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Loss of an exam day in a four-week class
A friend of mine is a mathematics professor at a college in the southeast United States (where they're currently expecting significant snowfall) and just asked an interesting question that I'm reposting here:

I'm currently teaching a four-week class, and next week is the final week.  There is a good chance that the college will be closed Friday due to the weather, but Friday is also scheduled to be an exam day.
How should I handle this?  I cannot afford to use the last Monday as the new exam day.  My initial thought is that I could post it as take-home exam with strict warnings about using resources, but we can probably guess how well that will go.

I'm sure that she would appreciate any suggestions you might have, and I am also curious to see what they might be.

Would increasing the difficulty of the exam be an option? From what I understand this is a common tactic for dealing with using resourced on a take home exam.

"in the southeast"... of what?

What is so hard about getting the time tabling department to find a time slot when all of your students are free that a new exam can be booked in after the end of your 4 weeks?

@Ian: The "time-tabling department" (I've never heard of one) cannot know about all the extra-curricular constraints which affect students, such as part-time jobs (this might be why I've never encountered such a department).  Scheduling new exam times is a significantly different task from setting up a lecture schedule prior to enrollment.

@BenVoigt, without a time-tabling office how do you get the timetable created so that students can take the combination of courses they have chosen?

@BenVoigt, as to extra-curricular constraints, the student is at university to get a degree, so they have to decide if they want the degree or not.   Other things in life has to be fixed round the degree.

@Ian: Students are responsible for fitting in extracurricular commitments around the course schedule printed in the catalog and/or selecting course sections which fit into their schedule.  It is simply not true that the university can later change the schedule, to timeslots the students did not agree to during enrollment, and simply say "pick your priorities".

@Ben, when I was at university you need special permission to take a job in term time so as to advoid this sort of issue.

@Ian: Students who are employed by the university can be expected to get permission for also getting a job outside.  Those who are not, don't need any such permission.  Also, a job is just one example of extracurricular commitment.  What about religious services?  Does your University require students to get permission to go to church?  Please, take your "life revolves around the university so students can be required to show up at any time without advance planning or mutual agreement" concept, forget you ever thought that way, and never, ever, try to implement it as policy.

This is a college level issue. The school should come up with a plan for how such a problem should be handled. It seems absurd to ask each individual professor to come up with a specific plan for his/her own students.

Indeed, but/and (here in Minnesota, where snow and ice are common), my own institution is historically negligent in planning for such things... instead declaring that it's just the usual, and that it is "against the rules" for instructors to cancel class just because there's a blizzard, for example. So I've resorted to announcing (in person or in email) "following the rules, class will not be cancelled, but the material will be repeated in its entirety the subsequent class time ..." That is, because the central admins don't necessarily have to cope with the fallout, they may choose delusion...

It's only a college level issue at places with college level plans in place. That doesn't really help as an answer for those places that give professors autonomy (which isn't absurd — I know my class and its needs better than any administrator)

@guifa it seems to me like logically this is a college level issue, whether or not a particular college recognizes that fact or not. Similarly, certain other issues like student mental health are college level issues, and we would not expect a professor encountering a student with mental issues to have to start figuring out how to help that student - there would be college-wide resources to deal with such problems, because that is the logical way to set things up. Anyway, you're correct my answer would not be helpful to professors in certain not so well-run colleges - sorry about that.

@DanRomik I still don't see how a "not so well-run college" is the one where the college dictates how professors manage their course.  To be, the better one is the one that trusts faculty to make the most reasonable adjustments given the course and its students. Should Alabama have had a blanket policy after the tornados?  Should Tulane have had a blanket policy after Katrina?

@guifa: surely Tulane did have a blanket policy after Katrina. The school closed. Individual professors didn't decide whether or not to flunk their students for missing classes/exams, no matter how well those professors understood their course and its needs. The school decided. Of course, once your city is evacuating that should be a relatively easy blanket policy for individual professors to get behind. A few days of snow might generate more difference of opinion.

@guifa I live in California so I'm not an expert on the response to such severe weather events, but I'd hazard the answer to your questions is Yes and Yes (if by "blanket" you mean "college-level"). And I'd ask similarly, should professors have to fix equipment that breaks in a classroom? Should they be in charge of classroom scheduling? Should they set up their own web servers and code their own Learning Management System? No, clearly professors are supported by a logistical infrastructure that takes care of such things. Planning for bad weather logically falls in precisely the same category.

@SteveJessop I don't know exactly how Tulane did it, but I imagine it was similar to Alabama. Alabama left it largely to professors, except to say student could take their grades "as is" if they want (which really only works in classes that had substantial work prior to the final). Otherwise, the particulars of scheduling or other modifications were left to the professors.

While I don't disagree that this is a college-level issue, her question was more about what could done in the heat of the moment.  I would expect that appealing to the administration on the day before the cancellation wouldn't accomplish much.

@AegisCruiser I understand, and sorry again that my answer isn't helpful to your friend with her specific question. I initially posted this as a comment and was encouraged by another user to post it as an answer, so I did. I'm actually surprised by the number of votes, but apparently some people are finding it helpful at least as general commentary on the subject.

I think many of us are running into this.  We've been back in for two weeks and I've lost four days in a four-day-a-week class between MLK and weather-related incidents (yay building flooding too!).  Thankfully it's early enough I can make reasonable adjustments.
At my university, we are given relatively wide berth to reschedule and work around campus closures and based on the question, it seems the situation is similar, so here are some of the possibilities I'd see:

Take home exam with regularly scheduled Monday
Not optimal, because they'd end up just cheating as it will be hard to rewrite a test designed for classroom-taking for home-taking in such a short time, but essay-style tests may work okay (doubt that's the case for a math course, though)
Reschedule the test day on the weekend.
It may seem a bit dickish, but you could reschedule for Sunday and then handle the handful of no shows individually (this presumes that the weather is okay by Sunday, Saturday looks to be a no-go all over).  Students will kill you on evals for this.
Move the test to Monday and have a special session to cover Monday's material
Presuming one of the remaining days is a review-like day, cancel it to fit in the rest of the days.  The review day will then be rescheduled as a special session at a time that the vast majority of students can make (perhaps consulted via a survey).
Cancel the test and integrate into the final
This presumes there is a final.  Some students may balk at this, and since it would involve the modification of the syllabus may require approval of higher ups or be subject to other university rules.

Some universities may have more codified policies that explicitly add on extra days, in which case you should modify the schedule in accordance with that policy.  No doubt that a department head or dean would remind you of such a policy in advance (our provost did, which is to say, we were encouraged to hold virtual classes, but were reminded that we were free to handle the situation — including rescheduling classes outside of normal hours — in the ways that best fit our courses)

I am mildly, and happily, surprised to hear of an administration that grants autonomous decision-making to individual faculty... On the other hand, then I guess they won't have to field any complaints, and it'll be on faculty members' heads.

Give everyone an A and be done with it.  You will get good evals.  If your students are full time students then you can do things like reschedule on the weekend.  Otherwise they are busy taking care of their kids, working their second job, etc and that is just not going to work.  Save yourself the headache and give everyone an A.

@emory I'm not sure where you think I actually recommended that course of action.  But, despite your snark (1) there are places where it's a safe assumption that all students are full time or even live on campus (for example, my freshman lit class that was even given in our dorm), and (2) for contingent faculty, student satisfaction is a fact of life.  Bad student evals will mean non-renewal of contracts.  My personal recommendation is the third, but that's because I always have a buffer day or two at the end and I'm okay having my reviews out of the normal schedule.

@emory Your students give evals after they get grades????

@guifa That is not your recommended course of action, it is my recommended course of action.  Student evals are no joke.  If you are being judged primarily on student evals, then it makes sense to optimize them.

@emory where did you state your recommended course of action is to "Move the test to Monday and have a special session to cover Monday's material"?

@guifa my recommended course of action is to give everyone an A

@JeffE: I believe emory's suggestion was to give everyone an A on the midterm exam. The students would therefore know this when submitting their evaluations at the end of the course.

Give the exam in class on Monday and deliver the material scheduled for Monday via an on-line mechanism.  Schedule a help session during office hours (book a classroom if possible) for those who need additional help with the material delivered on line.
I'm not sure how this would work for a math course, but in my discipline (computing) narrated PowerPoint slides turned into a "video" work fairly well.  I've done that a few times when participating in out of town conferences or symposia.

If you have multiple assessments, I would make the missed exam optional and give students two opportunities to take the exam. Students who do not take the exam have some other assessment (e.g., the final exam) count more.
If you only have a single assessment, I would have the exam during the next scheduled session and offer a no penalty makeup exam session. I would then schedule two sessions where you can give the missed lecture.

If making the test optional, I'd probably recommend actually just tell students I'll drop their lowest (thus it's "optional" but wouldn't penalize students who didn't do well but made the effort to show up, and give an incentive to actually take it)

As an undergraduate math student, I've had plenty of take home exams and final exams that were impossible to cheat on. Because they were take home, difficulty was increased, and severe punishment threatened for cheating. For my topology course we had several difficult problems we had to provide proofs for, and my numerical analysis required us to write code to evaluate the problems. Unless it's a well known theorem or problem there's really no way to google solutions.
Of course you must trust the students to be honest and not plagiarize, but it's been my experience as a student and as a grader - when people cheat it's quite obvious. And if one does manage to get one past you, really they are only hurting themselves, as they are not gaining the knowledge they'll need for their next level courses.
Hopefully you won't be forced to cancel class. Stay warm up there!

They are not impossible to cheat on.

Be honest and realize that the administrator(s) know the weather ,time have already decided the right thing you should do. If they saw how much you struggle with this you may lost your credentials to teach in la esquela? Comprende amigo

authors: دکتور محمد یونس فخری


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What is the PhD application process for Germany and Switzerland?
Currently I am in the last semester of my Master studies in computer science in Germany. I am further contemplating about the possibility of applying for PhD position somewhere in Germany, Switzerland, (and maybe Austria). There are other candidate countries as well, but these are the main ones.
In a year or so I should be done with this studies. I wonder what is the PhD application process for Germany and Switzerland. Are there scholarships offered? Is there a need for scholarship at all, or do you get paid as an researched directly from the institution where you get the PhD position?
question added after edit:
Is there a need to search and find for a supervisor (or professor), and explain him the idea for the research that you are planning to work on... or do you get the position and work on the topics which are treated in that research group. my question is both for Swiss and DE?
Can someone with similar experience tell me how these things work?

I can speak for Austria (place where I did my PhD) and Switzerland (current place of employment), but my answer should be applicable for Germany as well.

I wonder what is the Phd application process for Germany and Switzerland. Are there scholarships offered? Is there a need for scholarship at all, or do you get paid as an researched directly from the institution where you get the Phd postion?

Both models exist, but the far more common one is that you are just employed as a researcher while doing your PhD. This has advantages and disadvantages. Typically these positions are financially rather attractive (at least as far as PhD student salaries go), currently at about 2400 EUR 14 times a year in Austria for full-time employment, a bit more in Germany, significantly more (around 5000 CHF 12 times a year) in Switzerland. All of these salaries allow you to conveniently live (no need for a diet of Ramen noodles) in the respective places. On the other hand, as a researcher you are not "just" working on your thesis. In addition, teaching has to be handled, support in administrative matters will be part of your job, and you will need to work on matters of your research project that you find neither interesting nor advance your thesis work in any way.
The application process is generally as for any other job - find out what jobs are offered, contact the person per mail, send in CV, (usually) do an interview via Skype, wait for an offer. The hardest part is probably finding out what research groups currently have job openings. Positions are generally not announced very widely (if at all). However, just because you cannot find an ad for an open position with a specific professor does not necessarily mean that he does not have a position available. Both places that I worked at had open positions almost at all times for a really qualified student. What really helps here are connections - do you know somebody who is already an "insider" in academic circles, maybe a PhD student or postdoc? If so, ask him to put you in contact with some faculty.
If not, look for universities that you might consider joining, find out from their web page what faculty there handles your topic, and send them a short mail. Keep it crisp - both of my professors so far have been insanely busy, and any mail from an unknown person with more than one short paragraph will never be read carefully. Just tell who you are, what your current university is, and that you would like to talk about the possibility of doing a PhD. Give them a week to answer and then send a quick and friendly reminder (my current prof is the dean of the faculty, and given the size of his inbox mails sometimes do get lost - that does not mean that he is necessarily not interested). Maybe, the professor will put you in contact with one of this postdocs or PhD students to "chat" via Skype or in person (if possible) - consider this the technical interview, because afterwards the prof will ask the person that you talked to whether they think that you have the technical skills that are required for the selected field. What you should not do is send an overly long formal application - most professors get many of those from rather dubios applicants from the far east, hence formal blind applications are generally discarded unread. Don't be one of those.

is there a need to search and find for a supervisor (or professor), and explain him the idea for the research that you are planning to work on... or do you get the position and work on the topics which are treated in that research group. my question is both for Swiss and DE?

You are generally not expected to "come" with your own topic. Your broad overall theme will be defined by whatever project / position pays your salary, and on top of that you are expected to define your concrete research project together with a postdoc and/or the professor some time into your PhD (say, about a year after starting). What you should know is roughly what interests you research-wise and contact only professors that really do this research. This sounds like a given, but I work in services and software engineering, and I have lost track of many applicants interested in robotics, AI, formal methods, etc. I have already discarded. Don't be one of those, either.

I'd post the net income after taxes, not the gross income. I strongly suspect a PhD student in Switzerland takes home 60K per year!

I just had a chat with a friend starting phd in switzerland (in the italian canton). he said there is a minimal wage for phd student which is 1500 CHF. don't know if this applies only to that canton or to the whole country

@aeismail Net incomes tend to be misleading, because they depend on marital status, whether you have kids, where you live, how you go to work, and a million other small to medium factors. 60.000 CHF / year is considered a very low pay in Switzerland, and you do in fact not pay much taxes for that. You have to consider that you also pay 1500+ CHF for a single apartment in Zurich. Standard starting pay with a masters degree is around 100.000 CHF / year.

@WolfgangKuehne The italian-speaking parts are the "poorhouse" (under very large quotation marks) of Switzerland. PhD students there are often not employed full-time. I do not know what the price scales in the italian-speaking areas are, but in Zurich or Bern you would hardly be able to live from 1.500 CHF / month.

60,000 CHF is apparently comparable to the pay of a PhD student in Germany. However, taxes, retirement, and health insurance eat up about 40-50 percent of a German PhD student's income. So I think knowing the range of net incomes is much more useful than just quoting the gross.

This may be, but not being a tax expert, I have very little idea what the range of net incomes is.

@aeismail some do, mostly privately-funded PhD students, and in their final year. Although universities frown upon these cases as they generate a sentiment of unfairness in other grad students. Taxes for someone who earns 60k are marginal in CH (~2k/year).

@aeismail some infro I found about the phd and postdoc wages in Swiss:
http://acide.epfl.ch/ResearchersSalary
http://www.englishforum.ch/employment/135771-postdoc-position-epfl.html
http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/EPFL-Salaries-E150428.htm
how does these numbers compare to the wages of phd and postdoc students in DE?

German salaries are generally according to the TV-L scale, level 13. So there's no real "wiggle room" in what you get paid—as compared to the absolutely enormous variance in Switzerland (why is there a 30K difference?),

In Austria and Switzerland, there is also a standard pay, but some students only get funded part-time, while others get extra from projects, consulting work, additional teaching etc. There certainly is quite significant "wiggle room".

In Germany, you may only get a 50% position (you will be expected to work full-time, but be paid only 50%). This is rather uncommon in CS, but standard in psychology - better CS entry level job prospects push Ph.D. students' wages up. So there definitely is wriggle room.

A good place to look for open positions in academia in CH is the ETH-gethired website. In Switzerland, you will usually be hired by the university or research institute and receive a salary (about 3.6 to 4.5k CHF/month). In exchange you typically have to do TA work (assisting with practical sessions in courses, correcting assignments, etc.) and sometimes technical tasks (taking care of lab equipment). In some universities (like the two Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology, ETH and EPFL) and for some programs, a formal application to a competitive graduate school is also required.
In some cases, you can get funded directly by the Swiss National Science Fund which leads typically to a lower pay but less or no teaching tasks. But it is seldom the grad student's task to secure funding.
Scout the lab websites for positions not listed in my link, and don't be afraid to apply spontaneously as well, if a place sounds particularly interesting to you.

Don't be misled by the Swiss salary. It's good pay for a PhD, but taxes and living costs are pretty high.

@Moriarty I agree for living costs, especially rent, but taxes are low, in fact I hardly paid any (hey it's Switzerland).

Ah, right. I somehow managed to confuse Switzerland with Sweden (which does have high taxes).

@jigg can you refer to the question that I asked to above as a comment to aeismail answer

(Income) taxes totally depend on the location, taxes in Zurich might be low (no idea to be honest) but other places (Geneva…) not so much. Overall, it's roughly in the European average, special cases (forfait fiscal/Pauschalbesteuerung) notwithstanding. VAT is however very low but that's moot since before-tax prices are already high.

In general, doctoral studies in both Germany and Switzerland are paid research employees. In Germany, for instance, Doktoranden (doctoral students) are formally called Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter ["scientific (or academic) workers"]. They are paid as government employees according to a fixed scale, and have a contract outlining their duties.
Now, for these programs, you apply as if you were applying to a job outside of academia, except you send a CV in place of a résumé. The hiring is done directly by the group of the professor who has the open position.
There are some exceptions, primarily related to American-style doctoral programs. For these, your application is in a style similar to that of a graduate school in the US (form, letters of recommendation, statement of purpose, etc.). These are typically fellowship-based positions that carry a stipend. They usually also have a reduction in teaching and supervisory duties.
In any case, however, you should never have to pay (or get an outside scholarship) to do doctoral studies in a scientific field in Germany or Switzerland.

is there a need to search and find for a supervisor (or professor), and explain him the idea for the research that you are planning to work on... or do you get the position and work on the topics which are treated in that research group. my question is both for Swiss and DE?

A funded "Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter" position is usually attached to an existing project or grant. The same is not true for fellowships. There you can either present your own idea, or work on one offered by a professor. However, the project in any case should be aligned with the goals of the program to which you're applying.

Thank you! My question is rather related to the fact that I do not have a certain idea that in which subfield of a given field I would like to do my Phd on. It is pretty variable at the moment. One extra question, does the topic of Master Thesis affect the chances of getting accepted in a Phd programme, if the topics are not much related, or if they are very related. Is there a plus?

I'd argue that it's a function of the faculty member in question. Some are just looking for talented people with experience in the general field; others are looking for people with as much experience as possible. It can also depend on the needs of the specific project, particularly if there are significant deadlines and milestones to be met in a short time frame. But having experience in the particular area is never a bad thing, as far as I can tell.

"A funded "Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter" position is usually attached to an existing project or grant." In my experience that is not necessarily true: depending on the field and university, the paid position may be anywhere between being paid for the PhD project research (usually with some teaching obligation) to being paid only for the teaching (i.e. the PhD is in terms of the position "your own fun"). While the latter is getting more seldom now, some faculties start to have x hours of teaching as formal requirement for the PhD.

Admittedly, I did leave out the Planstelle, which are funded for teaching purposes. However, I think most faculty use those as "swing positions," used to pay for students in-between or while securing other funding.  The exception Is "Oberingenieur" positions, which aren't PhD positions in any event.

I disagree with the statement that "you should never have to [...] get an outside scholarship [...]". In computer science, "outside scholarships" e.g. from foundations like the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes
might not be very common, but they are often used in other fields and, of course, computer scientists are eligible for these scholarships as well.

By the way, you can find much information about doing a PhD and research in Germany at the website of the DAAD. Likewise, you can find information about grants in Austria at grants.at.

@non-numeric_argument: My point is that you should not need an outside scholarship to do PhD studies. That doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't apply for them. The caveat is that if the only way somebody is willing to take you on is if you can fund your own studies, then you're potentially entering a very tenuous situation, and should give serious thought if that's what you want to do.

@aeismail I agree that it is not fortunate if your potential supervisor only accepts you with external funding. However, this happens very often in the humanities and social scienes in Germany.

In an ideal world, you would have already an interest in a particular research topic that you'd like to learn more about. I think that's the first crucial step before you do anything else.
Assuming that you have selected your research area, you can look for researchers/professors that are defining the frontiers in that area and live in DE or CH. Once you shortlisted the names, which could take some time since you might need to visit each lab's website to find out more about its research, you should apply for all positions that you find interesting. Try to arrange interviews with the professors or group leaders and try to get an idea how your PhD life under his/her supervision would look like. Of course, it may be quite hard to extrapolate from a single interview but it is better than pure email conversation. Don't forget: PhD is kinda like a marriage with your supervisor. You need to get along with him/her really well.
By doing the interviews, you can narrow down possible destinations for your PhD. I would then look for other issues: salary, city, culture etc.
I know the salaries in Zurich and in DE since I lived and worked in both places as PhD student. In Zurich, the salaries are well above the average PhD salaries. With 60% employment (e.g., biology PhDs or some first year CS PhDs) you get ca. 3'000 CHF after taxes. For a 100% employment your salary becomes ca. 4'500 CHF after taxes, which is around triple the money you can make as a PhD in DE. Of course, the city is more expensive but you end up having more money in your back account compared to a PhD in DE.
However, as I said above, your PhD topic and your supervisor's personality are much more important than your income. You should never forget about that.

I completely agree with what you say. I would prefer working with a demanding but understanding supervisor for less money, rather than working for a supervisor who is grumpy and robotic. Very Nice point from you!

In Switzerland, the application is quite straightforward: you have to contact the research group that you are interested to work with. There is no national selection or competition.
PhD in Switzerland are usually better paid than in Germany but the salary may vary from nothing or CHF 2000 up to CHF 7000 per month. I mean, in Switzerland working conditions are very liberal and depends more on the competition with the market. Typically computer scientists or engineers will get more than archaeologists or biologists. More resources like open positions and careers tips are available at myScience.ch a national website dedicated to researchers and engineers

I can speak for Germany universities and, with a good approximation, for Max Planck Institutes: Usually, you can apply for a Ph.D. position whenever you want (typically, with a CV) but you will be hired if and only if your favorite supervisor has by chance some unallocated funds. Unlike in other countries (say, France or Italy) there are no regular rounds of openings that allow a large number of graduate students, funded by the University or Institute as a whole, to simultaneously begin their doctoral studies.
There are essentially two exceptions:
1) You apply to a graduate schools, mostly funded by the DFG (German Research Council): Again, you can only be admitted if there are some unallocated funds, but it is often the School that accepts your application, and you might be able to switch from one supervisor to another one once you're in.
2) You receive a grant from a third party, typically a foundation: there are many, mostly linked to political parties or religious institutions (and in that case you will have to prove that you are close to the political/social/religious vision of that specific foundation) or to companies. Once you bring your own funds and sometimes a small overhead, it is likely that most professors will be willing to supervise your studies.
In any case, you will be usually hired as a wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter (in bureaucratic language, the corresponding code is TV-L E13), whose net wage will oscillate between 1.600€ and 2.200€/month. CAUTION! In many fields (e.g. in mine: Maths) it is very usual (and sometimes even required by the DFG) that graduate students are hired only on a part time basis, you may see opening for something like "TV-L E13 (66%)". Even if you have a part-time position, very strict rules determine whether you can have a side job.
(In most German universities you may enrol as a Ph.D. student: this will cost you little money (~120€/term) but will get you some benefits - cheaper meals in the university restaurant, cheaper bus/metro tickets and so on.)

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Are there post-doc grants available for non-US citizens in the US?
I was looking for postdoctoral grants/fellowships for a potential post-doc opportunity in the US. It appears as the entire grant/fellowship system is geared towards US citizens, or permanent residents of the US. It is understandable with respect to use of federal resources, but slightly discouraging nevertheless.
Are there any funding opportunities available for non-US citizen? In terms of field I'm interested specifically in Biomedical and STEM fieds.

Of course. Look for open postdoc positions in academic projects funded by NSF and the like.

@DCTLib are you sure? I have just look at the NSF post-doc grants and the solicitation documents clearly state that applicants must be US citizens or permanent residents by the time of applicaton

Related: Can individual international scholars apply for US federal funds? and Is there any funding opportunity for postdoc in US? and Research grants for international PhD candidates.

@posdef On advertised open postdoc positions, you become postdoc in the research group of your future postdoc advisor who applied for the funding in the past and already got it granted.

@DCTLib Sure, I'm with you on that one. But if you want to be able to bring your own money in then you are out of luck, right?

@posdef You could always bring money from your home country, where you could apply for funding for a research project to be performed abroad. You will still be likely to need support from a host professor before you can apply, though.

There is relatively little funding of the sort you are looking for—funding that non-U.S. residents can apply for directly to fund post-doctoral work inside the U.S.  However, that is not really that important, since that is not how most post-doc positions are funded anyway.
Most post-docs do not apply for their own funding.  The funding comes from the institution that hires the post-doc (Very often—but not always—the money ultimately comes from a research grant from an outside agency, but the post-doc would not be involved in writing or administering the grant.)  If an institution has funds for a post-doc, they will advertise a job opening and hire somebody.  Generally, the search is global; they would be willing to hire somebody from anywhere in the world, provided they are a qualified.  (There are some technical caveats about how this works, but they are of little import in practice; and—again—they are things that the hiring institution mostly needs to worry about, not the person they choose to hire.)

I think in some fields, grants like  Human Frontier Science Program  and Life Sciences Research Foundation  are helpful especially biology.
However, competition is very high in these and profile has to be in the top 5-10 of the applicants.

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Do graduate schools pay attention to joining Phi Kappa Phi or other honor societies?
Recently I received an invitation for Phi Kappa Phi honor society. I do not know too much about those organizations and I was wandering what are the benefits (or possible disadvantages) of joining?
I was searching online and people keep mentioning that it is good for your resume, networking etc. However, it seems to me that I just need to pay for membership and they will put me on the list, how could it be beneficial for me?
Could you please tell me if worth considering? And is it really beneficial to have those things on my resume? Do graduate schools or employers pay attention for those?

As a once-paying member of Phi Kappa Phi, I would suggest you save your money. The only one that gets major traction is Phi Beta Kappa.

Do graduate schools pay attention to joining Phi Kappa Phi or other honor societies?

As I understand it, eligibility for membership in Phi Kappa Phi is entirely determined by grades and class rank.  If so, it won't help with grad school applications, since the admissions committee already has access to far more information about grades than they would learn from knowing the applicant is a member.
Some fields may have honor societies for which membership conveys more information, but I do not think there is any widely known, field-independent example in the U.S.
In my experience on graduate admissions committees in mathematics, I've never heard anyone discuss honor societies at all.
I joined an honor society as an undergraduate, not because I saw personal benefits to it but because my parents would have been disappointed if I had declined membership.  The only consequence for me has been that they occasionally send me a newsletter, but I'm told some people do find membership to be useful or meaningful.

I am a little late to the conversation but here is my two cents for anyone who reads this in the future.
I chose to join PKP for my own personal amusement. In addition, I joined while already in graduate school and I was wanting a new MacBook. PKP boasts Apple discounts for their members. I was more than disappointed when I learned that Apple only gives PKP discounts on random items; none of which, at least at the time, included MacBooks. As I investigated other "discounts" offered to members, I found that they were equally lame, for lack of a better term.
After my initial year, I chose to not renew my active membership because I was already a lifetime member (everyone who joins is) and the only benefit I saw to paying annual dues would be for access to apply for scholarships that I may or may not have won. Even then, I was already finished with school so that didn't apply to me. Their "career" advice is basically an online form that you complete, which is pretty much a super secret LinkedIn service, through which I was never contacted by a prospective employer.
They used to have their member directory online but now, they have converted it to a actual book that one may only have for a fee. Not long ago, they emailed me asking me to call and update my information for said book. I did so out of curiosity and spoke to someone I could barely understand who, I believe, was also trying to sell me something.
It was a fun honor to wear PKP garb at graduation and I sometimes enjoy the bragging rights. I do put it on my resume, but I do not think it has ever helped or hindered my applications.
I'd join again, but I'd never pay money to keep my membership "active." It benefits me in no way.

On the other side of the coin (just to give perspective, I'm not suggesting honour societies are bad or detrimental!!) some graduate schools (depending on the country you apply for) and potential academic supervisors might look down on you joining an honour society.
Honour societies or Frats/Sororities as many non-US countries will recognise them might make the automatic assumption that you've joined a 'party house' despite that many honour societies are anything but. This is due to the consistent perception of these societies in various films/newspapers etc as being depicted as such, where academics and education are the least of student's concerns.
It really depends on where you are applying and the program you are applying for. If you decide to apply outside of the US, belonging to a general honour society could (I stress could, doesn't mean it will) be detrimental to your application. In Australia or the UK, or Europe or even Canada to a degree, an honour society does nothing for your graduate school application. It's really only relevant for the US.
Honour societies (from my understanding as a non-US person based in Australia) are great for business opportunities and networking for jobs, but I'm not sure about their potential in helping you do research (which is the point of graduate school).
I think if you'd like to join an honour society, you should join one where academics and/or research are the main priority, but also have a think about where you'd like to go to graduate school.

If honor societies are looked at as a bad thing in some countries, surely one can just leave membership off your CV when applying for grad school and/or jobs there?

Absolutely, easy fix :)

I am not a proponent of academic honor societies (as you may know from elsewhere on this site), but I think that mentioning them in the same breath as fraternities and sororities is simply an erroneous conflation.  For instance, many honor societies have no in-person campus activities.  They are no more part of "Greek life" than epsilon-delta proofs in calculus.

On the other hand: "In Australia or the UK, or Europe or even Canada to a degree, an honour society does nothing for your graduate school application. It's really only relevant for the US." No, I'm in the US and have done graduate applications for years, and I promise I do not care in any way at all about honor societies.  It's not good or bad: it's really nothing to me.

@Pete: I think the point is that, while you and I and awsoci clearly understand that honor societies are unrelated to "Greek life", people in other cultures may not. Seeing that someone was a member of an organization whose name is three Greek letters may lead them to the "erroneous conflation" you describe, to the candidate's disadvantage.

I joined an honor society as an undergrad. The largest benefit, IMHO, was having access to member-only scholarship applications. Most honor societies offer membership based on your grades--it is basically just an acknowledgement of your academic success as an undergrad, and is not likely to influence your admission to grad school. (Membership in an honor society will help if you decide to transfer as an undergrad.)
It is definitely worth considering mambership, though. There are usually opportunities for members to be active in leadership roles at local,national, and international levels. If you hold such a position, it may influence admissions or hiring decisions, and it certainly won't hurt your chances.

Some honor societies publish their own journals, offering their members an opportunity to get their research out there. As a member of Psi Chi, I have the chance to publish there if I find difficulty with other journals accepting my manuscript.

But is this journal any good? If it's not, then publishing in it may even be harmful --- at least, because it precludes you from publishing the same content in a better journal.

AS a member of many honor societies, I think it is a great opportunity to join however, the benefits you enjoy mostly depend on your involvement. You can benefit from scholarship opportunities, travel discounts , leadership experiences among many others.


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Which university uses or used this academic regalia?
Given information about academic regalia such as colour and style of graduation robes, how can I determine the university that used that regalia?
I have the photo below, and would like to find out what university this graduation was for.

Questions that are only of assistance to a single individual that will not be of benefit to future visitors of the site are considered off-topic on the Stack Exchange network.

@corey979 The issue has to do with curation. Once the question is done, it will be of little value to future users of the site. This runs against the SE philosophy. (If anybody knows the answer, they’re free to leave a comment.)

@corey979 You can also nominate the question to be reopened. If the argument is good enough it should rally people to sponsor it for reopening as a first step.

Perhaps the question could be rephrased as "How can you find out which university used or uses a particular graduation robe, colours, etc.?" to which one possible answer might be "contact a company that provides academic robes for a particular country (or in the U.S., state), they may know." This information might be of interest to people doing genealogy or historical research.

Jack, I reworded your question to make it more general. If that's not acceptable, you can change it back. I don't know if this will be sufficient to get it reopened.

I would vote to reopen this question if it included a textual description of these academic regalia --- so there is at least a chance that someone ends up here with a Google search and finds it helpful.

@aeismail this was considered on topic https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/95944/graduation-robes-what-accolades-does-this-guy-have but green is much less common.

Okay. I guess I’ve been overruled. But i still think it sets a bad precedent.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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How to deal with a busy research partner?
I'm working on a research, and I have a partner. We both should be working on the same tasks, but he's very busy, as he has teaching load and I don't, so I end up doing most of the work myself.
This is not a big problem to me, but my advisor sometimes blames us for delayed results or little achievements, and I find it not fair to be blamed because he expects an outcome of two when there's actually only one working, and I get embarrassed to tell him that it was only me, because my partner is actually also my friend.
How does one deal with this situation? I know my partner is very capable, this is not an incompetence claim, it's just he has little time compared to me.

You could tell your friend what you told us, and let him explain to the advisor.  I hope that when there are breaks in the semester, your friend tries to make up for lost time.

@aparente001 is it appropriate to ask him to be a second author, not a first co-author? Given how much work we each put.

Yes, that's appropriate. And your friend, if he's honest, will agree with this arrangement.

You could ask him if he's given any thought to whose name should go first.  That would be an interesting litmus test.

As the comments have said, you need to go with your partner and explain this to your adviser face to face. It's not an incompetence issue and you need to make sure that you make that clear to your partner - it's a workload balance issue.
At the end of the day though, there are only two options available:

Either your partner reduces their outside workload or,
Your adviser reduces your workload to account for it.

This is something that needs to be decided between the three of you.
However, I'd strongly advise that after you've had the talk, that you put in place a very rigorous project plan for your next tasks with a strict timeline. Often, this situation ends up just repeating itself as your colleague says 'oh I'll find more time' or your advisor says they'll slacken off but not much happens, so a rigorous project plan helps highlight if the talk has worked or not.

Thank you. Will sit and talk about this and see what will come up.

I've also struggled with this issue. What works for me is working on multiple projects, in this way I don't do the work my partner is supposed to be doing.


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Can I use a section of my thesis to "soap-box" about a meta-issue regarding research?
I'm a big believer in FOSS (Free Open Source Software), and a physics graduate student. I believe a lot of current researchers are not aware of free solutions to problems that are usually encountered in a lab, and since money is often tight in academia I think it's important.
I also feel like my thesis is the only bit of work I'll do in academia that's truly mine; there's no journal with strict criteria on what I can include.
So do you think it's appropriate to include a section at the end of my thesis, essentially completely separate from the rest of it, containing my views about the state of software in science and solutions to problems? I'm worried that it might seem a bit preachy, but I think that's a problem that can be solved with tone/phrasing.

@henning, sorry should've done that. Someone's already edited it for me though. Thanks mhwombat

You might want to think about your likely audience reading your thesis. That is, a "lot of current researchers who are unaware" aren't likely to read your thesis. Those who are likely to read will notice  (or already know) the software that you have documented you use. And if people aren't noticing what software you used because your particular project only peripherally needed something special, then it seems a bit pointless to spend the energy writing an extra chapter  as opposed to supporting your views in other forums. (this applies to any 'soap-box' like topic that adds a chapter.)

You could just add a paragraph in the acknowledgements, where you just express your gratefulness to the developers of some of the FOSS projects that have been most useful to you while writing your thesis. That was quite common in my department.

A thesis in the sciences should not be about your views. Write a blog post or a letter to the editor.

+1 for "write a blog post": spread the good news by using free softwares, writing tutorials, helping other on-line and IRL, contribute to existing projects, etc. It will have more impact and will be more appropriate. If that makes you feel better, write your thoughts as a section of your thesis, but remove it from your thesis, and publish it on Arvix or such, it will have more impact and will be perceived as what it is: an independent piece of advises for the other researchers, and not actual research.

BTW, there are lots of unanswered questions around there : https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/search?q=physics , cf. also https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/scientific-computing

Can you frame it as acknowledgement? "The author wants to acknowledge the efforts put into free software by volunteers that was used to process data for this thesis, especially the authors of software X,Y and Z for their usefulness in A, B and C processing. The author also wants to acknowledge that this thesis would not have been possible without free software and thus the usefulness of free software for the academic community in general". Its short, to the point and as non-preachy as it gets, and fits into an "acknowledgements" section of the thesis (the wording is open for debate ofc).

Seems like any publication you put out demonstrating the virtues of your preferred tools can help to grow their reputation.  Also, your abstract can note that only freely available open source tools are used, as that is useful information for readers (since it means that they can acquire the tools necessary to replicate your work at no cost).  However, going beyond that and pushing for the exclusive use of such tools can come off as chauvinistic.

After more than 40 years of Free Software, it seems rather arrogant of you to believe that everyone else is ignorant of it. There can be good reasons to use it. There can be good reasons not to use it as well. Pontificating on it in your thesis really won't sway anybody's opinion.

Somewhat to my surprise, I find that I do end up reading people's PhD theses, far more often than the "no-one's going to read this" picture tends to imply. I read them for the technical content, though - if I did find such an appendix, I would be very unlikely to read it.

You could write a soap-box paper and publish it to arXiv.  It's been done before.

This post you just made is "truly yours" and has reached a wider audience than your thesis ever will. That should be enough for you :)

Use whichever software you fancy, and give everyone else a goddamn break.

Don't ask us,.  Ask your advisor.

You're an advocate of FOSS, but you don't know that the "F" doesn't mean "free" as in money?

What about an epilogue before the introduction chapter?

@Jon Custer I'm making no assumptions, and I'm not saying "everyone" else is ignorant of it. But most people I've met in 8 years in academia are unaware of this issue.

@KennethK. I do know what the F stands for.

@CapeCode Some software costs budget-stretched labs an awful lot of money, when there are plentiful free alternatives.

I think this is a fairly bad idea, for the following reasons:

It's largely shouting in the woods. Let's face it, while you may feel that your thesis is the only piece of work that's "truly yours", it will likely also be the least-read piece of your career. More to the point, your (presumed) target audience (young physicists in other departments) are very unlikely to ever come across your statement. How many PhD dissertations of people you don't know personally have you read to the end?
It has a non-zero chance of annoying somebody in your committee. Again, a physics thesis nowadays is mostly there to appease your committee (as few to none outside of the committee will ever read it), so a section that does not contribute to or actively hurts this goal seems like a bad idea. And I would argue that there is a real danger that somebody in your committee is not thrilled about the unconventional political statement in your thesis, as:
You may be unable to write it in a way that it does not come across as preachy. I think the pure existence of such a section will be perceived preachy, so no matter how you phrase it, it may always be perceived as such.

So if your thesis (and formal papers, obviously) are bad places to communicate your opinion on science politics, how can you communicate these matters? Most people I know with strong opinions on political matters of science (be they about career models for young scientists, open access, reproducibility, ...) tend to primarily communicate their thoughts over various social media (blogs, Twitter, Facebook), with the occasional invited opinion piece on the topic in a journal or magazine editorial. Every now and then, they are also invited to talk about the issues they care about in seminars or as invited speakers in conferences. Presumably, in some cases, they have just been invited in general and have decided on their own that politics is what they are going to talk about. This strategy reaches substantially more people (even if your blog entry never jumps across 100 views, that's probably still more than your thesis will get in the next 50 years), and from a blog or Facebook entry, people expect opinionated content, so there is much less reason to think less of you (unless they vehemently disagree with your opinion, but in this case no way of communicating your thoughts will help).

I read random theses on interesting topics from people I know nothing about.  It's sad to see that apparently so few people do :(

What if OP includes a sentence or two in the methodology section saying something like "all software used to process our data is open source.  The source code is available at..."?

@thedarkwanderer: How do you even come across these? I don't think I've ever read any thesis except when it was cited somewhere else or someone else suggested that I read it. And even then sometimes I simply failed to find a copy online. Once I think I accidentally found a thesis via a search engine, while doing some background check for my own research, but that seems rare...

@tomasz I live near a University with a library.  The library stores paper copies of PhD and Master's thesis of its past students in print.  Sometimes when I'm looking for a book on something, something in the PhD library will  pop up in the catalog and I will go read it.  Otherwise just random postings online (but you are correct that theses are not easily searchable/findable online the same way journals are)

@tomasz whenever I try to get a feel for a topic that's pretty new to me I like to read introductions and lit reviews from relatively recent theses if they pop up in a search engine

@tomasz When looking at a new topic I find a well-written thesis very helpful, indeed I actively seek out those published by key groups of the new field. They assume less prior knowledge and so for the "newbie" are usually easier to follow and often contain lots of extra  information which does not find its way into the final papers for various reasons. Very useful for the less intelligent people like me!

The purpose of a thesis is to show that you can do independent research. Your advisor and your committee members will read your thesis to see if you achieved that goal. Anything in the thesis that does not help them determine that, wastes their time (not too much, as they will probably just skip it, but still it risks annoying people whom you don't want to annoy). Lets be honest, those are the only people who are really going to read your thesis. So you can expect virtually no gain from doing so, as you are not going to reach anyone who might be interested in what you have to say about FOSS, and there is a very real potential of harm to your thesis from doing so.

I agree with the other answers that it is a bad idea to include a completely separate 'soap-box' chapter of your thesis which is dedicated to your personal political views of FOSS. The key issue is that you are not adding anything that substantiates your thesis. However, I think that if FOSS has legitimately played a substantial role your research project, then there are ways in which you can communicate your point without jeopardizing the integrity of your thesis.

Demonstrate the utility: Rather than write an entire chapter, simply demonstrate the utility (point below relevant) of the software in your project. Show your examiners (and any future readers) how you used the software to meet your research goals. 'Do' rather than 'say'.
Reference the software: If you are using open source R or Python packages, consider giving credit by referencing the FOSS software that you used (e.g. R example, Python example). The benefit here is that you can tactfully demonstrate the usage of the software, and avoid coming across as just "talking the talk".
Acknowledgements: A simple paragraph in your acknowledgements may give you a sense of fulfilment. Not to suggest it's the norm, but I have read several theses in which the student gives thanks to their God and this has not impacted the success of their work. A FOSS paragraph doesn't seem any less appropriate.

I was faced with a similar issue in my thesis, but concerning  reproducible research. After consulting my advisers, we came to the conclusion that the fact my entire thesis was entirely reproducible was more than a mere political statement. In fact, many of my research questions, future directions, and implications were centred around this. The key point here is that it wasn't included as a political statement, but to better communicate the research project.

Isn't there literature that you can cite that can turn this into a scholarly argument, rather than a "soap box" moment? Also, you can put whatever you want in your thesis, but your committee and/or chair need to approve it, so you should discuss with him or her before you go on a tangent.
It seems that using outlets with larger audiences would be helpful, such as a journal article, conference presentation, or other media.

My suggestion: Instead of putting that in your thesis, write a paper on this issue - a social commentary paper more than a research paper, even if it involves Physics research - and try pitching it to:

Professional journals as an opinion column / not-main-matter content.
Semi-professional/popular publications which professional societies of physicists issue
Some of the conferences you usually submit to - but not in the normal tracks for papers; talk to the organizers and ask for an opportunity to hold a panel discussion on this matter. Or perhaps even suggest a "methodology" session.
Some publication dealing with physics research, i.e. with academia and what happens within it. This may be more challenging and it's not clear what the readership would be but it might still be relevant.

If open source software helped you in your research, write it into the acknowledgement of your thesis. You feel grateful to the contributors, so that's the genuine place where to mention it.
In the main thesis, it is likely off-topic, even if you add some extra section for "FOSS advertising". Also, the acknowledgement will be probably the second most read part of your thesis at all, apart form the abstract.

If it isn't actually part of your thesis target point, you will rightfully be marked down for (1) diverging unnecessarily, and (2) putting unsupported personal opinion in an academic thesis.
You want to do what you say, ask nicely if you can do a vanity publication of your thesis and include it there.

I think as many have said here, there might be objections which wouldn't have been there if you hadn't included the "soap box". I would suggest becoming well settled in academia first (gain tenure etc.) and then one day on your own home-page have a section about your personal views on FOSS. This would mean that people who would want to reach out to you and actually follow your views (future students) would get to read them.

Why does OP need to wait to get tenure before starting to soapbox? The implication that only tenured professors have interesting things to say or should be listened to is obviously false and quite offensive. I have seen many times graduate students discussing interesting things on their personal web pages or blogs, and would hate to be deprived of such content in the future because of bad advice like that offered in this answer. So I would encourage OP to use such platforms for any kind of soapboxing/activism that they think is worth sharing with the world.


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NEAR/n or W/n operators returning irrelevant results
I'm trying to conduct a systematic review. Unfortunately one of the necessary search terms is "data". I have tried constructing my terms so that any single mention of "data" without the other relevant key words shouldn't be included, however I'm still getting articles returned because they have "data" in the abstract. Does anyone have any advice? Relevant portion of my search is below:
((Missing NEAR/2 data) OR (Sampled NEAR/2 data) OR (Imperfect NEAR/2 data) OR (Unknown NEAR/2 data) OR ("Partially observed" NEAR/2 data))
Review is being conducted on WoS and Scopus
Thanks :)

Time to go have a talk with your friendly local research librarian who will be of tremendous help.

It seems that you are hitting against some limitations of keyword searches, but that could be seen as a good thing because keyword searches should not be the primary strategy for literature searches. Keyword searches are often (rightly) the first step of the search process. However, we must realize that no matter how carefully we craft our keywords, such searches will necessary miss many important articles.
I propose the following search procedure that should help you find what you're looking for.
First, you need to adopt a recursive approach for the keyword search. So, you could begin by searching directly for your desired keywords without worrying that you will miss some articles. So, based on your sample string above, you can begin with something like this:
"missing data" OR "sampled data" OR "imperfect data" OR "unknown data" OR "partially observed data"

Suppose, as an example, this comes up with 100 results. Read the abstracts and filter to the articles that are truly relevant for your purpose. Suppose you have 50. Examine the full text of these articles; suppose you find that only 20 are truly pertinent. Then you can start reading these 20.
As you read these pertinent articles, pay attention to other synonyms of "missing data" that they might have. Suppose, for example, you find that some of them refer to terms like "missing at random" or "missing not at random". After reading these articles and collecting the synonyms, you should go back and do another round of searching with these new keywords. Again, filter abstracts, find the new pertinent articles, read them and gather any new synonyms. After a few rounds of this, let's say that you have identified 30 articles that your keyword searching can find for you. Now you're ready for round two.
The second major type of searching is backward- and forward-citation searching. In both cases, you start with the articles that you have found that are really exactly what you are looking for. Let's suppose that out of the 30 articles from your keyword searching, only 10 are perfectly what you want. You will carry out the following steps for each of these 10. (In principle, you could do it for all 30, but then the procedure gets really tedious and might not add that much.)
First the backward citation search. For a pertinent article, read the titles of all the articles in the cited references list. Take note of any title that seems interesting. Then look up all such interesting titles, read their abstracts, and then collect those that are relevant for full-text reading. When you find any that is indeed pertinent, you do the same thing with it: read the references list, identify interesting articles and look them up. You should keep on doing this until you find no further interesting articles that you have not already included. This procedure is called a backward citation search because all such articles that you find are published backwards in time relative to each article that you are focusing on.
Next, for each truly pertinent article, you should also do a forward citation search. For this, search for the article in Google Scholar. Right underneath the article, you should see a tiny link that says something like "Cited by X" where "X" is the number of articles that have cited that article. Click on that link and then Google Scholar will list for you all the articles that have cited that article. Browse through those titles (at least the first 30 if there are too many). If any title looks interesting, then add it to your list of articles to examine abstracts, full text, etc. This procedure is called a forward citation search because all articles that you find are published forwards in time (that is, later than) relative to the focal article of interest.
Whenever you identify a new article that is truly right-smack on your topic of interest, you should carry out a full backwards and forwards citation search on it. If you follow this procedure, you will likely find several additional articles that your keyword search had not identified.
Hopefully, a more thorough search procedure like this might meet your needs.


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Can I add a preprint directly to OSF even though it is already published on OSF?
So basically, I have this paper my team and I wrote for a data challenge. It's published, and available as a project on Open Science Framework (OSF). However, it doesn't show up on Google Scholar, and after doing some research, I saw that preprints submitted to OSF directly will get indexed by Google Scholar. Note: I cannot add the paper manually to Google Scholar as I have no prior published papers.
Is it acceptable to submit the paper as a preprint to OSF, even though it's already on OSF as a part of an overarching project (with a DOI and everything)? Let me know if any extra information is needed.

Earlier this month

I have never uploaded anything to OSF myself, but since the "Upload a preprint" instructions mentions a way to upload the preprint PDF file from an existing project, I would assume the OSF finds the practice acceptable, at least under some conditions (which they don't seem to spell out). I would guess it's acceptable for a preprint that's a component of an overarching project, but it's probably worth double-checking with someone more familiar with OSF, or their support.
Even after reading the FAQ I am unclear on whether Google Scholar tends to index projects or not. If I were in your shoes, I would take @leonos' advice of waiting a few weeks to give them a chance to do it. If I have found the right repository, it was apparently only made public five days ago, and Google Scholar often takes longer than that to index preprints and articles.


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If my research is addiction related, can I tell the professor I have first hand experience?
I’m an undergraduate doing research in the bioinformatics department, and we are researching drug addiction. We are also attempting to incorporate the psychology cooccurrences (i.e. suicide ideation, anxiety, depression)  of addiction. Personally I have not experienced drug addiction, but I am very familiar with two different addictions (one ongoing) and the cooccurrences mentioned above.
A benefit of this has been that my first paper and project was very well received by the professor because I understood the subtleties of the topic. However, this also means I am mentally unhealthy.
I have always considered telling the professor about this, but I don’t know if this would be encouraged/acceptable, and if I would still be allowed to stay in this research area.
Any input is appreciated, thank you!

Why exactly do you feel that it would be helpful/relevant/important for the professor to know this?

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/72217/is-it-ok-for-an-applied-mathematician-to-research-a-topic-that-she-has-personal

@Mowgli because sometimes I feel like I’m pulling “facts” out of the air lol (because no citation), where actually the “fact” came from experience and interaction with people similar to me. For example if I get asked, “why did you choose this as the next step?”

The logical flow in the second paragraph is not apparent to me. If the situation is that you have mental health issues as a consequence of dealing with addiction in loved ones, then I think that phrasing is clearer. As a follow-on, it's not clear whether "this" in the third paragraph is your experience with addicts, your mental health issues, or both.

@chy00 If it is a research project, I don't think your personal experience is a valid justification for scientific choices. Every person is different and, as an individual, you are certainly not representative enough to assume that if something applies to you, then it also applies to the rest of the people affected by whatever issue you're working on; I think your personal connection to the issue is not relevant to the way you should build your research project. If you have no citation: either find one, or work on building a dataset to justify your initial claims (that's research!)

Okay, first off, I do not think you should mention it unless you think it negatively affects your work. But then I think you should absolutely do it.
You do have to be critical about this. I don't know your situation. But if you are currently suffering from an addiction, you might be prone to some of the same psychological defense mechanisms. And this might give you a bias in your work. But it might also be the complete opposite. So... just be critical and honest with yourself. If it negatively affects your work, you should not be doing this kind of research.
Also think about the worst case scenario: What if someone else finds out? Would that be a career destroying situation? If that is a chance, then it is always better to admit it yourself before someone else can. It will help you stay in control of the narrative, and people will not hear about it from rumours.
Your second point was that your personal experiences have actually helped you in some way. That might be true because you do not shrug something off as a minor issue if you personally know that it can be a big problem, etc. However, your personal experience is NOT science. You write in a comment that you "feel like [you are] pulling “facts” out of the air lol (because no citation), where actually the “fact” came from experience and interaction with people similar to me". Don't do that! Your scientific work cannot rely on anecdotes. You either have to cite a reference or you have to apply the scientific method, make people fill out questionnaires, write a study and evaluate its significance, and so on.
If it feels like you are pulling facts out of thin air, then you are not doing good scientific work, no matter how true those facts are. You have to have some kind of measure of the truth of your facts. Personal experience is not a valid one. So if you think about using your personal experience to help you in your research, do so by using it to find areas that still need to be considered, but then consider those areas with the scientific method.
Finally, I want to emphasize that it is not a good idea to self-medicate or to power through an addiction, just in case that is something you're doing. Whatever your situation might be, I hope you deal with it by getting some professional help.

Yes you can.  Even may.
The question is should you?  What is the motivation? To brag your worldliness?  To earn pity?
I advise no.  Concentrate on learning the topic academically.  Let your personal experience enrich your learning but more as deep background.


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Acceptance to online publication – Why is everybody I know faster than average?
I recently attended an editiorial panel at a conference where editors of several journals in my field advertised their journals and to this purpose listed, amongst others, the time difference between editorial acceptance and online publication.
While the averages they gave were about one month, I cannot recall any paper of mine or my colleagues in this field for which this took longer than two weeks. We get the proofs within a week, send our corrections within one or two days and the paper is published a few days later. Add two days for the rare case that another round of proofs is required.
I can guess several reasons for this discrepancy myself such as:

authors not returning the proofs in time
bad figures that require reworking
bad English that requires a lot of copy editing
a strongly skewed distribution of acceptance-to-publication times (but then journals would probably use the median and not the average for this statistics)

However, I am interested in something more substantiated than a guess and thus in any statistics or hands-on experiences from a copy editor or similar as to what usually makes up for the time between acceptance and online publication, which in turn could explain these discrepancies.

Did you ask the editors at the panel?

@StephanKolassa: Unfortunately not. But I probably will on the next occasion.

You get the proofs in a week?! I've had gaps of months before proofs arrive (and no, nothing is wrong with the latex I send - the proofs often contain significantly more errors).

From personal experience, I can say that while the usual time from acceptance to online publication may be quite short (for a good journal), there are occasionally situations where the process takes a lot longer.  This probably pushes the mean time interval up quite a bit.
Over the last five years, I have published a couple dozen papers, and for most of them, the time lag between their acceptance and their appearance online was just two or three weeks.  However, for three of those papers, the time was quite a bit longer--a matter of months instead.
The reasons for this varied.  In one case, the copy editor raised some questions about my wording, and the paper passed back and forth between me and the journal several times before both sides were satisfied with the way the terminology was used.  For the second paper, the proof contained a serious error in one of the equations, which took three more rounds of proofing to get corrected.  (Every time I explained what needed to be changed, they messed up something else; it was frustrating.)  In each of these cases, it would take a couple weeks for the editorial staff to make the changes, generate a new proof, and send it to me.  When you need to go through four proofs, that can stretch the process to two months.
I don't know why the third paper took three or four times as long as usual; it just did.  Presumably there was some difficulty at the editorial office, but I never pressed them to find out what it was.
I try very hard to submit very carefully composed and edited manuscripts, and I encountered a few slow-moving manuscripts.  I know there are a fair number of people whose manuscripts routinely need quite a bit more editing work than mine.  Mostly, I think this is because the authors are not native English speakers.  However, whatever the reason, there are going to be a nontrivial number of papers that need to be sent back and forth between the authors and the editorial office multiple times.  These give the distribution of time delays a long tail and probably stretch the mean waiting time out significantly.

I had a similar experience when submitting manuscripts that contained several equations to journals that do not normally handle many equations. I had to go through several rounds of corrections as they kept messing it up.

The most obvious explanation is that if the "one month" estimate reported is a mean rather than a median, it could be heavily influenced by a few large values. In other words, it seems quite reasonable that there would be a skewed distribution of times to publication: most around 2 weeks, a few that because of various problems take 6 months. As a result, you'd see a mean time of around a month even though in your experience the large majority of your observations would be around 2 weeks.

I was presenting this as a guess in my question already and am explicitly looking for something beyond guesses. Do you have anything to back this up?

@Wrzlprmft What exactly are you looking for? A paper on the distribution of the acceptance times of other papers? https://xkcd.com/1447/

Good to hear the average time from acceptance to on-line publication. I didnt know that it is about 1 month. I have now been waiting 2 months since acceptance, and am getting a bit desperate.

I have been a copy editor for several academic journals at two different publishers. In my experience, things that affect the time from accept to publication include:

Editors asking for additional data (e.g., tables, figures) to be supplied at the author proof stage, which then need to be incorporated into the accepted paper.
Editors asking for substantive edits and reorganization of a paper post-accept by the copy editor because they don’t want to go through another round of revisions with the author, as it will affect the time from submission to accept (basically, they want to shift blame for the delay from pre- to post-accept).
Papers being “batched” for issues by the editorial office, leading to an uneven and unpredictable workflow for the copy editors and typesetters
The publication model (e.g., continuous publication, ePub ahead of print, number of issues in a volume).
The length and complexity of the paper (e.g., systematic reviews and meta-analyses, in my experience, can take a couple of days to copy-edit, particularly if one is also responsible for editing/formatting the tables and forest plots, whereas a narrative review or technical note may take an afternoon).

Thank you for your answer. Your points only seem to explain why the publication process may take long and vary, but not why I and my colleagues experience publication times that are systematically lower than the published averages. Can you [edit] it to elaborate? Anyway: Welcome to Academia SE.


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Viewing paper abstracts from Google Scholar
In a researcher's page in Google Scholar we can click the paper title to see its abstract.
Is it possible to do this from standard Google Scholar search?
(I'm starting to think this is just not possible, but maybe I'm doing something wrong.)
No abstract in standard search

Abstract example as seen from researcher page (by clicking paper title)

Update: To clarify, I meant viewing the abstract without leaving Google Scholar. (Microsoft Academic, for example, shows the abstract within the website.)

maybe there is a greasemonkey browser script to show if the abstract is in the source code of the URL

In Google Scholar's mobile version, clicking on the title of the search result reveals the abstract. In order to show the mobile version on a desktop computer, you have to resort to hacks, such as a mobile browser plugin for your browser or enabling mobile view in the developer tools of e.g. Chrome or Firefox.

That does indeed reveal the abstract, but also redirects to the journal's website. I think OP is looking for a way to view Google Scholar's abstract page. (The downvote isn't mine, btw.)

@Anyon Right, thanks. I tested this one the mobile version. Turns out this might work as a "hack", and I edited this into the answer.

Anyon's comment is correct. I'm upvoting because the hack is useful but I was hoping to get the behavior in the desktop version of the website.


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Entering conference outputs in Pure (Elsevier)
Many universities (including my own) use Pure (an Elsevier product for institutional research information management) to report research outputs.
My question is about entering conference outputs in Pure.
In particular, suppose I submit an abstract to a conference and it is accepted for a poster or a presentation (not a paper in the proceedings).
When entering this in Pure there are 3 options in my university:

Contribution to a conference/Abstract

Contribution to a conference/Poster

Contribution to a conference/Presentation

My university presents no guidance on which I should use.
Given that the abstract had been accepted with a resulting poster or poster/presentation, which should I use:
Abstract or poster/presentation
Is there a difference? And under what circumstances should I choose each of these categories?

Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it's hard to tell exactly what you're asking.

Assuming that you enter it after decisions have been made or that you have the chance to update an earlier entry, I think it should be entered (or updated) as it was accepted, not as it was submitted.
Other possibilities are misleading, even dishonest. If you submit a presentation and have a poster (only) accepted, then entering it as a presentation is false. The opposite case is true as well.
Your "contribution" is what was accepted.

Intuitively, it would be Contribution to a conference/Abstract.
What you submitted was an abstract, and not a paper for presentation.
Given the scenario, all three are possibilities. I'll nonetheless go with Contribution to a conference/Abstract (provided the abstract is published as the conference output whether as program book or conf website).
However, if I were to go with Aalto's guidance for ACRIS, I might probably opt for poster if the end outcome is the poster, and presentation if it were presented. Likewise TU/e Pure guidance or Groningen guide.

My "intuition" is the opposite. Enter it as it was accepted, not as it was submitted.


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What is the meaning of the "eye symbol" on a corrected proof?
I have submitted my corrections of the proofs to a Wiley journal, in the corrections, I have corrected a typo in one of the equations, the typo was not made by the typesetter but rather by me, in the last version of the accepted paper. After they have sent me a link summarizing the made corrections, while scrolling though the proof, I found the following symbol (see attached image).

I'm worried that the "eye symbol" means that the paper needs verification from the editor, before making the change, since this symbol was only on the change that I have made on the equation. Is anyone familiar with the symbol?

I don't know specifically about Wiley, but the eye symbol is frequently used as a proofreading or copy-editor mark to direct an author to look at a section of the paper and to (re)check that it is correct. For example, see here near the text: "all reviews will be marked with ..."


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Advice on choosing a pre-print server (Social Sciences)
I have submitted an article to a journal for peer review. The journal allows the manuscript to be submitted to a non-commercial pre-print server at any time. I am new to publishing, and am wondering what I should take into consideration before choosing a pre-print server? For additional information I am working within the social sciences, are there any servers you would recommend for this? What is the general attitude towards places like SSRN who have been bought out by Elsevier?

Where do other people in your field post pre-prints/where do you go to read them?

I would recommend SocArXiv given its (non-profit) organisation's yearlong commitment to openness. In addition, it offers high quality metadata via CrossRef (accessible through DOIs assigned by SocArXiv).
SSRN is rather questionable due to its link to Elsevier. Until recently, for instance, it required users to register an account and login in order to access preprints -- a rather frustrating user experience which diminishes the practical notion of "openness". In addition, Elsevier is suspected of collecting personal data in an ample manner. Finally, SSRN preprints are not assigned DOIs.


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How to avoid an accumulation of manuscripts "under review"?
As described in the title, imagine a scenario where one has multiple prepared manuscripts for submission. Due to external factors (slow review speed, unavailability of reviewers, technical issues, ...) a decision is delayed on the first submission. The same happens to the second submission which is rejected in the course of the review. Nonetheless, one manages to finish two other manuscripts. In this situation, one ends up with 4 manuscripts submitted and under review at the same time.
How can one avoid such situations? What if one receives multiple review decisions within a short time frame?  Intentionally delaying publication does not seem a suitable solution to me.

Why do you (apparently) think having multiple manuscripts 'under review' is a bad thing? What is the problem you are actually trying to avoid?

@ avid Thank you for your question. Scenarios like "multiple reviews coming back at the same time - overwhelming an author" or "unpredictability of review report timing which does not allow for proper timing of vacation". In general, scenarios where the submissions control you rather than you control the submission.

This answer to a related question is worth considering.

@Dr.M You know you can ask for more time to complete revisions, right?

@avid - in a fast moving field, not having previous papers published to refer to may well slow things down some.

"Nonetheless, one manages to finish two other manuscripts." Hopefully sending them to different venues.

Your title question is: How to avoid an accumulation of manuscripts "under review"?
My first response is: "What's the problem?" You're being productive. I think I have 4 manuscripts under review. Depending upon your field, this happens more than you think.
To answer your questions in the body of your post:
How can one avoid such situations?
Depending upon how long reviews take in your field, this may or may not be a problem.
What if one receives multiple review decisions within a short time frame?
Address them as they come in. Most journals in my field give ~30 days for minor revisions and 60 to 90+ for major.
So, triage your revisions.
Also, I have asked for extensions and never had any journal say no.
Usually, the time for revisions corresponds to the amount of work.
Intentionally delaying publication does not seem a suitable solution to me.
I agree.
One last tip: Write well written papers so you do not get a lot of minor revisions and the reviewers will also have fewer points of confusion.

Indeed, sweat blood over writing a clear and concise paper. Relax when the straight 'Accept' comes back.

That's the correct answer. Address reviews when they come in, and if you really are in the situation that three come back in the same time then ask for an extension for one or two of them.

This answer seems to somewhat normalize the Stockholm syndrome associated with the pathology of review periods.

That's how this life works. I have multiple manuscripts I'm working on, many of which will all simultaneously be out for review. And so what? Nothing wrong with it at all, if being a researcher is what you do. As others have said, just means you've been productive


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Strategies to live in the present moment as an engaged academic?
Academia is full of challenges. Teaching, performing research, securing funding, (insert more tasks), ...
Many of these task require farsightedness and strong organizational skills. Oftentimes, one must plan months (or even years) ahead when it comes to large grants.
For me, this often results in constant thinking about academic schedule alignment - even in my free time. For example, I read a sign on the road or a newspaper headline and I think about a related topic at work with a deadline upcoming. For example, I see a headline about how good nutrition helps with cardiovascular disease and I think about an upcoming grant. I go to the supermarket and see a label that says "high fiber" and I automatically think about an ongoing study on fiber and obstipation.
This bothers more as I want to live more in the current moment and I want to reduce thinking about future job-related events. What organizational strategies and practical hints would you recommend to achieve this goal?

This seems like a question for a counsellor or even a psychiatrist.

The honest realizations that: my time is finite, my health can change in an instant and so can my whole world, my research while interesting to me and to a community of my peers is ultimately not world changing, my contributions to my University while important in the moment will be forgotten shortly after I leave, the fact that my children are aging faster than I can fully appreciate the developmental stages they are at. Everyone over-inflates the importance of what they do, and academics are probably the most guilty of it. So my advice - honest introspection.

I guess I'm just a nerd - I love seeing everyday stuff and wondering about it all. Perhaps not at the level of seeing grant proposals in everything - that sounds like work-related anxiety over funding. Perhaps rethinking as 'that is so cool', not 'I need the next grant'.

Dear Buffy, I slightly edited the question to clarify that I do not refer to psychological advice but rather techniques and strategies that may help to distinguish clearer between professional and private life.

Perhaps intrapersonal.stackexchange.com?

@R1NaNo As a developmental, I should push back against the idea of "stages" - it's a continuum

@AzorAhai-him- well maybe if I wasn't so disengaged with my family due to work stress I would have noticed it was a continuum!

@AzorAhai-him- - there is an _inter_personal stackexchange site, the closest to intrapersonal might be https://psychology.stackexchange.com/

@JonCuster Yes, that was the joke ;)

At some certain point, for example, if you have tenure (for what that's worth), it might be time to (try to) stop thinking about pleasing higher-ups, both within your department, and in the hierarchy of your university. Yes, if you're in a discipline that absolutely relies on external funding to be able to do anything, that's a rough spot. Sorry.
Nevertheless... :) ... if that's possible... :) ... think about The Ideal.
Improving collective human understanding, that kind of thing. Yes, quite a distance away from current public/political/whatever discourse. But, yes, try to stay focused on actual ... "facts". :)
One gauge is to think in terms of what you'll want to think about what you did in this moment... twenty years later. That kind of thing.