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Publishing code in order to improve my chances to be admitted to a CS graduate school
I am 32 years old now and I want to apply for a degree in computer sciences at a European university. I am afraid they could consider me to be too old. That's why I want to show them somehow part of my code and improve that way my chances to be admitted at my age.
I thought about uploading a video in Youtube showing how my program runs and publishing the code of the program in other place, and then putting the links inside my CV. I am not sure how to do all this. My code is an unfinished emulator. It is about 20 000 lines of pure ASM and it hard to read. I feel that I need a way to prove that the video shows a real existing program and not only fake animation I may have done.

First, I wish to know if it is good to put the links to my code and videos inside the CV.
Second, I would like to know the best site (and simplest to use) to publish my code. It would be not lucrative at all for somebody to steal my code. Still I think it would be painful to find out some day that someone copied and pasted chunks of my code and said that he made it. I need a basic protection against plagiarism provided by the site. Maybe based on the date I posted the code.
Third, I am very worried about critics. This is 20 000 of ASM code(only part of the nearly 50 000 lines long project). It is messy! It looks really ugly. It is cool and highly optimized but I know there is always place for more optimization. I love it, it uses lot of SMC and code reusing. I love it but always there are people who could say it is junk.
Fourth, it is not finished. It works perfectly, but part of the OP-codes are not coded yet. I coded more of them, the ones I think would be used more frequently.

Given a situation like this, what would be the best way to proceed with sharing code to help boost chance of admission?

Hi, and welcome to Academia.SE!  I've done a bit of editing on your question to generalize a bit (including to cover graduate admissions) as well as to sharpen the question, with the aim of making the question better suited for the model of this site.  Please feel free to adjust anything that you feel I have broken in doing so.

"I want to apply for a degree in computer sciences at one European university. And I am afraid they could consider me to be too old for the study." - well, have you picked a particular programme, and is admission into that programme restricted at all?

"show them somehow part of my code and improve that way my chances to be admitted at my age" - this reminds me the CS professors at the university where I studied seemed to be split at roughly 50/50 as to whether having coding skills before starting CS studies is an advantage (prior skills, faster learning) or a disadvantage (lots of self-taught bad practices, likely reluctance to learn why something works best a specific way when it has always been working somehow without understanding the background) for students.

I know someone could learn to use well black boxes or objects in programing without knowing how they are actually working, but not in my case. I am using ASM.
What I was afraid of was that professors was going to think about me as some of those students that are trying to show how much they know and even are interrupting the professors in the middle of the lesson to say them they're wrong. Not my case! I hope nobody thinks that way about me, because I will not be admitted.

@NIki: To some extent, objects are meant to be black boxes, so it's somehow fine to use them without knowing what they do exactly. Unfortunately, based upon my experience with students, I am convinced something like ASM could as well be used without knowing how it actually works by some, even though it is not supposed to be treated as a black box. And while I would not agree with the final assessment, I understand that is what the respective professors who consider prior coding experience a minus are wary of. That notwithstanding ... is admission a question at all for your programme?

@O.R.Mapper If I have to be honest, I am not sure it is good idea to show right now my ASM(AVX, SMC, REG as RAM) work. I have other simpler works(using AS3 and HTML) that I could show. Those are enough to show them that I have some basic idea of programing. But ASM is somehow too advanced(I think). I am just afraid I would not be admitted because of my age. My diploma is from 2000 and I'm not sure it could serve at all. For the case I am not admitted, I wish to be able to say: "I did all that I could do and in the best way, but it was the God's will/guidance and I have to knock on other doors"

@NIki: The point of my repeated asking whether admission is a question at all is that some programmes in Europe are admission-free, which means that anyone who wants to get in will get in, as long as some formal requirements (graduation from secondary education, for example ... but certainly not age) are met. In this case, there is no individual evaluation of candidates. Given that CS programmes usually need no materials or lab space (unlike, say, a chemistry lab or so ...), CS programmes often belong to these programmes. Find out about this first before worrying about age.

@O.R.Mapper I'm sorry that I didn't answer to you! The worker from the agency that is moving my solicitude said that it will be hard for me to be accepted with such old diploma. So I guess it is not admission-free.
In my time, informatics was not shown in schools. Now almost every school offers it. Younger candidates can pull out a fresh diploma with a note in informatics and I am not a match for such candidates. Unless I show something more(I guess)

@NIki: I am still not clear about the context, and I think you should add some more information on this to the question. What "agency" are you referring to? Is it someone from your target university? Can you check the admission rules of that university yourself, or are you just trusting in what that "agency" seems to tell you? In the situation I described, at least in the instances I was thinking of, there is absolutely no requirement to have had any prior education in informatics. If the situation is complicated, we might try and find out about it in chat.

Thank you very much, @O.R.Mapper! It's just I don't want to take more of your time! Thank you for the help!

The worker from the agency that is moving my solicitude - this is completely new to me.  Do you really need this middleman?  Can't you apply directly?

@aparente001 The agency is moving the bureaucratic part. I couldn't do this alone. They are advising me when it's possible. They can't understand the difference between high and low level language, but for the rest they are helping me a lot. They said me to collect all that I have made in the area of computers and to add it to the CV(I hope this is a good advise). Which is more important for me, Is that somehow, using an experienced man in the middle, makes me feel more confident.(They are helping me to lie in the motivation letter too. It's not my fault the world is false and works this way)

@NIki: What exactly do you mean by "They are helping me to lie in the motivation letter too."? In the place where you apply, is it the normal procedure for prospective students to involve a third party for moving the bureaucratic part? If not, then why can all the other students do it alone, but you cannot? Do all students have to "lie in the motivation letter", and do you have proof for that, rather than just the agency's word? Increasingly, I am getting the feeling like you are being scammed by someone offering to solve problems that do not necessarily exist in the way you describe.

@O.R.Mapper I'm not living in the same country. I could prepare it all by myself and send it to the universities, but I'm not confident. I'm not sure my papers would reach the destination. It is a foreign country. The agency already sent hundreds of students to Europe. I have no doubts regarding the honesty of the agency. I first put in the letter that I find myself incapable to work in a team, and I am hoping to overcome that with the help of my colleagues at the university and the pedagogic skills of the teachers. I had to totally remove that and it was important for me to point it out.

Nlki, thanks so much for explaining.  Your explanation was very helpful.  Now, could you let us know either your country or your part of the world?  Thanks.  //  I am also curious to know, does your undergraduate institution have perhaps an office where some of these types of assistance could be provided?  Could you ask this question in several different offices, if you haven't already?  I wonder if there might be such an office, but perhaps a bit hidden from view.

@aparente001 I'm not saying where I am from on internet! Many people would segregate me because of my origins. No, I haven't searched for more agencies or offices. I live in the province and in order to visit other agencies I would need to go to bigger cities and I try to save my money for the actual studying. The one I found is in the nearest to my town bigger city and even this way I have to travel with autobus maybe 120km. It is the nearest to me, and worked for many others.

Nlki, if you're not comfortable giving your country, that's okay, how about the general part of the world?  E.g. Latin America, etc.  (By the way, I recommend using a pseudonym online.)  Anyway, I think I wasn't clear what I was suggesting.  I don't mean look for a different agency.  I mean, could you approach the folks at your undergraduate institution?

@aparente001 No. My undergraduate school's a joke. Not a serious institution(normal for a little provincial town). As example in my diploma is included a discipline that I never studied. I personally do not respect my diploma. I visited my school several times last week to search for teachers to recommend me. I said them I was not an exceptional student and they said: "No problem! We will invent(lie) something for the recommendation letter!". I mean I had the best notes in the whole school, but nothing more, no medals or competitions as I read in the examples of recommendation letters online

Okay, so much for that idea.  (I attended a school like this in a provincial city in Latin America, so I can relate.)  //  This whole agency application idea is new to me.  I understand that you're not comfortable sharing the name of your country; but would you be comfortable sharing your continent?  I am interested in understanding how these agency applications work.  Thank you.

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

What's SMC? Please edit the question to avoid initialisms that might not be known to the general public (ASM->assembly, SMC ->?)

@MassimoOrtolano "Self Modifying Code"

First of all, you actually wrote 20000 lines of code in assembly? People don't write large programs in assembly anymore because it is very rare for a human to do better optimization of a very large program than a compiler. They write assembly in special cases to optimize a small subroutine or to micromanage the execution.
That said, I would propose for you to write a small paper (2-3 pages, or more) explaining what is the purpose of your program, why you chose assembly to do it (maybe to learn how the low level stuff work?), put some snapshots of it working, and how you solved some issues. You can put it up in a repository (maybe researchgate?) and add a reference and link to your CV. If I was recruiting you and saw a paper about a program in assembly, I would check it out for sure. However, I would never go to read an assembly program... This solves your issue of not getting the code stolen.
Moreover, if you came to my interview, I would ask you: "Why assembly and not C? Is it a performance issue? Is it a hobby? To learn?". If you add it to your CV, be prepared to defend it.
Second, 32 is not too old to get into university, There were people much older than you during my studies. I'm not sure in which country you want to study, but how competitive is the procedure to enter the university? In some EU countries, anyone can access university and then they have a strict exams scheme for going to upper years. Check your alternatives.
Finally, try to catch up a little bit with current technology. I know you want to go to uni to learn, however, kids now learn Python at high school, and are usually quite skilled when they come to uni. Not knowing about Github or where you can put your code, while having written 20k lines of code yourself, tells me that you are not good at searching things up. Try googling "platforms to publish my source code".
I don't want to discourage you and I apologise if I was harsh. If going to the university is your dream, go for it. But you can start already learning to become a good programmer, there are so many information out there for free, that ignorance is no longer acceptable.

I coded stuff in AS3, VBS, HTML etc, When I start to code something in higher level language, I fell like calling a routine or using a class is just the same as calling/reusing code in ASM, so I often prefer to do it in ASM. I don't know why. I would like to get better in higher level languages.

@NIki I never said you cannot code in anything else. However, I'm really curious, why assembly?

It fits well for my projects. As example, in these 20000 lines of code, I never used a call/ret or push/pop. Such way I speed up the program a bit. Often routines are very seamless, so changing few variables makes the routine to do another work. In such cases I use twice less space in RAM. I sometimes modify through SMC key parts of the routines and they do another things, saving such way space in RAM. I admit it takes too much time, which does not repay the speed improvement, but now I am coding as a hobby so productivity is not so important.

@djechlin When you code something in C, the compiler passes it down to the assembler......

@NIki I think this has gone a bit out of hand. There is an entire field of CS on compiler construction, there are hundreds (maybe thousands?) of people who spent their entire life in this field. You should spend a few hours checking up on this before you go tell your interviewer that the "compiler passes it down to the assembler". I'm not going to fight this because I suspect you might be trolling us. If you are sincere, please do some reading up. Good luck with your application anyway.

@djechlin When I share the code and you see it, you will believe. When I was 6 years old, I drew a sketch showing domination of perspective. My teacher saw it and said it was impossible for a toddler to can draw perspective. That hurt me a lot. When someone is judging me before even seeing my work, just because the common sense says that "a toddler can't use perspective", I feel upset and I want to code viruses and use my knowledge in networks for the wrong purposes. I'm emotionally wise enough to not do it, but out there are many young coders that take the wrong turn because they got hurt.

@djechlin I admit you tried to not hurt me while exposing your wrong assumption and this is good for you. This here is not the place and the way to argue about languageA vs languageB. When I publish it, you and I we both will have more arguments to argue.

I have written instruction-by-instruction emulators in C and C++ when working on performance analysis of computer systems under development. Based on that experience, these are some questions and issues you should consider if you decide to use your code as part of your application. They don't need to be answered here, but you should be prepared for these issues to come up.
You made two choices that may be difficult to defend, assembly language and self modifying code.
Assembly language There are two possible justifications, your own education and speed. Personally, I would never claim a speed improvement without having benchmarked both versions. As I understand the situation, you do not have a high level language version, so you cannot do that comparison.
When I started programming, it was easy to beat compilers by writing assembly language directly. During the 1980's and 1990's it got harder and harder, as compiler optimization improved. Some of the optimizations modern compilers routinely use make for difficult bookkeeping if you try to hand code them. The last few times I used assembly language were situations in which I needed very tight control over what a processor was doing for hardware performance measurement.
That said, if you have a particularly clear, well-written piece of assembly language code it may be worth presenting as evidence of your programming skills.
Self-modifying code The only justification you mention is to save space. In writing emulators in C or C++ I never hit memory size problems, not even in the 1980's, when memories were much smaller than they are today. 20,000 lines of assembly language are unlikely to result in more than about 100 KB of instructions. Why do you need to save instruction space?
In addition to the obvious readability downside, self-modifying code may run slower than having separate copies for each function. Many processors have an instruction cache that is optimized for feeding instructions into the pipeline, not for handling changes. Frequently used code that does not get modified can sit in the instruction cache. Code that does get modified has to get reloaded after each change.
Have you measured your code performance with and without self-modifying code?

The processor behavior upon SMC vary from one CPU to other. In any case self-modified code will be slower than the not self-modified one. That's why I limit the use of SMC in the parts of the program where performance is not important. Usage of RAM space is critical for the project. I have not C version. I understand that the humans need HLL. C vs ASM is like DNS vs IP. And at a latter stage a HLL could be used for the project. Anyway this will never happen, because I've planned to abandon the project once published it. It is too ambitious and I can't finish it alone. And it can't be sold!

@NIki How would you explain being short of RAM for instructions with such a tiny program?

I can't do it using only what I have coded to the moment. The concept of the program explained in the presentation will demonstrate the need of as short machine code as possible. While not always mandatory, a shorter program would always be better than a larger one. Shorter programs leaves more resources for other programs to use. I don't see the need to defend this statement. Maybe you all are just testing me to see if I can defend myself in a possible interview with the admissions committee. Shorter programs are better and I don't have to demonstrate it.

Will admissions committee attack me so badly over my decision to use ASM. I mean it is just a language. Will they be all the time re-iterating over and over again over the choice of ASM over C? I am starting to feel the bad guy of the story and I think I just chose one language over other! I didn't break the law or something! I am feeling attacked and I am worried that they would not even read my presentation and directly jump over their desks and attack me with sticks because of ASM. That's how I feel right now.

@NIki I am trying to show you some of the questions that are likely to occur to someone reading about your program. That way, you will be able to preempt any risk of attack or choosing to ignore the program by providing the answers in the program documentation.

@NIki All else being equal, a smaller program is better than a bigger one. In this case, all else is not equal. ASM and SMC both tend to take longer to write and get working correctly, and to result in less readable code, than high level languages. Those are enormous costs that should be compensated by equally enormous gains. Maybe the gain is just that you are fascinated by those techniques and wanted to exercise them. If so, say so. If you are going to claim practical advantages, you need to explain why those advantages outweigh the costs.

NO No no!!! I think I already mentioned ASM is giving me pain. It is a suicide to use only ASM to code. I even mentioned, I was planning to abandon ASM and use only HLLs from now on. It just happened that I used ASM, because when trying to use C, I was feeling not as comfortable as using ASM. I even mentioned here I wish to become better at HLLs. They will show me only HLLs and that's ok! I just want to show them that I have knowledge and a good logic detecting, understanding and solving problems. ASM or not, it is not relevant. Still it's more advanced than others and that was worrying me.

Don't share the code as part of your application.
Do describe what the code does, and the approach you took, and what you would like to do differently if you had it to do over again, and how all of that ties into what you want to do in grad school.
If it doesn't tie in, then there's no need to bring it up at all.
Programmers who are able to document their code are 100 times more valuable than those who can't.  If you write a clear, interesting description, as I outlined above, that will impress the committee far more than reading the code or watching a demo.
If you want to skip the middleman and prepare your own application, you are welcome to ask specific questions about the process here as you go along.
I do understand that the process seems daunting, but Academia can help you and also a language stackexchange site, such as https://french.stackexchange.com/.
One last thing.  Your age (32) is not a big deal.

+1 on documentation vs. 20000 lines of assembly language code. Also, when I started on the graduate program that led to my PhD in computer science, I had 32 years of professional programming and computer architecture experience. Age should not be a big deal.

Thank you, aparente! The project does not tie. The university will not touch ASM at all, only highest level languages. And, I myself don't want to use ASM anymore. It gives me all kind of pains. It is very hard to code and debug. I only pretend to show them my level of understanding of CS. Admitted or not, I plan to throw away all the ASM projects. I'm definitively not going to interrupt the teacher, saying "this would be hundreds of times faster done in ASM". NO! I'll most probably not use this acronym at all in the university. I'll do as you suggest!

Downvoted.  Providing thorough, readable documentation isn't an alternative to sharing code; it's a requirement for sharing code.  Of course you should share your code, and of course your code should be well-documented.

@JeffE Is it a problem that it is unfinished? The idea and function are clear, but some less needed functions are not coded yet. I have comments inside the code too. Comments like ";TODO: try to use another register here, because ...". Sometimes I just comment an instruction like: ";xor ECX, ECX" because it is no more needed but It helps me to keep it there commented in order for me to know there ECX has to be zero, but it was zeroed already by the previously executed code. It is a WIP and it could look messy, but the presentation and explanations will be the clearer possible.

@Jeff - If you think that it is helpful to publish a piece of code solely for the sake of bolstering an application to grad school in computer science, I suggest you develop your point of view in an Answer.

authors: 无偿献血有什么待遇根深蒂固_女士献血条件和标准丹凤朝阳


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Does Title IX require U.S. universities to have grade expungement policies?
Under U.S. law, Title IX sets requirements on how universities must deal with sex discrimination, including making reasonable accommodations for victims of assault or harassment.  One possible accommodation is grade expungement (removing courses from a transcript if the grades were affected by this situation).  Are universities required to have a publicly stated policy on this issue, or can they handle it on a case by case basis?

Why the downvotes?  The question isn't worded well, but it seems like a perfectly reasonable question about academic practices in the U.S.  Title IX is a law dealing with sex discrimination in education, and among other things it requires universities to make reasonable accommodations for victims of assault or harassment.  One possible accommodation is removing courses from a transcript if the grades were affected by this situation, and the question is whether universities are required to have a publicly stated policy on this issue, or whether they can handle it on a case by case basis.

@AnonymousMathematician I have added "Under US law" at the beginning, in benefit of those that, like me, didn't understand.

@AnonymousMathematician, the details you provide in the comment are critical in understanding the question. Please edit it in.

Schools don't have to create an expungement policy, though it's strongly suggested by the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights.
Per the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which amended Title IX, universities are required to make "reasonable accommodations" for survivors. Universities have some latitude in what they may deem reasonable or not and furthermore may decide whether or not to grant such an accommodation on a case-by-case basis. Thus, there is no general answer to your question.
Of course, given that the accommodation you're asking about has showed up as a suggestion in official Office of Civil Rights communications, there's a pretty good chance that your university offers something along those lines. The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) investigates and sues schools for failure to comply with Title IX, among other things, so their "suggestions" carry some weight.
Universities are required to let students know what sorts of accommodations they offer, and how students may go about requesting them. Identify your college's Title IX coordinator, and ask them whether or not your college offers expungement as an accommodation, and how to go about requesting it.

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Making sure I'm in good terms with peer researchers and not making enemies
I'm a student that started doing CS research not too long ago, and I'd like some advice on making sure I'm in good terms with my peers. I've been helping another student's project (in my field, the first author is usually the author. I was to be the second author because it wasn't my project, but I'm also very interested in this research direction), but I feel that my contributions are not appreciated, and I'm often blamed for bad results. Just as an illustration, one such situation is, when I come up with an idea (e.g. finding algorithms, relevant papers that we can use in our research), the other student would pretend as if they knew about it already and tries to explain it to me as if I've never heard of it before, and takes credit. Then when I implement that idea as we discussed,  s/he seems happy with it, but later when it turns out to be not exactly what we wanted (either another slightly different method performed better or his/her advisor didn't like it), I'm blamed for introducing that problem.
And I also feel that, while I'm interested in solving the same problem, I want to approach in a different way (s/he wouldn't accept it in our current project for reasons like, there are other more important things we should be working on, and so on. and I can't argue much because it's not my project). I understand that I shouldn't simply victimize myself, and it could be a different story from someone else's perspective, but regardless, I think I started seeing how there are politics in academia and how researchers can act petty and selfish, and I want to avoid that as much as possible and focus on having fun doing research and growing my career.

If I wanted to leave a project and do similar research in my own ways, is there a wise way to do this without accidentally taking credit for anything I didn't do or giving the impression that I'm trying to steal the research? I would simply cite the work we did together if there was a paper, but there is no publication yet because we couldn't finish on time, and I don't really see it being completed this way. In addition, we found out recently that there are other papers that solve this problem or part of this problem in a very similar way. I could take a significantly different direction for solving a different problem under different assumptions, but I can also see that backfiring and giving the wrong impression.
What are some potential source of unwanted politics/conflicts that beginning researchers should be aware of in general?
If you've observed students that ended up not being able to collaborate well, what was your perspective, and what did they seem to be forgetting?
If you've had conflicts or ended up not being in good terms with another researcher, how did it affect your career, if it had a long term effect?

his/her advisor didn't like it You didn't seem to mention your advisor in your question(Did I miss something?) Do you have an advisor? can't argue much because it's not my project Do you have a project? If not, find an advisor and start to work on your own project

Collaboration on any level should leave a written trail. You should have a collaboration tool (Redmine, wiki) so, that everyone writes their idea down, what has been done (or failed) and what they are planning to do for the future. Talk is cheap and leads to misunderstandings along the way.

Sounds like the student you're helping is a jerk. Dump them.

Starting a collaboration comes with commitments. If you work together with someone, you cannot just walk away, because the other members of the team have invested a serious amount of work, which might depend on your contribution. So usually the only thing you could do is to finish the project and avoiding starting a new one. The latter might be difficult, because people trying to exploit you can prove quite clingy. However, as I read your question, you are in a easier situation:

In addition, we found out recently that there are other papers that solve this problem or part of this problem in a very similar way.

Face it, your project is dead. You might get a publication by applying your method to some variation of the problem, but this is neither good science nor good for your career in the long run. So cut your losses and do something else. Ending the project can also be used as a pretext for ending the collaboration, which apparently did not work out.
While you are certainly right that scientists are as selfish and petty as everyone else, quite often both sides in such a conflict feel exploited by the other side. If you tell your collaborator every idea that comes to your mind, while s/he thinks things through before communicating, s/he will think that you leave all the hard work to him/her, while you will feel starved of necessary information. So a collaboration can end in a disaster, even if all people involved behaved exactly as they expected the others to behave.

What are some potential source of unwanted politics/conflicts that beginning researchers should be aware of in general?

Remember, it may take two to tango, but it only takes one to be a jerk. So, Rule #1: Inasmuch as it depends on you, don't be that jerk.
Rule #2: If you're stuck working with that jerk, you have two choices – adapt and endure, or find another research group. Depending on your sunk costs, the latter option might be impractical, so beginning researchers should keep their eyes and ears open, and be on the lookout for petty politics while they still have other options available. Unhealthy partnerships can make research long and unpleasant, harder than it has to be, and ultimately unfruitful.
As for working on an existing problem by using a different approach, that can be a tricky one. Sometimes your approach will lead to a dead end, and it's best to heed the advice of your fellow researchers. They might be absolutely correct when they say, "There are other more important things we should be working on." But sometimes you have a novel idea, and others just are too stuck in their ways to see its merits, so heeding their advice isn't always the right answer, either. Tread carefully.
After reading your question, I see a major issue and a minor issue at play. The major issue is the new approach: How can your efforts help the research team the most? By going off in a different direction, and trying something new? Or by focusing your efforts on what the team is doing now? When doing research, time is extremely important. Research can be slow and laborious enough as it is, and it can be frustrating when someone new joins the team and wants to reinvent the wheel.
The more minor issue is the credit-and-blame game. That can be frustrating, and people can get burned, but I don't think it's the same kind of problem. Choose your battles wisely.

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Is there a list of the largest academic journal publishers, ordered by the number of journals they publish?
One can manually browse through scholarly publishers' websites and see the number of journals they publish, such as:

Elsevier: ca. 4.330 journals
SAGE: ca. 1.200 journals
Inderscience: ca. 430 journals
Cambridge University Press: ca. 380 journals
Emerald: ca. 350 journals
Hindawi: ca. 230 journals
MDPI: ca. 200 journals

However, a manual search risks leaving out certain publishers, is prone to mistakes, and is quite time-consuming.
I would thus like to know: Is there already a comprehensive list of large academic journal publishers ordered by the number of journals they publish?
EDIT: I am not intending to crowdsource a full list here; such an approach would be flawed as well. The background for my question is that I would need precise data about academic journal publishers for a specific analysis, and before I go on to design a time-consuming data-collection method, I wanted to ask this question here.

Precision is probably unnecessary. The top-three will likely be high above the rest. One that's missing from your list is Springer.

I am not sure, how useful such a list would be. My spam folder is full of "publishing houses" claiming to publish 300+ journals. And in the times of online publishing, this might indeed be a true statement, as publishing a journal only requires coming up with a name and scamming some unsuspecting junior scientist into submitting their thrice rejected, flawed manuscript as the centre-piece of some special issue. No one would consider these places large publishers. On the other hand there are big places like the AAAS which publishes Science, but only 5 other journals in total.

Your university library can probably tell you what publishers they make payments to for journals.  Spinger says it publishes "more than 2900 journals". https://www.springer.com/gp/

As I could not find a satisfactory answer, I tried an alternative approach. This is what I came up with:

The methodical approach was, first, to obtain all publishers names that had supposedly at least 15 journals according to either DOAJ, Publons, Scopus or Sherpa Romeo. Secondly, I webscraped the journal portfolio of each respective publisher. Finally, I ordered the publisher by journal count.
More details in this paper (where the table is taken from) or on GitHub.

There are a large number of predatory publishers who publish 300+ journals of no real value. So there is no way to include all publishers.
However, if you would be satisfied with scopus indexed journals, then you can download the excel file, sort it based on publisher and filter it. Thus, you will get a list of publishers with the number of journals. Of course, the list will be confined to scopus indexed journals (around 40000 journals by 4000 publishers).

Thanks. After having done a bit of research, I guess that your suggestion is possibly the best available approach. There are limitations, of course: First, Scopus is selective (thought not as much as, say, Web of Science). Secondly, Scopus' excel list seems to have problems with unharmonized publisher names (see the discussion at https://github.com/greenelab/scihub-manuscript/issues/24). Anyway, I am unaware of a better approach - but I would still wait a bit and see whether other people have other suggestions before I 'accept' your answer.

If we talk about the top academic journal publishers. Taylor & Francis, Elsevier, Springer, and Wiley come to mind. I don’t really keep up with the mergers and acquisition shenanigans in the publishing world so some of those might have been gobbled up by the others since the last time I looked.
Here is the list of major academic publishers in the world in 2022.

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text:
Planning to retake English language test for PhD admissions in the UK, but listed previous average in my CV - should I contact professor to explain?
I participated to an English language test in the autumn. My average score was very good, and above the requirement of a program I am applying to. However, the score of one of the sub-components was less than the given requirement (surprisingly low, but I have no idea why). I had indicated my average score in my CV, but I did not send the test results with the application, because I will soon resit the test. It was not possible to write an explanation on the application form.
Should I contact the professor and explain the situation? He might be wondering why my CV says something and the application something else. Or is this usual, that the document arrives later than the rest of the application (which is allowed according to the application guidelines)?
I would not like to appear as marketing a passing score but not actually having one instead. So, is it better than (1) I bother them, or (2) let them ask if it matters?

You should definitely contact the professor. English is just a trivial component in your application, so you should not worry about it. Especially, you will likely have an interview if you are shortlisted.
When I applied to Oxford, my IELTS score was only 6.5, while the school required 7 (and no band is less than 6). I contacted the professor, and she told her assistant (who collected the applications) that it was OK for that position with 6.5.
I was later rejected, but it was due to my lack of research experience, not my English score.


text:
What is a final undergraduate paper called in English?
Here in Croatia, when students are finishing their 3rd year of undergraduate courses, they usually write a paper called "Završni rad" (eng. Final Work/Project). I'm trying to communicate some things with foreign colleagues and I'm wondering what that would be called in English

In Australia, they have Honours thesis. Might be similar!

This is very country- and even university-dependent, as the answers make clear.

Bachelor thesis?

Thanks to the Bologna Declaration, the degree system is standardized between European countries, among which Croatia. In this system, the 'undergraduate' degree is called a Bachelor degree. Anyone familiar with European education will not confuse this term with any other degrees, and is likely reminded that you are talking about European education, which may have different requirements for various degrees depending on each country.
As such, the following terms will describe what you mean, without confusing your peers (other than those simply unaware of differences between educational systems). Pick the one that closest resembles what your project actually encompasses - for example, mine was called the Bachelor Final Project because it did not require an extensive report.

Bachelor thesis
Bachelor end/final project/paper
Bachelor dissertation

Note that native BrE or AmE speakers may not agree, but I would like to stress that this may be a cultural difference, not a lingual difference: above phraseology might be quite uncommon because the concept of a bachelor thesis is unfamiliar to academics in the UK or US; I have however seen numerous terms like the above at various continental European universities.

In my experience, in Mathematics, in the U.S., (where "senior year" is typically the last year of an undergraduate degree), things done beyond literal coursework can be called "senior project", "senior thesis", "honors thesis", "senior writing project", or nearly anything similar, with no precise sense from university to university or even from student to student. That is, sometimes "honors thesis" has some actual requirement beyond "senior thesis", but not reliably so...

In engineering departments it can also be called a 'capstone project', with the final report of the project not given a separate name. At Princeton, there were 'junior papers' (2, one each semester), and a 'senior thesis' (1 done through the whole year). Seems very institution-dependent..

@shane conversely, in the UK it's normal to hear about an undergrad (or masters) dissertation, and a PhD thesis :-)

The term undergraduate dissertation, or Final Year Project Dissertation is also used. The word Thesis is usually reserved for a PHd or research degree.
As already mentioned this is very dependent on local terminology and will vary from country to country, discipline to disciple and institution to institution.

This usage must be UK-specific.  In the US, I've never heard the word "dissertation" used for undergraduate work, but "senior/honors thesis" is quite common.

@JeffE I think it is.  Here in the UK (science), "Thesis" is ~never used at less than Masters level. For a Masters, "Thesis" and "Dissertation" are both common, for Bachelors degrees, "Dissertation" or "(final) Project (report)".  "Paper" (as in the US "Term Paper") isn't used for internal work,only for reaserch papers.

Oddly enough that's switched from how it is in the US, where "dissertation" is typically reserved for a PhD-level work, and even then mostly in formal contexts. (Informally, people usually say "thesis")

In Switzerland (very international research groups in CS though), the project in question would have been called bachelor thesis. The final project of the master studies: master thesis. The term dissertation, however, is actually reserved for the PHd level/doctorate degree.

There is no one phrase, since different schools call such projects different things, so I would recommend just trying to a clear translation. The phrase "final project" is frequently used to refer to the final project for a class, so "undergraduate final project" is likely to be more simply understood as what you mean.

Not just translation, add a short explanation. And make sure to use consistent naming.

From the previous answers, you could see a lot of different names for essentially the same thing. IMO, any suggested name fits, the key here is that you are going to communicate the impact and the results of your work whatever the title you give it.
It is safe to use <original_name>(<English_translation>), <brief_explanation_of_the_project>.
I second the comment by @vonbrand, its advisable to give an explanation, but keep it brief unless stated otherwise.

Degree project or Final project is how some other Slavic-speaking places translate their local notion for the thing you write and defend to get a degree. Since it well describes what it is and it's quite a straight translation of the original notion, I would go with it.
Unless, of course, there's an official translation in your transcript. If this is the case, using the official translation is another option.

My final undergraduate project/paper was called the capstone project.


text:
My paper was too revolutionary - reviewers at a top journal rejected it "by simply reading the title". What now?
Some days earlier, in the hour of contemplation, I made an extremely critical and paradigm-shifting breakthrough in my field and then, I started writing on it for a publishing and many times checked through the paper and finally submitted it after many days of proofreading.
The paper was committed to the biggest and most popular journal for my field, and I waited for a reply. And the reply was saddening, my paper was mysteriously rejected. As I contacted the reviewer, I was told that he and others "rejected it by simply reading the title".
And my title was very professional, in the sense that it was not something like "X proven wrong and Y revolutionized!".
Now I am confused on what I should do, this paper needs to be published. If not for myself, then atleast for the thousands of other researchers who have hopelessly comitted their lives to this field.
I must add here, as my advisor congratulated me and hugged me on this great discovery, he was skeptical of my paper being published because it is simply too outstanding to be true. And big journals who receive thousands of paper each day will most likely reject it in quickness, and this paper needs to be read with a lot of thought and concentration to be believed. He advised that I should submit it to a lesser known journal whose reviewers he is great friends with, so that he'll tell him to take a good thoughtful look at it. He assured me that my paper would be accepted there. However, I might have naively not considered this and simply went for the biggest journal out of extolment.
So what should I do now? And is rejecting a paper because it is too good even a valid reason?

The question of what to do when you have a paper that you think is revolutionary is a really important one for many academics and would-be academics.  There are several nuances here that are absent from the question for which this one has (unilaterally) been marked as a duplicate.  Speaking personally, I would much rather read and respond to variations on this theme than many other themes that appear so prominently on this site.  (E.g. "My advisor said X, and it discouraged me.  What should I do?") I have voted to reopen.

@PeteL.Clark Can you elaborate on the nuances? I understand that the question is slightly different, but I marked it as a duplicate, because I don't expect any new answers to appear here that aren't already represented on the marked duplicate. If you mention something that you think is an answer to this question (and other people in a similar situation to this OP) but not to the marked duplicate, I will gladly reopen.

Most answers to the linked question, especially the accepted one (mine), heavily engage with specific aspects and even specific language of the question.  My answer was even informed by the OP's profile (since deleted) on other SE sites.  Some differences: (i) the OP here does not use the word "crank".  There is a difference between rejecting a paper and thinking the author is a crank.  (ii) The OP claims that the paper was rejected based only on the title (which seems inappropriate, if true).  (iii) The OP's advisor says "it is simply too outstanding to be true".  I've run out of space...

...One more difference: in the other question it was pretty clear that the problem in question was P vs. NP and thus the field was TCS / mathematics.  The advice given (by me and others) was strongly directed to these fields.  In fact I don't know how to proceed with trying to publish a revolutionary paper in most academic fields, and I would be interested to learn.

I think basing an answer on the specifics of the OP's profile is somewhat not in the spirit of this site as per "Can I ask about my specific situation" in the [help/on-topic]. Also, the OP in the other question did not mention the word "crank" either, it was edited in by someone else. But OK, let's reopen and see if the answers that appear are substantially different.

it was not something like "X proven wrong and Y revolutionized!". Then what is it? You don't need to tell us your field and  exactly what you did in the paper. But, please let us know how you formulate the title of the paper.

Well, there's the obvious solution: just change the title of your paper.  Seriously, obfuscate it enough that it is not immediately clear what your final conclusion is going to be.  Make sure the introduction and abstract don't give it away either.  This is called "burying the lead" and it is generally a bad practice but it does have the one advantage that your paper has to be read before it can be rejected for its claims.  (Of course it could still be rejected for other reasons)

Some days earlier... I made an extremely critical and paradigm-shifting breakthrough in my field... and finally submitted it after many days of proofreading. You cannot write a seminal paper in a few days and expect people to take you seriously.

Did your advisor exactly say the article was "too outstanding to be true"? This is very different than "too outstanding to be easily accepted" or "too outstanding and will be looked with suspicion" for example.

Actual title please?

So OP is lying?

This just seems like a made-up story.

@Alexandros but... but... (s)he spent "many days" proofreading! Can you imagine someone that thorough?

@Vajura either lying or massively overestimating his brilliance.

Forget publication, and look for venture capital. Problem solved.

You don't say what your field is.  I think you would get a better answer if you did, as cultural norms differ.  My answer is from the perspective of a pure mathematician.
The first thing I want to say is that, given absolutely no specific technical information about your situation, your post gives me the impression that your work is most likely not correct.  Or to be more precise: it is an empirical fact that most papers which claim to completely revolutionize a field turn out to be incorrect, so from a probabilistic perspective anyone who says that is most likely not to be correct -- and this by the way is an attitude that you need to be aware of and take into account.  What I really mean is that the way you describe your work makes me think it is more likely to be incorrect than if you had just said "I believe I have done work of the highest level of importance in my field, but I have not been able to publish it.  What should I do?"
But rather than picking apart your post to reveal why I got that impression, let me concentrate on directly answering your questions.

And is rejecting a paper because it is too good even a valid reason?

Obviously not.  Not only is this an invalid reason, it is a reason that does not make any sense and thus is never given.  And it was not given to you.  If you really think your paper might have been rejected because it was too good, you need to have a long talk with your mentors about how academia works.

So what should I do now?

My advice you to you is to talk to your advisor once more to make sure you've correctly understood what he told you to do.  If you have, then I'm sorry to say that I think you may need to find a new advisor -- or at least a new mentor to help you out here.  The advice as reported sounds terrible.

I must add here, as my advisor congratulated me and hugged me on this great discovery, he was skeptical of my paper being published because it is simply too outstanding to be true.

Please remember to choose your language carefully in academic discussions.  Did your advisor really say "it is simply too outstanding to be true"?  If so, he is saying that he does not believe your work is correct, and somehow that most important message has been lost.  You are acting as if he said "it is simply too outstanding to be published in a top journal", which doesn't make sense.

And big journals who receive thousands of paper each day will most likely reject it in quickness, and this paper needs to be read with a lot of thought and concentration to be believed.

It would be very helpful to know what your field is here.  In my field (mathematics) there are no journals which receive thousands of papers a day.  Moreover most papers which are submitted to top journals are read with a lot of thought and concentration -- in fact, the very top journal in my field, Annals of Mathematics, is a bit notorious for keeping (correct!) papers for more than a year before rejecting them after a careful evaluation.
Of course if your paper does something revolutionary and the arguments are difficult and technical, the burden is on you to present them as clearly as you possibly can, and also to make sure that your paper does not have any superficial flaws that would invite an early rejection.  The question which has been suggested as a duplicate of this one has many good answers giving advice about this issue.  Let me add that it sounds like it has arisen for you:

As I contacted the reviewer, I was told that he and others "rejected it by simply reading the title".

(Again, please choose language carefully: do you really mean the "reviewer" or the "editor"?) Rejecting a paper simply by reading its title would be inappropriate and unprofessional.  Even if the title is terrible or worse, one should read at least a little farther to confirm the initial impression.  I have to say that I am skeptical that the editor at the top journal in your field told you this.  Could you confirm that this is exactly what happened?  (FYI, exhibiting a terrible title that you didn't use didn't convince me that your title was adequate.)

He advised that I should submit it to a lesser known journal whose reviewers he is great friends with, so that he'll tell him to take a good thoughtful look at it. He assured me that my paper would be accepted there. However, I might have naively not considered this and simply went for the biggest journal out of extolment.

This sounds like very bad advice.  (Again I assume by "reviewers" you mean "editors".) If your advisor really thought your paper was correct and revolutionary, he should be helping you publish it in a top journal, not a journal in which he can arrange to have his influence exerted.  It is really inappropriate for him to ensure that your paper will be accepted: again, how does he know it is correct?  But I see a germ of something valuable: if he has colleagues or contacts that can give your work the attention it deserves, why don't you ask him to send your paper, as a manuscript, to those people?
In general the way that you try to publish a truly revolutionary paper is not exactly the same as a run-of-the-mill one.  Namely, as I said at the beginning, the better a result you claim the more likely it is incorrect (no matter who you are).  Everyone knows this.  So -- and here I may be talking more specifically about my own field, which has a vibrant preprint culture -- you can make your life a lot easier by circulating your revolutionary paper as a preprint, giving talks / going to conferences / visiting various experts and so forth.  If you can't convince any top person in the field that your work is correct, how will you publish it -- and more importantly, so what if you do publish it?  Conversely if you can convince several worldwide experts in the area that what you've done is correct, then the path to publication becomes a lot smoother.
Good luck.

"how does he know it is correct?"  Well, I would hope the advisor has some expertise in the field and that he's actually bothered to read the paper.  I suppose that last one isn't always assured, but since an obviously flawed thesis reflects poorly on the advisor they do have a certain interest in being familiar with the work.  I recall my own advisor not really reading my thesis until after my graduation, though we had spent lots of time discussing it before then, from the basics to the nitty-gritty.

Very good answer. I might add that, as long the cultural conventions of the OP's field allow for it, the preprint could and should be posted on the arXiv before circulating it and presented at conferences.

Could Science or Nature receive thousand papers a day?

This answer is simply too outstanding to be true :)

I can actually think of plenty of titles that would make it fine to reject a paper based solely on the title (for example a title making it clear that the paper is outside the scope of the journal, or one making a claim that is widely known to be false).

@Tobias: A title like that could be a joke of some kind, or it could have a meaning that only becomes clear once the paper is read.  In either of the two examples you mentioned, I can't imagine that a conscientious referee wouldn't confirm suspicions gained from the title by reading at least some of the paper.

@Ooker: According to this link http://www.nature.com/nature/authors/get_published/ Nature receives 200 papers per week.

Perhaps "too outrageous to be true"? But, seriously, the grander the claim, the more skeptical the audience. If it is really such a great discovery, it must be presented particularly cautiously. Darwin's "Origin of Species" comes to mind. He was very careful in his claims. Tone down, and then some more.

Based on your post, I would say that you probably didn't choose an inspired title.
One of the big problems with the top journals in my field is that they get many junk papers from wannabee mathematicians. One of the most common trait of these is a grand title, and many reviewers know from many past experiences that if an unknown submits a paper entitled "The best proof ever" or "Proof of Riemann, Collatz and the ABC conjectures" they are invariably a complete waste of time. The exceptions are so rare that it is not worth the effort, and most mathematicians which are not world renowned experts in their field probably know not to oversell the paper in the title.
Now, think for a moment about this. You make a paradigm-shifting breakthrough in your field, do you need to emphasize this in the title?
If your paper is right, will the readers be convinced by the title, by the contents of the paper or by both? The title will have absolutely 0 impact on this, it is the contents and contents alone which convinces readers.
Now, if you missed something in your paper, and your paper is wrong, then you have a junk paper with a grand title, that's a bit embarrassing.
Last but not least, as I said a grandeur claim from an unknown usually creates a bad impression even before reading the paper, it might detract some of the readers. And even if someone reads it and understands that you indeed found a breakthrough, that title can easily be interpreted as "in your face, I proved this and you couldn't" (most serious scientists wouldn't do this, but I know few who would).
At the end of the day, with such a discovery, it is not important what you think about your paper; it only matters what the community thinks. And you can often achieve more with a modest well chosen title.
Last but not least, in areas where things can be open to interpretation, a wrong title (i.e. This approach is the only one which is right) can be interpreted as trying to impose you opinion on the community; or as telling people with other views that they are wrong...
P.S. This advice is based on my understanding on how people in my domain would react in a similar situation, things might be different in other areas.

If I were you I would try:
http://arxiv.org/
(http://arxiv.org/help/submit)
Once it's there, please share the link here, I'm sure many will be interested to prove your statement right or wrong.
Best

Depending on the field, it may be a terrible idea. Some publishers refuse to publish manuscripts that have circulated as preprints, and in some fields all the worthy publishers are like this.

@Davidmh on the other hand, if the paper is truly revolutionary then it will likely become well known and cited within the field – such widespread acceptance is a good substitute for peer review. So it wouldn't necessarily be a disaster.

If a paper has issues that make it get rejected on sight, on Arxiv it'll look like a crackpot paper. Even if it were actually revolutionary, just not written the right way so that the argument is unconvincing.


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In Germany, is it possible to get a professorship in the same university where you earned a PhD?
I did my PhD in a German university. I heard that it is not legally allowed to be professor in the same university. However, I see also some counterexamples in our field. Is this true? If so, why some people could still stay in the same university?

Whether it is legally allowed is a matter of the laws of the individual states (as education is not a federal responsibility in Germany). Normally, staying at the same university for the duration of the complete academic carrer (starting with PhD studies) is frowned upon, which is why candidates from elsewhere are normally preferred.

@DCTLib Do you know in which states this is not allowed?

I do not think it is illegal, it is just discouraged, as far as I know.

When such rules are in place (sometimes at the state level, sometimes at the university level), they usually specify that you cannot be eligable if you are currently employed or otherwise associated there. However, I seen cases where such a "hausberufungsverbot" was bypassed by arranging a temporary position somewhere else first ... So if everybody wants you, they can find a way to make it work, if someone wants to block you (s)he can.

I edited this question and a few others because generally, to avoid tag proliferation, we try to create new tags only to categorize things that aren't classified well by existing tags. If you feel strongly that the new tags I removed (e.g. "professorship") are really needed, please raise the issue on [meta].

In Germany you cannot get your tenure in the same university where you already working. So to speak, you cannot promote to tenure in a university while working on this university. I explain myself, if you are a post-doc in Uni A you cannot get the professorship in this uni, no matter if you did or didn't your PhD there. You'll have to apply for better positions in other universities and, eventually, get hired in uni B.
What I've seen is someone working in a post-doc position in Uni A, accepting a professorship in uni B, working there for a semester and coming back to Uni A as a professor. He was not promoted to professor in uni A, so it is not illegal.

Could you please cite the exact law where these restrictions are spelled out?

I cannot "cite the exact law". But here you have a bite from the EUI Academic Careers Observatory:
"The German academic career is not tenure track: by law a junior staff member cannot be promoted to a professorial position within the same institution. However, one becomes a civil servant from Academic Assistant (C2/W2 positions in the old/new system) onwards. "
http://www.eui.eu/ProgrammesAndFellowships/AcademicCareersObservatory/AcademicCareersbyCountry/Germany.aspx
My example of University A and B is based on the experience of my German supervisor.

Small quibbles: a) C2 and W2 are not equivalent; W2 (old: C3) are professors without a chair, while W3 (old: C4) are chairholders. The old tenured assistant positions C1 (after PhD) and C2 (after habilitation) no longer exist in practice. (W1 are junior professors, which is different concept.)
b) It's true that you cannot be promoted to any professor position in Germany, but having an outside offer allows the university to offer you a better position if you stay (if they have one available). Formally, the process would be like a fresh hire, but in practice it's similar to a promotion.


text:
What is the name for "academic fights"?
There are several kinds of academic fights:

Two researchers may have different interpretations or modelling approaches to the same dataset. They claim that the other party is wrong in their publications.
Two researchers claim that they did the same thing first, not citing the other's work
Two researchers claim that the other party's research method, data collection process, and coding methods are problematic.

What are the names of these fights? How do I find recent examples of these fight?

To my eyes, your examples fall into two very different categories.
When researchers are in conflict about who did something first, that is typically known as a priority dispute. When the stakes are high, these can be extremely bitter: see, for example, the fight over the discovery of Haumea or the fight over CRISPR patents.  The problem here is that it's not really a scientific dispute at all, but rather a historical or societal dispute, and scientific methods cannot generally help to resolve it.
On the other hand, when scientists are contending over a technical question, ultimately the fight will be settled by nature and not the scientists (even extreme political pressure can only defy reality for a limited time). When considering low-intensity conflicts, this is so common that I'm not even sure that it has a particular name---it's just a natural side-effect of the scientific method. Get any two scientists in a room together and you will find that there are things that they disagree about and are would be happy to see settled one way or another by additional evidence.  When they are larger and more persistent, they typically end up being called something along the lines of a debate (e.g., "the nature vs. nurture debate") or a controversy (e.g., "the Hopi time controversy").  In this case, ultimately there is usually some truth to both sides, and the ultimate resolution is often actually a reframing of the problem.

Regarding the OP's #1 as it pertains to philosophy, this amounts to a relatively large genre of philosophical literature that can often be identified by "reply to" in a paper's title.

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text:
Can I perform psychological experiments at home and be taken seriously?
I've just finished my under-graduation in psychology in my country and I'm very motivated to start publishing and making my own experiments.
Following this answer: Does one need to be affiliated with a university to publish papers?, I've discovered that I can publish papers without institutional affiliation. Is it the same with experiments?
How can I prove that my experiments were rigorously conducted and that I'm not faking documents or participants?  how can I show that I didn't induce some answers to the participants to prove a given hypothesis?
If I can publish without an institutional affiliation, would my results be taken seriously in academia?

You may have issues with not going through an ethics committee. Psychology experiments usually require at least a superficial examination to assure they don't violate ethical standards.

@Issel it's also important to note that the motivation of the questions in a forum is not always very clear. Of course, I knew I would face a lot of problems trying to do such experiments by myself, but I didn't know the nature of the problems and the level of difficulty. Now I'm more prepared to discuss about these issues with some professors who could help me.

Issues related to IRB approval have come up reasonable regularly on the site. In particular you should consider the plight of research done without prior board approval.

Publishing papers about psychology experiments does present an additional issue, human subject research ethics. A reputable journal is likely to require assurance that the rights and welfare of the research subjects were protected during the research.
If you were working or studying at a research university in many countries the university would have some provision for reviewing the ethics of planned research, and monitoring it in progress. US research universities each have an Institutional review board. A journal could rely on IRB approval to know that the research subjects were protected.
You need to find out how that is handled in your country, and make sure you are following procedures and getting reviews that will make your research acceptable for the journals in which you wish to publish. There are enough pitfalls in doing human, or even animal, experiments that one should really not attempt them without guidance.
Usually, a psychology researcher starts their research career as a graduate student with an academic advisor supervising them. They will learn how their supervisor, and other researchers, prepare and organize experiments. Their supervisor will guide them in selecting ethical experiments, getting informed consent, preparing paperwork for independent review, etc.

Because of all the caveats, I suggest the OP not try this without guidance from professionals. It is truly a "Don't Try This At Home" situation.

@Buffy which professionals? I feel lost.

Normally you learn how to do this properly in an educational situation, say a graduate program. The professionals are the professors. But you need independent judgement about the ethics of what you want to do from an IRB as the writer of this answer suggests. Otherwise you might step into ethical violations without knowing it. Outside the US, an IRB will have a different name, but most places require the equivalent vetting.

Research in animal subjects is similarly regulated.

There are IRBs that are independent from universities,  but they cost money and if you don't know how to write a protocol, it will be difficult to get approval.

@BryanKrause There are ethically motivated regulations which limit what you can do in animal testing, but the regulations are not nearly as strict as with human test subjects. That applies especially to psychological experiments. There are lots of psychological experiments which could provide very interesting data about human behavior, but telling people exactly what happens during the experiment would skew the results. But you can not get informed consent of the test subjects when you don't tell them what happens during the experiment. That makes many such experiments unethical.

@Phillip I'm well aware, but OP cannot simply dive in to animal research in most places, either, and especially not if they want to publish in reputable journals.

You are absolutely able to publish the results of observational studies with no oversight, and this has been done before without university affiliation. However once you get into 'experiment' territory where human or animal subjects are manipulated in some way, all respectable journals require that you have informed consent or IACAUC review and approval.  Without that, you'll mostly be unable to publish your results outside of shady pay-to-publish journals, if that.

Is it the same with experiments?

Yes, assuming you have sufficient resources to conduct the experiment.

How can I show my experiment was really made rigorously and I'm not faking documents and participants? How can I show the experiment really happened? how can I show I didn't induce some answers to the participants to prove my hypothesis? There are a lot of simple experiments I can do by myself and I want to publish them, how can I be taken serious?

In each instance: The same way a university researcher would.

I didn't think it needed saying, but: The necessary ethical and legal paperwork is required, regardless of where work is conducted; some experiments cannot, should not, or both, be conducted at home; and other caveats. Nonetheless, ultimately, publishable research - even in psychology - can be conducted at home, albeit, you'll need to be selective about the research and you'll need to compliant. (The OP might want to ask should such work be conducted at home, which Patricia Shanahan partly answers.) Working with an industry- or university-affiliated PI - e.g., as an intern working from home - would simplify the process.
That said, given that

I've just finished my under-graduat[e degree] in psychology

You might want to ask: What are the benefits of a supervisor, over working alone? The benefits are significant and I'd recommend supervision.

This is not true (as elaborated in the answer by Patricia Shanahan).

@Dirk, which bit?

The bit "the same way a university researcher would". A university researcher could refer to documents where the university describes how it ensures that all its researchers obey the regulations regarding experiments with human subjects. As a researcher at home this is not possible and one would have to document that one has obeyed all ethical and legal standards in a different way. Maybe the journal just lets you sign a document, but I doubt that (although: not may field, so probably I am wrong).

@Dirk Patricia Shanahan considers the case of human subjects, it isn't clear whether that's relevant to the OP's question. Regardless, being able to refer to documents...regarding experiments with human subjects isn't relevant in the context of the specific questions to which I answered the same way a university researcher would. For instance, how do such documents help show my experiment was really made rigorously and I'm not faking documents and participants?

I don't think this answer has sufficient warnings about the pitfalls.

OP includes "I didn't induce some answers to the participants" which seems like there human subjects are involved. Regarding the other question: I once wrote a grant application where experiments with human subject were involved (listening test) and we could refer to some university guidelines which helped a lot with the requirements. Also, if you work at a university you usually have to sign that you obey the codes of scholarly conduct and ethical behavior. In this case the journals just do not ask questions.

Probably Bryan Krauses comment is more spot on than mine…

I think it's a fair assumption in the dark that any publishable psychological research will, in one way or another, require IRB approval. Not mentioning this makes this answer maybe not strictly wrong, but utterly misleading.

@user2768 Most universities have some kind of research ethics training, and everyone must sign and attest that they have been trained and will abide by the regulations. Violating the university's policy of research ethics comes with stiff consequences, like termination, expulsion, or revocation of grants, so the stakes are much higher. An at-home researcher signing a document saying they did everything by the book carries much less weight, since there are little to no consequences for lying about it. There is simply less accountability outside of an institutional setting.

You all believe research cannot be conducted at home? That seems short sighted: Many workable solutions exist. For instance, it ignores the possibility that a PI employs the OP as an external consultant.

@user2768 Sure enough, I am doing math research at home. It's the experiment that is hard to do without institutional resources.

@user2768 while much research can be done at home, psychological experiments are a special exception. In essence, because we've seen the harm done to research subjects by historical research, the whole field has achieved a consensus that we will consider unacceptable to perform psychological (and other) experiments on people without standard safeguards. Furthermore, to remove any possible incentives to ignore the rules, if someone does research on humans without following due process, we'll automatically consider the results of such research as tainted-unusable, unpublishable, unciteable, etc.

@user2768 We have good reasons to want to artificially establish a 'taboo' boundary on performing any human experimentation not following due process. We don't want "it's simpler to ask forgiveness than permission" to be a possibility; we don't want researchers to "move quickly and break stuff" expecting that if they do find something significant, then the ends will outweigh the means - no, we want to ensure that the means have to be justified, period, or you'll get excluded and shunned for breaking this taboo even if the research is technically solid but not with proper ethical validation.

Patricia Shanahan considers the case of human subjects, it isn't clear whether that's relevant to the OP's question Psychology is, by definition, human subjects. || It's quite obvious you have never worked with human subjects. Frankly, this answer should be deleted because it encourages highly unethical behavior. External consultants would never be hired to perform experiments at "home."

psychological experiments are a special exception [to research that can be done at home] Yet, such experiments are common place: They are continuously conducted over the Internet. My answer is even clear on the limitations: assuming you have sufficient resources to conduct the experiment. I'm well-aware of much of the above; yet, commentary seems to rule-out the possibility without due consideration. Regardless, a better question is: Should a recent graduate do research at home? I'd say no, regardless of discipline.

@BryanKrause In all honesty, I thought the pitfalls were obvious, especially as the OP asked can, rather than should.

@user2768 You might be surprised by the sorts of things people have done without realizing they were breaking rules. There's a reason that universities often mandate all sorts of human subjects training even for people that might not be expected to work with human subjects (and, as I've commented elsewhere here, there are similar restrictions even for most animal studies). In any event, I appreciate your edit and have reversed my downvote to an upvote.

@AzorAhai "Psychology is, by definition, human subjects" - I disagree strongly; a lot of psychology research uses animal models. The lines between psychology and neuroscience can get a bit blurry there, but defining psychology as involving human subjects is not correct.


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Can I use editing credits in my grad school app for english program? If so, how?
In undergrad I was lead student editor for two poetry anthologies, one of which I received a grant for. I'm now applying to an MA English program and would love to include this information but I'm not sure how. On the application, it has a spot for publications etc, but then just says to upload a file. I don't have the original manuscripts or anything, I just have the physical books and an amazon link. I also don't have any of the correspondence from my undergrad about the grant. How should I approach including this information? Do editing credits count as publications?

This seems like an appropriate thing to add to your CV and such is normally required for grad school admissions.
No, editing is a "publication" per se, but it is an academic activity. "Publications etc." probably means a CV, a listing of you past academic accomplishments and publications.


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Is it possible to look into research trends years and citation-wise?
Is it possible to look into research trends years and citation-wise?

Suppose, I look up Google Scholar and select a publication/conference, let's say ICLR: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&view_op=list_hcore&venue=0032SoU2xY4J.2022&vq=eng_artificialintelligence&cstart=0
The papers are sorted from citations in the last 5 years. What I want is to see the recent trend among papers of the last 2 or 3 years which are recently published in the same conference or surf conference papers citation wise only of last 2 years. Is that possible?

For the former, you can use Google Scholar's advanced search:

Note, however, that Google Scholar's search results may be incomplete and noisy. For the latter, you can use Scopus Document Search, if you have access. Microsoft Academic used to have this feature, but has since been shut down.


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Importance of Ph.D. Degree Title in Career Outcomes
I attend a graduate school that has offers two Ph.D. degrees in mathematics: one as you would expect, and the other with an added concentration in mathematical biology. I gather that the department is rather known for its research group in mathematical biology. I have been told by some in the department that opting for the concentration in mathematical biology (which will be shown on the degree) could be perceived negatively outside of the narrow search for careers specifically concerned with mathematical biology. I suppose this owes to the perception that the degree with the concentration is less rigorous and more hyperspecialized than the standard mathematics Ph.D. degree.
However, others in the department have claimed that the precise title of the degree is basically irrelevant, and what truly matters is the coursework you have completed and the ability to sell your own skillset and experience to whatever prospective employer you happen to find yourself interviewing with. As someone who is interested in applied math (though not only mathematical biology), is there merit to the viewpoint that I could be overlooked for positions due to having a specialized degree title? Would it be a mistake to opt for the concentration if I still feel that there is a possibility I would like to work in a different subfield of applied math? Thanks in advance.

Are you focused on careers within academia (i.e. university faculty) or outside?

Presumably the difference is more about what you actually do during your PhD studies rather than the "degree title". If genuinely you do your PhD in financial mathematics but for some reason your official PhD title says "PhD in Mathematical Biology", you will most likely not be overlooked for academic positions in financial mathematics. But in reality, if you opt for the path where your title says "PhD in Mathematical Biology", you are not in fact going to work on financial mathematics, and the reason why people will overlook you for such positions will not be the "degree title".

Nobody cares what it says on your diploma. They care what your papers and thesis cover.

The specifics of the PhD might be important in obtaining your first position, but after that no one is likely to care and it will depend on what you do and your research interests at that time. Once you are a bit established you can set your own goals and research program.
And if you do focus on mathematical biology then the dissertation, CV, transcripts, letters, etc. will make that clear to anyone interested whether or not the diploma specifies biology.
All (almost) PhDs are quite narrow in scope, though the diploma doesn't always state the specifics of the narrow field of the doctoral research.
I'd guess that as long as it is still called a PhD that it won't matter. For a bio related job you just stress that you are well qualified to research that. A piece of paper doesn't change that.

[I]s there merit to the viewpoint that I could be overlooked for positions due to having a specialized degree title?

In the strictest sense, the answer to this question is "yes". In the comparative sense, a slight difference in the title of your degree is effectively irrelevant next to other aspects of your future applications.
If someone is trying to hire a particularly theory-focused mathematician, you're simply never going to be a fit for that position with an applied focus, no matter what your degree title. As long as it's clear that you can write proofs correctly by the time you're applying for your next job (if that job is academic), you're as good as you're going to be on this axis.

Would it be a mistake to opt for the concentration if I still feel that there is a possibility I would like to work in a different subfield of applied math?

An approach to answering this question is to look at the underlying differences between taking this concentration and not taking it in terms of coursework. If the courses you will be required to take mesh well with other possible areas you would be comfortable working in, that's good. Otherwise, pivoting from one distinct specialization to another later usually isn't impossible, but will cost some quantity of time.

The OP doesn't suggest interest in "theory-focused" (i.e. pure) math, but only the possibility of other applied fields.

@Buffy The OP mentions some context regarding whether a bio concentration will be perceived as "less rigorous"-- I can of course be wrong, but I understand their anecdotes to be a symptom in math of a stereotype that anything interacting with application areas is "less rigorous" in general. What I'm trying to convey in my answer is that people with this outlook do exist and job searches tilted towards theory do as well, but they're unlikely to be impacted one way or another by the title of a concentration on an applicant's degree.


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My professor says he'll send me recommendation letters once he finished writing them, what should I respond?
I asked for a recommendation letter from a professor and sent him all the required materials. He agreed to write me the letters, but he also said that he will send me the letters later next week. Is this normal? As far as I know, the content of a recommendation letter should be confidential and should not be read by the student.
What should I do at this moment? Should I tell him not to sent the letters to me but directly to the universities I'm applying to?

This is dependent on the country. Where do you and your professor live, and where are you applying to?

Or does he perhaps originate somewhere else?

Many professors will share what they write with students even when the expectation is that they are "confidential". I don't have a problem with it as long as the recommender is honest and independent.
I think people might fear that only positive statements will be shared, somehow indicating bias toward the positive. But if a professor feels they need to write negative things, then they really should talk to the student about it before writing/sending any letter. If the professor can't support a student they should be advised of that. It is a way to avoid misunderstandings.
The response could be "thanks", or "thanks but that isn't necessary". Your call.
I was told, years after graduation, that my professor wrote me letters of recommendation, which he didn't share, that he intended to be entirely positive, but the phrasing could be interpreted otherwise. The person who told me (a colleague of the professor) said that it probably caused me a setback. In essence the advisor said that I was probably the world's foremost expert on a topic that some would consider very minor. He meant well but there were some cultural (math culture, actually) considerations that he didn't recognize. Even if he had shared it with his colleague, rather than myself, I might have had a different career trajectory. Just a misunderstanding, but with serious consequences.

In the US at least, the issue isn't confidentiality, it's whether the student has waived their right under the law to see the letter. Most schools won't take a letter "seriously" if this isn't the case. But there is absolutely nothing preventing the letter-writer from providing you with the letter anyway, which has no effect on your waiver.
However, the program will probably require that the letter come directly from him and not from you.

He may have a pile of letters to write and hasn’t gotten to yours yet, but I would have been more forthcoming about that. He may also rank his work by due date or incoming date or something else.

I think you missed the point of the question.


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Being the last author as an undergrad
TA (a PhD student) of one of my classes was looking for an undergrad to join in one of his projects. This was not directly related to the field I want to work in grad school, but there is no group or faculty in my preferred area, so I wanted to join in anyways (because it is another area I enjoy and I had lots of free time). We started working on it with him, had weekly meetings, I helped with theoretical aspects, and I did all implementations (replicating the other papers that did not provide code so we can compare plus our own experiments). I also did a lot about designing the experiments (which is the only way of proving your work in this area).
This got accepted to one of the top conferences. While I obviously didn't expect to be the first author, I was kind of suprised when I saw that I was the last author, and the professor (PhD student's advisor) was the second last author. For context, it is CS (but not theory), and the author list in our paper is clearly not alphabetical. Now, my questions:

Isn't this unusual? I thought it was better for a professor to be the last author? When I asked the PhD student about, he just said it was the professor's decision.
Should I still include this in my PhD applications (it's my only publication so far)? I feel like the admissions committee would ask about why I am the last author.
When asked, should I mention the possible reasons? I never asked the professor, because, after this project, the PhD student left the program and started a PhD program from scratch somewhere else. Since I had mainly worked with him, and since it was not my primary interest area, I decided to not start a new project. (I don't remember if I conveyed this to the professor after the author list was sent or before, it might have had an effect).

Finally, I have checked this professor's Google Scholar page, and in fact he has acted similarly at least 3 times before (3 publications, each with some of his PhD students, in each one, one of the PhD students is the last author). I believe this (and his other PhD student leaving) are supporting facts for me, I still feel like it could come across as whiny

Is it more desirable to be first? To be last? To be next-to-last? What are the implications of position in the author list? Are you being short-changed by being last author? Are you getting more credit than you deserve? What is the issue?

It's in computer science but the author list is not alphabetical, so anyone who sees is will assume that it's "the most contributing to least contributing and PI/lead last" order. I'm clearly not the lead, so they will ask why.

Ah, thanks for clarification. I sorta suspected that, but it was one of these "either this or the opposite" situations for me... My sympathies.

Many assume that it is the last mentioned author who did much of the work - but field dependant.

Absolutely include it in your CV. It would be foolish to omit it. Self defeating.

@Buffy How to explain it when asked? Also, by CV, do you also mean in PhD applications?

Actually, in any application. "It was my advisor's choice". And you are a rare undergrad to have any publication at all.  Long term is is a big win.

There are at least three basic author order schemes:
1) Alphabetical
2) In decreasing order of contribution
3) Split into junior and senior contributors, with juniors coming first in decreasing order of contribution, and then seniors in increasing order of contribution. [Often with just one senior spot]
In Computer Science, I've predominantly seen 1) and 2). An undergrad being at the end of an author list that is clearly not alphabetically ordered is a dead give-away for order type 2), and hence does not require particularly explanation.

For completeness, it should be mentioned that in some fields, last authorship is a thing (often dedicated to the person who brought in the funding). But I haven't seen it in CS.

Not common, but some papers have authors in random order.

Then it's still problematic in another level. In all those months we worked on it, the professor did nothing but just asking for updates and trying to force us/tell us to finish stuff before some deadlines. And still, I have never seen a (non-alphabetical) author list where the PI was the secon to last author (sometimes they are the first, probably because they worked on it 1-1, did most of the work etc)

Which part of CS does this refer to? (3) seems to be quite common, especially keeping the primary advisor last.

@kepmhme Presumably, the professor pitched the idea to a funding source which allowed the PhD student to do the project in the first place, which is a ton of work. The professor typically does the first 80% of the work, and the students do the other 80%. If that doesn't add up, you know why people are left unsatisfied. Including you as an author at all is praise, and especially as this could be interpreted as portraying you as the subject expert, don't sniff at it. -but I'm not in CS

Isn't this unusual? I thought it was better for a professor to be the last author? When I asked the PhD student about, he just said it was the professor's decision.

It may be unusual, but if the professor wanted to give you the "seat of honor" it's probably because you deserve it. I wouldn't worry about this.

Should I still include this in my PhD applications (it's my only publication so far)? I feel like the admissions committee would ask about why I am the last author.

Of course! Having any publications at all as an undergrad is a substantial accomplishment. If they ask why you're the last author, you can just say it was the professor's decision and explain your contributions in detail.
(Later on, you may produce further research that supersedes this, but there's no harm in leaving this citation on your CV, too.)

When asked, should I mention the possible reasons?

Focus on what you contributed to the paper, rather than speculating on what the professor's reasoning was.

What do you mean by "seat of honor"?

The position in the author list normally reserved for the supervising professor (whether because it indicates a large contribution, denotes the corresponding author, or another reason--the OP doesn't indicate why they think it would be "better" for the professor to appear there, so we can only speculate).

Just for background, I'm in the field of computer science and am both a PhD student and a faculty member (going on 3 years now).
If there is anything I've learned about authorship, one's position all depends on the composition / mindset of the research team (w/ heavy influence from the lead / PI).

Isn't this unusual? I thought it was better for a professor to be the last author? When I asked the PhD student about, he just said it was the professor's decision.

Not unusual. My adviser prefers that she be the last author when she advises. I prefer that authorship should reflect the amount of effort exerted (another topic) on research tasks discussed in the paper. Another co-faculty prefers that writing should have greater weight (in terms of effort) versus actual tasks performed for the project. I honestly think its a mindset -- regardless of what the rest of the "field" is doing.

Should I still include this in my PhD applications (it's my only publication so far)? I feel like the admissions committee would ask about why I am the last author.

Yes! Don't leave it out as you're just starting out. When you're asked about it, it'll be your chance to brag!
@Max already gave good points to answer this. But to add my personal experience -- I benefited from publishing a paper my (undergraduate) adviser told us we should try to push out. We didn't think much of it because none of us wanted to go into the academe at the time. Later (after deciding to pursue research), I found out that the paper would help me get into a higher rank.

When asked, should I mention the possible reasons? I never asked the professor, because, after this project, the PhD student left the program and started a PhD program from scratch somewhere else. Since I had mainly worked with him, and since it was not my primary interest area, I decided to not start a new project. (I don't remember if I conveyed this to the professor after the author list was sent or before, it might have had an effect).

If you're asked then its your chance to brag! In general, being an author implies you had a hand in the work. I forget how many interviews I've paneled, but I really could careless about the position. We just have to accept that there are different notions of authorship position. I'd rather focus on learning about your contribution to the project and what the whole research group managed to find out.
This is just my personal opinion, but don't let authorship order get to you too much. Inclusion as an author is a bigger issue. Also, as you progress with pushing out publications and working with other individuals, reflect on what authorship position / order means to you and how other individuals might have influenced your thoughts. Lastly, keep in mind to develop your voice in research team discussions. Things can get awkward if not everyone's on the same page, but I feel the easiest way to get through this is to lay things out so everyone knows what everyone else is thinking.


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"Statement of purpose" vs "Research proposal" in the context of graduate studies?
After consulting google, what I am able to understand is that a statement of purpose is a document that is used when applying for graduate studies and it mentions the aptitude and motivation for research in a particular field
Is my understanding correct? If yes, then what is a research proposal?

Yes, your understanding is correct. While the CV lists past accomplishments, your SoP is a statement about your future goals, both for graduate study and thereafter. It need not, in general, be specific about a research topic, just a fairly narrow area.
A Research Proposal, on the other hand, is a specific outline of a research project that you suggest you would want to carry out. An advisor might accept such a proposal unchanged, but might also want to modify it, perhaps drastically. But it shows that you have given serious thought to at least one problem and have done some background on it.
A really complete research proposal would include a statement of the problem to be studied and questions to be answered, a preliminary suggestion of how the question will be attacked, and even suggestions about sources for any needed funding.

In the US, it's quite normal in many disciplines for a student to apply to a graduate program without knowing what advisor they would have and what dissertation project they might work on.  A student applying to a graduate program in that situation would not be ready to make a research proposal.