different in the US.</p></li>\n<li><p>In the US, I do not know of any age-specific bias; technically, it's probably against the law in most states. On a personal level, I have known many students who have returned to academia after extensive careers outside of it, and some of them in fields quite far removed from anything of a traditional \"academic\" nature. The ones who returned to academia with a clear sense of purpose have thrived, and many of them have even won prestigious fellowships. On the other hand, I've also known people who have been unable to hack the rigors of a graduate education and essentially gave up within a few weeks. </p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>In general, though, if you know what you want to do, and can convince someone to give you a shot, you have an excellent shot at getting a good PhD and having a fruitful career.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 5098, "author": "hoo", "author_id": 3996, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/3996", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>It really depends on your field and the admission committee. Some fields like mature candidate with lots of industry experience as they can be productive at lab work etc. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 5764, "author": "Zai", "author_id": 4318, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4318", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>This is also anecdotal but I was 32 when I applied to graduate school and started when I was 33. My observations have been the following:</p>\n\n<p>Many of the professors that I've interacted with (some of whom are inevitably going to be part of the admissions process) are very positive about accepting older students, especially if they have work experience. From what I've been able to tell, the reasoning is that having worked and been out in the real world, you probably have a better idea of what you want to do and where you're going. In addition, you are more likely to be dependable about getting the work done, will bring more experience to the table, and have more realistic expectations and strategies for coping with things. This can be really good for getting an RAship and it sounds like your research experience will make it even more applicable.</p>\n\n<p>On the other hand, being a student again means that in many cases people will make assumptions about what you do and don't know and how you will act. I've had a number of people treat me like I've never worked before, making comments about, \"You'll find out once you've actually worked...\" and things like that. This can make a difference in how you're treated, it's disconcerting to be treated like a student again after being more of an equal with all of the people you're working with.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 9034, "author": "GA in NYC", "author_id": 6636, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6636", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>33 is not old. We had 40+ year olds in my Ph.D. program. </p>\n\n<p>The biggest hurdle might actually be that your study habits are rusty. You might consider taking a single class in the field as a continuing ed student just to get back in the studying grove. A good grade and reference from your professor won't hurt either and will show you're on top of your academic game.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 25647, "author": "Tom Au", "author_id": 755, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/755", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I've been admitted to two graduate programs (finished one).</p>\n\n<p>In my experience, admissions committees are generally looking for \"mass,\" rather than \"velocity,\" even though both are components of \"momentum.\" </p>\n\n<p>You have the \"mass,\" with your test scores and course work. You seem to fear that older age implies less \"velocity.\" That may be true technically, and it could factor into a few decisions, but I haven't seen much evidence of it.</p>\n\n<p>At some level, admissions committees are looking more for evidence of \"likely to finish\" (the degree), rather than \"likely to be brilliant.\"</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 26606, "author": "Amatya", "author_id": 6674, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6674", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>This is two years too late but someone else might find my comments useful.</p>\n\n<p>A Math department would likely not care about your age. Most US University teach some baby-calc type course to most of their undergraduate students and Math departments generally are in need of bodies to teach and grade those courses. They take a lot of students in and pare them down at the comprehensive exams stage.</p>\n\n<p>Unrelated to your main question about the admission process, I would like to point a few things out though:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>Statistically, Pure Math is a young person's game. Most pure mathematicians do their best work in their teens, twenties, and thirties. You'll be 35 by the time you're done with coursework and nearing the end of that window. Still, if you're having fun and making a contribution then that's the only thing that matters. You'll find out during coursework and later while preparing for your Field Exams (or equivalent) where you stand when compared to others. To use a basketball analogy, you could always be the Kareem Abdul Jabbar and play at a high level well into your late thirties but most NBA players start slowing down past their early thirties. </p></li>\n<li><p>I noticed that you're considering applying for both Pure Math and Applied Math . In general, I have seen that if you have a head for pure math, if you love topology, algebra, measure theory etc, you're generally less excited about coding, numerical methods, scientific computation type stuff and vice versa. You seem unusual in the sense that you're attracted to and have talent in very different kinds of mathematics. This is a hard process and a minimum requirement is that you should really enjoy this stuff. So I hope that your decision to apply to a pure math program stems from some real exposure to it.</p></li>\n<li><p>The next 10 or so years of your life will be disproportionately devoted to your career. First to get out of school and then to publish to get tenure. Spending that type of time away from your family and kids becomes difficult for older people who usually have a different perspective on what's really important in life as compared to someone in their twenties. If you're single, you may find it harder to find the time and energy to date someone outside of grad school. If your first job is in a small town then your dating options will be even thinner, especially since you're not a native. These things may not seem important now but you may change your mind later.</p></li>\n</ol>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/902", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/528/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 908, "author": "Community", "author_id": -1, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Firstly, not all schools place weight on GRE/TOEFL for PhD admissions. Some do, Some don't. </p>\n\n<p>A publication and good grades but bad GREs/TOEFL does not immediately guarantee rejection. Nevertheless, I had done some research on this and here is what I learnt :</p>\n\n<p><strong>GRE:</strong></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>GRE (I talk about the old pattern, I have no clue about the new one) tested both Quantitative and Verbal aptitude along with the ability to write and analyze arguments.</li>\n<li><strong>Quant</strong> section is essentially a sanity check. A 780/800 or above indicated that the student has well founded basics and he is able to solve <em>everyday math problems</em>. This was meant to test only those parts of mathematics which everyone applying to graduate school does encounter. Thus, no Calculus or Linear Algebra. Universities find this score useful since it is a good indication of the mathematical basics of the student.</li>\n<li><strong>Verbal</strong>. This initially irritated me since I saw no benefit in testing my vocubalary for a technical PhD. But later, I learnt that the verbal section actually varies with IQ. There were numerous high IQ societies which gave out invitations on the basis of GREV marks. <a href=\"http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/criteria.aspx\">This</a> is a comparison of the different high IQ socities with their GRE marks requirement. The GRE (together with Quant) was an instrument for checking IQ without making it too blatant.\nHere are a few citations:</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://www.am.us.mensa.org/Content/AML/NavigationMenu/Join/SubmitTestScores/QualifyingTestScores/QualifyingScores.htm\">Mensa</a>:</p>\n\n<p><code>from 5/94 to 9/30/01\n (quantitative + verbal + analytic) 1875</code></p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://www.triplenine.org/main/admission.asp\">Triple 9 Society</a> : </p>\n\n<p><code>Graduate Record Exam (GRE), combined verbal, quantitative, analytical (June 1994 through Sept 2001) : 2180</code></p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://www.oathsociety.com/membership.html\">One in a Thousand Society</a> : </p>\n\n<p><code>GRE (verbal + math + analytical scores) 2180 (6/94 till 9/01)</code></p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://www.prometheussociety.org/\">Prometheus</a> :</p>\n\n<p><code>GRE (“old”): a score of 1610 on the “old” GRE (taken before October 1, 1981)</code></p>\n\n<p><em>Personally, I think of all this as pseudo-nonsense but c'est la vi</em></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>The <strong>argument</strong> section is (arguably) the most useful for PhD admissions. The 2 parts (writing and analyzing) are along the lines of how one writes research papers. The writing sections teaches/tests for rigor in ones' arguments and requires that each statement be backed up appropriately. The analysis section tests the students ability to read \"actively\" just as how one would read a research paper. The question requires the student to point out flaws in the argument presented and the more the number of (realistic and nontrivial) flaws you find, the more you score. GRE tests students for critiquing general arguments such as building a new library since \"the old one is far away from campus\" and similar flawed arguments while in research a paper could state something similarly inane in that field.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p><strong>TOEFL</strong></p>\n\n<p>Among Reading, Listening, Speaking and Writing, I think none of them are useful. Reading gets covered in the Comprehension questions in GRE (with a notch higher difficulty). Listening and Speaking are almost useless since it is fairly simple to memorize generic things to say and still get above the 24/30 marks threshold. Writing gets covered in the GRE as well (At higher difficulty). If the university needs to know if the candidate can speak good english, I think an interview is a good alternative or (as some universities seem to be tending to) IELTS is a good option since you actually interact with a examiner rather than recording answers for \"The city you love most\" to be evaluated later.</p>\n\n<p>But, I Think TOEFL does filter out students with extremely poor English skills (beyond repair for the university), so it does help in spite of having overlaps with GRE and being inherently flawed (IMO).</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 910, "author": "Suresh", "author_id": 346, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<p>GRE/TOEFL scores are used in a number of different ways (some of which are alluded to above)</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>GRE scores are sometimes used as a university-level filter (if your GRE score is &lt; X, then you'll need a strong support letter from your department to get admitted)</li>\n<li>TOEFL scores are used as a filter for giving people TA funding (if your TOEFL score is too low, you can't be assigned to be a TA, and if it's lower, you can't even get RA funding)</li>\n<li>More informally, the GRE/TOEFL scores are used as a \"do you even care' filter: for a CS program, a quantitative score less than 600 might be considered to be a warning that the candidate doesn't even care enough to prep for it. </li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>But for Ph.D programs, the GRE/TOEFL are either used as a high-bar disqualification filters to prune applications (in top schools), or as low-bar disqualification filters to prune the non-serious applications. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 913, "author": "JeffE", "author_id": 65, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>My (computer science) department does not require GRE scores at all. A few faculty still use them to evaluate applicants—there's no accounting for taste—but there is certainly no official cutoff (as Suresh suggests). In practice, they're only useful if they're really low.</p>\n\n<p>However, by state law, an international student at my university cannot be hired as a teaching assistant if their TOEFL spoken English score is below 24. (Too many courses were being taught by foreign students with thick accents.) Since my PhD program has a TAship requirement, we <em>must</em> filter out applicants with low TOEFL scores. We can still admit applicants with scores below 24 if someone offers them an RAship, but they have to bring their score up to 24 by the end of their first year. So in practice, you have to have at least a 20 to be considered at all. (And we do conduct phone interviews with borderline cases.)</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1245, "author": "Anonymous Mathematician", "author_id": 612, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>On the admissions committees I've been on, GRE scores have been used primarily for one purpose, namely dealing with students from out of the way places. Every year, we see a number of applications from students at not very prestigious schools but with perfect grades and letters saying they are the best in years. We suspect that the courses are easy and the competition is not impressive (being the best is meaningless if we doubt the second best is very good), but we don't want to reject someone unfairly. GRE scores give a simple, consistent way to compare these students with those from other schools. Most of them have unimpressive GRE scores, but occasionally they do very well on the GRE, and in those cases we investigate further.</p>\n\n<p>TOEFL scores are another case in which consistency is very helpful. Skype interviews would give more information, but different interviewers would be more or less demanding (plus the interviews would be a lot of work). If you want to set a consistent cut-off, for example for TA support, then a standardized exam may be the right approach. Note also that the administration may not trust faculty interviewers not to exaggerate the English abilities of students they want to admit.</p>\n\n<p>If it weren't for its usefulness in screening the applications from out of the way places, I'd be in favor of eliminating the GRE entirely. However, even making someone jump through a meaningless hoop can actually be a useful filter. In practice, having a successful career requires occasionally doing things you don't care about, for reasons that may not be clearly explained (and might or might not turn out to be justified if they were explained). Some students run into serious psychological issues here. Maybe they can't overcome their disorganization if they don't feel motivated, or maybe they just refuse to participate in anything without a clear justification. It may be unfair, but these students are not likely to be successful in the long run, and it's a waste of time and energy to prepare them for a career that isn't likely to work out. Jumping through hoops like the GRE is a mild test in this direction. If you are too disorganized to sign up for it in time, or if you aren't willing to jump through such a hoop at all, then that's a bad sign for your future career.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/906", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/411/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 919, "author": "Suresh", "author_id": 346, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>It's highly unlikely that the chair of a department serves on a graduate admissions committee. The committee is usually composed of some set of faculty who represent the different areas in the department. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 929, "author": "JeffE", "author_id": 65, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>At my (large CS) department, the graduate admissions committee officially consists of:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>The director of the graduate program. This is a ~3-year rotating position among the senior faculty.</p></li>\n<li><p>About a dozen faculty members, distributed roughly uniformly across topic areas and faculty rank. The department head is not a member; he's way too busy.</p></li>\n<li><p>About a dozen graduate student volunteers.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>However, our graduate admissions database is open to the entire faculty. Each faculty member is expected to help review applications, and in particular, to identify applicants that they would be willing to advise, offer an RAship, help recruit, and/or recommend for fellowships. We ask each applicant to name a few faculty they'd be interested in working with, so I usually start by reading the applications that mention my name. I haven't been on the admissions committee since 2000, but I still read a few dozen applications every year.</p>\n\n<p>For each round of admissions, each research area (theory, graphics, architecture, etc.) provides a ranked list of applicants for their area to the committee, along with estimates of advising/funding capacity. This usually requires discussion among the area faculty, coordinated by the area chair, who may or may not be a committee member. (I was the theory area chair for several years.)</p>\n\n<p>Final admissions decisions are made by the official committee, but positive reviews from extra-curricular faculty carry a <em>lot</em> of weight. In particular, nobody is admitted without at least three positive faculty reviews, including at least one potential advisor. Decisions are folded back into the database so that faculty can track their favorite applicants' progress, and if necessary, drum up more faculty reviews.</p>\n\n<p>So, in practice, <strong>everyone</strong> is on the committee, including the department head.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 63513, "author": "paul garrett", "author_id": 980, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/980", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Since this question has somehow come to the top of the queue: in the U.S., in mathematics, the department chair would rarely participate. The person in charge of graduate admissions would be \"Director of Graduate Studies in Math.\", or equivalent title. This would be a position that would/should involve genuine PR and recruitment work. The old tradition was that the position would be a backwater/sinecure for otherwise inactive faculty. In modern times, the level of energy required to do the job has increased to the point that most faculty could not cope, and do not want such a job, since it would take away from \"refereed publications\", the baseline for salary and status improvements.</p>\n\n<p>But, of course, grad admissions and policies around this issue have a tremendous impact on the atmosphere in a department. Somehow the internet has made things more intense, more stressed, so choice of people to be around is all the more critical... ironically?</p>\n\n<p>To some degree, the \"grad admissions committee\" is supposed to represent \"all constituencies\", but, in reality, this doesn't make much sense, since in the U.S. the thin-ness of undergrad preparation does not allow students to make competent announcements of their eventual interests.</p>\n\n<p>The \"real-politick\" of grad admissions, involving understanding of the wildly varying undergrad or Master's level preparation around the world, and how those things translate to functioning in the U.S., is not interesting to most faculty, so the responsibility descends to the shoulders of a relative few who've paid attention to the reality, rather than the PR.</p>\n\n<p>Who this is in a given place, and whether it's anyone at all, depends...</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 63525, "author": "David Ketcheson", "author_id": 81, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/81", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>In my department of 15 faculty, 3-5 faculty serve on the committee. This usually does not include the chair, but sometimes has. The committee makes final decisions on most Masters applicants, and screens PhD applicants. But promising PhD applications are also reviewed by likely potential advisors before a decision is made, so faculty who are not on the committee also play a major role.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 63572, "author": "vonbrand", "author_id": 38135, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/38135", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>To give a completely different view, here the graduate admissions are handled by a central committee run by the graduate school of the university, as faculty I have next to no incidence on their decisions. We are rather small (some 600 graduate students in all).</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 63578, "author": "D.Salo", "author_id": 12438, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12438", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>In our small department (about the same size as David Ketcheson's), there is no admissions department per se. Master's applications are initially read by our student-services person, who routes the ones passing an initial sniff test to two reviewers (faculty/instructional staff), ideally ones whose specialties align with the applicant's. Reviewers score applications on a rubric, adding a five-point-Likert-scale recommendation (from \"definitely admit\" to \"deny\").</p>\n\n<p>A third reviewer may be sought if the original reviewers' opinions diverged significantly. The assistant director of the program resolves any remaining in-limbo applications.</p>\n\n<p>Ph.D admissions, however, go through the Ph.D Committee, which consists of tenured faculty.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/917", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/535/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 921, "author": "Bravo", "author_id": 411, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/411", "pm_score": 2, "selected": true, "text": "<p>You should ask your university if they could provide a mapping to a 4-point system. If they don't, you simply have to calculate GPA*4/100! In case you feel this undermines your prospects, ask your university for a rank certificate which will give the admissions committee a good idea of where you stood in your department.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 926, "author": "Ondrej", "author_id": 422, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/422", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Unless it is specifically requested, do not do it. Some school even urge you not to do it. It is highly probable, that they know your scale and understand what level means you are smart and hard working. Be sure to include thing like <em>cum laude</em>, merit scholarships, ranking within the cohort, ... These things are easier for them to understand and help them to compare you to the other students.</p>\n\n<p>Miscalculating your GPA may result in unintentional deception or undermining your actual achievements. Be careful.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 927, "author": "Joost", "author_id": 130, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/130", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I found the following conversion for Syria, 100 point systems differ so generally the conversion is not always the same. I would use this only as an indicator.</p>\n\n<pre>\n| Scale | Grade Description | US Grade | Notes\n| 95.00 - 100.00 | الشرف‎ (Honor) | A+ | Arabic: Sharaf\n| 85.00 - 94.99 | امتياز‎ (Excellent) | A | Arabic: Imtiyaz\n| 75.00 - 84.99 | جيد جداً‎ (Very Good) | B+ | Arabic: Jayed Jeddan\n| 65.00 - 74.99 | جيد‎ (Good) | B | Arabic: Jayed\n| 60.00 - 64.99 | مقبول‎ (Aceptable) | C | Arabic: Maqboul\n| 0.00 - 59.99 | راسب‎ (Fail) | F | Arabic: Raseb; Lowest passing grade\n</pre>\n\n<p>According to this source: <a href=\"http://www.classbase.com/Countries/Syria/Grading-System\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://www.classbase.com/Countries/Syria/Grading-System</a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 940, "author": "Community", "author_id": -1, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I know this already has an accepted answer but still:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Why do you need it?</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>If you need it for grad school, chances are that the university would want \"untouched\" grades. In other words, they want to see your grades \"as is\" without any modifications, conversions or other such activities. I had my GPA on a 10 pt scale and most universities asked me to enter it as it is and that the job of conversion would be their headache.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Has the university provided you with a conversion algorithm?</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>If a university needs converted GPA, chances are that it provides a conversion algorithm. For instance, University of Washington provided <a href=\"http://www.grad.washington.edu/fac-staff/gpa-gpc/converting_gpas.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow\">this</a> (Warning! PDF) to international students. I've seen Berkeley, PSU and a few other universities do something similar.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Are you willing to spend money?</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Columbia University provided the reference for <a href=\"https://www.wes.org/calculator/login.asp\" rel=\"nofollow\">WES, a GPA Conversion tool.</a></p>\n\n<p>Citatation : <a href=\"http://www.ieor.columbia.edu/pages/admissions/FAQs/index.html#N100EF\" rel=\"nofollow\">IEOR Dept.</a></p>\n\n<p>Excerpt of the passage (In case the link dies):</p>\n\n<p><em>For the online application, though, you can enter an approximate conversion of your percentage grade. There are many websites that help you with grade conversion, and one of them is available through <a href=\"http://www.wes.org/gradeconversionguide/\" rel=\"nofollow\">WES</a>. Please note that we do not recommend this site over other ones.</em> </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Use your university's guidelines. For instance, some universities give students a rough conversion from their scales to US and ECTS scales. See if your university does so. </li>\n</ul>\n\n<p><strong>Warning: Do not use random GPA conversion schemes from blogs or <em>shady</em> websites. While it might not cause much difference, don't risk it.</strong> </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 965, "author": "NewName", "author_id": 559, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/559", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I recently had to deal with this situation when applying. My University did not have an A/B/C... system and would not provide a GPA.</p>\n\n<p>Some of the application forms that I filled out provided instructions for international students, eg: no not enter a GPA. So I would start by reading the application forms.</p>\n\n<p>For those that do not, my strongest recommendation is to contact the person in charge of applications at the department that you are applying to. Ask them what you should do in your specific circumstance. There is usually an email address on the department website for application enquiries.</p>\n\n<p>Unfortunately a few universities never replied to my emails. For their applications I left the GPA field blank if the form allowed. For forms that required a GPA for submission I simply made up what I thought was an appropriate system.</p>\n\n<p>While this didn't seem to hurt my chances, I would only recommend this as a last resort if you can't get a straight answer from the department you are applying to.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/920", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/537/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 925, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 6, "selected": true, "text": "<p>Ultimately, the answer depends upon what admissions system a department uses.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>If you need to obtain admission to a group at the same time as (or instead of) the department as a whole, then it is of course absolutely critical that you make contacts ahead of time! In general, I'd even start contacting people well before the time of application. However, make sure that your contact is substantial. When it becomes time to apply, you will have a better shot.</p></li>\n<li><p>In many departments, you apply for admission to the department as a whole. After your admission, you select an advisor to work for. In such cases, it's not really critical for you to have a direct contact within the department, since it's not necessarily a given that the professor you want to work for sits on the admissions committee. In such cases, you'll have an indirect connection at best. That said, it's still a good idea to have a contact in a department during the admissions process. You don't lose anything by it—unless the professor has a bad reputation amongst his colleagues (and then you might not want to work for him or her, anyways!). By the way, I would caution <strong>strongly</strong> against going to such a school if there's only one professor at the department you'd be interested in working for. You're taking a very large risk under such circumstances.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Now to answer some of the other issues raised.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Email or other forms of contact.</strong> Face-to-face or phone interactions rank above email interactions. There's no doubt about that. However, an email interaction—if actually substantial—can also be viable. However, a quick emil telling someone you're applying and interested in working for them won't really get you anywhere.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Number of people to contact.</strong> There is of course no limit to the number of potential advisors you can contact. To some extent, they're competing for you just as much as you're competing for them!</p>\n\n<p><strong>Can I apply on credentials alone?</strong> At most top departments (where application is done at the department level), I think it's entirely possible to apply on credentials <em>and recommendations</em> alone. Having the contacts can obviously help, but not having it won't ruin your chances for admissions, either.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 928, "author": "David Ketcheson", "author_id": 81, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/81", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Just to add to aeismail's answer:</p>\n\n<p>If you can send an e-mail that demonstrates that</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>You are a strong candidate</li>\n<li>You wrote an e-mail specifically for that professor</li>\n<li>You are familiar with some of that professor's work</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>then it <strong>may</strong> have an important positive effect. Ideally, you would be able to suggest how things you know or have done could contribute to that professor's research agenda.</p>\n\n<p>Sending a generic e-mail to multiple professors will not help your case and will probably hurt it. I mention this because a large fraction of the e-mails I receive from potential students are obviously part of a mass-mailing.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 930, "author": "Suresh", "author_id": 346, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346", "pm_score": 5, "selected": false, "text": "<p>To supplement the other answers, here are some do's and don'ts for email contact. </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The worst thing you can do is make it seem like you're trying to cast\n a wide net and don't have a clear focus. That's a guaranteed delete.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Therefore, </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Narrow your search to the people whose work you're really interested in</li>\n<li>Read their papers (especially recent ones - I've had people email me about stuff I did 5 year ago - I've moved on :))</li>\n<li>Think about their work. Find something intelligent to say (even a question). </li>\n<li>Email the professor and focus on those questions. </li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>That's most likely to get my (their) attention. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 944, "author": "DavideChicco.it", "author_id": 379, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/379", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<blockquote>\n <p>How important is knowing an advisor prior to applying for PhD?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Super important.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Does an email interaction play a vital role when the department makes its admit decisions?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Sometimes yes. An email + an visit in person to the university could surely increase your probabilities to get accepted.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>If email contact is important, can a student send out mails to 2-3 professors (working in the same area) in case one of them does not bother to reply?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Yes, sure, mandatory! Send as emails as you can!</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>To sum up, is applying of any use (especially in top universities) when you have no contacts and only your credentials to bank on?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Yes, try to contact and visit the professor you want to work with.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/924", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/411/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 937, "author": "JeffE", "author_id": 65, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<p>In my experience, citation counts are considerably less important than recommendation letters, but they still matter, especially for tenure. For fresh PhDs, high citation counts are definitely helpful, but they're not a hiring requirement for most fields in CS. But for tenure, it's <em>really</em> hard to build a successful case without at least one high-impact (post-thesis) publication.</p>\n\n<p>Smart committees know to gather citation counts, publication counts, acceptance rates, impact factors, h-indices, and other quasi-objective numerical data from reasonable sources and to compare them with peers in the applicant's field. (For my promotion cases, for example, my citation counts were mined from Google Scholar, not ISI, and I was compared against other theoretical computer scientists, not other computational-geometers-who-play-with-surface-graphs.) Alas, not every committee is smart.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 938, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>To answer the part of the question about freshly-minted doctorates, citation counts are not normally considered as a critical component, either for academia or for industry. Or perhaps I should state that the <em>lack</em> of citations for recently published literature is not a major obstacle, particularly in fields with long \"half-lives\" for research papers. (Some of my papers only got cited after a year or more following publication.) However, a <em>high</em> citation count for a paper indicates that the student is doing potentially impactful work, and that can carry weight with a professor or manager doing hiring in either academia or industry.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 102959, "author": "Mohaqiq", "author_id": 9709, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9709", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>You already got some nice answers, but let me share my personal experience. I am a fresh PhD and I got hired on aP position after 3 months of graduation. There was another candidate (my friend) who also graduated same time with me, he had 14 times more citations, 6 times more total impact factor, and almost 10 times the number of publications. But he graduated from a university ranked in 400 and I graduated from world top 20. He published most of work by collaborating with different students from developing countries, while my publications were totally focused on my thesis work. He had 100+ publications during PhD but no patent, my all publications were registered for patent and 2 were bought by the industry. <br/>I was convinced that my friend will get this position not me, but the result was surprising I got hired while he was rejected. So, in my opinion sometime citations and number of publications has minimal impact and you may get hired based on from where you are coming and what exactly you did during PhD. Focused, well organised, and quality work with few publications and citations are better than low quality large number of publications with high citations and high total IF. </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/933", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/411/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 939, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>From conversations with a mentor who was the editor-in-chief for a major journal, if you take the responsibility seriously, you need to have enough of an understanding of the papers assigned to you to figure out which referees will be suitable for a paper, while not taking so much time to read it that you can't process all of them for lack of time. As mentioned above, you need to at least a \"high-level\" read of the paper before assigning it to the referees. If the paper comes back with mixed reviews, it probably requires a careful re-read; if the reviews are uniform in recommending for or against publication, then it may not be as critical.</p>\n\n<p>However, the editor will want to read papers when revisions come in, so that may mean going through a paper several times during the course of the review process.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 8736, "author": "Peter Jansson", "author_id": 4394, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>In addition to the reply from aeismail to which I agree you need to add several other aspects. First, let's emphasise that good indepth knowledge of the field is vital. </p>\n\n<p>The first stage for an editor is to assess whether the paper is appropriate for the journal, that it follows instructions for authors and is of reasonable technical quality to go to review (figures in order, language ok etc.)</p>\n\n<p>The second stage for an editor is as was already stated to identify and assign referees based on the content of the papeer and reviewers speciality. </p>\n\n<p>The third stage is to assess the reviewers comments and provide the author(s) with an educated summary of the reviewers work and possibly help by providing guidelines as to how to handle the reviews, emphasising some comments and possibly de-emphasising others. It not uncommon that reviews differ widely and in such cases the editor must be able to mediate, alternatively assign additional reviewers. This means apply objectivity and evaluate reviews. It also means you need to understand (at a deeper level) the paper and the comments that go with it.</p>\n\n<p>The fourth stage concerns the revised work. Once the revised version is back from the author you need to evaluate the authors response to the reviewers comments. The author may not agree with the reviewers comments and it is the editors job to judge the revisons and make appropriate decisions (for additional review or accept/reject).</p>\n\n<p>It might be appropriate to point out here that the editor is not just an evaluator but also a mediator. Disagrements between authors and reviewers are common. Some reviewers may have good points but terible ways of conveying them. In such cases the editor must place him/herself above the infected views and convey the essential points being made to the author.</p>\n\n<p>The fifth stage concerns final decisions. This can be a formality but to have an editor sign off on a paper for publication means it has gone through peer review/revisions in a satisfactory way and is sound. So it is an important final step.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/935", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 942, "author": "nibot", "author_id": 458, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/458", "pm_score": 5, "selected": false, "text": "<p>You've mentioned that you intend to apply to grad school. It would be helpful to know where you are in the academic process: high school, started university, finished university?</p>\n<p>Regarding asking for help, I see two distinct phases:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><p>If you have not yet started the project (and you are not currently a student somewhere), then I think most professors and professional researchers would be very wary to spend any time helping you. Complex systems, is, in particular, a field that attracts a lot of crackpots, and even the most well-intentioned projects of interested amateurs usually fizzle. I think the best bet would be to find someone you already know to provide early consultation, rather than cold-calling a professional at this stage.</p>\n<p>If you are enrolled in a university of some kind, then the story is different: the faculty has something of an obligation to talk to eager students. (-:</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>If you have already made significant progress and have <em>specific technical questions</em>, I think almost anyone would be wiling to help.</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n<p>One other piece of advice: don't worry too much about talking about your idea. Many 'amateurs' get obsessed with the secrecy of their amazing idea -- this is the road to crackpotdom. I think it would be quite reasonable to state your idea on a site such as mathoverflow and ask whether it is a credible research proposal.</p>\n<p>If you can cite recent publications in refereed journals that indicate active interest in the area of your proposed work, then this is a good sign that you have both done your homework and identified an interesting subject of investigation.</p>\n<p>That said, even if the thing you are investigating turns out to be interesting only to you, it could still be worth continuing. It might lead somewhere more interesting later, and you would certainly develop useful skills in the process.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>If I don't get anyone on board, what are my chances of publishing, or at least getting a pat on the back from admissions committees when I apply for graduate school? Do they appreciate this kind of thing?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>A successful independent project, especially one resulting in a publication, would be great material for your grad school app. If your project does have interesting results, it should not be too hard to publish, regardless of your credentials.</p>\n<p>Even if it turns out that your work is not publishable in a refereed journal, it might find a home in your school's &quot;journal of undergraduate research&quot; (or something similar), which would also be a nice resume bullet during the grad school application procedure.</p>\n<p>Finally, it's probably best to simply avoid the word &quot;amateur&quot;.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1281, "author": "Paleoguy", "author_id": 729, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/729", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I am an undergraduate student, and my experience with attempting research has been frustrating at best. Science is a political ballpark like any other profession. Tact and suave are your best friends when it comes to wooing a potential mentor in academia. Hard work is necessary as well, but hard work alone will only get you so far in the modern socioeconomic landscape. If a professor senses that they can get away with ignoring you then they probably will. This is especially true of large institutions with thousands of students.</p>\n\n<p>All you can really do is just talk to people and hope for the best. Make sure you talk to a number of people, and don't put all of your hopes in just one researcher or professor.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 67109, "author": "Captain Emacs", "author_id": 45857, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/45857", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>If you have no research experience, it will be hard to convince any professional scientist to invest in you. Perhaps there is a team of enthusiasts in your community (or even online) who are happy to embark on projects? </p>\n\n<p>Today's networking opportunities increase your leverage massively in finding like-minded people on the net, via blogs, joint software development etc. At some point, you may try and visit workshops of relevant topics, even just for visiting and meeting people and there you may find some suitable contacts.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/941", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8104/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 952, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The best way to take advantage of memberships in professional societies—beyond attending conferences—is helping to <em>organize</em> them. This will get you in touch with the other people in your field who are at an early-career phase. (Older faculty typically don't need to, or are higher up on the food chain.) Organizing sessions is also a good way to learn your specialty better, and to keep abreast of who's working on what. </p>\n\n<p>In the long run, it can also bolster your career by providing you with \"synergistic\" (or \"service\") activities that show you to be a good member of the research community, which is important for getting job offers and promotions.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 954, "author": "Suresh", "author_id": 346, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I will say though that early in your academic career (and you shouldn't really get involved in such activities BEFORE you have a PhD), you have to seriously weigh doing such organizational work against the corresponding amount of time spent working at your research. It's good to maybe do one or two things, but I wouldn't recommend spending a lot of time on it. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 962, "author": "JeffE", "author_id": 65, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>In my experience, the <em>only</em> role that membership in professional societies plays in connecting researchers is <strong>slightly lower registration fees for conferences</strong>. That's it. Conferences and workshops in my field are organized almost entirely by volunteers form the research community. Some are affiliated with professional societies (specifically, ACM, SIAM, and IEEE), but some aren't, and the success of a conference or workshop in bringing colleagues together appears to be independent of any sponsoring organization. But since I'm an ACM member, my registration fees for ACM conferences are <em>slightly</em> lower, so I'm <em>slightly</em> more likely to go.</p>\n\n<p>Other that that, I got nothin'.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1279, "author": "Ivan Machado", "author_id": 690, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/690", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>In addition to all that was mentioned before, as a <strong>student member</strong> of some of these associations <em>(experience with the ACM)</em>, you may apply for some travel funding... that will enable you to attend a (or some) conference(s) - in case your university/project doen't give you enough money to do that (I personally know about several cases)- , and then you have the opportunity to keep in touch with your peers. It should be good, to a certain extent, for your carrer. Maybe in a simple conference you can meet the guy you've referenced for a couple of time (that doesn't answer your emails... lol), and talk to him about your research projects/ideas, receive some (good) feedback, and so on... </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/943", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/379/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 947, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>You'll typically have between a half-hour and an hour to talk with them. In that time, you should be able to cover a number of different topics:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Your background (briefly)</li>\n<li>Your academic experience, if any</li>\n<li>Why you're interested in working in their department</li>\n<li>Their research focus</li>\n<li>Their ideas for future research focuses</li>\n<li>Ways you could fit into their department</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Of all those, the only ones you could probably skip is 1. Everything else is pretty crucial to getting a good idea of what the department's research agenda (if they have one) is.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 951, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>When you have a meeting with a \"distant\" potential colleague, you should let the interviewer determine the initial flow of the interview. The important thing is to not spend too much time trying to figure out if this is just for information, or if you're being \"tested\" in some way. (The answer is, yes, you're probably being tested.) </p>\n\n<p>Sometimes, the interviewer will want to talk about his research, to see if you are willing to think about new ideas, and how to fit them into your work. Sometimes, they will want to talk about your research, to see how well you can explain your ideas and work to people outside of your field. And other times it will fall somewhere in between these two extremes.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/946", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/550/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 949, "author": "Community", "author_id": -1, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<p>Normally, it's fine, as long as you submit a pre-print and not the camera ready of the conf proceedings. You can also check these questions: <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/7/102\">Does publishing a paper on arXiv prevent me from submitting it to a non-open access journal?</a> and <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/40/102\">Submitting a subset of my work to ArXiv</a>. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 950, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>In addition to Charles's answer, it depends on how the conference papers are published. If they're published as a special issue of a journal, then it may very well depend on the policies of the journal, as well as those of the conference. (And some conferences may have special restrictions on publications; in those cases, you should check with the conference organizers.)</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/948", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/532/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 956, "author": "Ran G.", "author_id": 324, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/324", "pm_score": 6, "selected": true, "text": "<p>Even for conference papers you can still perform (relatively small) changes after the notification. When trying to rebuttal, it makes much sense to address the main issues raised by the reviewer (and not to pick on the minor changes they suggest). Some good practices include:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Acknowledge good suggestions made by the reviewer. If those suggestions are easy to fix, say they are fixable and will be fixed in the final-version.</li>\n<li>If the reviewers suggestion makes no sense or is not valid - explain why their review is invalid. However, you should acknowledge the fact that if the reviewers did not get it right, there might be a problem in your paper. Promise to clarify those issues for the final version.</li>\n<li>If the review raise up a valid point that makes your result significantly weaker than you claim, I don't think there is a reason to rebuttal, but other might think differently (trying to justify why it is still a strong result).</li>\n<li>Don't claim that the reviewer has no idea what s/he is talking about (even if that is indeed the case..)</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Bottomline, you should be respectful and polite to the reviewers. Thank them for their suggestions and suggest to fix whatever is fixable even if you think nothing is wrong. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 957, "author": "Community", "author_id": -1, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Usually, a conference enforcing a rebuttal process will also define what kind of rebuttal an author can write. For instance, the conference <a href=\"http://www.sigsac.org/ccs.html\">ACM CCS</a> (considered as one of the best conferences in security) enforces a rebuttal phase. Let me quote what they wrote during last year edition: </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>You now have the opportunity to view the preliminary reviews of your\n submission and, if you wish, enter a response limited to 500 words.\n This response is completely optional and there is no requirement to\n respond. If you do, the deadline is [3 days after receiving this message]. </p>\n \n <p>Your response must focus on the following:</p>\n \n <ul>\n <li><p>Answers to specific questions raised by reviewers (if any).</p></li>\n <li><p>Factual errors in the reviews.</p></li>\n </ul>\n \n <p>We stress that your paper is being evaluated as submitted. You may\n NOT use your response to provide new research results or reformulate\n the presentation. </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Another conference, <a href=\"http://web.cs.wpi.edu/~guttman/post12/\">POST</a>, uses a similar process with similar requirements, with an extra suggestion that I think it's worth mentioning: </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <ul>\n <li>Your response will be seen by all PC members who have\n access to the discussion of your paper. Please be polite\n and constructive.</li>\n </ul>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>So, the bottom line is: keep it factual, polite and constructive. If a reviewer doesn't like your paper, then it's unlikely you can change his mind during the rebuttal phase. However, it's just a good opportunity to address some very specific point. For instance, if a reviewer asks: \"Isn't your approach undecidable?\", then you can answer \"yes/no, and we can include the proof in the final version of the paper\" (and ideally, link to a research report where the proof is already written). Or if a reviewer wrote \"this problem has been already solved 20 years ago by X\", then you can answer \"We released one of X's assumption, that we believed was too strong for this particular context\". </p>\n\n<p>Basically, the rebuttal might be unlikely to change a particular review (unless there was an obvious mistake), but can encourage the PC Chair to ask for another review of your paper. And Jeff's remark is very good, don't write the rebuttal the same day than you receive it :)</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 159533, "author": "Stefan", "author_id": 33569, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/33569", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>For Computer Science conferences, I found this article by three AI researchers/profs very helpful: <a href=\"https://medium.com/@deviparikh/how-we-write-rebuttals-dc84742fece1\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">https://medium.com/@deviparikh/how-we-write-rebuttals-dc84742fece1</a></p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/955", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/249/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 959, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>If we're talking about a PhD candidate, the most relevant factors, for me, are those that demonstrate the applicant's capability to be a productive researcher. That means a compelling statement of purpose (why the applicant wants to be a PhD student, with ideas for potential areas of exploration, if not necessarily an entirely thought-out project) counts for quite a bit. </p>\n\n<p>Equally valuable are letters of recommendation that <em>actually talk about the candidate</em>. I don't care for a letter that regurgitates the student's academic performance, or that reads like a template in which the name of the applicant was swapped in for somebody else's. That does me no good in evaluating a candidate, and to some extent can work as a mark <em>against</em> a candidate, since it indicates a lapse in decision-making (why get a letter from someone who doesn't know you well?). A really good letter of recommendation, however, can sometimes make the difference between somebody who's on the bubble and somebody who gets an offer of admission.</p>\n\n<p>Transcripts and test scores do matter, but for me are less valuable, because they don't give me a lot to go on—it's not easy to tell what's a \"good\" performance and what isn't, particularly when schools use \"nonstandard\" scales (such as reporting scores out of 100 without telling me what the average score is!). </p>\n\n<p>The other factor that we do here that not all programs do is an interview (in person or via Skype). This is perhaps the most important part of the process for us, because we can see if the paper record matches the \"actual\" applicant. Sometimes candidates look good in writing, but can't really talk knowledgeably about what they have studied. That's usually a clear sign that someone really won't be a good fit as a graduate student.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 961, "author": "JeffE", "author_id": 65, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65", "pm_score": 6, "selected": true, "text": "<p>As aeismail says, what we are looking for is <strong>concrete evidence of research potential.</strong> So, in decreasing order of importance:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Decent grades and (if required) test scores; otherwise, no one will read your application at all. Here, \"decent grades\" means three-point-something from a good undergraduate program.</p></li>\n<li><p>Research publications, if you have any.</p></li>\n<li><p>Recommendation letters. You <strong>must</strong> have at least one (and preferably three) strong recommendation letter from a faculty member who praises your research potential in specific and credible detail. Letters that draw specific comparisons to other successful PhD students are best. Letters from junior faculty are perfectly fine; they can draw comparisons to their recent graduate school peers. Letters that say only \"He got an A+ in my class\" are useless; we can read your transcript.</p></li>\n<li><p>Research statement. Your statement <strong>must</strong> discuss your research experience and interests in specific and credible detail. A statement that only describes your sources of inspiration (\"Ever since man walked on the moon...\") and/or brags about coursework is useless.</p></li>\n<li><p>Other concrete evidence of independent research/scholarship/creativity.</p></li>\n<li><p>No red flags. Potential red flags include low grades in classes central to your proposed research area, missing key classes entirely, abysmal test scores, negative (or overly delicate) recommendation letters, recommendation letters obviously written by the applicant, spelling and grammar mistakes in the research statement, any evidence of immaturity or personality issues, and any evidence that the applicant is not prepared/informed/serious about research.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Notice what's not listed.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/958", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/552/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 967, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>This isn't a one-size-fits-all problem. People should move into research when they're ready to do so, and in consultation with their advisors, when appropriate. </p>\n\n<p>That said, the approach I'd tend to advocate is to ramp down classwork while ramping up research. In that sense, the student controls the pace at which she learns, and can adjust the selection of coursework as time goes on to support or to complement the research work. Moreover, there's generally the assumption on the part of the advisor that the first few months aren't going to feature a lot of useful scientific results; they'll mainly be spent learning techniques and tools and basic concepts and understanding. </p>\n\n<p>So the way to figure out if one is ready to start research is by doing some \"low-hanging fruit\" problems: if the student can handle the basics, then she can start moving on to the rest. If not, then at least she has a better handle on what she needs.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 968, "author": "Suresh", "author_id": 346, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<p>As aeismail says, there's no single answer. As with most things in life, it's hard to know when you're \"ready\" to do something. The best way is to jump in when you <em>feel</em> like you don't need to prep any more, and then be prepared to shore up weaknesses as you spot them. </p>\n\n<p>Over time, you'll learn how to prepare yourself to embark on a new research topic: some people like to start solving a problem first, and then return to the literature when they get stuck. Some people like to read a few key papers to get a sense of the main open problems and techniques, and then go off and play. </p>\n\n<p>The only important thing is that you do <em>something</em>, and not just wait on the sidelines for a mythical feeling of \"readiness\" to emerge. Be fearless, like a 2 year old who doesn't know enough to be afraid :)</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 969, "author": "JeffE", "author_id": 65, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I've never understood the dichotomy between “preparing to do research” and actually doing research. I have always learned best with a target problem in mind. I always have to learn new fundamentals to solve any new problem. Most of the time I spend on research is \"wasted\", and most of what I learn is \"useless\", and that's okay.</p>\n\n<p>The difference between just solving interesting problems and doing \"real research\" is pretty small. In both cases, you're completely ignorant at the beginning; what distinguishes \"real research\" is that everyone else in the world is ignorant, too. As long as you're comfortable working with no hope of finding your answers in the back of a book, you're as ready as you'll ever be. Jump in!</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/966", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 971, "author": "Henry", "author_id": 8, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>There are several major websites on which jobs in mathematics, including postdocs, tend to be posted. Most importantly (in the US) <a href=\"http://www.mathjobs.org\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">mathjobs.org</a>, but also the <a href=\"http://www.ams.org/profession/employment-services/eims/eims-home\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">AMS's service</a> and others. (See <a href=\"https://mathoverflow.net/questions/952/where-are-mathematics-jobs-advertised-if-not-on-mathjobs-e-g-in-europe-and-else\">this mathoverflow question</a> for many more.) Postdoc positions can take a while to sort out, since many of them are filled (or even created) in response to what happened earlier in the hiring season, so there may still be opportunities, especially if you're willing to look outside the US.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 972, "author": "Community", "author_id": -1, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>In addition to AMS, you can also have a look at <a href=\"http://dmatheorynet.blogspot.it/\">DMANET</a>, they have many different positions in maths/TCS, but it's quite active, so it might worth browsing the announcements. </p>\n\n<p>Also, if you see a job announcement that you really like, don't hesitate to contact informally the responsible, even if the deadline is passed (and even if the deadline is quite old). It's possible that the position was not filled-in, and that they still have the budget. It's also possible that they are preparing another, similar position. You can also contact directly some professors you might interested in working with, even if they haven't advertised anything, you never know :)</p>\n\n<p>Good luck!</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 978, "author": "DavideChicco.it", "author_id": 379, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/379", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I'd like to give you some advices:</p>\n\n<p>1) <strong>Strong reccomandation</strong>: do not choose an university where to apply by focusing only on its excellence, but choose it only if there is a research group that studies your research stuff.\nWorking for some years in a research group that does not match with your scientific objective could be a very dangerous error.</p>\n\n<p>2) After identifying which universities have a research group focused on your fields, try to apply for the best, basing on <a href=\"http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2011-2012/engineering-and-IT.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">Times Higher Education Ranking</a>, or another indicator.</p>\n\n<p>Good luck!</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1049, "author": "Anonymous Mathematician", "author_id": 612, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Unfortunately, I'm afraid your supervisor gave you very risky advice. For anyone other than a real star (at the level of the top students at the top schools), applying to just 20 top departments is likely to lead to disappointment. You may be at that level - of course I have no idea - but coming from a less famous university also puts you at a disadvantage, even with a well-known advisor.</p>\n\n<p>As several people have pointed out here, there are still some jobs available for next year, but many of the most attractive possibilities will be gone. At this point, you should look for advertisements but also explore other possibilities. Write to departments to see whether they have any last-minute openings (e.g., a sabbatical replacement), write to faculty members to see if they have postdoc funding from recent grants, etc.</p>\n\n<p>Ideally, a trusted mentor should inquire about these possibilities, not you, although of course this depends on whether you have someone who is willing to do this, such as your advisor. A mentor can explain that you only ended up in this situation because of following questionable advice, and your application was excellent otherwise, so a department that gets you now will be seizing a great opportunity rather than hiring someone nobody else wanted. (Of course, your advisor may feel uncomfortable loudly announcing that he gave you bad advice.) A mentor can also contact friends in other departments, collaborators, etc. in ways you probably can't. But it's much better for you to inquire than for nobody to.</p>\n\n<p>As for staying at your current university, I'd recommend remaining a graduate student rather than getting your Ph.D. and becoming an intructor, unless there's a huge funding difference or you have already spent an unusually long time in grad school. Continuing with a one-year position at the university you attended for grad school is tantamount to announcing \"I didn't get a job last year\" on your CV, and that can hurt your job search compared with simply graduating a year later.</p>\n\n<p>If you stay in grad school, perhaps your advisor could help arrange for you to spend a semester or even year visiting another university, which could help take care of the \"getting involved in the research community\" side of things. However, the funding situation for that can be complicated, so it may require luck or someone who can call in some favors.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1059, "author": "Jeff Burdges", "author_id": 616, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/616", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>There is scads of postdoc money available both inside the U.S. and worldwide for people interested in doing research, really money exists. </p>\n\n<p>There are not however faculty positions for all those postdocs, at least not in countries that pay anywhere near U.S. wages. I know French people working as professors in South America, Americans working in Asia and the Middle East, etc. It's certainly a grand adventure which you should consider, but it's effectively a one way trip because if you stay then you'd never earn enough to retire in the U.S. </p>\n\n<p>American universities will look down upon your time abroad if you try coming back as an academic too. Even very low ranked universities will realize you've taught in much more traditional systems that probably don't coddle the students nearly so much, meaning they won't trust your teaching.</p>\n\n<p>Europe does not follow the U.S.'s job calendar, meaning you may apply whenever you wish, but you must watch the job sites like <a href=\"http://www.math-jobs.com/\" rel=\"nofollow\">math-jobs.com</a> year round, which is annoying. I believe many asian countries have schedules, but not necessarily the same ones, watch the job sites.</p>\n\n<p>There is an issue that the further you travel from the U.S. the more your school's standing hurts you. I'd expect you can find postdoc money, references, etc. from Europeans or Asians who know your advisor, but this support counts for very little when you apply for a permanent faculty position.</p>\n\n<p>You should imho simply take an industry job if you wish to remain in the U.S. long term, but if you want an adventure there is one to be had. Adventure isn't for everyone but you only live once. ;)</p>\n\n<p>p.s. Don't limit yourself too much when applying, retool into computational homological algebra if an opportunity presents itself (and you can program well).</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 8394, "author": "Science Man", "author_id": 6259, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6259", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I can only answer your second question, being in somewhat same kind of situation. (job in algebra)Let me first start with a job link: </p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://www.euro-math-soc.eu/node/3432\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://www.euro-math-soc.eu/node/3432</a></p>\n\n<p>Some of the European jobs have later deadlines. You can apply there. Try euro-math-jobs, nordic-math-jobs, and don't forget to write to people asking about whether there are groups having funding for postdocs.And do look at the mathoverflow question they mentioned above (I did too, and it helped).</p>\n\n<p>Also, check this: <a href=\"http://homotopical.wordpress.com/jobs/postdoc/\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://homotopical.wordpress.com/jobs/postdoc/</a> \n(You will find it very informative).</p>\n\n<p>Best of luck!</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 96800, "author": "Clément", "author_id": 19627, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/19627", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Here's a list as a community wiki (feel free to edit), for primarily temporary Math. positions as researchers (a.k.a. \"post-docs\", \"non-tenured\", etc., etc. : the classification varies):</p>\n\n<h2>Mainly in North America</h2>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://chroniclevitae.com/job_search?job_search%5Bdistance_from_zip%5D=10&amp;job_search%5Bemployment_type%5D=&amp;job_search%5Binstitution_type%5D=&amp;job_search%5Bkeywords%5D=&amp;job_search%5Blocation%5D=&amp;job_search%5Bposition_type%5D=63&amp;job_search%5Bstart_date%5D=&amp;job_search%5Bzip_code%5D=&amp;utf8=%E2%9C%93\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Chronicle</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"https://cms.math.ca/Employment/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Canadian Mathematical Society</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://eims.ams.org/jobs/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">American Mathematical Society</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"https://www.mathclassifieds.org/jobseeker/search/results/?keywords=&amp;kfields=&amp;t731=47910&amp;t732=49077&amp;t735=&amp;max=25&amp;site_id=1925&amp;search=\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Mathematical Association of America</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n<h2>Mainly in Europe</h2>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://postes.smai.emath.fr/postdoc/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Société Mathématiques de France</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/search/field_research_field/mathematics-297\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">EURAXESS</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.maths.lth.se/nordic/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Nordic-Math-Job</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"https://www.myscience.org/jobs?ctrl=1&amp;p=&amp;d=Mathematics&amp;r=&amp;t=Senior+Researcher&amp;q=\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">MyScience.orq</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n<h2>Australia</h2>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.austms.org.au/Jobs/Academic_listings.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Australian Mathematical Society </a></li>\n</ul>\n\n<h2>All Around the World</h2>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.all-acad.com/Jobs/Mathematics_Statistics/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Math Jobs</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"https://www.mathjobs.org/jobs\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">MathJobs.Org</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"https://academicpositions.eu/find-jobs/?s%5B%5D=&amp;fields%5B%5D=mathematics&amp;positions%5B%5D=post-doc\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Academicpositions.eu</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://euro-math-soc.eu/jobs\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">European Mathematical Society</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n<h2>Other Ressources</h2>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://mathoverflow.net/q/952/82852\">This post on math.sxe</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"https://homotopical.wordpress.com/jobs/postdoc/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">This long blog post</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://notable.math.ucdavis.edu/wiki/Mathematics_Jobs_Wiki\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">The Mathematics Jobs Wiki</a></li>\n</ul>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/970", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/562/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 974, "author": "JeffE", "author_id": 65, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65", "pm_score": 6, "selected": true, "text": "<p>You have to make the case that your research potential outweighs your lack of research output.</p>\n\n<p>The only places to make that case are your research statement and your letters. Both your statement and your letters should make it clear that <em>you are an active researcher,</em> even though you are not <strong>yet</strong> published. Your statement should describe the specific research problem(s) that you are pursuing, promising and specific partial results, and a specific and well-informed plan of attack.</p>\n\n<p>Similarly, letters from faculty at your MS department should describe your independence, stubbornness, intellectual maturity, and so on, in specific and credible detail. <strong>When you ask for letters, ask your references specifically if they can write a strong letter about your research potential.</strong> Ideally, your references should admit that their department doesn't provide you with the environment that you need to thrive as a researcher. And it really hurts to write “[Bravo] can do better than us,” so it better be true.</p>\n\n<p>Admissions committees (at least the ones I've been on) do take applicants' previous institutions into account when judging research records. We know that applicants from most 4-year liberal arts colleges don't have as many opportunities for computer science research as applicants from (say) MIT, so our expectations for MIT applicants are higher. So your lack of publications may not hurt you as much if your MS department is <em>known</em> to have a weak research atmosphere.</p>\n\n<p>However: <strong>Do not suggest in your application that your lack of publications is your MS department's fault.</strong> You may believe it's their fault, and you might even be right. But if you actually <em>write</em> that it's their fault, you'll come across as someone eager to blame others for your weaknesses. No matter how good you are at research, nobody will admit you if they think you're a jerk.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 994, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>This is another one of those questions that defies easy categorization. If you are applying, for instance, to a \"hard\" engineering discipline, it's not normally expected that a MSc would have any \"external\" publication record of any kind, and, as such, not having one would not weight against the candidate in admissions considerations. (All things being equal, of course, the candidate with a publication record might be prioritized over one without.) Similarly, any student coming from a European bachelor's/master's system, where the expected output is a master's thesis, but not necessarily journal publications, I would weight accordingly. (I might ask for a copy of the master's thesis.)</p>\n\n<p>Similarly, if the degree is coursework-only, then this should be clearly stated as part of the application. The challenge will then be to get some support from the letters of reference of your capability to do research.</p>\n\n<p>For fields where some publication record is expected, I'd follow JeffE's advice.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/973", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/411/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 976, "author": "Community", "author_id": -1, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The first thing would be to contact the editor of the journal that published your co-author's work, and to explain the problem to them. If the proofs that it is your own research are sufficient, they might consider the previously published paper as plagiarism, which should unblock your own publication. In this process, it might be worth contacting also the journal to which you submitted, so that they can confirm the date at which they received your submission. </p>\n\n<p>Right now, I would say that the best move is to contact the two journals editors with the proofs, and see if they can sort things out. You can also consider in the mean time publishing your paper to an open repository (such as <a href=\"http://arxiv.org\">arXiv</a>), if it does not interfere with the copyright policy of the journal you want to publish to. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 990, "author": "Nobody", "author_id": 546, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/546", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>My first advice is to calm down.</p>\n\n<p>Your question and your comments sound emotional to me. The more emotional you are, the worse situation you would be in. Since the other party is your prof, the burden of proof is on your shoulder. You need to deal with it carefully.</p>\n\n<p>I am not even sure you have a problem. From what you have said in the question and comments, your prof submitted a paper with only his name on the paper to a journal without your prior knowledge. Then he gave you his approval to submit another paper of probably the same contents to another journal with both your name and his name on it(you said he is the co-author).</p>\n\n<p>The above is what I understood from your question and your comments. If all are true, the issue is his problem, not yours. Because he is the one who did the double submission, not you. All you have to do to clear up this issue is to present evidence which shows that you got his approval before you submitted the paper to the journal.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 991, "author": "JeffE", "author_id": 65, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65", "pm_score": 6, "selected": true, "text": "<p>Let me echo scaaahu's excellent advice: Calm down. Obviously you're scared, and with good reason, but you need to approach the situation calmly and professionally. Otherwise, <em>even if you are in the right</em> it will be difficult for other people to take your concerns seriously.</p>\n\n<p>Your comments suggest (to me) that the situation is not as straightforward as your initial post describes. Without considerably more detail about what happened — <strong>which would be inappropriate for you to post here</strong> — it's difficult to make specific suggestions.</p>\n\n<p>I think you need to discuss the situation with someone who understands both the politics in your department and the publication culture in your field. Find another senior faculty member in your department (or in a different department, or in the dean's office) who you can trust to keep confidence. (Yes, this can be difficult, but ask around.) Write up a timeline of events in advance, and make copies of documentation for each event in the timeline. Calmly and carefully describe the situation. Just present the facts; don't panic, and don't accuse. (One of the facts is \"I'm scared\"; that's okay.) Ask your confidant how to proceed. <strong>Listen to them.</strong></p>\n\n<p>In the best case, this is a simple misunderstanding, and talking to an informed but neutral third party is the best way to convince you to relax. In the worst case, your department chair is being egregiously unethical, and in particular threatening your chances at graduation, in which case you absolutely need a senior faculty advocate to help you navigate the resulting political mine field. (Your primary goal in this case should be to graduate and get out, not to optimize your grade or to punish your department chair.) Most likely, the actual situation is somewhere in between those two extremes.</p>\n\n<p>Good luck.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/975", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/565/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 976, "author": "Community", "author_id": -1, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The first thing would be to contact the editor of the journal that published your co-author's work, and to explain the problem to them. If the proofs that it is your own research are sufficient, they might consider the previously published paper as plagiarism, which should unblock your own publication. In this process, it might be worth contacting also the journal to which you submitted, so that they can confirm the date at which they received your submission. </p>\n\n<p>Right now, I would say that the best move is to contact the two journals editors with the proofs, and see if they can sort things out. You can also consider in the mean time publishing your paper to an open repository (such as <a href=\"http://arxiv.org\">arXiv</a>), if it does not interfere with the copyright policy of the journal you want to publish to. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 990, "author": "Nobody", "author_id": 546, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/546", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>My first advice is to calm down.</p>\n\n<p>Your question and your comments sound emotional to me. The more emotional you are, the worse situation you would be in. Since the other party is your prof, the burden of proof is on your shoulder. You need to deal with it carefully.</p>\n\n<p>I am not even sure you have a problem. From what you have said in the question and comments, your prof submitted a paper with only his name on the paper to a journal without your prior knowledge. Then he gave you his approval to submit another paper of probably the same contents to another journal with both your name and his name on it(you said he is the co-author).</p>\n\n<p>The above is what I understood from your question and your comments. If all are true, the issue is his problem, not yours. Because he is the one who did the double submission, not you. All you have to do to clear up this issue is to present evidence which shows that you got his approval before you submitted the paper to the journal.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 991, "author": "JeffE", "author_id": 65, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65", "pm_score": 6, "selected": true, "text": "<p>Let me echo scaaahu's excellent advice: Calm down. Obviously you're scared, and with good reason, but you need to approach the situation calmly and professionally. Otherwise, <em>even if you are in the right</em> it will be difficult for other people to take your concerns seriously.</p>\n\n<p>Your comments suggest (to me) that the situation is not as straightforward as your initial post describes. Without considerably more detail about what happened — <strong>which would be inappropriate for you to post here</strong> — it's difficult to make specific suggestions.</p>\n\n<p>I think you need to discuss the situation with someone who understands both the politics in your department and the publication culture in your field. Find another senior faculty member in your department (or in a different department, or in the dean's office) who you can trust to keep confidence. (Yes, this can be difficult, but ask around.) Write up a timeline of events in advance, and make copies of documentation for each event in the timeline. Calmly and carefully describe the situation. Just present the facts; don't panic, and don't accuse. (One of the facts is \"I'm scared\"; that's okay.) Ask your confidant how to proceed. <strong>Listen to them.</strong></p>\n\n<p>In the best case, this is a simple misunderstanding, and talking to an informed but neutral third party is the best way to convince you to relax. In the worst case, your department chair is being egregiously unethical, and in particular threatening your chances at graduation, in which case you absolutely need a senior faculty advocate to help you navigate the resulting political mine field. (Your primary goal in this case should be to graduate and get out, not to optimize your grade or to punish your department chair.) Most likely, the actual situation is somewhere in between those two extremes.</p>\n\n<p>Good luck.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/977", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/399/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 981, "author": "Community", "author_id": -1, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I don't really know for PhD, but for Postdocs, from what I've seen and heard, these skills count <em>a lot</em>, especially when the recruitment process is well structured, as I experienced it in the UK and in Germany. Basically, the recruitment process consists of three steps: </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Sending the CV, application, reference letters, etc. At this point, soft-skill do not really count, although knowing how to write a good cover letter can help. </p></li>\n<li><p>Seminar/Public talk: the applicant is invited to give a presentation of his research work to a public audience (usually including the committee, and the staff from the department). </p></li>\n<li><p>Interview: the recruitment committee interviews the applicant. </p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>In the steps 2 and 3, the soft-skills are very important. Basically, all applicants reaching step 2 have good credentials, so it's somehow already established that they can write papers and solve research problems, so the quality of the talk and the attitude during the interview are crucial. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 995, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>For a graduate student, soft skills matter only in as much as they pertain to good writing and to having good interview skills (if interviews are conducted).</p>\n\n<p>If you write a poor statement of purpose with an otherwise solid application, it can severely hurt your chances of admission. Similarly, in a department that does interviews, a good interview can significantly improve your chances—raising you from \"on the bubble\" to \"admit.\" Of course, the converse could be true—if you come off as arrogant or incompetent in your interview, that can completely kill your chances at admission.</p>\n\n<p>However, those are skills that can be worked on via practice, and most universities offer workshops and training on how to improve writing and handle job interviews. Students should take advantage of those opportunities when they're available.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/980", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/379/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 983, "author": "Lars Kotthoff", "author_id": 12, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Unless your professor specified something, you can basically use whatever format you want. Make sure that it looks professional though (i.e. don't use Comic Sans). The titles and authors would be those of the paper you are summarising.</p>\n\n<p>Apart from that, the structure is already given. I would probably put each synopsis on a separate page with something like \"Summary of ...\" and the title of the paper as heading.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 992, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 3, "selected": true, "text": "<p>This is a fairly simple assignment. To answer your questions:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Obviously your name and class information should appear at the top of the assignment (unless otherwise instructed by the professor).</p></li>\n<li><p>The \"title and authors\" referred to by the professor are in reference to the paper that you are discussing, not you!</p></li>\n<li><p>You are told to write in complete paragraphs. That means no bullet lists, so write everything as complete, well-structured sentences. </p></li>\n<li><p>Spacing and font are up to you, but in general, I'd use at least 1.5 times normal spacing and 11 pt or larger font (unless you're working with LaTeX, in which case the formatting is handled for you).</p></li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4804, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think this is a really useful habit to get into when you are just starting to read the literature. It lets you look back and quickly refresh yourself about what you found interesting in the paper. I would suggest that as you develop a reference library (e.g., LaTeX bib file or Endnote) that you keep some of the content in that file. As I think grades are less important in grad school than knowledge, use a format that makes it easiest to archive with your bibliographic software.</p>\n\n<p>If you use LaTeX (and possibly in MS Word) you could probably write a citation style and document class that would automagically build the document from the bib data.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/982", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/570/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 985, "author": "dearN", "author_id": 21, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/21", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I think you are the person who would be invited out to lunch, dinner etc. as you are the guest <code>:)</code> ! However, there is nothing wrong with inviting your opposite number to talk in an informal setting. The only consideration is that you know the lay of the land! </p>\n\n<p>Depending on how many days you would be spending at the US university, you might want to make a strategy on conversations and prospective collaborations. </p>\n\n<p>I am assuming you would have results to show and tell and with a punchline at that. That generally helps.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 988, "author": "David LeBauer", "author_id": 258, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/258", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Your host has a responsibility to make your schedule in such a way that it will be full and engaging.</p>\n\n<p>Sometimes, it can be difficult to fill the schedule - it requires that people respond to the hosts invitations to meet with you. Your input can be helpful both in filling out the schedule and making sure that your visit is productive.</p>\n\n<p>You can request to meet with specific people and ask for feedback from your host on who you might want to speak to.</p>\n\n<p>I think it would be a good idea to request to meet with graduate students in addition to postdocs and senior scientists.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/984", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/96/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 993, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>There are a few programs, such as the <a href=\"http://www.newtonfellowships.org/\" rel=\"nofollow\">Newton Fellowships</a> and the <a href=\"http://www.humboldt-foundation.de/web/humboldt-fellowship-postdoc.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">Humboldt Fellowship</a> which are designed expressly for international researchers; however, those programs are based out of the UK and Germany, respectively. There is also the <a href=\"http://fulbright.state.gov/grants/which-grant-is-right-for-me\" rel=\"nofollow\">Fulbright Program</a> which offers opportunities for students and scholars to come to the US. These may or may not be applicable.</p>\n\n<p>However, this is largely a \"chicken-and-egg\" problem; coming from abroad, you won't be able to apply for your own money at US agencies (except ones sponsoring programs like the Fulbright). So the logistics of this might be very challenging to coordinate. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 996, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<p>From what I've seen, you've just described perfectly what many professors would view as the \"ideal postdoc\". As one of the main goals of your postdoctoral training is to gain experience writing your own grant proposals, your four steps are very close to what you should be doing.</p>\n\n<p>The most crucial part for you will be finding a postdoctoral advisor with whom you get along. As is typical in research settings, look for someone with significant research experience who has a successful record of getting proposals funded. Given that this is your goal, this is possibly more important now than their publication record. You should be able to find this out by asking around the department and speaking to graduate students, and even just asking the advisor directly about their recently funded grant applications. Once you find someone, everything else should go fairly smoothly.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>1) Come up with feasible research idea and approach advisor.</p>\n \n <p>2) Discuss idea and possible collaborations.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>You should do this both on your own and through talking to your advisor. Remember that one of the main factors driving whether a postdoctoral grant is accepted is <a href=\"http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/pappguide/nsf11001/gpg_2.jsp#IIC2j\">previous experience of both the postdoctoral fellow himself and the advisor</a>; consider ideas in areas where you have experience doing research <em>and</em> your advisor has experience mentoring.</p>\n\n<p>While you can consider collaborations, my postdoc advisor told me that at <em>most</em> I should consider one other collaborator, other my advisor himself, as collaborative proposals are more <a href=\"http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/pappguide/nsf11001/gpg_2.jsp#IID4\">complicated</a>, both from a submission and administrative standpoint.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>3) Try to categorize it into NSF's or any other funding agencies categories.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Your advisor should already be aware of relevant funding opportunities.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>4) Write a proposal in the summer and submit it during the next window of opportunity.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I assume you wrote \"summer\" because you were thinking of a particular grant, but different opportunities have different grant submission deadlines. Again, talk to your advisor to see which grants the thinks would be a good fit for you, and check out their respective deadlines.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/986", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/21/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1001, "author": "Jez", "author_id": 358, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/358", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<p>There are a few things that I would consider when choosing a data repository:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Does it let you release your data under a license you're happy with?\n<ul>\n<li>Applying too restrictive a license can prevent anyone from doing anything useful with the data, so think about what you're prepared to allow. In particular, remember that most of the research done in academia could be considered \"commercial\" from a legal perspective. On the other hand, you may wish to choose a license that ensures you get credit for your work. You may or may not agree with them, but reading the <a href=\"http://pantonprinciples.org/\">Panton Principles</a> will give you some idea of the issues here. Also take a look at this <a href=\"http://opendefinition.org/licenses#Data\">list of licenses written with data in mind</a></li>\n</ul></li>\n<li>How easy will your data be to find?\n<ul>\n<li>People will only use your data if they can find it. I recommend Googling (other search engines are available) for some datasets you know of in your field and see if they come up — those repositories which are indexed by the major search engines will put you at a big advantage when it comes to attracting citations.</li>\n</ul></li>\n<li>What repositories are well known in your field?\n<ul>\n<li>Your institution may have a repository which you can easily deposit in, but it won't be the first place colleagues in your field will think of to look. If there are well-established repositories I would prefer those, or make sure your data is indexed by a well-established aggregator (I know <a href=\"http://www.ands.org.au\">ANDS</a> runs a national aggregator in Australia).</li>\n</ul></li>\n<li>What does your institution allow?\n<ul>\n<li>In many cases, your institution will own (or otherwise have a claim to) the data you generate as part of your research, so check what your local policies are and if need be ask your supervisor, head of department, legal team, etc. This will particularly affect your choice of license.</li>\n</ul></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>The other parts of your question can probably be answered better by others here (or maybe it should be split into several?)</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1003, "author": "Leo Uieda", "author_id": 460, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/460", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"http://www.figshare.com\">Figshare</a> provides online hosting and a permalink to your dataset, though it does not provide a DOI. I've been posting some figures there, but not data, and I quite like the service. They allow the option of keeping the data private as well, so you can use to store the data and later release it when you're done.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1011, "author": "William Gunn", "author_id": 582, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/582", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think the best place for data is in a subject-focused data repository, but in the absence of that, there are repositories such as <a href=\"http://datadryad.org/\" rel=\"nofollow\">Dryad</a>. </p>\n\n<p>Biomed Central just announced a partnership with a site called LabArchives to host data of BMC authors, including DOIs for the data and the re-use promoting CC0 license, but I don't have any experience with the site.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1015, "author": "tjvision", "author_id": 587, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/587", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Sounds like it might be appropriate for Pangaea: <a href=\"http://www.pangaea.de/submit/\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://www.pangaea.de/submit/</a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 2867, "author": "Raphael", "author_id": 1419, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1419", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>If you have a website with free preprints of your work (which you probably should have), put your data (and code) there. Alternatively, I know people who use <a href=\"https://github.com/\" rel=\"nofollow\">GitHub</a> (or similar) for the purpose of (distributed) storage. This has the charm of persistence and an immediate potential of collaboration.</p>\n\n<p>For a (hopefully) persistent approach to citability, <a href=\"http://datacite.org\" rel=\"nofollow\">DataCite</a> looks legit. In particular, they issue DOIs and <a href=\"http://datacite.org/members\" rel=\"nofollow\">are funded by libraries and research facilities from around the globe</a>.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/987", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/258/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1001, "author": "Jez", "author_id": 358, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/358", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<p>There are a few things that I would consider when choosing a data repository:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Does it let you release your data under a license you're happy with?\n<ul>\n<li>Applying too restrictive a license can prevent anyone from doing anything useful with the data, so think about what you're prepared to allow. In particular, remember that most of the research done in academia could be considered \"commercial\" from a legal perspective. On the other hand, you may wish to choose a license that ensures you get credit for your work. You may or may not agree with them, but reading the <a href=\"http://pantonprinciples.org/\">Panton Principles</a> will give you some idea of the issues here. Also take a look at this <a href=\"http://opendefinition.org/licenses#Data\">list of licenses written with data in mind</a></li>\n</ul></li>\n<li>How easy will your data be to find?\n<ul>\n<li>People will only use your data if they can find it. I recommend Googling (other search engines are available) for some datasets you know of in your field and see if they come up — those repositories which are indexed by the major search engines will put you at a big advantage when it comes to attracting citations.</li>\n</ul></li>\n<li>What repositories are well known in your field?\n<ul>\n<li>Your institution may have a repository which you can easily deposit in, but it won't be the first place colleagues in your field will think of to look. If there are well-established repositories I would prefer those, or make sure your data is indexed by a well-established aggregator (I know <a href=\"http://www.ands.org.au\">ANDS</a> runs a national aggregator in Australia).</li>\n</ul></li>\n<li>What does your institution allow?\n<ul>\n<li>In many cases, your institution will own (or otherwise have a claim to) the data you generate as part of your research, so check what your local policies are and if need be ask your supervisor, head of department, legal team, etc. This will particularly affect your choice of license.</li>\n</ul></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>The other parts of your question can probably be answered better by others here (or maybe it should be split into several?)</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1003, "author": "Leo Uieda", "author_id": 460, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/460", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"http://www.figshare.com\">Figshare</a> provides online hosting and a permalink to your dataset, though it does not provide a DOI. I've been posting some figures there, but not data, and I quite like the service. They allow the option of keeping the data private as well, so you can use to store the data and later release it when you're done.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1011, "author": "William Gunn", "author_id": 582, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/582", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think the best place for data is in a subject-focused data repository, but in the absence of that, there are repositories such as <a href=\"http://datadryad.org/\" rel=\"nofollow\">Dryad</a>. </p>\n\n<p>Biomed Central just announced a partnership with a site called LabArchives to host data of BMC authors, including DOIs for the data and the re-use promoting CC0 license, but I don't have any experience with the site.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1015, "author": "tjvision", "author_id": 587, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/587", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Sounds like it might be appropriate for Pangaea: <a href=\"http://www.pangaea.de/submit/\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://www.pangaea.de/submit/</a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 2867, "author": "Raphael", "author_id": 1419, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1419", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>If you have a website with free preprints of your work (which you probably should have), put your data (and code) there. Alternatively, I know people who use <a href=\"https://github.com/\" rel=\"nofollow\">GitHub</a> (or similar) for the purpose of (distributed) storage. This has the charm of persistence and an immediate potential of collaboration.</p>\n\n<p>For a (hopefully) persistent approach to citability, <a href=\"http://datacite.org\" rel=\"nofollow\">DataCite</a> looks legit. In particular, they issue DOIs and <a href=\"http://datacite.org/members\" rel=\"nofollow\">are funded by libraries and research facilities from around the globe</a>.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/997", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/61/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1005, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think this is a function of the EU country in question, and perhaps even the specific institution that you want to work for. </p>\n\n<p>If you have a particular institution in mind, then you should contact them directly to ask about the specific procedures that apply there. Otherwise, you should take a look at the national-level funding agency or agencies that provide the funding that is comparable to the EU-level program. For instance, in Germany, that would mean looking at what the <a href=\"http://www.dfg.de\" rel=\"nofollow\">DFG</a> permits as part of their internal practices. [In Germany, this usually shouldn't be a problem, but it might in other countries, depending on their appointment procedures.]</p>\n\n<p>But I think the other thing is that most likely a <em>temporary worker</em> can get a full-time salary from an EU-level grant, but a <em>permanent</em> employee cannot.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1692, "author": "Community", "author_id": -1, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<p>So, after quite some time spent on reading the paperwork and talking with helpful staff, I finally understood how this system works. There are different amounts involved: </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>S</strong>: the salary of the researcher, corresponding to the gross amount, i.e. before tax. For instance, 50.000 euros per year. </li>\n<li><strong>r</strong>: the overhead asked by the host institution, which basically corresponds to the indirect costs of hosting the researcher (renting the office, paying the admin staff, etc). This is an agreement between the host institution and the european commission, usually calculated as a percentage of the salary. For instance, where I'm working now, it's 67%. In some places, it can go up to 100%. </li>\n<li><strong>T</strong>: the travel and equipments expenses. It basically depends on the expected number of conferences to attend per year, the meetings organised for the project, etc. For instance, based on 4 conferences per year, 2500 euros per conference, that makes 10.000 euros. </li>\n<li><strong>C = S + rS + T</strong>: the total cost of the researcher per year. For instance, that would be 50000 + 33500 + 10000 = 93500. </li>\n<li><strong>Req = 0.75 * C</strong>: is the requested amount to the commission (assuming the host institution belongs to: profit public bodies, secondary and higher education establishments, research organisations and SMEs, 0.5 otherwise). So, for the example, we would request 70.125 euros per year. </li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Note that the request amount is 10.000 euros above the gross salary of the researcher (deducting the travel costs). In other words, one could consider that the 25% the host institution has to pay are indirectly paid by giving an office and proving staff support (who, in general, would be paid anyway, EU project or not), and therefore it does not necessarily mean that the researcher has to find another funding source for the missing 25%. </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1004", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1007, "author": "dearN", "author_id": 21, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/21", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<p>At my university (in the US), the quals are a big deal -- both written and oral. The written quals are the tough ones because the oral quals, here, deal only with your research and as you should be reasonably well read in the literature in your field of research, no one really fails the orals.</p>\n\n<p>The written quals need substantial preparation. For my quals (Fluids/Thermodyanics/Heat transfer) back in 2008, I had to work and study hard for about 10-12 hours a day for 3 months straight. </p>\n\n<p>There were several students who didn't make it through the first attempt and had to go through it all over again the next year. Some (miniscule number) didn't make it the second time around and were discharged with a master's degree.</p>\n\n<p>So to answer your question:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>It is very university and area of specialization, the difficulty level and importance given to written qualifiers.</li>\n<li>To be safe, study up hard like you never have before.</li>\n<li>You may have other responsibilities like grants, classes to teach, assignments to do and research but you just have to balance all these.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Good luck! It is just a matter of hard work, thats all!</p>\n\n<p>-Will be getting my PhD in mechanical engineering at the end of Fall 2012.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1008, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Qualifying exams are <em>never</em> to be taken lightly. Even when they prove to be a surreal experience, they need to be given the attention appropriate to their seriousness. These are exams that you typically only have one or at most two chances to pass. As a result, you want to get through them on the first try, so that you don't have to worry about them again. </p>\n\n<p>How hard you have to work does depend a lot on the structure of the exam, and based on your previous preparation. If there are a lot of subjects to be tested with which you are not familiar, you may have to work harder than if you're getting A's in all of the classes that will be tested on the exam. (Even then, you'll still want to work through some practice problems to get a feel for the kinds of questions that are asked.)</p>\n\n<p>As the original questioner mentions, in many cases the oral exam can be a \"sanity check\"—in more ways than one. If the decision has been largely made on the basis of the previous coursework and written quals, then the oral exam can act either to confirm the decisions of the panel, or as an effective psychological exam. One of my panels turned things into what amounted to a carnival side-show, with everybody acting completely out of character, and in a manner I found entirely unbefitting an oral qualifying exam. However, it made sense to see if there was any way to make me \"snap\" and lose my cool. (I was too busy trying to figure out why everybody was acting so oddly to really snap.)</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1006", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1016, "author": "Community", "author_id": -1, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I think there are two parts in your question: can someone with a Bachelor from the US get a job from a university or research lab, and what kind of visa such a person would need. For the first question, it's really depending on the university. As for the visa, it depends if it would be for a PhD student, or for a \"regular\" researcher (i.e. not a student). However, in both cases, the visa application depends on the country, as far as I know, there is no Schengen Research Visa. For instance, for France, there are two types of Visa the person could apply to (<a href=\"http://www.consulfrance-washington.org/spip.php?rubrique98\">Visa section of the french consulate in Washington</a>)</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p><a href=\"http://www.consulfrance-washington.org/spip.php?article519\">The “Skills and Talent” Card visa (Carte Compétences &amp; Talents)</a>. However, for this one, they say: </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>University graduates should be PhD. Lower graduates will be required to add proof of profesionnal experience in the same field for a minimum of 1 to 3 years (the lower the degree, the longer profesionnal experience expected) </p>\n</blockquote></li>\n<li><p><a href=\"http://www.consulfrance-washington.org/spip.php?article398\">Visas for professors and researchers holders of a \"convention d’accueil\"</a>. According to this <a href=\"http://www.fnak.fr/dn_Formalites/ES_criteres_eligibilite.html\">site</a> (in French, I couldn't find an English version), a \"convention d'accueil\" would basically be the work contract with the university/lab, and the eligibility requirement seems to be a Master degree or equivalent (but it could be the case that a 5-years US Bachelor degree counts as an equivalent to a 5-year French Master degree). As far as I understand, that would be the best option for someone who wants to do her PhD in France. </p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>It would also be possible to apply for a student visa, but I think it's not possible to get a work contract with such a visa. Another solution could be to apply to a:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.consulfrance-washington.org/spip.php?article500\"> Employer Sponsored visa / OFII</a>. There does not seem to be anything specific to research in this case. </li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>So, to sum it up, I don't think there is a unified process to apply for a visa in Europe as a researcher, and each country has its own rules. Note that these visas are not automatically Schengen visa, and I've known the case of some extra-EU students, who obtained a visa in one Schengen country, and were not allowed to travel in other Schengen countries before becoming officially resident of the country. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 67330, "author": "Community", "author_id": -1, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p><strong>It is possible to work as a researcher in a European University with only a bachelor's degree.</strong> In many fields, jobs as a research assistant would be pretty accessible to someone with this level of education, if your degree is in a relevant field or you have relevant experience. You might be able to get a slightly higher level of position if you have a good CV, and there is opportunity for advancement. However, ultimately it is very hard to advance into higher level academic positions without a PhD. This only happens in exceptional circumstances.</p>\n\n<p><strong>However, practically speaking this will be very difficult for someone without the right to work in the EU</strong>, such as a U.S. citizen. While getting such a job is technically possible (and varies by country), typically it involves the institution sponsoring you. This involves a lot of effort on their part, and most likely will only happen for higher-level positions. Also there may be barriers (such as salary level and education level requirements) that prevent you from getting a visa in certain countries, as well. For example, in the UK you would have to make at least £35,000 or have a PhD level job to get the relevant visa. <strong>In short, unless you have some unique, in-demand skills, this is unlikely to be a real option.</strong></p>\n\n<p><strong>If you want to work as a researcher in Europe, consider studying for a higher degree in Europe.</strong> The barrier to entry is much lower for this; visas can be obtained relatively easily, and institutions provide a lot of support to help you. This need not be a PhD, you could just do a one year masters' degree. Depending on the country, you may be able to work while studying on a student visa. You also may have an easier path to transition to a work visa. In any case, the connections you make, and the additional education you get, should help.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1009", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1507, "author": "Chris K. Caldwell", "author_id": 817, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/817", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>It would be a good idea to seek info from those that might know, such as: </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.aspiringdocs.org/faqs/preparing/\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://www.aspiringdocs.org/faqs/preparing/</a> </li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/education-careers/becoming-physician/medical-school/preparing-medical-school.page\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/education-careers/becoming-physician/medical-school/preparing-medical-school.page</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"https://www.aamc.org/students/considering/gettingin/\" rel=\"nofollow\">https://www.aamc.org/students/considering/gettingin/</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>This site is aimed at questions about Academia, I can see how you might think this would be an appropriate place, but the sites listed above should directly answer your questions. </p>\n\n<p>Have you spent time with some of your local medical professionals, found out about their jobs, their specialties? Good luck! </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1509, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<p>Speaking from (1) experience applying and talking to applications officers, and (2) knowing doctors who take part in the admissions process, I would suggest that the ideal medical student would appear as follows:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Any major, but very high grades in all pre-med courses</li>\n<li>Very high MCAT score</li>\n<li>Experience working in a hospital <em>or</em> medical research lab, with demonstrated results (good recommendations from doctors and published papers, respectively)</li>\n<li>Very personable during the interview, well-liked by all interviewers</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>None of these should be a surprise; they just want awesome, academic students.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1010", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/581/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1017, "author": "Willie Wong", "author_id": 94, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/94", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>One possibility is to ask the <em>students</em> to present. </p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>It gives an opportunity for the students to practice presenting <em>something</em>. </p></li>\n<li><p>Sitting from the audience point-of-view with (I expect) expert knowledge, you will be at a great vantage point for judging whether the students fully comprehend the paper and whether they are focusing on the \"correct things\". Sometimes students spend too much time tracking down irrelevant details and miss the big picture. </p></li>\n<li><p>Sometimes (depend on local culture etc.) students are more likely to engage in discussion and ask detailed questions if it is their peer doing the presentation. (The \"intimidated by the professor effect\".) </p></li>\n</ol>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1024, "author": "Artem Kaznatcheev", "author_id": 66, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/66", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I recommend the discussion format. The two downsides of it you list can be overcome by using a <strong>guided discussion</strong>. When you assign the paper, also include a list of questions that you expect the students to be able to answer after having read the paper. When the class meets:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Select students at random (or through a random permutation).</li>\n<li>Have the student answer an assigned question as a discussion seed.</li>\n<li>Open up the floor to other students to make comments and pitch in their ideas (thus starting a discussion). </li>\n<li>When the topic dies down, move to the next question on the assigned list and repeat from step 1.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>This format has several advantages:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>It ensures that the students have read the paper (since they might get randomly selected)</li>\n<li>It encourages them to think of their own answers and participate in discussions.</li>\n<li>It eliminates the intimidating factor of the professor having tight control of the discussion (since you only moderate who speaks)</li>\n<li>It lets you address the key points of the paper (through your initial selection of questions) without having to go over the whole paper in class.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>I have experienced this format in upper level undergrad/grad courses during my undergrad and enjoyed it greatly. It really encouraged me to read papers and reflect on them carefully.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1036, "author": "Eiyrioü von Kauyf", "author_id": 601, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/601", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I propose the presentation format as well but rather than have the students present from anything, maybe have a pool they can choose from or assign topics? With regards to the discussion format, sometimes it can devolve into only a few of the students talking spiritedly while the rest are confused or bored.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 38904, "author": "user1258240", "author_id": 29406, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/29406", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Usually I start by asking the students some simple questions about the paper. After a few questions I am so confident that most of them understand almost nothing about the paper, that I feel comfortable presenting it as if they never read it...</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1012", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/586/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1022, "author": "Artem Kaznatcheev", "author_id": 66, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/66", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>If the student (or anybody else for that matter) did not make a novel and significant intellectual contribution to the project, then they should not be included on the author list of the paper. In your question, it seems like all the intellectual contribution was by the professor (and colleagues) and the students just carried out tasks assigned to them or made very minor contributions. As such, the students should be mentioned in the <strong>acknowledgement section</strong> but not given authorship.</p>\n\n<p>That being said, if your supervisor is only using you for drill work, then maybe you should seek a better supervisor. A good supervisor should encourage their students to take an active role of novel intellectual contribution. If your supervisor is not encouraging you to do this, then they are not training you to be a researcher, they are training you to be a lab-hand (although I guess in some fields you have to be a lab-hand before you are can be trained as a researcher).</p>\n\n<p>Here is the <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/644/66\">flip side of this question</a>, in particular my answer is inspired by <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/651/66\">@JeffE's answer</a>.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1026, "author": "Raphael Wimmer", "author_id": 592, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/592", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Given that the students did not participate in writing the paper, I agree with Artem Kaznatcheev that they should not be named as authors. \nIt is good scientific practice to only put an author's name on a paper if she or he has at least read the complete paper before publication and can judge its correctness. After all, each author is responsible for any misrepresentations in the paper. \nHowever, they definitely should appear in the acknowledgement section.</p>\n\n<p>(Our lab has the informal policy that we ask students who contributed somehow to a research project if they want to take part in the paper-writing process. In this case, they are named as authors, otherwise mentioned in the acknowledgements section.)</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1030, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Reading your original question, the scenario you describe makes this situation a little more complex.</p>\n\n<p>If the paper is written in such a way as to draw significantly on the work reported in the thesis—to the extent of using figures and data prepared by the student, then one could very well make the argument that the student should be cited as an author. This is especially true if the supervisor uses any of the text in the construction of his paper.</p>\n\n<p>More generally, I try to use the criterion that my postdoc advisor gave me: if someone believes that their contributions to the research are significant enough to merit co-authorship, then they should contribute to the writing and revising of the manuscript. At that point, they become fully entitled to co-authorship.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1043, "author": "csgillespie", "author_id": 611, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/611", "pm_score": 5, "selected": false, "text": "<p>A few comments:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>Were they asked to contribute to the paper or was the paper written without their knowledge? If they refused to contribute, then they shouldn't be a named author. If they weren't asked, then it's not their fault they didn't contribute ;)</p></li>\n<li><p>I think the word <em>undergraduate</em> is a red herring. Substitute it with the word <em>PhD student</em> or <em>RA</em> or <em>Prof from the lab next door</em>, does this change your view? A person's title shouldn't influence their inclusion.</p></li>\n<li><p>How much work are we talking about here? When I provide statistical advice, I'm happy to give up a few hours of my time for free. But once I'm spending days on the project, then I expect (and make it clear) to be am named author. </p></li>\n<li><p>If data collection was \"trivial\", then I would suggest it shouldn't be used as an undergraduate project. Also, I presume that there was some skill in collecting the data?</p></li>\n</ol>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1054, "author": "bobthejoe", "author_id": 319, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/319", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The consensus (of course no such thing exists) that I have heard in the biological science goes, if your data resulted in a figure, you get your name on the paper. However, if the person wrote the paper and contributed immensely, they then get the first authorship,</p>\n\n<p>I think part of the question is based on whether or not the ideas of the thesis were influential in the interpretation of the data and if the data had to be recollected. In the situation described our field would be very comfortable with having the undergrad in the middle, the least important position of authorship.</p>\n\n<p>It is very important to acknowledge @JeffE's comment which is \"<strong>the correct answer depends on the standard publication culture in the supervisor's field</strong>\"</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1014", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/588/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1019, "author": "Alex Holcombe", "author_id": 590, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/590", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>First one must assess whether researchers in the area agree that the community should leave Elsevier. If there isn't strong support for leaving Elsevier, then any move is likely to fail, as it will probably involve a new venture (such as a new journal) requiring the support of many, many researchers in the area, perhaps as authors, editors, or readers pressuring their university to subscribe to the new journal. If the research community is not supportive, this may because they have very good reasons or it may be out of ignorance / lack of imagination of the alternatives. </p>\n\n<p>Discussion of the possibilities in your researcher community serves to explore the options, educate, and potentially build support. You may be able to start a discussion of the issues on mailing lists, social media, or run a <a href=\"http://openwetware.org/wiki/OpenVisionScience\">conference symposium/satellite</a> related to this topic.</p>\n\n<p>If there is community support, there are a few possibilities for actually making the move. In most (all?) cases, Elsevier owns the journal and its name, therefore one cannot simply switch publishers and keep the same journal name. As a work-around, moves have occurred when all or most of the members of editorial boards of Elsevier journals <a href=\"http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Journal_declarations_of_independence\">resigned and started a new journal</a>, usually issuing an open letter explaining their action and encouraging the community to submit to and subscribe to the new journal.</p>\n\n<p>A new journal can use the traditional subscription model or be open access. </p>\n\n<p>With a subscription model, one can use a traditional publisher- a non-profit university press may be less objectionable than Elsevier or one of the other mega-profitable corporate publishers. I have <a href=\"http://openwetware.org/wiki/OpenVisionScience#Publishing_Solutions-_subscription_model\">started a list of possible publishers</a>. To get started with a new publisher, one must convince them that they will make enough from subscriptions for the new journal to be worth their while. This may be difficult, as new journals are frequently risky. It takes a few years for a journal to receive an impact factor, and may also take years to be indexed by the major databases, and many authors will only submit to journals that have already achieved these things.</p>\n\n<p>An open-access journal can use the author-pays model, in which case a large publisher can provide all the traditional services (manuscript submission software system and reviewing workflow management, layout, copyediting, production, webhosting, accounting, exporting to databases, DOI registration, proper metadata, etc.) or it can be run on a shoestring, with academics handling everything perhaps with a few administrative staff. For research communities willing to submit all their manuscripts in LateX, this is quite feasible but for communities that demand layout (figures and text arranged to fit a standard page appearance and possibly typesetting) be done, this is more labor-intensive.</p>\n\n<p>Several open-source software tools assist in publishing journals. Open Journal Systems is most like a traditional journal publishing platform but I hear it may be difficult for academics to use. Annotum is based on Wordpress and I believe it works by having authors write their manuscript directly in its software, so that it can guarantee that the paper will look exactly as you expect it (WYSIWYG). It is used by PLoS Currents and other journals. All of these tools could probably use more skilled programmmers contributing to the project.</p>\n\n<p>I am only a researcher, not a publisher, so perhaps not everything I have written here is correct. I think we researchers are in particular need of estimates of the person-hours needed to publish and manage a journal by various methods, so that a research community considering a move can budget appropriately / be comfortable knowing what they're getting into.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1025, "author": "Amye", "author_id": 591, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/591", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>As a publisher who has launched an OA journal and seen what it takes to do so, I see the biggest problem for starting any journal being lack of an <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_factor\">Impact Factor</a> (IF). I've polled authors at ECVP and about 90% said IF is what determined where they submitted. Everyone knows why this is, so why don't academics turn inward and try to undermine this reliance on IFs? Doing so would insert true competition into the journals market. Maybe academics have tried to do this, though I've never read of any real substantial attempts. I could be wrong. The second problem after IF and before funding is loyalty. Ed board members are often tied to multiple journals and in those first few years you really need those big names on your board to commission for the journal. Big names often care more about another journal or just don't care. </p>\n\n<p>You need a publisher, be it nonprofit or profit, that can put in the work to promote the journal and help commission. Financially, OA journals are very easy to start. Subscription journals require more financial backing, which perhaps could be gotten through grants if you don't want to be tied to a commercial publisher. The answer is long and requires lots of discussion and more important, commitment. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1029, "author": "Daniel Baker", "author_id": 594, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/594", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>It occurs to me that in our field (vision science), Journal of Vision already is an open access alternative to Vision Research. I haven't noticed a big difference in quality or acceptance rates between the two journals, they publish at a similar rate (JoV=270, VR=252 articles in 2011) and their impact factors are within 0.5 of each other. Also, around a third of the VR editorial board are also on the JoV board, and Denis Levi is about to transition from VR editor in chief to JoV editor in chief. Given these similarities, I guess the fact that the whole field hasn't abandoned VR suggests that people still feel there is a place for it. Or, from the other perspective, the success of JoV shows that lots of people wanted an open access alternative, and it's great that they now have one. {reposted from Google+}</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1018", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/590/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1021, "author": "Artem Kaznatcheev", "author_id": 66, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/66", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Moving from comments:</p>\n\n<p>Defining field boundaries is an extremely difficult problem. Once those boundaries are defined (or as they are being defined) it is also difficult to judge which field individual journals belong to. The technical problem is one of \"community-structure\" or cluster detection, and is a big problem in computer science.</p>\n\n<p>For the specific case of journals and citations, there is some cool work on this via statistical properties of random walks that <a href=\"http://www.eigenfactor.org/map/maps.php\" rel=\"nofollow\">makes nice definitions using the map-equation</a>. However, these statistical methods sometimes produce oddities (I think I remember seeing Phys. Rev. Letters being classified as Chemistry based on the stats). It also doesn't always produce the fine-gaining desired, for instance eigenfactor seems to not have a Cognitive Science category, just a general Psychology category.</p>\n\n<p>In general, I recommend taking a look around <a href=\"http://www.eigenfactor.org/\" rel=\"nofollow\">eigenfactor</a>. Note that the website claims eigenfactor and article influence scores adjust for different fields, already (take a look at <a href=\"http://www.eigenfactor.org/whyeigenfactor.php\" rel=\"nofollow\">point #4</a>). I am not sure how accurate this claim is, but I personally find their metric more reliable (not to mention more accessible!) than ISI Web of Science. I also think their approach is more developed than the freshly-pressed Google Scholar journal rankings based on h5-index. However, I would love to see eigenfactor and Google Scholar together. </p>\n\n<p>If you are unsatisfied with eigenfactor's rankings, then a naive metric might be: classify journals into their fields and then assign each a ranking p, meaning the journal is in top p% of its field by some standard metric. This should give you a rough idea.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1031, "author": "JeffE", "author_id": 65, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>There is no such index.</p>\n\n<p>Publication and citation standards vary significantly between disciplines and even sub-disciplines. Without direct, deep knowledge of the standards in each community, it is simply impossible to compare impact of a journal in field X with the impact of a journal in field Y. (Eigenfactor's extraordinary claims to the contrary require extraordinary evidence, which they don't provide.)</p>\n\n<p>Moreover, it's not clear why you should even try. Any judgement about the relative importance of Journal of X versus Journal of Y necessarily requires a <strong>prior</strong> judgement about the relative importance of <em>field</em> X versus <em>field</em> Y. HC SVNT DRACONES.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 14123, "author": "user9489", "author_id": 9489, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9489", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The CWTS SNIP factor controls for differing disciplinary citation rates and speed. See <a href=\"http://www.journalindicators.com\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://www.journalindicators.com</a> It is also shown in Scopus</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 14154, "author": "StasK", "author_id": 739, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/739", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Here's an informal and difficult to quantify one: does it suffice to have a publication in this journal to get tenured? Or, in a reverse manner, can one get tenured without having published in a journal like this? </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>In economics, you will get tenure in most reasonable places for publications in <em>Quarterly Journal of Economics, American Economic Review,</em> or <em>Econometrica</em>. </li>\n<li>In statistics, these would be <em>Annals of Statistics, Annals of Applied Statistics, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B Methodology, the Journal of the American Statistical Association</em>, and <em>Biometrika</em>. </li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>These are the fields I am closely familiar with. I can imagine that in most natural sciences, a publication in <em>Nature</em> or <em>Science</em> would boost your chances quite a bit. Finance has a system of ranking journals, with a handful of highly coveted journals designated as A-journals.</p>\n\n<p>Getting reliable statistics along these lines is of course impossible. If Google were a little smarter, it would scan the CVs of those tenured and untenured (those who moved to another university after the typical period of 5-6-7 years), grab their publication records, and see what the journals are that those who got tenured had published in that untenured hadn't.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1020", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/62/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1027, "author": "Lars Kotthoff", "author_id": 12, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12", "pm_score": 3, "selected": true, "text": "<p>You absolutely should inform your advisor that you are going to seek external help, even if they are against it. They are partly responsible for your studies and should know what's going on.</p>\n\n<p>You could try introducing the subject as a collaboration rather than seeking help. If the person you want to approach has written a paper on the subject for example, you could say that it would be beneficial for your work to collaborate with them. As long as you at least create the impression that you're looking for interaction on the same level rather than just getting advice, I don't think you would have too much trouble convincing your advisor.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1048, "author": "Anonymous Mathematician", "author_id": 612, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The cardinal rule of interacting with advisors is that if you don't generally trust your advisor's advice, then you need a new advisor. So you should start with the idea that your advisor's approach to any given situation is probably worth trying, and only give up on it if it's clearly not working out or seems contrary to what everyone else is saying.</p>\n\n<p>Beyond that, I'm sure it varies between fields. I wouldn't presume to offer advice to someone in a biology lab on how to sort this issue out, for example.</p>\n\n<p>The most important thing, which you absolutely must do no matter what, is to inform your advisor in detail of any help you receive. This is a matter of intellectual honesty, while everything else is a matter of convention or wise strategy.</p>\n\n<p>What you want to avoid is the following scenario: you meet with X, then meet with Y and explain what X said, then meet with X and convey Y's response to X's ideas, then meet with Y again and relay information back from X, etc. If you try this and are a little vague about the line between your own ideas and what you learned in your last meeting, then you can pull it off for a while, but eventually you'll be in big trouble when X and Y talk. Even if you never actually lied, but just let people assume you were contributing more than you actually did, they'll be very unhappy if they decide you weren't contributing enough. [And this can be a particular danger for students: if someone says something cryptic and then you figure it out later, is that because you are adding new ideas and insights, or because you are catching up to where the expert already was? It can be hard for a beginner to judge, and this potential for confusion is a valid worry for advisors.]</p>\n\n<p>As to how to introduce the idea to an advisor who resists getting outside help, the main thing is to understand why. Is it because your advisor feels this is an important learning experience for you? Is the advisor convinced that the problem is not as difficult as you fear? (And, if so, can you make a compelling case that it is?) There are also more worrisome scenarios. For example, maybe the local expert in this area is notorious for competing with or undermining students, or has a bad relationship with your advisor. Your advisor may be reluctant to say this explicitly, so if he/she seems to be ruling out a natural collaborator for unclear reasons, then you should ask about other people you might talk with instead.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1023", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1503, "author": "Chris K. Caldwell", "author_id": 817, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/817", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>This question seems a bit wide to answer. Are you interested in public or private schools? Junior college or peer 1 research level? US or elsewhere? Let me answer from the prospective of a 4-year US state institution. Generally senates seem to be what the faculty make of them, they can choose to become a rubber stamp, or choose to act... </p>\n\n<p><strong>A. The senate functions as a voice of the faculty</strong></p>\n\n<p>By filtering and focusing the concerns of the faculty, the senate functions as a key voice of the faculty. A voice selected or elected by departments across the campus. The senate can conduct dialog with the administration, offer press releases, lobby with legislators, join in with other institutions to tackle larger issues... Whether or not they are listened to, faculty member should speak together often about the central issues at the institution. </p>\n\n<p><strong>B. Determination of General Educational Policy</strong></p>\n\n<p>Traditionally the senate allows the different disciplines to discuss joint concerns, such as the general education policy, starting new programs, ... They are rarely the final voice (or even the key voice) in these issues, but they are an important one. Anytime an educational goal has been set, it is the faculty who should determine the curriculum, these decisions usually pass through a senate body.</p>\n\n<p><strong>C. Maintaining the Faculty \"handbook\"</strong></p>\n\n<p>This may be given different names at different institutions, but the subset of policies and procedures related to tenure, promotion, post tenure review, usually fall under faculty review. Core parts are usually decided by the institutions board, but many of the details of faculty evaluations, ... are often decided by the faculty. Even when they are not, the Senate provides a united voice to address these issues.</p>\n\n<p><strong>D. Protect the Faculty's Interests</strong></p>\n\n<p>For example, the Senate should (to the best of their ability) be involved in suggestion priorities for budgeting (whether listened to or not); in suggesting standards for academic freedom (and explaining to its member what it is, and what it is not); when necessary, the Senate should be ready to stand up for individual faculty when the institutions polices have been incorrectly applied; ...</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1535, "author": "Joanna Bryson", "author_id": 384, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/384", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I've been on the Senate and on the Faculty Board of Studies in my university. Basically, boards like these are about communication, to make sure there is some oversight by academics of administrative decisions. They do have veto rights, and on rare occasion these may be exercised. Individuals on them have an opportunity to bring things to the attention of academic executives. How happy they seem about an idea also gives the executive an idea of how much trouble an idea will be to implement. They also learn things about what is happening in the university or faculty which they can bring back to their department.</p>\n\n<p>How useful a board is and how much communication is really done depends on both established culture and individual initiative. But the mechanisms are usually there in the university's charter for these groups to actually to be quite useful.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1032", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/590/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1900, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Your approach is wrong and will be a hindrance in maximizing your chances for acceptance. No school wants to accept someone who only wants to go to their school because of its ranking. You need to tailor your application to demonstrate why you want to go to the particular school. Once you have identified some schools/supervisors, ideally one of your recommendation writers can introduce you. You then need to build on that relationship. Talk to them about how your work fits in with their past and current work. As your relationship with the potential supervisors builds, figure out how they fit into the department. They will likely have the inside knowledge needed for writing a really good application.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 26351, "author": "Tom Au", "author_id": 755, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/755", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Let's take inventory. To respond to your order of presentation, your grades are so-so, not bad enough to keep you \"out,\" but by themselves, not good enough to be a strong recommendation.</p>\n\n<p>The next thing is: \"I've done some research and got some papers accepted at good conferences.\" That puts you \"ahead of the class\" and probably got you into the good Canadian university. That will probably get you into many a good American university. As an American, I'd like to see you come stateside.</p>\n\n<p>Perhaps the most interesting thing you said was that you are a fully sponsored (paid) student by your government. That suggests \"scholarship student\" to me, perhaps the equivalent of America's \"National Merit Scholar.\" </p>\n\n<p>In your applications, to universities, talk about how their programs meet the needs of your government, and why you'd be an ideal research bridge between the two. Many American universities are looking to add geographical and cultural diversity to their mix of students. The fact that your government chose you as an \"ambassador\" is a factor in your favor.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1034", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/532/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1040, "author": "JeffE", "author_id": 65, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Yes, this is relatively common. (In my opinion, not common enough.)</p>\n\n<p>Recommendation letters carry more weight if he reader knows the writer's qualifications. In particular, letters about qualification for graduate school carry more weight if the reader has some sense of the writer's track record for judging students' research ability. (This is why letters from senior faculty are more valued — not because of their vast research experience, but because they've presumably seen and evaluated more students.) The best way for the reader to understand your track record is to <em>tell them</em>.</p>\n\n<p>But briefly, because as you suggest, the letter isn't about you.</p>\n\n<p>I don't think there's a standard way to do this. Some people put their bio early in the letter, say in the second paragraph (because the first paragraph is the actual recommendation). I put mine in a footnote on the last page.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1046, "author": "Ben Webster", "author_id": 13, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I would regard a separate biography as a bit odd; it's normal to sign with your current title (so I sign \"Ben Webster, Assistant Professor of Mathematics\") and of course, write on letterhead, so your current position is clear. In terms of context on how many students you've evaluated, you can slip that into various points in the letter. I would just stick a sentence into the second paragraph; one can unobtrusively give a short explanation of who you are mixed with the standard explanation of how you know the student.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1063, "author": "Joanna Bryson", "author_id": 384, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/384", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<p>You are right, the point of the letter is <strong>entirely</strong> the candidate, any sentence(s) about yourself should be entirely to the point of facilitating communication about the candidate. I was told in school that all histories tell you as much about the culture that wrote them as the culture they describe, so you need to take both into account when you read them. I suppose this is true of reference letters as well. It's like introducing yourself before you ask an academic you don't know a question one-on-one over coffee at a conference – sometimes there's no need, but sometimes it's essential to framing the question &amp; making the most of the other person's time &amp; answer.</p>\n\n<p>I have never been explicitly asked for a biography beyond \"how do you know the candidate, for how long, and in what capacity\". However, the UK is under a lot of legal pressure concerning letters of reference because some are so much better than others, not necessarily due to the candidate, but possibly due to how knowledgeable the writer is about writing letters. Possibly candidates deserve some credit for picking good letter writers, but this could be hard particularly for very junior candidates. So having guidance for writing a letter is useful, it's letting all letter writers know good practice by previous letter writers.</p>\n\n<p>Personally I include biographical information (not a full biography) where I think it may be helpful and when I am trying to write a strong letter. Similarly, I also give information about our institution where I think it might not be known and be helpful. Examples: if I am writing a US institution from the UK, I let them know that I have attended US institutions &amp; know what their programmes are like. Sometimes if I know someone well in the department I may point that out in the letter so that whoever is doing the search has the option of going to ask that person how seriously to take my opinion if they want to. </p>\n\n<p>I put this at the end of the first paragraph or possibly as a stand-alone second paragraph, in advance of offering my verbose opinion of the candidate, so that the reader can have that information in mind when they see what my opinion is. The first sentence of the first paragraph says who the letter is for &amp; for what position. The second sentence is my one-sentence summary of my recommendation. The third (or the second paragraph) is in what capacity I am writing the letter. That's where biographical details might be useful. </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1035", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/600/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1044, "author": "Anonymous Mathematician", "author_id": 612, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612", "pm_score": 5, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I agree with JeffE that leaving is the best solution, but it may not be an option. One key question is whether you have tenure: if not, you're presumably doomed (if the chair's behavior is as bad as you fear) and you will need to find another job anyway.</p>\n\n<p>Assuming you have reasonable job security, I'd sit down with the chair and ask what he envisions. Don't complain, argue, or try to present your side. Instead, you could start by acknowledging that the two of you have unfortunately gotten off to a rough start in your working relationship, and that because of his stature and leadership role it's important for you to earn his respect, so you'd like his advice on how to improve the situation. Your goal is to learn, not to debate. Don't explicitly agree to any facts that aren't true, but you don't have to fact check everything he says, and you shouldn't dispute his perspective or opinions in this conversation.</p>\n\n<p>One possibility is that he is an insecure jerk who wants you to submit to his power and authority. If you do so, and let him boss you around a little without complaining, then he may treat you somewhat better. [This is assuming he can't treat you any worse than he already is. If you fear things could get worse, then be careful, but your question suggests you don't have a lot to lose.]</p>\n\n<p>Another possibility is that he just doesn't want you around, and there's simply nothing you can do to get on his good side. In that case, maybe he could help you transfer to another related department, for example. Of course, you can't even bring this up unless you have some job security, since otherwise you have no leverage at all. And it's important to do it in a face-saving way. There's no way it will happen if it looks like he is getting rid of a problem employee (the administration and the other department will not accept that as a valid reason for such a transfer), and obviously he won't cooperate if the stated reason is getting you out from the control of an irresponsible chair. Instead, you'd have to give it a positive spin: helping your career by giving you a chance to develop in a slightly different research direction, building ties between departments and fostering interdisciplinary connections, etc. It may be galling, but you need to set this up in a way that makes it look like your chair is doing something valuable for the university by helping to arrange it. If you can get your chair enthusiastic about this, and if there's another plausible department, then the chair's influence within the university might really help you. And don't be too restrictive in ruling out possible departments: there might not be any appropriate match, but I know of a couple of cases in which people have successfully resolved personality conflicts by moving to departments that were a bit further afield than one might expect (engineering vs. science, for example). If you've got tenure, then the university has a powerful incentive to fix this conflict, even if it means letting you sit in an odd department.</p>\n\n<p>Leaving the university is radically different from switching departments, and you should not ask the chair for help in doing that. Within the university, your chair's standing with the administration will play a major role in what opportunities are available. Outside the university, your chair probably can't help you very much, but could certainly hurt you, so it's not worth the risk.</p>\n\n<p>The worst case scenario is that your chair hates you and wants to hurt your career, regardless of which department you are in. In that case, there's nothing you can do if your chair has the full support of the administration, and you'll have to either leave the university or wait for the chair to retire. However, you shouldn't give up all hope until you've exhausted options like submitting or transferring.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1062, "author": "Joanna Bryson", "author_id": 384, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/384", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>If you are dealing with a bully who is insecure and threatened by you, direct negotiation will only result in your being manipulated further. Read the available on-line literature on adult bullying.</p>\n\n<p>Making friends with other powerful people (e.g. superordinates of your boss) is effective, eventually you might become someone that the bully wants \"on side\" and their overt behaviour will just flip like a light switch. If you can document all your claims e.g. some members of a department having twice the teaching load for no clear, publicly-stated policy reason, you may have legal recourse &amp; be able to get a more level playing field to try to prove your academic merit on (have you talked to HR?) But if things are as \"sewn up\" as you say, and there is no help from HR or another campus organisation, then the best thing is to change job.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1064, "author": "Suresh", "author_id": 346, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346", "pm_score": 5, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Just to add to the other excellent comments: while I have no personal experience that might be of value in your situation, I think that there is one thing you MUST do on a continuing basis regardless of everything else. </p>\n\n<p><strong>Document every instance where you feel this person is abusing their authority in relation to you</strong>. Accumulate as much evidence you can on each case, and build up a case file. Even if you don't go on the offensive, you'll need this if the chair starts trying direct confrontation and provocation (instead of the passive aggressive bullying that's going on right now)</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1067, "author": "Ellen Spertus", "author_id": 269, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/269", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Not a full answer, but a suggestion: Consider meeting with the college's ombudsperson (if they have one), affirmative action officer, EEOC officer, etc.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1075, "author": "kmm", "author_id": 75, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/75", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>If the harassment really is for reasons of \"e.g. gender, skin color, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, accent, etc,\" then the federal government could get involved. See the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission website (http://www.eeoc.gov/) for more information.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3016, "author": "ElCid", "author_id": 1520, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1520", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>This is a very interesting question, and I am surprised that there's no more about \"bullying\" in the SO academia community (I hope this will change fast).</p>\n\n<p>As anonymous and new user, I can share some experience:</p>\n\n<p>1) If someone (higher in grade) bullies or harasses you, it's sad to say, but that means that you are not seen as doing a valuable contribution to the department. Not a \"maybe\", not a \"perhaps\": that is just what it is. This assumption could be right or wrong, but any dean/chair/professor wants to have a supportive (adoring?) team. So either you adapt to the system, or you will make your life very miserable: make your contributions very clear, boast about your workload or find another place. Bullies like strong (and loud) voices.</p>\n\n<p>2) Do not confront the bullying person: it's anyway an unfair battle, since they're managers and higher-ranked anyway.</p>\n\n<p>3) Be blatantly open with what you do, aka \"blow your own trumpet\": when you start doing it, others reply as well, and you start realising that your \"case\" is no worse or better than somebody else's.</p>\n\n<p><strong>MISTAKES TO BE AVOIDED:</strong>\nI think that the worst mistake to be done in these cases is moaning about the issue, or using \"allies\" to make the case, or asking the unions to do something about it. Moaning won't solve your case, but just make your stomach more acid; internal allies will not either: having allies and support is generally a good thing, but I realised that I was just \"using\" them to reinforce my assumptions and beliefs (ending up in a infinite loop of self-commiseration); unions will just use a pre-defined strategy that will be well known in advance by the bully.</p>\n\n<p><strong>REMEDIES:</strong>\nSince you do not want to change your affiliation (but sadly this is the only real way to solve the issue, I am afraid), my take on the issue is to be honest with yourself, and ask whether your workload could be worse, or if you could make a request to avoid some teaching times by using some reasonable excuses, and in general stopping being negative about the person. The latter is tough but again, if you're being (overtly or secretly) negative, the bully will make your life even worse.</p>\n\n<p><strong>RESOURCES:</strong>\nAn excellent blog on the matter, and an \"external\" voice to talk to (yes! they talk and listen to you, also privately...) but in the UK: <a href=\"http://bulliedacademics.blogspot.co.uk/\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://bulliedacademics.blogspot.co.uk/</a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 27766, "author": "Ellen", "author_id": 21211, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/21211", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>You didn't mention if you had a union or not. If you do, go to the union's grievance officer. Bring all the evidence. Have a conference with the chair and the union rep. It doesn't have to be hostile. The focus can be how you can be on par with other faculty members. Most grievance reps are good at building consensus. It will put the chair on notice that his decision making isn't to be arbitrary and capricious. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 98626, "author": "rkdrury", "author_id": 82646, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/82646", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I got through this type of situation through a combination of institutional and personal means.</p>\n\n<p>I was subject to mobbing by a group of faculty members in a particular field of British lit (pre-1800). When one of them became chair, and I stepped down as graduate program director, they piled on. One filed a specious grievance against me. When that failed after a year of harassment (during which I lost my mother), the new chair scheduled me to teach 3-4 new preps every single term. After four years of this, and after 3 separate administrative complaints that went through my chair and were stopped by the dean, I filed a grievance after my chair finally got grounds to file a negative performance review because she had overloaded me for years. The grievance was part of a peer review process; my peers found for me five to one. Next, I was diagnosed with breast cancer and got 1 year off. During that period, my chair got promoted (!!!) and was gone. Problem solved, on top of which I had grounds to file EEOC complaints for gender, age, and disability discrimination. I'm back this term. So far so good, with a chair that doesn't seem to have the stomach for all of this.</p>\n\n<p>We are so vulnerable--and until our good work is trashed, we don't realize how vulnerable we are. </p>\n\n<p>Fight the good fight when you can, and back off and lay low when you can. There's nothing to be lost by it, either in terms of your job or in terms of your self respect.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1039", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/604/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1055, "author": "Sylvain Peyronnet", "author_id": 43, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/43", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<p>Usually, I hire two types of postdocs. </p>\n\n<p>The first one is the \"zero expectation\" postdoc, this is the postdoc that I hire when I already have the manpower to complete the project, and when the project is clearly on the good tracks. For this one, I just look at the research work he has done (I don't care about numbers/publications, only about the quality of the work) and make sure that he will be able to work alone (mmm, this means that I look for someone that should already be a faculty member somewhere, but which is not for various reasons).</p>\n\n<p>But what is interesting you I guess is the second type. In any project the most important thing is to make sure that we will be able to complete it in time. If I hire a postdoc for that purpose and if the postdoc don't do the job, I will have to do it myself, I don't want this to happen. So, the only thing that interests me is the ability to complete the goals of the project. Publications? except if the goal of the project is to produce papers I don't care. Skills? this is what I am looking for, and more precisly I am looking for confirmed skills, not exposure (too risky).</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1058, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>As Sylvain implies, the freedom in selecting a postdoc depends strongly on the nature of the project. If I have a position for which on-going funding is available (because it's part of a long-term center, for instance), the \"must haves\" or more like \"would like to haves.\"</p>\n\n<p>On the other hand, if I have a limited-term position (one funded through something like an NIH, NSF, or DFG grant which has a time-limit attached), then I need to be much more strict in selecting my candidates. Then I want one with as close a match as possible. </p>\n\n<p>That said, however, if the clock is already running, then I can't necessarily wait for a postdoc who has <em>all</em> of the qualifications to come along. In that case, I will pick someone who satisfies most of the criteria, and do extra due diligence to make sure that the postdoc is <em>teachable</em>: that is, that she is willing to learn the extra skills that she needs to complete the project in a timely manner.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1060, "author": "Joanna Bryson", "author_id": 384, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/384", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Postdocs have an absolutely critical and unique role in a research group. They have more research potential than anyone else in academia, because they are both full time on research and yet experienced, not students. They are also very expensive and a rare luxury that comes only with heavy investment from a funder or university.</p>\n\n<p>The first thing I look for therefore is demonstrated proof that the candidate will take good advantage of the expensive opportunity they are being offered. Forms of evidence: </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>existing publications</li>\n<li>publications in prep.</li>\n<li>letters of reference</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>These should show that the candidate has skills in what needs to be done, and the determination and internal motivation to be a successful academic.</p>\n\n<p>The next thing I look for is evidence that the candidate is very likely to employ those skills in the area that I am funded for them to research. This is done through open and frank conversations with the candidate about their research and career goals, what <em>I</em> need, what <em>they</em> need, where they intend to go next, etc. A postdoc is at a critical time in their career, and everyone should know that they need to produce papers out of their PhD and that they may leave early if the right lifetime opportunity comes along. I try to negotiate in advance about what research I absolutely need them to complete, what further I'd like them to complete, and to discuss writing and research schedules such that they can meet both of our needs and wants, preferably through some synergy (e.g. of the possible outcomes of this project, which would best suit both of our goals?) I then try to agree a schedule about what research will be done when, what is the earliest date they'll start looking for their next position, when will they or we start writing the next grant or fellowship bid etc.</p>\n\n<p>These negotiations give me not only a sense of how much I can expect us to accomplish if I make this hire, but also how well we can work together and how similarly we understand our responsibilities as academics.</p>\n\n<p>Finally of course there is a luck element: if there is more than one viable candidate, the one who seems likely to be the best fit wins.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1051", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/21/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1072, "author": "Lars Kotthoff", "author_id": 12, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>There's an MSc specialising in Networks and Distributed Systems at <a href=\"http://www.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/?q=node/47\" rel=\"nofollow\">St Andrews</a>. There's also quite a large group that does cloud computing research and a <a href=\"http://www.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/stacc\" rel=\"nofollow\">cloud lab</a>, so you would almost certainly be able to do an MSc project on that topic.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1092, "author": "Dave Clarke", "author_id": 643, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/643", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>At the <a href=\"http://wms.cs.kuleuven.be/cs/\" rel=\"nofollow\">K.U. Leuven</a> there is a lot of research done in distributed systems, with a recent focus on cloud computing. You could do a Masters in Distributed Systems and do your thesis on an issue related to cloud computing. (One would need to first check that the course could be done in English.)</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1065", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/618/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1070, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>In general, recent performance will tend to outweigh prior performance. I will look at a student with a graduate 4.0 and an undergraduate 3.2 much more favorably than the converse (unless there are obvious extenuating circumstances, such as a large jump in the quality of the graduate program compared to the undergraduate). </p>\n\n<p>The source of the GPA drop is also important. A bad freshman year is almost certainly ignorable. A bad senior year is a red flag. Similarly, I will give much less weight to grades in \"general education\" classes, as I'm not hiring them based on their ability to analyze Shakespeare or Milton. Important classes for the major, though, can be deadly even if they are in the undergraduate years. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1074, "author": "JeffE", "author_id": 65, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Sort of.</p>\n\n<p>I was in exactly the situation you describe 20+ years ago. My undergrad GPA was horrible (even restricted to computer science classes); my MS GPA was near-perfect; I got into Berkeley as a PhD student. But I don't think the improvement in my <em>grades</em> was as important as the improvement in my <em>letters</em>. My undergrad letters said \"He's smart but lazy\", which is the kiss of death. My MS letters were much more positive. Also, when I applied to Berkeley, I had some research results in submission, so my positive letters had some substance to draw on.</p>\n\n<p>Also, I got very, <em>very</em>, <strong>very</strong> lucky.</p>\n\n<p>Now, as a faculty member who reviews PhD applications, I would certainly look at the improvement in grades as a good sign. But as I've mentioned elsewhere, above a certain threshold of \"good enough\", <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/958/priority-of-application-materials-for-admission-decision/961#961\">grades don't matter</a>. Especially since you're applying with a master's degree, your demonstrated research ability is <strong>much</strong> more important.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1066", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/620/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1069, "author": "Rob", "author_id": 622, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/622", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"http://www.higheredjobs.com\" rel=\"noreferrer\">http://www.higheredjobs.com</a> </p>\n\n<p>They have jobs broken down by Job Category, Region, and Institution Type. They also do a great job of keeping you informed of opportunities when they are added to the their database. You provide your CV and potential employers can search for applicants by credentials. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1071, "author": "Anonymous Mathematician", "author_id": 612, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>It's almost impossible to give a general answer to this question, since different fields handle things in very different ways. Your profile says you're a cognitive scientist and philosopher, which is beyond my competence, but for other readers here's an answer for mathematics jobs in the US:</p>\n\n<p>The largest number of job ads for US academic jobs in math, especially at but not limited to reseach-oriented schools, are found at <a href=\"http://www.ams.org/profession/employment-services/eims/eims-home\">http://www.ams.org/profession/employment-services/eims/eims-home</a>. In particular, most math departments do not advertise on generic websites (not field specific) unless there are university requirements to do so, and you cannot find most math jobs without going to math-specific sites. I have no idea whether this is typical for academic fields, or unique to mathematics.</p>\n\n<p>One unusual feature of mathematics (compared with computer science, for example) is that there's a centralized application site, <a href=\"http://www.mathjobs.org/jobs\">http://www.mathjobs.org/jobs</a>, which covers a surprisingly large fraction of jobs and makes handling letters of recommendation very easy. It's still important to look at ads on math society websites, since some schools do not allow departments to use mathjobs.</p>\n\n<p>For industrial or government employment, it's a real mess, and different subfields advertise in rather different places (or sometimes hardly advertise at all). I don't think there's anything valuable to say there without narrowing things down quite a bit.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1073, "author": "dearN", "author_id": 21, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/21", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<p>It would depend on what your field of work is. But heres a nifty little list that I keep an eye on (I am looking for a postdoctoral position in academia / research and these websites are quite helpful to <em>me</em>)</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.phds.org\" rel=\"nofollow\">www.phds.org</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.postdocjobs.com\" rel=\"nofollow\">www.postdocjobs.com</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.cfd-online.com/Jobs/\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://www.cfd-online.com/Jobs/</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.aps.org/careers/\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://www.aps.org/careers/</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.academickeys.com\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://www.academickeys.com</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>There are a few websites suggested in the answers below/above my response to this question and they are quite nice too!</p>\n\n<p>Besides that you probably have a general idea as to what you'd want to work as / work for. You could perhaps target a bunch of universities and faculty members for prospective positions?</p>\n\n<p>Good luck!</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 5021, "author": "walkmanyi", "author_id": 1265, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1265", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"http://www.myscience.cc/jobs\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://www.myscience.cc/jobs</a></p>\n\n<p>Take a look for a good research job adverts aggregator. Also adverts in top-notch magazines like Nature, or similar in the field of your interest are relevant. Your nearest library is your friend.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 5028, "author": "F'x", "author_id": 2700, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2700", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>You should consider location-specific job directories:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Some countries maintain such directions: in this UK, for example, there is <a href=\"http://www.jobs.ac.uk\" rel=\"nofollow\">jobs.ac.uk</a></li>\n<li>Most universities have a job directory, so if you have decided on your dream geographic area, you can look at the corresponding listings.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Also, some journals have a job listings section (just like your local newspaper):</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org\" rel=\"nofollow\"><em>Science</em></a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/science/\" rel=\"nofollow\"><em>Nature</em></a></li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 46833, "author": "Christian", "author_id": 35572, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/35572", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>In case you are interested in working in Germany:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://www.academics.com\" rel=\"nofollow\">www.academics.com</a></p>\n\n<p>(I guess relevant ads will be in English)</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 46843, "author": "non-numeric_argument", "author_id": 8067, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8067", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The European Commission supports the web-portal <strong>EURAXESS - Researchers in Motio</strong> which has also a <a href=\"http://ec.europa.eu/euraxess/index.cfm/jobs/index\" rel=\"nofollow\">job portal</a>. EURAXESS is especially helpful as it lists jobs from <strong>all European Union member countries</strong> in <strong>all disciplines</strong> (incl. sciences, humanities &amp; social sciences). You can filter for countries, research fields, positions (PhD, postdoc, professor, ...) and your own keywords.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 46918, "author": "henning", "author_id": 31917, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/31917", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Many jobs are advertised by <strong>scientific associations</strong> or institutionalized networks of researchers. At least this is true for political science, but I figure it applies to other disciplines as well. You can easily find relevant associations by googling for <code>$discipline association</code>. For example, the American Political Science Associations (APSA) has a nice <a href=\"http://www.apsanet.org/jobs_search.asp\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">job directory on their website</a>.</p>\n<p>Moreover, scientific associations and other networks frequently circulate vacancies through their <strong>mailing-lists</strong>. Non-association mailing lists are another great source for academic job-hunting. For example in Germany, jobs in the discipline of international relations are advertised through the <a href=\"https://de.groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/ib-liste/info\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">IB Liste</a>, jobs in history and cultural studies through <a href=\"http://www.hsozkult.de/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">HSozKult</a>. Again, use your favorite search engine to find relevant mailing lists for your discipline.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 132159, "author": "user14121", "author_id": 14121, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14121", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I create a platform for Academic people. You may search academic jobs updated daily at <a href=\"https://academicgates.com/job\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Academic Gates platform</a>. There are thousands jobs collected daily. Hope it help!</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1068", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/141/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1077, "author": "Alex Holcombe", "author_id": 590, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/590", "pm_score": 5, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Give some colloquia (departmental seminars or lab-specific talks) in the departments of organizers of conferences. You can sometimes invite yourself by writing to the organizer of their seminar series and offering yourself as a speaker but better might be having your phd advisor write and recommend you.</p>\n\n<p>This will increase your name recognition with the critical people and can give you a reputation for giving good talks. Organizers are unlikely to take a chance on someone that is junior and none of them have heard speak. If you can give a talk somewhere that will be videoed and posted online, that would also help with this issue.</p>\n\n<p>Finally, if you work with a more famous friend (or phd advisor) in the same area who is frequently invited to give talks, you could mention to them that you are trying to do this and they may recommend you for talks they have to decline.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1088, "author": "William Gunn", "author_id": 582, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/582", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Find out which conference organizers your PhD advisor knows and see if he'll recommend you to them.</p>\n\n<p>Present an amazing poster at a conference and spend some time getting the word about prior to the conference about your work, so that when the organizers come by the poster session, they see your poster mobbed with people.</p>\n\n<p>One thing you shouldn't do is respond to any of those conference solicitations for conferences you've never heard of, usually located in some Middle Eastern or Asian country. It's spam and they usually just bought a list of email addresses and did keyword targeting.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1093, "author": "Dave Clarke", "author_id": 643, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/643", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<ul>\n<li>Do great research.</li>\n<li>Give great presentations of your research.</li>\n<li>Become known, not only for your research, but by actively participating in conferences, workshops and other meetings.</li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1123, "author": "Joanna Bryson", "author_id": 384, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/384", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Volunteer to help organise meetings yourself &amp; invite people. Even if this doesn't directly help you get attention (which it might), at least you'll understand the process better.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1076", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/623/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1080, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 6, "selected": true, "text": "<p>If you have written the publication <strong>only</strong> with the resources and support of the former employer, then it is perfectly acceptable to do what you have written, and list the old address as your address for the \"active\" affiliations, and include a \"present address\" affiliation to show your updated physical location.</p>\n\n<p>However, if your new employer <em>does</em> provide financial support, then you should list them accordingly. This is especially important if any of the actual research that makes its way into a publication has been performed while working for the new employer <em>using their resources</em>.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 11935, "author": "fedja", "author_id": 6118, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6118", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I would list the current affiliation in the address field (that field just tells where people can find you, not much more than that) and start the paper with an elaborate paragraph starting with \"This work was made possible through the generous support by.... \". This way you kill both birds at once. </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1078", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/626/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1083, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>It depends largely on how \"strict\" the employer in question is regarding qualifications. Some companies—particularly larger corporations—don't have the ability to recognize that the certificate might be equivalent to a bachelor's degree. Then, you really need to be able to demonstrate that you have the requisite credentials, and it's hard to \"mix and match.\"</p>\n\n<p>However, smaller employers are generally able to make those distinctions. However, the issue with these faster-paced programs is that you might not have the same breadth of experience as someone who has the bachelor's degree; the four-year degree holder may have internships and other work experience that will make them a more suitable candidate.</p>\n\n<p>In general, though, you are right to be skeptical of what sounds like a \"sales pitch,\" and do your own homework to make sure that it's recognized. One way to do this would be to contact some companies in the area and see if they've had any experience hiring graduates of this program. (You could also ask the sponsor of this program to identify some contacts for you—with the obvious caveat that you'll be getting the \"success stories.\")</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1084, "author": "Anonymous Mathematician", "author_id": 612, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>There are two issues: whether it will be a formal barrier (i.e., you'll be screened out before anyone ever looks at your application carefully) and whether it will impress people.</p>\n\n<p>For graduate school applications, there's no way you'll be officially screened out for this reason. There are several programs aimed at encouraging post-baccalaureate certificates to help women enter computer science. They attract excellent students, so grad schools are happy to see these applications; furthermore, if any grad school ever turned down applicants with such a background just because they had no \"real\" degree in CS, they'd be in big trouble on gender equity grounds. So you have nothing to worry about there: grad schools are aware of these certificates and willing to consider applicants with them.</p>\n\n<p>Of course, there are still issues of people's personal reactions, for example how rigorous or extensive they think the program is. It presumably depends on the program, and also perhaps on which courses you take within the program. If take you challenging courses and do well in them, ideally do some sort of project with a faculty supervisor, and get strong letters of recommendation, then you should be in good shape for grad school applications. As a sanity check, you should ask about the placement record of previous students in the program: without some reason to think otherwise, you can expect you would end up somewhere in that range. If they all do well, that's a very good sign; if some but not all do, then you need to make sure you end up in that top group.</p>\n\n<p>As for industry, CS hiring is much less credential-driven than some branches of engineering (where there are more regulatory or liability issues). If you can demonstrate talent and skill, then nobody will really care what your degree is in (except sometimes for research jobs that require a Ph.D.). There are some tricky issues: for example, some of the top tech companies get enormous numbers of applications and have to filter them rather brutally. However, even there the filtering is more often by prestige (did you get impressive grades at a top university) rather than the field the degree is in.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1108, "author": "Nobody", "author_id": 546, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/546", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I am a retired software engineer from a well known company in U.S. Your dream job is to work for a company in R&amp;D for HCI. My advice might be useful for you.</p>\n\n<p>In the old days, the HR department of those companies received hundreds of paper resumes everyday (I carried bags of job application letters for an HR staff before. Don't ask me why I did that, just guess.) Now, they receive hundreds if not thousands of e-mails per day.</p>\n\n<p>The way they filter the job applications is by looking for key words. When they have an HCI job vacancy, they look for computer programming experience, psychology and others. So, your major is important for your future job hunting.</p>\n\n<p>Now, your question, do you need a degree or a certificate is good enough? In my opinion, a degree is always preferable unless you cannot afford to it.</p>\n\n<p>Many companies do not recognize those certificates. They would wonder why you didn't get a degree. Is it because you were not good enough? or some other reasons. You would be filtered out. Remember, they receive hundreds of e-mails everyday. By the time they read all of them, it's 5pm. When they see you have a CS degree, a psychology degree and some working experience, they'll call you for an interview.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1082", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/632/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1086, "author": "dearN", "author_id": 21, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/21", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>For uploading papers and annotating them, I use <a href=\"http://www.mendeley.com\">mendeley</a>. \nTo organize my citations, I use <a href=\"http://www.citeulike.org\">citeulike</a> which is nifty for it bibtex entry generation. I also use <a href=\"http://jabref.sourceforge.net/\">Jabref</a> locally on my computer to manage my papers.</p>\n\n<p>I am into numerical simulations as well and I generally add my results to latex documents (figures and all) as I eventually need it in a latex format for my dissertation! Plus this way, I save time!</p>\n\n<p>Have you tried <a href=\"http://www.google.com/notebook\">google notebook</a>? I haven't used it in at least 3 years so I don't quite know how good it is now.</p>\n\n<p>Good luck!</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1087, "author": "William Gunn", "author_id": 582, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/582", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>It sounds like you're looking for something like <a href=\"http://figshare.com\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://figshare.com</a></p>\n\n<p>It's part of Digital Science, which is part of the same family of companies as Nature Publishing, but I know the guy who runs it and I think he's really sharp &amp; going about things the right way. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1089, "author": "David Ketcheson", "author_id": 81, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/81", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>For the last month, I have been using <a href=\"http://gitit.net/\">Gitit</a> for this purpose. That link goes to a live demo where you can try it out. It satisfies all your requirements:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>It's a wiki, so you can easily make links between pages.</li>\n<li>It's built on pandoc, which understands TeX and uses MathJax to render it (it technically renders a subset of TeX, but it's a pretty substantial subset)</li>\n<li>It's actually a Git repository, so you can upload anything you want to it. Or just put your figures out on the web (via figshare or a public Dropbox link) and link to them.</li>\n<li>Same as 3.</li>\n<li>Again, it's Git.</li>\n<li>It is open source: <a href=\"https://github.com/jgm/gitit\">https://github.com/jgm/gitit</a></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>As a bonus, you can put it out publicly on the web if you want (or just run it locally on your machine). I run it on an internal server at my University and my students and post-docs use it to. Thus it's a convenient way to share information as well.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1090, "author": "sckott", "author_id": 637, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/637", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Check out GitHub hosted blogs using what's called \"jekyll\": \n-http://jekyllrb.com/\n-https://github.com/mojombo/jekyll (see the wiki tab for example sites)\n-Easy way to start: use jekyll bootstrap or octopress</p>\n\n<p>Jekyll is just a bunch of code that makes it easy to have stuff that you have on blogs/lab notebooks: tags, pagination, etc. </p>\n\n<p>Some cool things are that its free, open source, versioned, handles images/papers/etc, can integrate comments (I use Disqus). </p>\n\n<p>It does require a bit of a learning curve over other blog platforms, but its well worth it. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1159, "author": "Brian Maicke", "author_id": 662, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/662", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<h1>Org-mode</h1>\n\n<p>I use <a href=\"http://orgmode.org/\">Org-mode</a> to organize and track my research. It is an Emacs major\nmode that seems to hit most of your requirements. The .org files are\nplain text which should guard against bloat and lets you access them anywhere, even when you do not\nhave Emacs or Org-mode available. </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>linking to past experiments/pages</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Org-mode has linking capability to any type of file, as well as to\nspecific locations in a document.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>latex equations</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Org-mode has support not only for LaTeX equations but for a number of\nprogramming languages via <a href=\"http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/index.html\">org-babel</a>. You can include the code blocks\ninside your .org file.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>uploading papers, or other URLs.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Because it is only a text file, this sort of behavior can be\naccomplished through the linking mechanism. The links\ncan be to other documents/papers on your machine or URLs. Visiting a\nURL in Org-mode will open your browser to the requested link.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>being able to transfer data.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I am unsure what you are looking for here. Org-mode has a nice\nbuilt-in table editor with automatic column width adjustment and some\nspreadsheet behavior. If you do not want the actual data in the .org\nfile, you can always link to do the data. If you are looking to import\ndata into the file directly, Org-mode has a function <code>org-table-import</code> that\nwill parse TAB or whitespace separated data into an Org table.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>dating and version control</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I use Org-mode to track my time spent on various research items. You\ncan set the headings in Org-mode to behave like multi-state TODO lists\nand assign time to them. Most headings start as TODO, switch to\nSTARTED when I clock in on them, and then I can update them to DONE\nwhen I am finished. It can also generate reports based on your tracked time. For example, I use a built-in report for the last week to help generate weekly research updates.</p>\n\n<p>I handle my version control and distribution\nthrough Dropbox, but since the files are plain text any version\ncontrol system you are comfortable with should work fine.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>open-source tool</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Org-mode is open source.</p>\n\n<p>Org-mode also can be set to display inline images, so even though the\nactual .org file stays in plain text for VCS, when you open the file\nin Org-mode you can view the images, and comment on them accordingly.</p>\n\n<p>While the .org files themselves are plain text, Org-mode has a number\nof export options, including LaTeX, PDF, HTML, DocBook, OpenDocument\nand others. So if you want to turn your research notebook into\nsomething more visually appealing than a plain text file, there are\nmany options. I would recommend <a href=\"http://www.jstatsoft.org/v46/i03/paper\">this paper</a> for a good description of what Org-mode can do in a research environment.</p>\n\n<p>The downside is that it is a mode for Emacs. If you are not already\nusing Emacs it has a steep learning curve and can require extensive\ncustomization to get things running exactly the way you want.\nOrg-mode and AUCTeX (the Emacs LaTeX mode) are the reasons I spent the\ntime to learn to work with Emacs and I have not been disappointed.\nHowever, if you are looking to get something up and running quickly\n(and are not already familiar with Emacs) it may not be your best\noption.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1173, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I personally use <a href=\"http://flyingmeat.com/voodoopad/\" rel=\"nofollow\">VoodooPad</a>, which is basically a personal wiki, in conjunction with <a href=\"http://pierre.chachatelier.fr/latexit/latexit-home.php\" rel=\"nofollow\">LaTeXiT</a> for latex equations. I've found it to work very well; you can store many things in it, including papers. It's all text-based so you can back up using Git or whatever you like. They have a free version. Not open source.</p>\n\n<p>I'm surprised nobody's mentioned <a href=\"http://www.evernote.com/\" rel=\"nofollow\">Evernote</a>. They claim you can put anything at all in it, and from what I've seen, that's true. Backup to Evernote cloud. Free, not open source.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1085", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/634/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1096, "author": "Dave Clarke", "author_id": 643, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/643", "pm_score": 7, "selected": true, "text": "<p>As drawing software, I use <a href=\"http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnigraffle/\">OmniGraffle</a> which is much more modern that Xfig, but based on similar principles. It's only available for the Mac and is not free, as far as I know. With little effort, one can produce very attractive diagrams.</p>\n\n<p>I also use <a href=\"http://www.texample.net/tikz/examples/\">Tikz/PGF</a>. It produces very nice diagrams and is very flexible. On the other hand, it requires that you specify the diagram in LaTeX and it has a bit of a steep learning curve.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1097, "author": "RBerteig", "author_id": 649, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/649", "pm_score": 6, "selected": false, "text": "<p>A free, fairly portable, and very complete tool for general illustration is <a href=\"http://inkscape.org/\">Inkscape</a>. It uses <code>SVG</code> as its native file format, and aside from attempting to be a decent drawing tool in its own right, one of its design goals was to provide complete coverage of the features available in <code>SVG</code>.</p>\n\n<p>For block diagrams, flow charts, and other simple sketches of process and data flow there is <a href=\"http://live.gnome.org/Dia\">Dia</a>. It's primary design goal is to duplicate the features of Visio in free software. Like Visio, it uses a stencils and connections drawing model that works really well for diagramming relationships and flow, but gets tedious when attempting to do art.</p>\n\n<p>For clean layout of directed or undirected graph diagrams, it is difficult to beat the <a href=\"http://www.graphviz.org/\">Graphviz</a> tools. They are primarily designed to be used from a textual description (<a href=\"http://www.graphviz.org/pdf/dotguide.pdf\">a concise intro here</a> (PDF)) of the graph, but there are various GUI tools that can edit their <code>.dot</code> files.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1109, "author": "mbudisic", "author_id": 140, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/140", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I use <a href=\"http://tclab.kaist.ac.kr/ipe/\">ipe</a> almost exclusively. It's not well polished, and some things are non-intuitive, but it does those things I need well (simple sketches of math. structures with LaTeX formatted text). Also, <a href=\"http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Tips_and_Tricks#Graphics_and_Graph_editors\">LaTeX wiki book</a> has some useful suggestions for alternatives.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1182, "author": "Ivan Machado", "author_id": 690, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/690", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>In general, if you intend to draw either <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map\" rel=\"noreferrer\">mind maps</a> or <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_flow_diagram\" rel=\"noreferrer\">flow diagrams</a>, you may use the <a href=\"http://www.conceptdraw.com/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">conceptdraw</a> tool. It serves both Mac and MS Windows users.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 2666, "author": "Federico Poloni", "author_id": 958, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/958", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>If you really care about typography, it is best to produce the figures and the text with the same layout engine. This is the only way in which you can be sure that fonts, stroke size and spacing match those of your text.</p>\n\n<p>TikZ, already suggested in Dave Clarke's answer, solves this problem excellently for TeX. Although, like TeX, it can be difficult for a newcomer. Adobe InDesign is a WYSIWYG solution. MS Publisher is another one, although less powerful. Word has limited capabilities in this respect.</p>\n\n<p>Most often, this requires access to the final article style of the journal, and is work for a typographer rather than a scientist. So it would be better left to the journal staff. However, it is an unfortunate truth that most journals try to reduce costs at the expense of quality when it comes to typography. Some of them offer \"professional figure editing\" as an extra paid service for authors. Some of them just take what is provided and do not care about fonts and stroke sizes. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3649, "author": "Per Alexandersson", "author_id": 2794, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2794", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Mathematica is actually good for making all sorts of graphics.\nThink of it as vector graphics software, but that every control point/coordinate can be specified to the decimal.</p>\n\n<p>Edit:\nThe syntax is really clear, it is easy to procedurally construct graphics,\nand it has lines, arrows, bezier curves, and of course a bunch of nice builtin plot functions that one can add extra decorations to.\nFurthermore, it IS a programming language, so if you have multiple images, it is easy to share common components, so that a singe change affects all images (provided you use a good programming technique).\nIt is also easy to get help with mathematica over at mathematica.stackexchange.</p>\n\n<p>The included image was entirely produced via a few lines of mathematica code, for example:</p>\n\n<p><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/r7P3T.jpg\" alt=\"enter image description here\"></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 5099, "author": "Dror", "author_id": 3926, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/3926", "pm_score": 5, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I know that <a href=\"https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/PGF/TikZ\" rel=\"noreferrer\">TikZ</a> was mentioned already, but I think it deserve its own answer. It is different from <code>Omnigraffle</code> just like <code>TeX</code> is different from <code>Word</code>. But, if you're up for the effort, you'll enjoy the freedom of producing extremely high quality figures!</p>\n\n<p>True, using <code>TikZ</code> for \"heavy\" diagrams can lead to lengthy compilations, but this can be solved using the <code>externalize</code> library of <code>TikZ</code>, or the <code>Standalone</code> class. See also <a href=\"https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/142479/412\">this</a> possible approach using <code>make</code>.</p>\n\n<p>Although <code>TikZ</code> is not at all WYSIWYG, there are several editors, that enable the use to draw \"by hand\" the diagram and export it to a <code>Tikz</code> snippet. Personally, I don't have experience with this kind of combination.</p>\n\n<p>Another advantage of <code>TikZ</code>, that as it is somewhat a programing language (after all <code>TeX</code> is turing-complete) you can program your diagram and use external data sources and visualize them. To that end, you can use a combination of <code>TeX</code>, <code>lua</code> or other languages of your choice.</p>\n\n<p>Finally, and most important; <code>TikZ</code> provides an amazing live community which can help you with everything related to it. A perfect starting point would be the <a href=\"https://tex.stackexchange.com/\">TeX.se</a>.</p>\n\n<p>PS: You can also have a look at <code>pstricks</code>. It implements a similar spirit like <code>TikZ</code> but... Well, I'm not using it so I cannot say much. I can say, that I saw amazing outputs of <code>pstricks</code>.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 8884, "author": "Paul Pearson", "author_id": 6478, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6478", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"http://www.geogebra.org/cms/en/info\">GeoGebra</a> is free and multi-platform dynamic mathematics software for all levels of education that joins geometry, algebra, tables, graphing, statistics and calculus in one easy-to-use package. Constructions can be made with points, vectors, segments, lines, polygons, conic sections, inequalities, implicit polynomials and functions. All of them can be changed dynamically afterwards. Elements can be entered and modified directly on screen, or through the Input Bar. GeoGebra has the ability to use variables for numbers, vectors and points, find derivatives and integrals of functions and has a full complement of commands like Root or Extremum. Teachers and students can use GeoGebra to make conjectures and prove geometric theorems.</p>\n\n<p>To add something that I personally liked a lot, it has the ability to generate TikZ code for any drawing made using the software! Also, the community recently completed a kick-starter campaign, in which they raised enough funds for an IPad version of the software, to be also available for free! </p>\n\n<p>[EDIT] - The tablet app is available now, both in App Store and Google Play!</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 8885, "author": "Peter Jansson", "author_id": 4394, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>All ways that allow you to produce the graphic you want is what you should use. I have used many different software over the years. I have gradually abandoned ones when I found better alternatives. I usually make \"raw\" data plots using Matlab and then use Adobe Illustrator to put the finishing touches to them (Inkscpe or Corel draw would work equally well). The benefit of doing things this is, for me, that I can add material from different sources or plots in layers and change them as I see fit. I am sure this can be accomplished in other ways but I have found my way to the final product. I also happen to like messing with graphics so that helps me to explore new ways. I also use LaTeX and TikZ (which has been mentioned in replies) and so as I see it there is obviously no single way to generate the graphics but you need to chose the best ones. In my case: Illustrator (alt. Inkscape, Corela Draw), matlab, TikZ, and Photoshop (alt. Gimp) for photographic manipulation.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 15684, "author": "Dror", "author_id": 3926, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/3926", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The vector graphics language <a href=\"http://asymptote.sourceforge.net/\"><code>Asymptote</code></a> is a very nice tool for both 2D and 3D images. From its website:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Asymptote is a powerful descriptive vector graphics language that\n provides a natural coordinate-based framework for technical drawing.\n Labels and equations are typeset with LaTeX, for high-quality\n PostScript output.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Checkout a <a href=\"http://asymptote.sourceforge.net/gallery/\">gallery</a> for samples. Just like TeX, you can \"program\" your image and obtain exactly what you want.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 15709, "author": "Speldosa", "author_id": 141, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/141", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>TikZ/PGF is great when you get it to work. However, designing your stuff in this language can really be frustrating at times. If you want something a little bit easier to learn, but you still want to program your illustrations rather than drawing them yourself, check out <a href=\"http://processing.org/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Processing</a>. There are a lot of excellent <a href=\"http://processing.org/tutorials/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">tutorials</a> on this language, some of them specifically aimed towards people with no prior programming experience (for example <a href=\"http://hello.processing.org/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">this one</a>).</p>\n\n<p>If you want to check out what some examples of what Processing is capable of (and how you can do it yourself), take a look at <a href=\"http://processing.org/examples/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">this page</a>. As an added bonus, if you learn processing, you can later use it for creating animations, interactive applications, games, and similar things, some of which might be useful in a scientific context.</p>\n\n<p>Some random examples of what Processing can do:</p>\n\n<p><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/GSPDO.png\" alt=\"enter image description here\">\n<img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/yyXVa.jpg\" alt=\"enter image description here\"></p>\n\n<p>Also, check out <a href=\"https://vimeo.com/34528189\" rel=\"noreferrer\">this video</a> for an example of an animation with Processing, and <a href=\"https://vimeo.com/66775875\" rel=\"noreferrer\">this video</a> for a tutorial on how to use Processing for data visualization.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 15766, "author": "Paul Hiemstra", "author_id": 4091, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4091", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I really like using <a href=\"http://www.yworks.com/en/products_yed_about.html\" rel=\"noreferrer\">yEd</a> for flow charts. You can easily arrange lot's of components, which is quite a pain if the tool does not provide functionality to do that (Inkscape does for example, but yEd does this even better). Also, the connections between components remain fixed, so rearranging a graph does not require you to redraw the connections. The tool is available for Linux, Mac and Windows.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 21090, "author": "wsaleem", "author_id": 14572, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14572", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>To add to the mix, there are online diagramming tools available as well, namely <a href=\"http://www.gliffy.com\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Gliffy</a> and <a href=\"http://www.lucidchart.com\" rel=\"noreferrer\">LucidChart</a>. Both have free subscriptions that allow limited use which is usually sufficient for simple diagrams. With these tools, you draw the diagram in your browser and can download it as PNG, PDF or JPEG. LucidChart allows a free upgrade if you register using a <code>*.edu.*</code> email address. </p>\n\n<p>Another good offline tool is <a href=\"http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/visio/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Microsoft Visio</a> which works on Windows only. It is great for drawing flow charts and other simple diagrams. There are many Visio clones but none of them live up to the original. In fact, I stumbled upon the above online tools looking for Visio alternatives for Linux.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 183927, "author": "kir0ul", "author_id": 145481, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/145481", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Maybe I missed it but for any workflow diagram (and not only, I do all kind of diagrams with it), I'd also mention <a href=\"https://github.com/jgraph/drawio\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">draw.io</a> (which is open source and can be <a href=\"https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.jgraph.drawio.desktop\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">installed from Flathub</a>), and its online version <a href=\"https://app.diagrams.net/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">app.diagrams.net</a>.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 183962, "author": "allo", "author_id": 79727, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/79727", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>A rather new option for creating illustrations for geometric objects is <a href=\"https://penrose.cs.cmu.edu/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Penrose</a>. It is able to generate nice figures for different objects described in a mathematical notation. See the <a href=\"https://penrose.cs.cmu.edu/siggraph20\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">paper</a> for examples and more explanation.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1095", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/411/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1105, "author": "csgillespie", "author_id": 611, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/611", "pm_score": 6, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Two obvious answers are:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Marking (grading). Ask your supervisor if they have coursework that needs to be marked (for a price).</li>\n<li>Tutoring. Put a note up in your departmental office offering to tutor undergraduates. If you're doing a more mathematical degree, you could tutor undergraduates from other disciplines. For example, helping out with some statistics coursework.</li>\n</ol>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1106, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": 6, "selected": true, "text": "<ol>\n<li><p>I know of a few graduate students who successfully made money doing consulting in their line of work. Most of these were engineering students, where the knowledge gained during graduate school is easily transferable, but I've seen others as well.</p>\n<p>If you're interested in this, talk to as many people as you can and network, network, network. It can be a fun side project with the potential to become a full-time job if you're interested.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>Another very useful skill that some graduate students may be able to do is <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_writing\" rel=\"noreferrer\">grant writing</a>. While you may not realize it, this skill is necessary in many, many industries, and if you're good at writing, you can make earn some good income contracting out your skills.</p>\n</li>\n</ol>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1107, "author": "dearN", "author_id": 21, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/21", "pm_score": 5, "selected": false, "text": "<p>It would depend on whether you are an international student or a domestic student.\nI am guessing, if you are an international student, you will have to work with your international office to work more than your <em>allowed</em> quota of hours citing extenuating circumstances.</p>\n\n<p>For instance, as a PHD candidate from India in the USA, I know that I get a stipend that counts as 20 hours of work per week. If I were to have, God forbid, extenuating circumstances and needed more money to support my cause, I'd have to work with the international office who in turn would work it out with the INS/ICE in the US so that I stay \"in status\" as a full time student <strong>whilst working for more than my quota of hours</strong>.</p>\n\n<p>Obviously, my answer is for international students in the US. If you are a domestic student, some of the answers provided here would actually help!</p>\n\n<p>Good luck!</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1130, "author": "Andy W", "author_id": 3, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/3", "pm_score": 5, "selected": false, "text": "<p>These are less attractive than either consulting or tutoring because they take a more regular committment, but these are jobs I have taken in the past for a few extra dollars (that haven't managed to kill me yet!)</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Being an adjunct teacher at another institution.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>This is very hard though, and requires a substantial time commitment. It has the positive benefit of you gaining teaching experience, which is useful if you plan on continuing a job in academia. I have also heard teaching online classes are much easier on your schedule as well, although take that as heresay from me as I have not done it myself.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Moonlighting as a security guard.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>This probably comes off as an odd choice, but I have had two security guard jobs in the past that worked out really well. I intentionally chose jobs that I sat at a desk, so I could read or write while I was on duty. I'm sure your mileage varies though with this, and I may have just been crap lucky with getting jobs in which this was possible.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4960, "author": "Per Alexandersson", "author_id": 2794, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2794", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>At my university, the school provides service for students with disabilities, \nany I have been a mentor/tutor for some of them.</p>\n\n<p>It is quite fun, and more importantly, I feel like I do something meaningful.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4962, "author": "F'x", "author_id": 2700, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2700", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p><strong>Writing high-school or college-level books</strong> in your discipline. There are quite a few types of books that publishers are interested in and pay young authors for: exercises with solutions, compilations of admissions tests with answers and comments, that sort of thing.</p>\n\n<p>I mention it because it usually is a job you can do on your own schedule. In my own experience, it does not pay as much as consulting, but it might be easier to get in. Also, it brings a lot of useful experience if you do it in a good team: learning how to write good pedagogical material is a precious skill!</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>Depending on your language skills, working as a <strong>translator</strong> or <strong>proofreader</strong> is a good option. It is a rather flexible job in term of work hours and place. Also, if you have necessary technical skills, scientific journals have large needs of <strong>grahics editing</strong>.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 13136, "author": "murat", "author_id": 8822, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8822", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>depending on your major and skills, I believe you can find some teaching positions. like ESL, math, computer science etc. whatever you can teach, look for companies offering that kind of service. I was working as an instructor at a \"computing for children\" kinda company. using available software, it was fun to work with kids. I was also teaching A+,N+ classes, since I am a CS graduate and like to teach the stuff. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 13323, "author": "user8946", "author_id": 8946, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8946", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>If you have the time and ability to - start a business in your disipline! I know this is a hard task but I managed to set at home accountancy and consulting business while a undergraduate (Accounting major and also a Computer Science). You can recruit people to work on commission for you, thus creating money for themselves and you! I have always been a fan of consulting and recruitment (headhunting) business start ups.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 16577, "author": "Prashant Koirala", "author_id": 11637, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11637", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Online tutoring and teaching - It can be less time consuming especially in the area of their expertise. Good instructors are scarce and they are online and offline companies that are always looking for quality instructors. Companies like <a href=\"https://generalassemb.ly/\">General Assembly</a>, [Udemy], <a href=\"http://www.venturesity.com/\">Venturesity</a> (sorry for the shameless plug :)) etc. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 17593, "author": "Emme", "author_id": 12532, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12532", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Look into babysitting. A lot of professors and staff are looking for reliable people to babysit (and maybe tutor) their young children. That is how I supplemented my income through graduate school.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 127907, "author": "anon", "author_id": 106646, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/106646", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p><strong>Private tutoring</strong> can be a good source of income -- getting pupils is difficult at first, but most of them will, once started, have many lessons, so there is some regularity in your income. If you want to reduce your hours, raising your rates can do the trick nicely (since you are an expert professional, you can and should charge a high hourly rate in any case, otherwise people will assume you are not very good).</p>\n\n<p><strong>Proof-reading and editorial work</strong> is flexible (because you can do it at any time of day or night), although it does not tend to be particularly lucrative. That said, if relevant to your field, a track record of such work can do wonders for your reputation and visibility.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Other specialist freelance activities</strong> relevant to your field. These tend to be brief and one-off, but can be very enjoyable and quite lucrative.</p>\n\n<p>[NB: since all of the above tend to involve working in a self-employed capacity, it is <strong>your</strong> responsibility to register with the relevant tax authorities, file tax returns, and pay the taxes (this is one reason why self-employed hourly rates tend to be significantly higher than employed hourly rates). If you feel uncomfortable doing these administrative tasks yourself, you may want to hire an accountant.]</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1103", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/411/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1111, "author": "Jyrki Lahtonen", "author_id": 17484, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/17484", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>A concern (raised by your background) that occurs to me is that do you really have a clear idea what graduate programs in math are all about? I don't think that any reputable grad school would allow you to study numerical analysis alone ... [Edit taking note of Willie's remark] <em>within a graduate program in pure math</em> - the scene is markedly different if you are applying into a program in applied and/or computational math. I apologize for not knowing that such possibilities exist. My smalltown background left me with the false impression that math and applied math always come together. Such programs may be better suited for you![/Edit] (continued rant) ... For the simple reason that doing research in math requires familiarity with a variety of tools and theories from adjacent, nearby and occasionally relatively remote areas of mathematics.</p>\n\n<p>Is entering a computer science/computer engineering graduate program not an option? Probably you can specialize in scientific computing/numerical analysis in such a program. It may actually be easier to find an advisor in such a topic at a CS department? I don't know for sure, but it sounds like such a plan would entail less risk.</p>\n\n<p>Our resident experts on numerical analysis/scientific computing can give you more useful advice. Below I will say my bit.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>Before you burn your boats I would recommend, as an extra-curricular activity, that you take a look at what the obligatory 1st year courses of math programs have in store for you.\nThe <em>core math</em> at a typical US grad school (for 1st year grad students) contains at lest <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topology\">topology</a>, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_algebra\">abstract algebra</a>, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measure_%28mathematics%29\">real analysis</a> (sorry the link is only to measure theory, couldn't find a more fitting Wikipedia article at this time) and <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_analysis\">complex analysis</a>. Some places would offer/recommend/require also <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_logic\">mathematical logic</a>. After the first year, you are expected to display a working understanding of the theories and results that those articles link to, and be able to reproduce their proofs on demand (ok, the committees will likely give you some slack on the more esoteric proofs, but don't count on it). The depth of those course probably depends on how much ivy the school has. I cannot give details on that for the simple reason that my experience is from a reputable but not top notch grad school, and I have only heard rumors about the others :-).</p>\n\n<p>Only after having covered those basics can you start specializing on a topic that interests you the most.</p>\n\n<p>I don't want to dampen your enthusiasm. I just had a few fellow grad students who were surprised by the graduate curriculum, and either dropped out or had a hard time making through the 1st year. My concern is that you may not fully appreciate how limited your exposure to math actually is (given your background). GRE is a joke, but it does test that you can speedily pick the correct calculus concept/theorem off the shelf in your brains and apply it.</p>\n\n<p>So if going through those links just makes you hungry to learn more, then 'full steam ahead!', but otherwise you may want to reconsider.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1117, "author": "tonymac", "author_id": 665, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/665", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Pure mathematics isn't your only choice for a PhD, and may not be the best fit with a computer engineering background.</p>\n\n<p>I'm currently a masters student in a MS/PhD program in <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_Science_and_Engineering\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">computational engineering</a> after getting a B.S. in applied math. Computational engineering is very different from computer engineering. It is a field which combines numerical analysis, linear algebra and parallel programming to solve engineering problems which are typically modeled as coupled systems of partial differential (or integral) equations.</p>\n\n<p>In <a href=\"http://www.utc.edu/Academic/ComputationalEngineering/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">my program</a>, the focus is on fluid dynamics, but there are others that focus on geophysics, structural dynamics, electromagnetics, etc. One of the advantages of this program is that it brings together people from mathematics, engineering and computer science, both in faculty and students, so you get a different perspective on problems than you would working strictly with other mathematicians.</p>\n\n<p>If this sounds interesting, you may want to check out the <a href=\"https://scicomp.stackexchange.com/\">Computational Science</a> board here on Stack Exchange.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1125, "author": "NeedPhdApplicationAdvise", "author_id": 672, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/672", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I don't know howto respond individually, so I am just going to respond here all together. </p>\n\n<p>@Willie, thanks, I have registered an account now. \n@Zev, thanks for migrating to academia. I didn't know this site even existed till now, and I am hooked. I will be posting with my regular SO account here :) </p>\n\n<p>@Tonymac, computational engineering would be ideal. That's exactly the kind of thing I am looking for as well, and that's precisely what excited me during my undergrad days and motivated me to take a lot of math grad courses as electives in my undergrad program. </p>\n\n<p>Coming back, let me re-emphasize. I am currently employed, just moved to Austin, Tx. I am only going to be applying for Fall 2014 for the most part, and that gives me an year to prepare. My question is, how do I \"best\" use the time till then? There are some advise I have seen on here that say \"use your time productively\". What would \"productively\" be in this case? What are the things I could do in the meanwhile to improve my application when I do apply? </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1110", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1114, "author": "Dave Clarke", "author_id": 643, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/643", "pm_score": 7, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I've never seen anything like this on a CV.</p>\n\n<p>If you have other publications, I certainly wouldn't include this. It would look like you are trying too hard to find something to put on your CV, which could do more harm than good. Let your publications stand for themselves.</p>\n\n<p>One thing you could do when describing the various jobs you've had, is to include the statistical analysis work in the description of the activities you performed in that job. You could also mention it in the cover letter, if it is relevant for the job. Finally, do bring it up in the interview as an example of how you work in a collaboration.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 19712, "author": "Fomite", "author_id": 118, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/118", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think it might be appropriate to put this on your CV is you are <em>very</em> early in your career, and facing the \"There's nothing but coursework on my CV\" problem. If that's the case, it might be worth doing just to show that you're in the early stages of your research career, but that you are engaging in collaborative research work.</p>\n\n<p>That being said, the moment you have something more substantial to put on your CV, I'd expect it to drop away in favor of those things.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 75338, "author": "Erel Segal-Halevi", "author_id": 787, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/787", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>You can ask these researchers to give you a recommendation letter. This may help you even more than another publication.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1112", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/663/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1119, "author": "JeffE", "author_id": 65, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65", "pm_score": 6, "selected": true, "text": "<p>(My experience with non-American PhD programs is limited, so some of what I say here may not be relevant or possible.)</p>\n\n<p>First, I think you may have painted yourself into a corner. More important than being specific, PhD applications should be <em>honest</em>. Hopefully your applications described the breadth of your interests, perhaps with some extra emphasis and detail in one area, rather than implying falsely that you are only interested in one topic. It's better to be rejected than to be accepted into a PhD program where you won't thrive.</p>\n\n<p>I think you need to look for overlaps and connections between your various fields of interest. Decision theory and machine learning are not that far apart. Quantum computing and philosophy of computing are not that far apart. Parallel computing and logic are not that far apart. Decision theory and logic are not that far apart. Machine learning and computer music are not that far apart. Finding something at the intersection of five or six different areas is almost certainly impossible, but <strong>lots</strong> of interesting stuff happens at the interface between field X and field Y.</p>\n\n<p>On the other hand, all the areas you describe are incredibly diverse within their own boundaries. You may find enough different topics within (say) machine learning to keep your fickle heart satisfied.</p>\n\n<p>One thing you should ask about (quickly!) is the possibility of having multiple (ie, two) advisors in different areas. Some departments encourage inter-disciplinary co-advising; some don't. Some advisors encourage collaboration with other faculty; others flatly forbid it. (In many European PhD programs, students are attached to specific projects of specific faculty from day one, and moving between projects or fields is almost impossible.)</p>\n\n<p>What worries me more than the diversity of your interests is this sentence: <em>\"Whenever I've tried to restrict myself to one topic of study - <strong>even for a month</strong> - that feeling is lost, and I am quickly bored\"</em>. You have to get over that. Research requires long-term focused attention. Early in your PhD program, you <em>may</em> be able to juggle a couple of different research projects at once, but eventually, you have to focus on a coherent thesis topic. It can be an interdisciplinary topic, sure, but it has be coherent. You will have to work on that one topic for <em>years</em>. If that sounds awful to you, then maybe you don't want to be a PhD student after all.</p>\n\n<p>My department head has changed fields several times in his career, so I think his advice on this topic is worth repeating. Assuming good health and good luck, you have a 50-year research career ahead of you. So if you're deeply interested in half a dozen different areas, you can afford to spend seven or eight years on each one.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1121, "author": "Anonymous Mathematician", "author_id": 612, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I'd start with a fundamental question: why do you want to get a Ph.D.? It's a major commitment of time and effort, so it's only worthwhile if you need a Ph.D. to accomplish your long-term goals. Getting a Ph.D. really isn't worth doing for its own sake, or out of a feeling that it's something you ought to do (because you like computer science, or enjoy education, or feel you should have the highest degree you can get). Really, it's just preparation for what you'll do after you graduate.</p>\n\n<p>So from this perspective, the question becomes what you hope to be doing in ten or fifteen years. Not specific topics, but rather what sort of career. When you look around at faculty or industrial researchers, do you see people who make you say \"Yes, that's exactly the sort of work and the range of topics I'd love\"? If you do, then you should look into these cases specifically. You can study websites and CVs, and maybe even e-mail a few questions (although keep in mind that people will be busy, so don't be pushy and don't waste time with questions you can answer in other ways). How did they end up in these positions that appeal to you?</p>\n\n<p>If you can find many people doing what you'd like to do, then that's an excellent sign, and you just have to learn how they did it. If you can find only a few, or even none, then you should worry that maybe a Ph.D. isn't the right path for you. In that case, if you enter a Ph.D. program you've got to hope for one of two things. Either academia will change you, or you will change academia. Either is possible, but neither is likely.</p>\n\n<p>I don't mean for this to be discouraging, but I strongly recommend thinking this through carefully before getting too far into a Ph.D. program (if you haven't already). Once you start, quitting is difficult psychologically even when it's clearly the right decision. It's easy to spend years in denial, knowing things aren't really working out the way you had anticipated but hoping they'll somehow get better. This isn't healthy, so the more thinking you do in advance, the better.</p>\n\n<p>Good luck! I hope you either find role models in this career path or find another that suits you better.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1164, "author": "JRN", "author_id": 64, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/64", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>It is possible that you will have trouble finishing your dissertation and thus obtaining your PhD.</p>\n\n<p>It is easy to do your coursework; each subject takes only one semester. You'll finish your subjects before you get bored. But a dissertation usually takes a year or more to finish.</p>\n\n<p>One possibility is to take your PhD at a university which allows publication of a few papers as equivalent to a dissertation. You can make the papers about different fields and yet related to each other.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 35124, "author": "verdelite", "author_id": 27270, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/27270", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I found your question today. I also have \"diverse interests\". Worse, my interests are more diverse than yours. I am interested in quantum physics, in biology, in history, in computer, in mathematics, in electronics, in music, etc. </p>\n\n<p>Your problem is just in what JeffE had found: \"Whenever I've tried to restrict myself to one topic of study - even for a month - that feeling is lost, and I am quickly bored\". I get bored after a month of intense reading, or after half a year of leisure reading. It might be with the \"instant gratification\" vs \"delayed gratification\" kind of thing. Picking low hanging fruits in a new field is exciting. Having to do hard work for difficult fruits is boring. You might even have procrastination if my theory is right.</p>\n\n<p>I worry that you might not be able to finish your Ph.D, like me. I chose one of the above as my Ph.D direction and I lost interest in reading boring (difficult?) papers and spent easy time in other fields. My GPA was good, I had no problem to pass exams. I just did not want to read those boring papers (the truth was that they were more \"difficult papers\" than \"boring papers\") in the field. I finally dropped out after years of struggling and got a job with my master's degree. Today, a day I find out that I am reading in parallel many materials on diverse topics at the same time, I decided to google and found your question. </p>\n\n<p>If you can't focus, it might be better for you to get a job with your master's degree in CS and live an everyday Joe's life, like what I am doing now. On the other hand, if you can untwist your mind so that you realize that life is difficult, research is difficult, and doing difficult work is unavoidable, you might be able to escape being bored ( Now you know it is not about being bored, it is about being unable to face difficult problems for delayed gratification), you may be able to survive your Ph.D life. </p>\n\n<p><strong>[Update after 3 years]</strong> Today I found this answer made by me three years ago. I can tell you what I have done to overcome the problem. I am proud of myself as an amateur scientist that I have focused on one narrow field unrelated to all my previous interests for three whole years and got deep understanding of it. I almost dropped all my other hobbies and interests. How?</p>\n\n<p>The first reason why I can make this change to my style was three years ago I suddenly realized that the old saying that we used only 5% (or 10%) of our brain capacity thus we had enormous capacity for learning was a lie. This is easily seen if you believe in evolution (why keep an energy hungry giant brain if there is no need). The truth is we have limited memory capacity. Don't jam garbage information in it! The second reason is somehow related ---- Those highly respected big figures in the past had limited brain capacity too! I believe if a person with good IQ and required education spends 10 years (sometimes 3 years) focusing on on topic, he can surpass almost all past and existing experts in the field, except for maybe one or two greatest. </p>\n\n<p>With this second reason in mind (Most great figures are average Joe's themselves) I think I have made a discovery in a field I once was interested in. I have to pick it up and set aside my current main focus for a while (maybe as long as a year). Hope the above two reasons can help some people here.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1118", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/625/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1126, "author": "Ran G.", "author_id": 324, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/324", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Different people would have different techniques. What I found very useful for me is to have a list of the 5-8 most important things I need to do. </p>\n\n<p>I don't use any specific tool, just a simple text file to write my tasks down (always adding tasks so I will not forget anything), but keep the most urgent 5-8 tasks at the top.</p>\n\n<p>I found out that the sole existence of this list is what helps me to focus. I don't follow the list item by item; I do jump between tasks; I start one task before I complete the the other. The important thing is that I keep looking at that list several times a day, recalling what else I still need to do, and trying to see the 'big picture'. Each time I look at the list I allow myself to re-prioritize tasks. Sometimes just to see the tasks written down is enough for one's mind to be able to arrange the day in the most effective way.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1293, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I have three answers to this question; I'll put them all here for you.</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><h1>Don't.</h1>\n\n<p>Multi-tasking is a necessity when there are many tasks that demand your attention all at once. The people who most need these skills are either managers, whose work demands that they divide their attention among their subordinates as necessary, and those working in a highly collaborative environment, where interaction with colleagues happens regularly. </p>\n\n<p>As a graduate student, this will almost never happen. Your responsibilities will typically include coursework, teaching assistantships, and research duties, and writing. Even your collaborations will happen at a slow pace. You'll rarely be in a situation where you <em>need</em> to get in touch with someone within the hour; almost all your issues will be able to wait a day. Considering that almost all research shows that multitasking decreases productivity, consider yourself lucky.</p>\n\n<p>To that end, if you can train yourself to focus on a single task at a time, your work will benefit from it. </p></li>\n<li><h1><a href=\"http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/\">Pomodoro technique</a></h1>\n\n<p>I recently (~6 mos) read about this technique online, and I've found it very useful for certain tasks. The concept is ridiculously simple. Before you start working, write down the task you're about to start on a piece of paper. Start a 25 minute timer and work until it runs out. Take a 5 min stretch, put a tic next to the task on the piece of paper, and then repeat until you're done. If you need to switch to something else, write it down on the paper as well, and switch every 25 minutes. This way, you always have at least 25 minutes to do each task, and you can set up your multitasking in 25 minute chunks. (As an added benefit, you're taking stretch breaks every 5 minutes, which is good for your health.)</p></li>\n<li><h1><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done\">Getting Things Done</a></h1>\n\n<p>There's an answer below that mentions this, but doesn't do it justice. I've been using this for years and it's a wonderful way of keeping track of what you need to do. At it's simplest, the technique just advocates that you make a to-do list of everything you need to do. The useful part of this technique is how he separates tasks; he puts them into \"contexts\", which you can think of as \"environments\". Some tasks will be done at home, some at work, some wherever you have email access, etc. By breaking up tasks like this, you can easily see what you need to do at any given time by simply consulting the correct list.</p>\n\n<p>This technique has gained immense popularity, and because of that many to-do lists online feature \"GTD compatibility\". This basically means that they let you make lists of your to-dos.</p>\n\n<p>This method comes with a catch; if you don't do it rigorously, you may as well not do it at all. As soon as some tasks <em>aren't</em> on your lists, then you'll stop checking the lists, and then the whole thing goes to pot. However, if you keep the lists current, then it's an immensely helpful technique. For forgetful people like me, the to-do concept is a veritable necessity, and the context idea is a good way of segmenting what you need to do.</p></li>\n</ol>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3111, "author": "userJT", "author_id": 1537, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1537", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>In writing papers about finished projects, it is important to take breaks - write something, and then get back to it next day (re-read what you wrote). So multitasking could be beneficial.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1124", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1129, "author": "Henry", "author_id": 8, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>In math we have various programs where a group of people get together to do focused work on a problem, usually at one of the mathematical institutes (I know of the SQuaREs program at AIM and the Research in Pairs program at Oberwolfach, and there are probably others). These are usually for 2-6 people, and the time frame is longer.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1134, "author": "Fomite", "author_id": 118, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/118", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I have found, having participated in a few fairly intensive workshops that were intended to produce a product after a short amount of time that this tends toward failure for a few reasons:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Most academics are interested in <em>problems</em> as well as the implementation of solutions. Hackatons are <em>implementation</em> factories, but its only a small subset of academics who will enjoy and/or be supported just to solve other people's problems.</li>\n<li>Building on that, its hard to formulate a meaningful problem, do the background research, plan the research and perform it in a one or two week period. A hackathon benefits from having all but the last stage done before-hand. Generally I've found with those types of intensive workshops, you can get the concept and maybe the plan down, but there needs to be more work done when everyone goes home. A lot more work. Which leads to the final issue...</li>\n<li>Long distance collaboration, especially with people with whom you have a fairly weak bond, and especially one without strong, lasting grant support, is really, really hard to do.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>So they do happen, but the finished-product focused ones tend to have a longer timeframe, and the shorter ones tend to be trying to accomplish very specific things, like putting out a consensus statement or <em>planning</em> research to be done later.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1146, "author": "David Ketcheson", "author_id": 81, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/81", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>In industrial math, Oxford has a long tradition of running <a href=\"http://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/groups/occam/study-groups\" rel=\"nofollow\">study groups</a>. This vague-sounding name has a rather specific meaning. From the page just linked:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><strong>What is a study group?</strong></p>\n \n <p>Study groups bring together mathematicians from across the globe to\n work on mathematical problems presented by industry in a week long\n workshop.</p>\n \n <p><strong>How does a study group work?</strong></p>\n \n <p>The academics work in problem solving teams with the presenters to\n tackle the problems raised, formulating their ideas using modelling,\n analysis and computation. At the end of the study group the academics\n present their findings and make suggestions of future work to be\n carried out. A final report is written after the study group.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I attended <a href=\"http://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/groups/occam/events/first-kaust-study-group-mathematics-industry\" rel=\"nofollow\">this one</a>. They are a lot of fun and have a track record of real impact.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1578, "author": "bobthejoe", "author_id": 319, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/319", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I shall argue that <a href=\"http://igem.org/Main_Page\" rel=\"nofollow\">iGEM</a> falls under the category of a Hackathon. Having coached a team, I have grown the impression that the program essentially gathers a bunch of undergrads together, teaches them various problematic things about biology, and then for 10 weeks the students slash together a random assortment of solutions and call it a day.</p>\n\n<p>Like EpiGrad, I have evolved to not favor this type of approach. Many times the students will take on a problem without recognizing that it is actually isn't a real problem. The result is a solution that tends to be very very narrowly constrained. Secondly, unlike a programming Hackathon, these sessions result in tons of hastily performed experiments with very few controls and lots of very difficult to reproduced data. Notably the <a href=\"http://partsregistry.org/Main_Page\" rel=\"nofollow\">Registry of Biological Parts</a> is having a serious issue with the quality control of their \"parts\" since they all come from unsequenced plasmids that were shipped to the Registry to qualify for the deadline.</p>\n\n<p>The positive is that it does get a lot of young students interested in science but it isn't a very productive way of doing science.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1128", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/49/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1132, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<p>Yes, it is possible to cross over between different fields following the PhD-level studies. However, in general, this tends to be more applicable to \"interdisciplinary\" fields that can fall into multiple disciplines. For instance, the engineering department I studied at hired people with PhD's in applied mathematics and physics, because their research fields—in fluid mechanics and interfacial science, respectively—meshed well with the research interests of the department.</p>\n\n<p>To give a counterexample, however, it will be much harder to make the case for a high-energy physics person to move into another discipline, just because it is so strongly identified with physics.</p>\n\n<p>Thus, if you have a PhD in a field such as mathematical economics or econometrics, it will be a lot easier to make the lateral shift. However, if you're in a more \"traditional\" subfield, that move becomes much more challenging.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1133, "author": "Dave Clarke", "author_id": 643, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/643", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>One additional difficulty of doing this, which may indeed be a hurdle, is that it will be difficult to teach undergraduate courses within the new department, because you may not have the background to do so. This will cause a course assignment problem for the head of department, one which could be avoided by not hiring you. On the other hand, you will be capable of teaching cross-disciplinary courses giving the education provided by the department a new angle, which may be appealing to the department.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_J._Watts\">Duncan Watts</a>, of Six Degrees fame, switched from Physics to Sociology. It's hard to imagine a more extreme cross-over.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1135, "author": "Anonymous Mathematician", "author_id": 612, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Moving from an economics Ph.D. program to a job in a mainstream math department will be difficult. There will be the practical difficulties (are you able to teach as broad a range of courses?), the incentive issues (\"If he's so great, why doesn't the economics department hire him instead? What's in it for us? If he's really a mathematician, why did he go to grad school in economics in the first place?\"), culture clashes (mathematicians will have no idea what a working paper is, won't know whether the American Economic Review is any good, won't recognize the names of letter writers from economics or care as much about their opinions, etc.), and so on.</p>\n\n<p>If you turn out to be a superstar, you'll have more flexibility, but anyone less gifted will have to work very hard to fit in. In particular, to have any real shot at this you'll have to:</p>\n\n<p>(1) Demonstrate that you have a broad background in mathematics, in particular in the areas that are not used in economics. I.e., you'll need to study mathematics to the extent that nobody would guess you didn't go to math grad school.</p>\n\n<p>(2) Publish papers primarily in mathematics journals. An economics paper, even a very mathematical one in an excellent journal, will count substantially less than a mathematics paper. if you have more economics papers than mathematics papers, then mathematicians who support other candidates will use this as an argument for why the economics department would be a better fit for you. (And they will convince many people by arguing that if the economics department wants you, then the math department would get the benefit of having you around for free, and if they don't want you, then maybe that's a bad sign.)</p>\n\n<p>(3) Find leading mathematicians to write letters of recommendation for you. There's a widespread belief that recommenders lower their standards a little when recommending for other departments, or may not fully understand the standards or needs of these departments, so math departments will on average pay less attention to a letter from an economist than from a mathematician.</p>\n\n<p>All this is unfair, but these issues are real. If you might want to work in a different department, then you should start preparing as early as possible.</p>\n\n<p>P.S. You'll also run into other cultural issues. For example, economics candidates regularly get tenure-track jobs in top departments straight out of grad school, while mathematics candidates almost never do (i.e., the number of people who do this in a typical year is 0 or 1). This may work to your advantage, for example by giving you a chance to do a postdoc and improve your credentials, but it's something you'll have to deal with.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 14906, "author": "Hedge Fund", "author_id": 10098, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10098", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Definitely. Economists are routinely hired at finance departments, as well as public policy, public health, and even marketing departments. Sometimes they have appointments across different departments including statistics. For instance Francis X. Diebold has appointments in the Department of Economics at Penn, as well as the Finance Department and Statistics Department at Wharton.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 87411, "author": "Tom Au", "author_id": 755, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/755", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>My father, a retired engineering professor, told me that some fields that are \"feeder\" fields into others, lend themselves more easily to the \"crossover\" process.</p>\n\n<p>In your case, mathematics is a \"feeder\" field to mathematical economics. My father felt that it was relatively easy for a math (or engineering) PhD to cross over into economics (as he did in his later years), because most economists feel that their field does not have enough mathematics. In fact, many senior economics professors of his time recruited graduate students with strong \"quant\" backgrounds to work with them.</p>\n\n<p>The reverse is not true. Most mathematicians would find it hard to take an Economics PhD \"seriously\" as a mathematician. It is said that mathematics is the \"queen\" of sciences, so its practitioners don't feel the need to cater to \"lesser\" fields.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1131", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/676/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1138, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>From my experience, there are three reasons why potential advisors want to see undergraduate research:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Show that the student cares enough about research to actually have participated in research during their undergraduate years.</li>\n<li>Student is at least somewhat familiar with the ins-and-outs of performing academic research in a university setting.</li>\n<li>The quality of the performed research may give some indication as to how \"good\" of a student the candidate will be.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>If you perform research yourself outside of the university settings, you'll provide a strong showing for (1), nothing at all for (2), and given that you're unlikely to publish anything, nothing of much use to the advisor for (3).</p>\n\n<p>To that end, I would try to get a job as a research assistant before applying. (I'm not sure this position exists in all fields.) This is usually a paid position, and will give you an experience to work with research, help run a lab, learn about academia, and and even possibly work towards being acknowledged--or even possibly a co-author, although that's unlikely--in a paper. It should help your application significantly.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1142, "author": "DavideChicco.it", "author_id": 379, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/379", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>You can consider the possibility of <strong>becoming a research assistant or research associate</strong> in the research group you want to join, before applying for Phd program.</p>\n\n<p>You can try to contact the reseach group leader and ask him/her if they have possibility (i.e. funding) and willing to assume you for some months as research associate. By this way, the group is able to know you and test you; you're able to work, get paid, do research, publish papers, and so <strong>reinforce</strong> your PhD candidacy.</p>\n\n<p>Them, when the Phd announcement will be out, you'll be a A-star candidate ;-)</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1136", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/552/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1139, "author": "Alex Holcombe", "author_id": 590, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/590", "pm_score": 6, "selected": true, "text": "<p>A major difference from an in-person interview is that interpersonal visual cues such as eye contact are absent or impoverished (even in Skype, because of poorer resolution / latency / smoothness than actual reality) and a rapid verbal back-and-forth is usually impossible. So it's more difficult to assess the interviewers' reaction and when they've had enough of your answer.</p>\n\n<p>Typically the interviewer(s) want to hear you talk about your research for several minutes and will ask a few rather open-ended questions that are mainly designed to get you talking. You should run with that and just keep talking and let the interviewer(s) say something when they want you to stop- it's too difficult to try to monitor their nonverbal reactions. Some candidates make the mistake of not saying much, in an attempt to not over-sell themselves or in an attempt to act suitably subordinate. The interviewer(s) really want to hear you describe your work in your own words and feel your enthusiasm and general attitude.</p>\n\n<p>The interviewers themselves will realize that it's difficult to have a normal conversation rapport so don't let any awkward moments or technical difficulties stress you out, the main risk is that you won't say enough.</p>\n\n<p>To show you aren't off in your own world, you can't use the normal nonverbal skills very much, therefore be paticularly sensitive to the exact questions they ask, but once you answer the specific question feel free to answer more broadly, a broad perspective tends to impress.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 2611, "author": "Dan C", "author_id": 1069, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1069", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>When I'm preparing for a phone interview, I often: </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Write out extensive notes</strong>. Partly, this helps me to organize my thoughts (which is good preparation for any interview), but in the case of a phone call, I <strong>actively consult them during the interview</strong>. </li>\n<li>For example, I <strong>write out answers to questions that I think I may be asked</strong>. When I'm asked one of these questions, I <strong>quickly skim my written answer to remind me</strong> of what I want to say. </li>\n<li>If possible, beforehand I also <strong>write out the names of the committee that will be interviewing me</strong>, as well as a few comments on each committee member if possible. This can help me to keep track of my interviewers, even when I can't see their faces. </li>\n<li>Finally, I will sometimes print out or <strong>take notes on information about the school that I'm interviewing with</strong>. Then, when they ask me question for which I don't have notes, I consult my notes on the school and try to work some of that information into my answer.</li>\n</ul>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1137", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/590/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1155, "author": "ESultanik", "author_id": 92, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/92", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>In my field (Computer Science), I usually assume that the first author and/or the \"corresponding author\" is the one who \"did most of the work\" and the last author is the one who secured the funding to do said work. In some cases the latter does not exist (<em>e.g.</em>, if a publication is not funded by a research grant/contract) or these are both the same person. In my opinion and experience, the author with the greatest technical contribution should be the corresponding author. This is because most inquiries to the corresponding author will be technical in nature. If I were interested in contacting the authors of a paper for a non-technical reason (<em>e.g.</em>, an inquiry to team for a competitive proposal) and I were unfamiliar with the authors (which is unlikely), then I would do a quick Internet search to determine if any of the authors are advisors of the others and contact the most senior one in terms of academic rank.</p>\n\n<p>Therefore, I think it is perfectly appropriate and even desirable for whomever provided the greatest technical contribution to be the senior author. This may vary by discipline and/or country, however.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1168, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 3, "selected": true, "text": "<p>Assuming that you're not in a field where it's \"strictly alphabetical order\" (like economics), the question of which position is more important depends on what stage of your career you're in. </p>\n\n<p>If you are a <em>beginning</em> academic—a PhD student or a postdoctoral fellow—then the <strong>first</strong>-author publications are most important, as these will show you taking an active and leading role in your research. As you move up the chain, however, and reach more senior positions, having the <strong>last</strong>-author credit becomes more important, as now you're showing your leadership role in directing projects. You don't want to be stuck in the trap of being a \"junior\" partner in research collaborations, with the senior PI getting all of the credit for the work.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1170, "author": "csgillespie", "author_id": 611, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/611", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>A few points. </p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>Most(?) PhD students don't stay in academia. If they a planning on leaving academia for some other profession, does it really make sense for them to be a corresponding author? Once a PhD student has left Uni it's hard enough to get them motivated to write any papers, never mind answer future questions on it! Ditto for RAs, not all RAs stay in academia.</p></li>\n<li><p>Let's suppose a PhD student does stay in academia and goes on to do an RA. It's unlikely to be on the same topic, so they won't be able to keep on top of the subject. </p></li>\n<li><p>As @aeismail mentioned, I really don't pay attention to who the corresponding author is. If you are doing a PhD with a well known researcher, anyone who looks at the paper will automatically assume that the senior person had the original idea. The junior author gets to dispel this \"myth\" by giving really good presentations or by \"author order\".</p></li>\n</ol>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1150", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/319/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1154, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": 7, "selected": true, "text": "<p>The secret to getting a good letter from someone is making sure they're going to write you a good letter before you have them write one. You should never need to look at a letter someone wrote for you, as you should basically know what they're going to write without ever having looked at it. In most cases, if someone doesn't feel comfortable writing a 100% positive letter about you, they'll let you know when you ask them and recommend you get someone else to write the letter.</p>\n\n<p>With that in mind, it is definitely better to forgo this choice, for the reason you suggested... people will likely feel more comfortable to write freely and honestly when they know you won't read it. Regarding the procedure, I'm not familiar with the mandate, but if it <em>is</em> a US mandate, then they'll probably show it to you after a lot of waiting. It is definitely uncommon for someone to ask to see a letter written about them, and it likely would be looked down upon.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1156, "author": "Anonymous Mathematician", "author_id": 612, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612", "pm_score": 6, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Among the faculty members I've known (at US research universities), there's a widespread feeling that recommendation letters should be completely confidential unless the writer chooses otherwise, and that viewing them using FERPA is unethically taking advantage of a legal loophole. Almost all the students check the waiver box, and if someone doesn't, then the letter writer is more likely to assume it was by accident than on purpose.</p>\n\n<p>In this context, my advice is:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>You should always check the box. If your recommenders believe you may look at the letters later, they will probably write weaker, vaguer letters. (For example, the most compelling letters often involve comparisons with other students, which may be omitted if you'll be reading the letter.)</p></li>\n<li><p>If you are not checking the box on purpose, you should say so explicitly. If you do this silently, people may assume it was an accident, and then if they learn later that you viewed the letters, they will be more offended than if you had announced this plan in advance. (And they may actually find out, since the staff who handle your request may find it troubling and leak the information even if they aren't supposed to.)</p></li>\n<li><p>You would learn less than you might expect from looking at the letters. It's remarkably hard to judge letters out of context, without having seen other letters from the same people, and it's not likely you'll discover a clear reason for your rejection. If anything, it might mislead you: you might decide that Professor X was damaging your chances by being insufficiently enthusiastic, without realizing that Professor X is never enthusiastic and in context this letter was viewed as very positive.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>I think the fundamental worry many students have is of a terrible letter, a single letter that ruins what would otherwise have been a successful application. This can happen, but I see an example only once every few years. And even in those cases, it often looks like it should have been predictable to the applicant. (For example, if you have had difficulties with someone in the past but things seem better now, don't ask for a letter without a serious discussion of how they think things stand now.) So I wouldn't worry too much: the chances you could dramatically improve your application by substituting a letter are small.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 27211, "author": "Andreas Blass", "author_id": 14506, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14506", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>You should definitely waive access to your letters of recommendation. If you don't, the people reading the letters have reason to suspect that the writers, knowing that you might see the letter, would omit (or at least soften) any negative information that they would otherwise have included. As a result, your failure (or refusal) to waive access can weaken the letters in the eyes of the readers.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 57935, "author": "lobotomyp0p", "author_id": 43339, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/43339", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I was explicitly told by my recommending professor that you're supposed to waive your right to see the letters. In particular they said that it might not matter if your recommender is a respected individual with an established career in the field, but it definitely matters if your recommender does not carry that weight.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1152", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/411/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1158, "author": "Dave Clarke", "author_id": 643, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/643", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I would say <strong>no</strong>. Leave them off the CV.</p>\n\n<p>Apart from the fact that you more-or-less invited them to invite you by applying for the position, thus they are not really invited talks, it's probably not a good idea to advertise all of the places you've unsuccessfully applied to or declined.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1160, "author": "Anonymous Mathematician", "author_id": 612, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I wouldn't say it's unethical to list them, since I think they could legitimately be considered invited talks, but I would strongly recommend leaving them out. Partly that's because it's not worth the (probably small) risk of offending someone who really doesn't think they belong there, but mainly it's because in my experience most people don't list interview talks on their CVs, so listing them will look a little unusual. In particular, it may make people wonder whether you felt you didn't have enough other talks, whether you're doing other unconventional things in your CV that they should watch out for, etc. This isn't likely to cost you a job by itself, but it's not what you want readers to be thinking about.</p>\n\n<p>There's a general meta-principle here: you should make your CV look like everyone else's, not because doing it differently would be wrong, but because you don't want readers to focus on the differences.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1161, "author": "JeffE", "author_id": 65, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65", "pm_score": 6, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I disagree with Dave. An invited talk is, by definition, a talk that you've been invited to give. Yes, interviews count. (More-or-less inviting yourself is not necessarily different than a non-interview invited talk.)</p>\n\n<p>I agree that you shouldn't reveal <em>which</em> of your invited talks are actually interviews, but that's only an issue if all your invited talks happen in the last semester before you submit your thesis. (And maybe you should wait until after interview season is over to add them. The people who are interviewing you are <em>desperately</em> curious about where else you're interviewing.)</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1818, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>It depends on which CV you are talking about. Hopefully you have better things to include on a one-page CV. Everything you do belongs on your \"full\" CV. I put departmental seminars in a different category from conference talks. I divide up my conference talks into invited and not invited (and maybe someday keynote). Interviews talks generally either go in external departmental seminars (as opposed to internal seminars) or guest lecturing depending on if it is a research talk or teaching demo. If the interview talk is only given to the search committee, then it goes under positions interviewed for and does not make the seminar list. My full CV lives on the web, but if I am asked to send a CV I purpose tailor it.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1157", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/662/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1163, "author": "Fomite", "author_id": 118, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/118", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>In Epidemiology (and medicine generally) systematic literature reviews - and the meta-analysis subset that come from systematic reviews that can report pooled summary estimates - are extremely well accepted.</p>\n\n<p>A novel systematic review, while it will take some time, is generally speaking worth a publication at least somewhere - unless someone has already done said review, at which point your work is done anyway. They've also started to be parsed as \"no more work than you should have been doing anyway\" - in order to get good priors for Bayesian analysis, a truly comprehensive view of the literature, etc. you might very well already be doing a systematic review.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1167, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<p>A systematic literature review is never a bad thing. At the worst, you have a large database of literature that you can cite in future work. as well as a feeling for where the \"low-hanging fruit\" might lie. It will also give you a framework on which to build and grow your literature collection over time. </p>\n\n<p>So whether or not you are able to publish it, a literature review is a good thing (within reason—don't spend six months doing nothing but reading literature papers!). </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1175, "author": "Brian Maicke", "author_id": 662, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/662", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>In Mechanical/Aerospace engineering it has been my experience that most research projects start off with a systematic review. Some journals will consider such reviews for publication, but the goal is usually not a publication, but to build a background in the area and to find potential gaps in current research. </p>\n\n<p>Another thing I have found helpful is to periodically review your review. This is important especially for longer term projects (PhDs, continuations/extension of previous research). I try to do a quick followup review every few months or so to make sure my review stays current. The duration between updates will vary based on the research and the discipline. Once you have the initial review in place, keeping it current should take only a little bit of time and effort.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1162", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/690/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1172, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I went through this experience, and I have friends who've gone through this experience, and it's never fun. You ask a lot of questions; I'll try to answer as many as I can.</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><blockquote>\n <p>What should be the student's considerations when the professor offers him a choice to move along with him?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Consider the following:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>How far along are you in your work? If you haven't proposed yet, it's probably easier just to find a new professor and start anew. If you haven't done any serious research yet (1-2 yrs), <em>definitely</em> find a new advisor and start fresh.</li>\n<li>Did you have a good relationship with this person? Do you <em>want</em> to continue working with them?</li>\n<li>Often, your credits will <em>not</em> follow you. (I don't have a source for this statement, other than I've been told by numerous people that graduate credits rarely transfer between institutions.) Make sure they will transfer, or that you will be given some sort of pass, before transferring.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Other stuff (rankings, location, collaborators) should obviously be taken into account as well. In my experience, most students do not move along with their advisor.</p></li>\n<li><blockquote>\n <p>Do universities offer coursework waiver and faster-than-usual graduation for students accompanying new professors?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Almost certainly not. </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Can papers published in the older university be considered a part of the thesis that will be written for the newer department? </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Probably, talk with the university before transferring.</p></li>\n<li><blockquote>\n <p>What should a student do if such an option is not available to the professor and also there are not other professors in the department who could/are willing to guide the student? Will the university offer a compensation for him?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>That's pretty unusual. This happens all the time; people are familiar with the situation. In many cases, the department will be willing to help you find someone new. You should view the ordeal as identical to when you chose your initial advisor; you'll probably do (shortened) interviews with a few profs, talk to lab members, look into research, etc. The difference is that, by now, you should be familiar with those people who do research similar to what you've been doing, so your search will be easier; you'll know them, and they should know you, even if only because you've taken a class with them or something. </p>\n\n<p>You will almost definitely not receive compensation. C'est la vie, my friend... welcome to the real world.</p></li>\n</ol>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1174, "author": "Anonymous Mathematician", "author_id": 612, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612", "pm_score": 6, "selected": true, "text": "<p>One issue is what your advisor is doing. If your advisor is leaving academia (e.g., going to work on Wall Street or for the government), then you are probably on your own, but moving to another university is generally not a big problem.</p>\n\n<p>If you haven't started doing research yet, you should probably just switch to a new advisor, but if you are already making progress, then staying with your current advisor is often the best approach.</p>\n\n<p>One possibility that wasn't mentioned in your question is moving physically to the new university as a visiting student while staying enrolled at the old university. You still work on research with your advisor, and at the end receive a degree from the university you started at. Maybe it varies between fields, but this is pretty common in mathematics, and it avoids some of the difficulties like transferring credit or different requirements.</p>\n\n<p>If your advisor is supportive (and they should be!), then this is generally not hard to arrange. It's easiest if they are technically going on leave from the old university, rather than resigning immediately, but that's a pretty common way to arrange moving between universities, partly because it simplifies situations like this. (And even if your advisor is not going on leave, you just need a colleague to step in as the formal advisor, while letting your advisor handle the day to day interaction.) The major reason for difficulty would be if there was some serious problem at the old university, such as a personality conflict with the department chair, which could make the department unwilling to be flexible.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1188, "author": "Fomite", "author_id": 118, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/118", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I generally agree with @AnonymousMathematician that the easiest thing to do may simply be to visit the New University while staying an enrolled student at Old University. It may require checking with both departments, but then again so will and out and out transfer.</p>\n\n<p>Another option that hasn't been mentioned:</p>\n\n<p>It may be possible to convert your current advisor to an \"outside reader\" or simply a committee member who happens to have an appointment at another institution. The formal title of your \"advisor\" can then be switched to a member of your committee at your current institution - preferably one sympathetic and supportive of your situation.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1169", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/411/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1183, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>If a student is going to dedicate a substantial amount of time to a non-academic, non-research activity, there had better be significant attention paid to this activity in the application itself. I would want at a minimum an explanation of the time commitments and the resultant recognition obtained from these activities. An additional letter of support or clarification (or recommendation) from the advisor for such an activity would also help to assuage my concerns.</p>\n\n<p>However, in general, if there is no direct correlation between the activity and the research field, I am likely to take a somewhat <em>negative</em> view of this, if it has a detrimental impact on the rest of the application. (For instance, if I were sitting on a math admissions committee, and saw someone applying who was applying for topology but spent a lot of time on some economics competition and had a weak GPA as a result, I don't think it would help the student's case much.)</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1187, "author": "Anonymous Mathematician", "author_id": 612, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<p>Competitions can be valuable evidence of achievement, but they have to be not just widely recognized, but also really relevant to the field. (Nobody cares if you're a chess champion, since you aren't going to grad school in chess, and the fact that it involves hard work and talent will not help your case; if anything, it will be viewed as a potential distraction that may cause trouble in the future.) The best case is if some of the faculty once participated in the same competition. Then they will know exactly what's involved and what success means. The next best case is if some of their current students participated. Otherwise, it will mean very little, unless your recommenders somehow make a strong case for its importance.</p>\n\n<p>As a test case, let's think about the Putnam examination, which is the most prestigious math contest for undergraduates in the US and Canada. Doing well on the Putnam exam is very valuable in math grad school applications, but even being one of the winners is not a guarantee of admission. The big advantage of the Putnam is that it gives objective evidence of talent compared with a nationwide pool, but the disadvantage is that solving contest problem is really not the same thing as doing research. If an undergraduate writes a paper a faculty member would really be proud of having written, then it looks better than winning the Putnam exam, but most undergraduate papers do not rise to that level and may not be as impressive as winning the exam. It's hard to quantify this trade-off, but I would definitely not advise anyone to neglect research opportunities in order to prepare better for the Putnam. Ultimately, graduate school is about research, and admissions committees sometimes worry about applicants who look more interested in competitions than research.</p>\n\n<p>The Mathematical Contest in Modeling may be more along the lines of the contests you mention: it's a multi-day, team-based contest. My impression is that it carries less weight in admissions decisions than the Putnam exam does. Being able to help organize and train a winning team has real value, but it won't play much of a role in graduate admissions.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 11114, "author": "Community", "author_id": -1, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I have found that yes, some competitions do enhance a PhD application. An example is a seminar series competition run by my university that I participated in, we had to speak about our current research (mine was the MSc at the time). I came second and it went in my favour for the subsequent PhD application.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1177", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/690/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1179, "author": "Ivan Machado", "author_id": 690, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/690", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I can add your list with two more well-recognized ranks:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2011\" rel=\"nofollow\">topuniversities.com</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2011-2012/top-400.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">timeshighereducation.co.uk</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>They indeed present some divergent results, but I guess they may provide community with some clue about the \"best\" universities in the world.</p>\n\n<p>Indeed, I agree with you that it'd be more interesting not only check out these \"marketing\" ranking, that considers a bunch of aspects, sometimes not transparent (!). IMHO, a good \"ranking\" would depend upon your subject matter, i.e., the research of interest.</p>\n\n<p>You really posed a very nice question, and I'd appreciate to hear from colleagues.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1213, "author": "Suresh", "author_id": 346, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>To answer your second question, getting accurate data can be tricky. The recent kerfuffle over the NRC rankings of computer science is a good example. The methodology was flawed, the data was old, and the data was misinterpreted, and it still took many years to produce the results ! </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1218, "author": "Anonymous Mathematician", "author_id": 612, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612", "pm_score": 6, "selected": true, "text": "<p>The big difficulty with devising formal ranking systems based on numerical measures is that, outside of a handful of areas like sports, anything we can measure is at best a proxy for what we really care about. It may start off as a pretty accurate reflection, but anyone judged on this basis will quickly discover how to manipulate it.</p>\n\n<p>For example, universities in the US are often judged partially by the fraction of students they accept. Of course, ambitious universities have adapted by advertising to encourage more applications, with no intention of accepting these applicants, but just to lower the acceptance rate by increasing the denominator.</p>\n\n<p>Similarly, universities are also judged based on \"yield,\" the fraction of admitted students who attend. That sounds at first like a pretty good measure of popularity, but it creates an incentive to game the system by rejecting students you think are likely to choose another university in the end, and universities do just that.</p>\n\n<p>Time taken to graduation can be gamed by kicking out students who are taking too long. Employment rates can be gamed by offering ten-week temporary jobs to unemployed students, timed to coincide with the measurement of employment rate (<a href=\"http://abovethelaw.com/2011/05/employment-statistics-shenanigans-open-thread-which-schools-are-juking-their-stats/\">really!</a>). All sorts of things can be gamed.</p>\n\n<p>And this is not just a theoretical problem. It occurs all the time in practice (if you are in the US, then your school is very likely doing some of these things), and some people are <a href=\"http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1990746\">extremely upset</a> about it.</p>\n\n<p>You might think scholarly measures based on citation counts would be less subject to this, but they are not. There are plenty of corrupt journals where editors put pressure on people to cite papers, or even use totally fraudulent methods like publishing review articles that carefully cite every paper they have recently published. People have been <a href=\"http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2012/04/10/emergence-of-a-citation-cartel/\">caught</a> seriously distorting their journals' impact factors by doing this, and I'm sure there are other, more clever editors who are getting away with it. If professional success depends on influencing a number, then people will discover ways to influence it.</p>\n\n<p>In summary, there's an awful tension between transparency and resistance to fraud: if you explain how your ratings work, then people will manipulate them. Nobody has any idea how to avoid this, and the net effect is that serious scholars do not waste time trying to compile numerical rankings. For the most part, the only people who do are those who are naive, trying to make money in unscrupulous ways, or trying to promote a cause through carefully chosen rating methods. The rankings they produce are not worth paying attention to.</p>\n\n<p>P.S. Polls of expert opinion are generally much better than rankings based on numerical measures, but even they have their problems. For example, the U.S. News college rankings are based partly on asking college presidents to rank other schools. Clemson University <a href=\"http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/03/rankings\">manipulated</a> the rankings by rating all competing schools as below average, no matter how good they were. I suspect they weren't the only ones to do this - the amazing thing isn't that it happened, but rather that we ever found out.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 178800, "author": "Dilworth", "author_id": 8760, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8760", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<blockquote>\n<p>For other departments are there reputable and reliable portals where one can get to know rankings based on various criteria like published research, number of graduates, time taken for graduation, etc?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p><em>YES</em>, in the case of computer science, for example, <a href=\"http://csrankings.org/#/index?all&amp;world\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">http://csrankings.org/#/index?all&amp;world</a> is a very reliable ranking that achieves precisely what you describe: a ranking of CS departments based solely on their conferences publication record, monthly updated, and with different parameters users can adjust by themselves.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 178854, "author": "Jeromy Anglim", "author_id": 62, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/62", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The QS World ranking system report rankings by many difference subject areas. It's not equivalent to &quot;department&quot;, but it comes close:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://www.topuniversities.com/subject-rankings\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">https://www.topuniversities.com/subject-rankings</a></li>\n</ul>\n<p>The Leiden Ranking offers provides rankings based on a small number of very broad fields:</p>\n<p><a href=\"https://www.leidenranking.com/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">https://www.leidenranking.com/</a></p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1178", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/411/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1186, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Your situation isn't quite clear. Are you deciding whether or not to accept a position, or have you already accepted and are trying to switch projects? </p>\n\n<p>In the former case, if you're getting that kind of pushback from your advisor, then he probably is not going to be the kind of advisor you'll really want to work for in the long run. In which case, you should look for someone else to advise you (in other words, pick \"somewhere else.\")</p>\n\n<p>On the other hand, if you're already employed by the advisor, your choices are more limited. It sounds lie you're writing from somewhere in the European system (otherwise, you'd be talking about applying to a different department, rather than another research group). The problem is exactly what the other group told you—they can't be seen as poaching a colleague's student. That's a major social <em>faux pas</em>, and would probably make their collaboration impossible to continue in the long run. Therefore, again, you probably won't get to work on the project you want, because you won't be able to move over to the other group.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1195, "author": "Sylvain Peyronnet", "author_id": 43, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/43", "pm_score": 6, "selected": true, "text": "<p>There are several possibilities for this behaviour. </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>You're good, he knows that, and the collaboration with the other research group is more formal than you may know (maybe they are in the same funded project because it was the only way to be funded, while the two groups may be in competition). In this case, he doesn't want you to go “behind enemy lines”.</p></li>\n<li><p>You're not the one he was looking for, he recently discovered that. He is very close with the other group and he don't know how to tell you that you are not a good fit for his group and relatives. So instead, he changed what he said in order to make it unacceptable for you, hoping that you will leave, and that you will also not go to the other group.</p></li>\n<li><p>He's not reliable, he had a weird idea of what is a student.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>By the way, except if you are a recognized genius, this is unlikely that the other team will accept you if they are close to your current advisor and want to stay that way.</p>\n\n<p>In all three cases, only one option: run far away.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1202, "author": "nibot", "author_id": 458, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/458", "pm_score": 5, "selected": false, "text": "<p>This is a red flag. Find someone else to work with.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 11949, "author": "chao", "author_id": 8217, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8217", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I don't really see why you are concerned at all! When you apply for PhD admissions, you have can always suggest who you want to work with, based on their and your research interests (you have to like them and they have to like you). I guess my question is how did you get paired up with him in first place and why? </p>\n\n<p>You make it sound like you are stuck with him, but you aren't. Now if he hired you to be on his project (remember this is his project/funding), you are to work for him and do it the way that makes him look good, (he has expectations to meet too and he wants to do a good job and look good to his superiors/sponsors). If you aren't interested in his project (and it clearly looks like you are not), don't west your time or his staying on his team. Approach your program and request to be teamed up with a different adviser and provide your reasons. </p>\n\n<p>I hope you understand that, in most cases in research based universities, you don't get a PhD admission offer unless at least one of the professors in the department you apply to is interested in your research topic. Now it would be unfair of you for a professor to hire you (recommend you for admission) so you can be in his team and then expect him to let you work for someone else. While he doesn't own you, he also feels that you would be an asset to his team upon your admission into the program, otherwise he could've recommended a different candidate whose interest matches his research/project.</p>\n\n<p>The bottom line is however, you should get out there. Approach your department Dean's office and request to be teamed up with a different adviser and explain your reasons. Keep in mind however that in most cases at PhD level, a professor will only agree to work with you/serve as your advisor if he feels that he is familiar with your research interest and that you will be of a great asset to his team. hope that helps. Remember that your tuition weaver and other monetary benefits (monthly stipend, medical insurance, etc) you receive while you are pursuing your PhD studies is covered by the money that is allocated to his project. So it is important that have interest in the work/project he has for you and you are confident you would succeed doing it.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1184", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/477/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1197, "author": "Community", "author_id": -1, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I think it really depends on how long you plan to work without salary. If you apply for some grants in the next months, and you'll get the answers for instance in February 2012, I guess it's ok to work without salary for a couple of months, but only because you're expecting something specific. But I wouldn't recommend being in such a situation if there are no concrete expectation, because, in addition to the fact that you might need money to live, it can also be psychologically difficult, for both your advisor and yourself (maybe it's just me, but I would feel bad asking someone to do some work without any salary, even if this person is willing to). </p>\n\n<p>You say that visa regulations make it difficult to move from one country to another, I don't know which country you come from, but having a PhD usually makes the process quite easier, especially coming from the US. You still have more than 6 months to find a postdoc, you would be better off with trying to get a job somewhere, meet new people, do something different and in the mean time, work with your current advisor on a proposal that would allow you to come back with some funding. An important aspect of a postdoc is to demonstrate your ability to cut the apron strings with your advisor, and to show that you can work with other people. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 7896, "author": "mako", "author_id": 5962, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5962", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Why not just bring up the idea of staying in your current lab with your advisor? Without mentioning money straight off the bat?</p>\n\n<p>If your advisor claims it's not possible to keep you around due to funding, then you can mention that you would be willing to do it without payment. And if you are willing to do it for free — and if you're already trained and have a good relationship — I can't imagine she/he would say no.</p>\n\n<p>On the other hand, keep pursuing other options. If you work out something else, neither your advisor nor anyone else is going have hard feelings (or any sense of shock or surprise) if you leave for gainful employment.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1189", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/21/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1191, "author": "Ivan Machado", "author_id": 690, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/690", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Nice question. Curiously, I've been used the <a href=\"http://www.dotproject.net\" rel=\"nofollow\">dotproject</a>, it's a <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open_source_software\" rel=\"nofollow\">FLOSS</a> (i.e, an open-source software) alternative to msproject. It may sound weird for somebody, for a couple of reasons (isn't it a tool for huge projects? yep, and I can ask someone: isn't my thesis a huuuuge project? lol)... but, believe or not, it's been good to keep my tasks on track. Besides, as it is web-based, I've provided my advisor with access to such a tool, so that he may monitor my tasks, especially because I've been out of my country, for a while (due to an internship).</p>\n\n<p>I've really thought about implementing some features to extend this tool so as to include things that are interesting, and unfortunately dotproject doesnt include.</p>\n\n<p>btw, if anyone either know any tool (as a good answer for the main question) or is interested in extend the dotproject in order to come up with a tool for helping researchers to keep their tasks on trach, please tell me!</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1215, "author": "Brian Maicke", "author_id": 662, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/662", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I have been using a mode for <a href=\"http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Emacs</a> called <a href=\"http://orgmode.org/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Org-mode</a> to track my research and do project planning. See my answer to <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/1159/662\">this question</a> for some of the other capabilities of Org-mode for research.</p>\n\n<p>Org-mode has a number of features that are useful for project planning. You can set headings as multi-state TODO lists and set scheduled start times or deadlines. You can also set effort estimates for tasks and generate text based reports via tables or the agenda view, all while inside Org-mode. The <a href=\"http://orgmode.org/manual/index.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Org-mode manual</a> covers the customizations to these areas and there are a number of <a href=\"http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/index.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">tutorials</a> discussing the customization of Org-mode for a variety of tasks.</p>\n\n<p>To generate graphical reports, Org-mode has an export feature for <a href=\"http://www.taskjuggler.org/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">TaskJuggler</a>. TaskJuggler takes text-based inputs and generates a number of different reports including Gantt charts and resource allocations. If you do not wish to use Org-mode as the source of your planning, TaskJuggler has its own native format for the text files, highlighted in the <a href=\"http://www.taskjuggler.org/tj3/manual/index.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">manual</a>.</p>\n\n<p>All the tools listed are open source and are actively being developed/maintained.</p>\n\n<p>A potential downside to these tools is that they are primarily text-based. If you are a visual person who wants a GUI approach to planning/reporting, these tools are probably not suited for you. Additionally, Emacs has a fairly steep learning curve, so if you are not already using it and do not have the time to become familiar with it, other tools will probably be better suited for you.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1217, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"http://www.redmine.org\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Redmine</a> is a popular open-source project management tool. It has lots of capabilities (issue tracking, time management, gantt charts, wikis, etc); see the overview on the linked page. You download and run it on your own server.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1278, "author": "Ally", "author_id": 728, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/728", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"http://www.eclipseppm.com/\" rel=\"nofollow\">Eclipse PPM</a> is a good tool - it's project/project portfolio management software. Quite a few universities and colleges use it.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 2230, "author": "mert", "author_id": 399, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/399", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I highly recommend <a href=\"http://www.wunderkit.com/\" rel=\"nofollow\">Wunderkit</a> (recently released) and <a href=\"http://www.6wunderkinder.com/wunderlist/\" rel=\"nofollow\">Wunderlist</a> for organizing to-do list, and taking notes. I think the people at <a href=\"http://www.6wunderkinder.com/\" rel=\"nofollow\">6wunderkinder</a> have been doing great job.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 2250, "author": "Rafael S. Calsaverini", "author_id": 1183, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1183", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I'm finding it a little difficult to write my thesis while simultaneously working at an internet company, so I started using the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_%28development%29\">Kanban</a> technique. Lean/Kanban is a technique from industrial production management that was adapted and is becoming quite popular in the software development world. I use the <a href=\"https://trello.com/\">Trello</a> website to track kanban. </p>\n\n<p>Kanban is very intuitive - it's just a board with many columns (for example: (work to do) - (work in progress) - (work complete), you can increase the granularity as much as you want). Each task is a card that moves around on the columns. </p>\n\n<p>The purpose of the board is giving you visualization on how much work you have to do. If you worked in a car factory and you realized that cars where stacking on a queue because one of the welding machine is broken, you would notice the problem right away. But it's quite difficult to realize that there's a pile of abstract work to be done because your workflow is somehow defective. If you have a visual representation of your workflow, it's easier to detect bottlenecks and solve them. </p>\n\n<p>There are a few management rules like:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>limit the number of tasks in progress and never pull new tasks until there's space available in the \"in progress\" column (I usually like to create very fine-grained tasks and limit it to only one in progress at a time),</li>\n<li>kanban is a \"pulled system\" instead of a \"push system\". You'll pull work to your desk when you finish what you're doing now (instead of waiting until someone push work onto your desk when they need you to do it). This prevents both being overwhelmed by work to do and having free time because no one give you work to do. </li>\n<li>organize tasks in order of priority, </li>\n<li>reduce waste: if you do something and abandon when it's almost done, you've wasted that time. It would be better to spend this time working on something that you would work on until completion. Or maybe you just need to push a little bit harder and bring this to completion.</li>\n<li>stablish \"acceptance criteria\". What are the criteria this piece of work must satisfy to be accepted as finished?</li>\n<li>stablish and measure what is \"value\" to you. If value is the quality of a text, then stablish levels of quality and measure the quality of your text. If value is getting things done quickly, than measure the time you take to do things. </li>\n<li>Stablish priority: what brings you the most value should be done first. Or rather: what have greater cost-of-delay should be done first. </li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Lean/Kanban works very well for software development and I needed something to organized the writing of my thesis. So I divided the thesis in chapters.sections.subsections (in the typical latex fashion) not longer than 3 paragraphs. Then I defined levels of quality (level A, the text is ok to be delivered, level B, it must undergo some review, level C, references must be checked, etc..., until level F when there's no text at all). So my tasks are: \"bring subsection 2.1.3 to quality D\". Now it's very easy to assign priority and \nmeasure the amount of work done / to do. There are even some scripts to graph your progress and extract some metrics. </p>\n\n<p>But what is really important is that it allowed me to focus on the small scale work to do and have clear short term landmarks, and also think on the large scale structure of the thesis and have large scale landmarks.</p>\n\n<p>Some reading on Kanban and Lean for software development (I believe most of it can be seamlessly applied to academic work - most of the problems are the same):</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://www.slideshare.net/kanbantool/kanban-in-4-easy-steps\">http://www.slideshare.net/kanbantool/kanban-in-4-easy-steps</a></p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://www.kanbanway.com/lean-software-development-using-kanban\">http://www.kanbanway.com/lean-software-development-using-kanban</a></p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://www.slideshare.net/davidpeterjoyce/pulling-value-lean-and-kanban\">http://www.slideshare.net/davidpeterjoyce/pulling-value-lean-and-kanban</a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 11673, "author": "marvin.chadwick", "author_id": 8049, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8049", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>It really depends on what you are looking for in a project management tool. In my opinion, Basecamp is good in term of basic task management. And I really liked its Calendar feature. It was easy to set a milestone and adjust schedules in a click. But in the new version of BC it’s no longer an option, as calendars are now events, so I need to edit each part of the schedule manually. I personally preferred the good old version of BC, it was simple and clear. My team agreed with me and, we decided to switch to another tool. </p>\n\n<p>We’ve evaluated <a href=\"https://trello.com/\" rel=\"nofollow\">Trello</a>, but it had no calendar feature at all. <a href=\"https://asana.com/\" rel=\"nofollow\">Asana</a> didn’t quite fit our scheduling needs either. We realized that we lacked the ability to view all the projects on a monthly progress chart. Whether it’s per project or per team member, Asana couldn’t give that to us. In the end, we settled for <a href=\"http://www.wrike.com/\" rel=\"nofollow\">Wrike</a>. I like its Gantt chart even better than the Calendar we used. Thanks to it I can visualize my whole project, set dependencies between tasks, and adjust them with just drag-and-drop. And the Dashboard view is all clean and uncluttered, just like BC’s used to be. So, we are sticking with it for now.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1190", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/77/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1196, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<p>There are some general guidelines for choosing members of a PhD committee:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p><strong>They should have some enthusiasm for the work that you do.</strong> If they're not invested in seeing you succeed, you won't get as much utility out of that committee member as someone else who might not be as knowledgeable, but is more committed.</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>They should have the time to be on your committee.</strong> If they're extremely busy, then it doesn't help to have them on a committee, because it will be difficult for them to attend the meetings—or it will make scheduling the meetings a nightmare.</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>They should not have conflicts with either you or your advisor.</strong> A thesis committee is already a somewhat political body. There's no need to add extra politics to the situation by having interpersonal or professional conflicts before the committee even begins to meet!</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>Collectively, there should not be a power \"imbalance.\"</strong> If your advisor is a new assistant professor, don't overload the committee with a bunch of full professors holding named chairs, and <em>vice versa</em>.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>When they will set preliminary exams, there's the additional qualification of:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>The committee members should be familiar enough with your area that they know what it might make sense to test you on, but not <em>so</em> familiar with your work that they turn it into a \"gotcha\" game.</li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1201, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>aeismail's post is very good, and just to add another few:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>How difficult of a committee member are they? Some people will ask you to do far more work than others, and they typically have a reputation as such. It's worth trying to find that out and saving yourself the headache.</li>\n<li>Many universities allow one or two committee members from outside the university. If there is a particular subject matter expert you would like to consult, feel free to ask them to serve on your committee... it can help you build a relationship with them and get their feedback on your research.</li>\n</ul>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1192", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/77/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1194, "author": "Anonymous Mathematician", "author_id": 612, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612", "pm_score": 6, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I would reserve the acknowledgments section for people or organizations that directly contributed to the paper. For example, if you talked with Erikson while he was still alive and he offered advice or suggestions, then it would be appropriate to thank him in the acknowledgments. If you were just inspired by his papers, then it is better to discuss that elsewhere in the paper. For example, you could note in the introduction that your approach is inspired by Erikson's work on psychological development, or you could mention this background when you define the terms based on his theory. But if you thank him in the acknowledgments section, then people will assume there was a more personal connection unless you clearly specify otherwise (\"Although I was never lucky enough to discuss this work with him in person, I owe Erik Erikson a great debt for...\").</p>\n\n<p>The main thing you should not do when thanking a deceased person is to attribute opinions to them, because they are not around to contradict you. For example, you should not thank them in a way that suggests they supported your work, even if it's true, unless you have some documented proof. For example, it's awkward to write \"I am deeply grateful to Erik Erikson for his steadfast belief in my theory.\"</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 27400, "author": "Greg", "author_id": 14755, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14755", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Instead of acknowledging him, you can dedicate the paper to him. I fully agree with @anonymous mathematician that acknowledgment has another purpose. Dedicating to a paper to a famous professor for her/his birthday, however, is not that uncommon and in spirit, I feel it closer to your intentions.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1193", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/280/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1210, "author": "Community", "author_id": -1, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<p>In Computer Science, CiteSeerX used to provide a Venue Impact Factor, that included journals and conferences, but it seems they've stopped doing it. As indicated by Gopi, Microsoft academic Research is some kind of global ranking, and JeffE also mentions google.scholar.</p>\n\n<p>That being said, a global ranking, across sub-fields, is not necessarily meaningful. For instance, if one does not work on programming languages, then it's unlikely to submit a paper at POPL (the first venue according to CiteseerX). Hence, I'd say that field-specific rankings matter more, for instance in security: <a href=\"http://faculty.cs.tamu.edu/guofei/sec_conf_stat.htm\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://faculty.cs.tamu.edu/guofei/sec_conf_stat.htm</a> or <a href=\"https://personal.cis.strath.ac.uk/changyu.dong/ranking.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">https://personal.cis.strath.ac.uk/changyu.dong/ranking.html</a>. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1211, "author": "Gopi", "author_id": 87, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/87", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>It is not perfect (I have found many conference from my field not listed under the right subfield) nor exhaustive, but I have often found <a href=\"http://academic.research.microsoft.com/\" rel=\"nofollow\">Microsoft academic Research</a> useful.</p>\n\n<p>Furthermore it has the great advantage to give ranking for both journal and conference and to cover many domains (Agriculture Science, Arts &amp; Humanities, Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Economics &amp; Business, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Geosciences, Material Science, Mathematics, Medicine, Physics, Social Science)</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 8730, "author": "Jukka Suomela", "author_id": 351, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/351", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The following national rankings were used as a baseline in the construction of the <a href=\"http://www.tsv.fi/julkaisufoorumi/haku.php?lang=en\" rel=\"nofollow\">Finnish ranking</a>. Hence they are \"global\" in the sense that they have been at least somewhat useful abroad:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Norwegian ranking (general): <a href=\"http://dbh.nsd.uib.no/kanaler/?search=advanced\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://dbh.nsd.uib.no/kanaler/?search=advanced</a></li>\n<li>Danish ranking (general): <a href=\"http://fivu.dk/forskning-og-innovation/statistik-og-analyser/den-bibliometriske-forskningsindikator\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://fivu.dk/forskning-og-innovation/statistik-og-analyser/den-bibliometriske-forskningsindikator</a></li>\n<li>Australian ranking (general): <a href=\"http://www.arc.gov.au/era/era_2012/era_journal_list.htm\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://www.arc.gov.au/era/era_2012/era_journal_list.htm</a></li>\n<li>European ranking (humanities): <a href=\"http://www.esf.org/research-areas/humanities/erih-european-reference-index-for-the-humanities.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://www.esf.org/research-areas/humanities/erih-european-reference-index-for-the-humanities.html</a></li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 9466, "author": "userJT", "author_id": 1537, "author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1537", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>It varies by discipline. In Medicine, conferences are not as important as journal articles. </p>\n\n<p>In Computer science, [some] conferences are very prestigious </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1199", "https://academia.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/690/" ]