text:
Is it normal for a professor to schedule a late night exam?
I'm in my first year of a PhD program in the U.S. One of my professors scheduled a midterm exam for 8:30-11pm at night, and I think it will be very hard for me to stay up that late for an exam. I'm already working hard between my classes, TA responsibilities, and research. I sometimes go bed as early as 9pm because I'm exhausted (which was not normal for me before entering the program).
I emailed the professor soon after the exam was announced, but he is unwilling to change the time, since there's no other 2.5-hour time slot where all the students in the class are free (the class period is only an hour).
My question is whether this is normal. If I want to continue in academia, do I just have to learn to deal with this kind of scheduling, or is this an extreme case?
Edit:
To clarify, this is a graduate course that I am taking.

"Reasonable" and "normal" are two quite different things. Why does an exam have to be 2.5 hours? Why does it need to be in one sitting? There are alternatives.

"Normal" is more what I'm wondering about. Also, this is a class I am taking, not a class for which I am the TA. I edited my question accordingly.

It’s definitely not normal, and you can reasonably expect that this is probably going to be a one-time event in your course work. Hence, even if it’s not ideal for you, just shrug your shoulders and get through it.

Why is he giving a test that isn't during your regularly scheduled time at all?

you haven't said what time of day the class usually meets. But I would have thought an exam time like that would also be unreasonable for people with young children and all sorts of other groups. How does he even know that that's the only time in common, did he ask you all?

What country/field is this?  It isn't usual in settings I know, but maybe there are some places where it is more common?

I would start addressing why you are exhausted by 9pm every day. (Medical issue? Getting up too early?) While this is an unusual time slot for an exam, you may find your preferred schedule causing other problems later.

Side note: Suggest you get extra sleep in the days before the exam and try breakfast shakes (loaded with vitamins) too. Helps.

Whatever else may be said about whether it's normal or reasonable, I'd say it's an extreme case.

I wouldn't have any problems with it, but I'm a late night person. What I did struggle with was a boss who liked calling 7am meetings.

Universities that I have attended have always had specific policies for exam times. Generally, these policies required midterm exams to occur during normal class periods, and set specific final exam windows according to the time of the class. This helped to avoid conflicts, because everyone with, say, a lecture at 10 am on Mondays would have their final exam on, say, Day 4 of Finals Week between 2-5pm (some special cases always did result in conflict anyways, but these were dealt with on a case-by-case basis).
Typically, specific night classes would have nighttime exams, as well - the assumption was that at least a portion of students in a night class were taking those night classes to allow them to keep daytime commitments like a full-time job.
An 8:30pm-11pm exam time for a class that meets in the evening seems late to me, but could be justified as necessary to avoid other conflicts. For a class that normally meets in the daytime, yeah, if it were me personally I'd be finding a way to cope during more normal hours: splitting the exam into two parts, perhaps, or changing to a "take-home" format.
However, what matters isn't really my opinion nor yours, but the policies of your institution. What do those policies say about exam times?
As a PhD student, I would try not to worry about this sort of thing too much. Classes are a tiny part of the PhD experience, and I assume you'll be done or mostly done with them after a year or two. Your PhD classroom grades won't really matter too much for you unless they are below the "passing" standard - you'll be assessed for future positions based on your research output instead. Personally, I am very much a night person, but there have been a handful of times when I nonetheless had to crawl out of bed with some numbers on the clock that are horrible for me, like 6 am (even 8 am is pretty tough for me). Scheduling is difficult, and occasionally everyone will get pushed out of their preferred timing for one reason or another.

At 3 different institutions, I've never seen policies about midterm exam times.

I've been in 3 different institutions too, and the only policy for Ph.D. exams --- giving that the number of students is small, and that exams at that level are few and well apart --- is "try to agree on a spot that's not too bad for everybody" :-). Anyway, I had to schedule exams  (not PhD) at those times during the pandemic, to accommodate people confined in different time zones.

@DanielR.Collins From the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities: https://policy.umn.edu/education/exam University of Wisconsin-Madison: https://registrar.wisc.edu/exampolicy/ U of M only allows midterms outside of normal class hours in special circumstances approved by the Dean and must accommodate conflicts and be published in the class schedule; UW requires posting in the class schedule and syllabus. The vast majority of (non-final) exams at both are in normal class times; most of the exceptions are to do simultaneous exams across multiple course sections.

@BryanKrause: Never doubted it was the case at some schools. And I can certainly see the utility of having such a policy now. But I doubt it's so widely in place as to help the OP.

@DanielR.Collins Perhaps; in my limited experience these restrictions are ubiquitous; apparently in yours they are not. https://catalog.purdue.edu/content.php?catoid=9&navoid=10532 https://bulletin.stanford.edu/academic-policies/university-policies-and-statements#examinations https://catalog.upenn.edu/undergraduate/policies-procedures/course-exam/common-midterm-examinations/ So far, every pseudo-randomly chosen institution I've looked at has some sort of policy on this, at minimum requiring an early notification of students (e.g., before or during week 1) and procedures for alternate times.

It is common at many universities to have late exams if a class is taught several times in different sections at different times throughout the week, but the exam is common between the different sections. In those cases, you have to find (i) a common time that works for the students of all sections, (ii) one or a small number of rooms where you can accommodate everyone. For classes such as Engineering Calculus, Business Calculus, etc., that may have hundreds of students spread over several sections, that rules out every time slot other than evening ones, and so exams from 8-10pm are not uncommon.
In other words, what you describe does not at all surprise me. You will just have to deal with it. If you worry about staying up that late, take an afternoon nap.

Wow! I'm surprised by this. It would never be considered acceptable around here. What about people that caring responsbilities?

Yeah, this being acceptable is culturally specific to the US here.

Universities are not exactly flexible about teaching schedules during the day either. Being a student comes with sacrifices in flexibility, whether that is an 8am class or an 8pm exam: You just have to make it work.

@IanSudbery How would you solve the problem discussed in the answer then? It's also easy to argue that in many cases that a single class period (often <1 hr) simply isn't long enough for a good exam anyways which also makes an off-hours exam the most practical choice.

@aquirdturtle My university closes at 6 and no student facing activity can take place after that unless its a specific night class put on the the department of lifelong learning. Exams happen in exam halls during exam week (which are three times a year). The spaces are often gymnasiums, concert halls, etc. All other assessment is either home work or in class exercises. How would some who had to work evenings, or had kids to look after deal with late night exams? Plus what sane person is at the top of there game at 9pm.

@WolfgangBangerth you can know in advance that you will be excepted to be on campus 9-5, and set up your life around that. At least the consistency allows you to find a system that works.

@IanSudbery I can see how having 3 designated "exam weeks" could be nice in some ways but it also comes with clear downsides, including that exams are less spaced out, which sounds very stressful, and that it gives professors less freedom to design courses way they see fit.

@IanSudbery You know up front that if you take certain classes, that exams will be late at night. It's been that way for years or decades, every student you talk to will tell you about it, and it's on the syllabus. The dates for these exams are set before the semester begins. I recognize that it is maybe annoying to some, but you have many weeks to arrange for alternate work schedules or a babysitter for the two or three occasions over the course of a semester where this will happen.

This is not normal. Moreover, the professor’s explanation that he chose this time because it’s the only time when all the students are “free” is also illogical, since he clearly didn’t ask your opinion about whether you are “free” between 8:30-11 pm on the night he did schedule the exam for. If he had, it would have been completely proper for you to say you are not free during that time since you have another scheduled activity (sleep or some other late evening relaxation routine in this case, but the nature of the activity is none of his business). So, to my ears this sounds like an abuse of authority - maybe not the most egregious one I can think about, but nothing to be dismissive about, and one that would be taken seriously if it was raised at my own department, and other US departments I’m familiar with.
In view of this and of the professor’s resistance to persuasion, it would be completely reasonable for you to email the graduate program coordinator, express your concern, and ask them to intervene. It’s very possible that the professor’s approach violates specific departmental or institutional policies of which he is unaware. (Or maybe they’ll say he is acting within his rights and you need to respect that — that’s not a completely bad outcome either, at least you’ll know you tried and you’ll be no worse off than before.)
While I assume the professor is acting in good faith and out of reasonably good intentions motivated by a desire to solve a practical problem, it is not uncommon for professors to make incorrect assumptions about what sorts of measures are reasonable to take in pursuit of their ideas of how a class should be run. Sometimes a little gentle feedback from colleagues or a person with a bit of influence is all it takes to get your rights respected. Now seems like one of those times. Good luck!

The timing is most likely an issue of conflicts with other classes that students might be taking, which the professor could easily check without asking, and other hard conflicts like that.

@aquirdturtle perhaps. I don’t know what led the professor to make the incorrect assumption that he did, and don’t see why it should matter. Your explanation, if true, would not make the behavior more excusable.

I once scheduled an exam in the evening. But I did reschedule it after a student told me that she is not allowed to fly an airplane in the dark (she lived in the mountains and came to classes on her family airplane). I would not reschedule if a student just wanted to go to bed early.

Wow, may I ask what your university is? That sounds incredible!

@Make42: It was in California and the mountain range was Sierra Nevada. Several of my students came to the university by airplanes. Buy only one could not fly in the dark.

Coming to school via plane - incredible :-D! Well you guys seem to have space over there.

What is family airplane? Private jet? Are students rich?

@JimmyYang: It is an airplane which is owned by the family (parents) of the student. It must have been a Cessna or something similar, I did not ask. "Rich" is a relative notion. If you compare the price of a house in Sierra Nevada with the price of a house in a California city, the difference can buy you a Cessna or two.  I also had a student in California who had his own  private jet. He would not consider himself rich either.

Wow, it's really hard for me to believe that some people own planes...

@JimmyYang As I understand it (not being a pilot and not owning a plane, but having flown on a plane of this type once to a customer on his plane once - quite an experience), planes are not that expensive, relatively speaking. The costs of a pilot really add up though. So if you are a private pilot then this isn't so bad. If you had to actually pay a pilot for every time you flew to class, it would get very expensive very quickly. Which means flying within your limitations - I can imagine bad weather would mean any non-IFR-rated students don't show up!

bizarre - if they could afford fueling and amortized training for a private plane, even if the craft itself were free, they could surely afford a nearby hotel and transit - still, something to admire!

I used to have a course that was held entirely in the evening hours because the location was somewhere different than the other courses were (it required specialized lab equipment in a Chemistry room). Those classes were usually until 22:00 (10pm), thus the exam was as well. Was it inconvenient? Yes. A lot of inconvenient things happen in life. Is it normal? Well, not in that it happened every semester. We only had it for the single course. But for that specific course it was normal. Everyone who did that course, did it during late hours.
However, we were warned up front that this was going to be the case for this course. Proper communication up front would probably have made a difference here.


text:
Declining an industry job oppurtunity
I was recently forwarded a job opening for a company with which my PI has research ties.
The job role and function itself does not appeal to me. I am quite keen on applying for grad schools that are directed more towards my own interests and cannot take the time out to work at this place as well. I don’t want to jeopardize my relationship with my PI since I really like working with them, but I want to turn down this offer, respectfully.
I would truly appreciate how I can communicate this with them.
Thank you.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
How to handle reviewing a paper which I suspect has been generated by AI?
I am reviewing a paper from a fairly famous journal in computer science. I am mostly sure that the paper was generated by AI. The paper has many problems and deserves to be rejected on the merits. But it is difficult to prove that it was auto-generated: I couldn't find any appropriate free tool or website to check the whole paper, and this would be useless anyway if the text was paraphrased.
What should I do in this situation? Can I write my guess about this plagiarism and give reasons confidentially to the editor to decide himself? It seems like if I merely recommend rejection, the authors will not face any consequence for auto-generating nonsense and wasting everyone's time. But I am not sure whether it is ethical to mention my unproven (and likely unprovable) suspicions.
Details:

Many basic requirements of a scientific paper are missing: no hypothesis, only a basic mathematical foundation, no experimental results, and the organization is very strange. Even the citations seem unusual.

The authors have previous papers which show that they are totally familiar with the structure of a scientific paper and scientific language. However, one of their recent papers does seem to have many of the same problems as this paper.

Comments have been moved to chat; please do not continue the discussion here. Before posting a comment below this one, please review the purposes of comments. Comments that do not request clarification or suggest improvements usually belong as an answer, on [meta], or in [chat]. Comments continuing discussion may be removed.

m123: I have edited to greatly shorten this post. If I got any of the details wrong, you may fix them. But please avoid reverting to the super-long version; it's important to distill the question down to something concise and readable. I also removed your side-question about whether AI can learn from SE posts; you can make a separate post about that if necessary.

You seem to have sufficient reasons to reject the paper on its (de)merits, whether or not it was written by a bot.
You can certainly tell the editor that you are suspicious.
I doubt that the editor has software (free or otherwise) that could tell whether the paper was bot generated.
I wonder if the many citations are real. Chatbots are notably nonsensical in that realm. You could quickly check a few. Even if real they may be irrelevant.
Finally, LLMs can indeed scrape SE posts. Whether they could use that information to learn how to do better is unclear.
Edit in answer to  comments from the OP.
Just describe the mess you found when you tried to check the references. You do not need to prove anything.
It will not reflect badly on you if the editor disagrees with you (though it may reflect badly on the editor).

Thanks for your guide. Since the citations are dense at one section, they can be added manually. Although, some of them that I checked does not contain the cited quotes, their titles are apparently related. Additionally, some of the cited papers does not contain the title of the paper. They only contain the name of the author, the journal name, pp, and year. But, there are also some cited papers that contain the cited paragraph. (The passage is not coherent at all and the paragraphs do not follow any specific order, goal, or coherency. They are some independent paragraphs).

Can I tell my guess to editor based on my written evidence here? Does the format of citations support my point of view? If the editor disagrees with my guess, is it considered a negative point for me? (For example, I get considered to be unable to precisely decide about these plagiarisms)

@m123: I feel like you are way overthinking this.  Obviously it's a bad paper.  Briefly explain why it's a bad paper, click the "recommend reject" button, and move on with your life.  If you're going to devote this much time and attention to reviewing a paper, spend it on one that actually has a path to being published and benefiting the community in some way.  This one does not.

@Nate Eldredge: Yes, I am overthinking this. You know, I am thinking to the unethical part of the action of such authors. This time we can reject it because of its poor context. But what if it wasn't like that? should we ignore the immoral part and just judge the correctness of the results? without considering its authenticity? It seems that we can even publish the correct outputs of AI as long as useful to read, but even in this case I think it must contain the name of the used "AI" as the author, not others. If I share my suspicion, can it be useful to prevent such a thing in the future?

@Nate Eldredge: Or you advise me to reject the paper because of its poor content only? Do you advise me to mention my guess confidentially to the editor with some reasons?

@NateEldredge On one hand I agree that you shouldn't spend much time on it.  On the other hand, if somebody in academia is just generating papers to get cheap publications, I think the community should know about it.

I would leave this up to the editor.  In this day and age, when they get a report that a paper is nonsense, they should always consider the possibility of it being machine generated.  I don't think they need you to point it out.  In any case, the editor would have to judge it for themselves before taking any action.

@m123 Maybe in this case the whole paper was just ai. But you shouldn't assume this in general because it's not a binary - the best stuff coming out of AI right now is a combination of human/ai intelligences.  Even if all the words are ai written, there could be a large amount of behind the scenes prompt engineering. I would be shocked if in 10 years using ai to summarize human work into academic papers isn't commonplace, particularly because a lot of academic papers are poorly written. All tools can be used poorly or improperly, what matters is the results

"Whether they could use that information to learn how to do better is unclear." The answer to this is that they'll improve only by learning grammar and common word combinations from SE, same as any other source of text. The LLM won't actually comprehend any of what the answer is saying; if I write "GPT 4.0 really sucks at citation accuracy" it won't take away from that that it should improve on citations, it'll take away from that sentences with that structure sound natural. Training an LLM is just teaching it patterns, it doesn't do any "thinking" on what it's read (nor is it self-aware).

@Kimball we already know about poor paper writing (which may or may not be generated by bot) for cheap publications for quite some time (even before chatGPT) :)

I know this might be obvious, but you mentioned "LLM can indeed scrape", and I believe that it would be more correct to say, even if it's less short: "people that train or create dataset for training LLM can indeed scrape your post". A slightly related topic to that would be "automated agent", but most of the existing ones that use LLM are just using recursive prompting to create the illusion of "autonomous agent", but it's not gonna work as expected for a lot of reasons. Just Fyi :)

I read some of the comments as the OP shouldn't tell the editor anything at all about the paper being possibly AI-generated? My advice would instead be to let the editor know all of what you have found, and strongly suspect. This paper could be all sorts of things (an experiment, some sort of joke, or even something malicious by someone else than the stated authors), and I don't think one should hide this possibly very important information from the editor.

Between Conversational AI afficionados, the questions about the value of GPT-generated text (i.e., about copyright, ownership, merit, ethicality etc.) are hotly discussed, so you may not find a single value answer on this.
My take currently is this: GPTs are a tool like any other. They are not persons or entities and thus cannot, for example, have rights regarding ownership or authorship. So if a human uses a GPT to create large amounts of text, that does not really matter in itself. What matters is whether the results are fit for the job or not.
There is no really good way to automatically determine whether a given text has been created by a GPT or not, at least since the likes of ChatGPT 3.5+. The default, regular, text, has been tried in blind tests, and humans were not easily capable to tell. And you can, using your prompts, strongly influence the kind of wording the GPT creates, so even if we had a tool to recognize the default language of a well-known GPT, the author could trivially flavour the text so that it would be impossible.
In this case, you found out that the paper is, basically, a pile of junk. This information, worded more professionally, is what the editor is interested in. You do not have to guess which tools the author used to come up with his drivel. It should not matter which text editor, which data analysis tools, which search engine, or which GPT they used. If using a GPT makes part of their process easier or quicker, then so be it.
Whether the usage of the GPT has to be disclosed is something which probably varies as well. If it is used just as a fancy evolved text editor (for example, you could use it as a "thesaurus" to just find different wordings for you; or to rewrite your content so it contains less grammatical errors or easier language), then a journal might be fine with it; if it somehow had a much higher impact on the actual content (frankly, hard to imagine at this point of time) then it probably would need to be disclosed. This would be up to the individual journal to regulate.
N.B.: there are of course areas where the usage of a GPT has to be tightly watched (e.g. questions surrounding copyright, or using personal or otherwise sensitive/protected data in the prompts and thus at least possibly disclosing them to 3rd parties), but that is not  principally different from any other search engine and I'd say out of scope for this question. Copyright especially is an issue, in my estimation, that's more relevant to AI generated picture/movie material than text.
Regarding the question of whether us here talking about this could teach ChatGPT how to avoid this in the future... unlikely. It is always hard to predict the future, but that's just not how these GPTs work. ChatGPT's training is years old (and was so even when the hype started). Combining a GPTs massive training base with current text and events is the hot frontier of GPT development; but the more current info is usually handled in a very different manner than the base training, from a technical point of view.
If the developers/scientists of a GPT wanted to make their texts even harder to detect, they would not need our input here, but they would just work on their algorithms etc. directly (they know much more about how their software works in detail). They don't need to wait for the training of the next big GPT to somehow pick up on this StackEchange question. There is no intentionality within the statistic data that's fed into such a system, it's just thoughtless statistics on a scale incomprehensible to intuition.

I do think that the style of a technical journal article is very unlike 99% of what large language models are trained on. And how ChatGPT and the like sound are pretty jarring in a formal journal setting.

@AnoE: Yes, I think that even if we had such a tool, the authors could use it to change the passage in a way that it is undetectable by those tools. But about your 2nd paragraph, don't you think that at least it must be mentioned in the paper that "this result are generated by this tool"? The same as what reaserchers do when they use Matlab, or any other tools.

Additionally, I suppose, and I have always heard that a scientific paper must show a scientific effort. Where is the effort when the text is totally generated by chatgpt? except for the efforts taken to change the appearance of the text to be undetectable at the first glance?

@m123 The scenario that an LLM will output a scientific paper that passes any form of peer review in a fully automatic way (i.e. given a prompt like "Find an interesting way to extend the work by X and Y on Z") is currently not realistic, even in fields that do not require experimental work or where the experimental work can be done in code, and even if the LLM has access to tools (like CAS, theorem provers, code execution, web browsing). An LLM that contributes to a publishable paper interacts with a researcher and acts as part assistant, part writing aid, sounding board, or knowledge base.

@m123: I have added a paragraph about disclosing the use. Regarding "effort": suppose you are a total genius and a new proof that generations of mathematicians have worked on just comes to you in your sleep. You write it down with no effort, and send it to a journal. This would not lessen the benefit of the publication at all, right? I believe "effort" is to be seen here in a meaning that implies that the actual publication has some value in furthering the field; not necessarily that the  researcher had a bad time writing it...

Two options:

You could write directly to the editor now, without finishing the review, to raise your suspicions.
You could finish the review, and include your suspicions in the "confidential to editor" box.

The more convinced you are that the paper is AI-generated, the more attractive #1 becomes, since it saves you from having to finish the review. The drawback is if the editor says "continue to review anyway" then the author would also be waiting longer, so only do it if you're confident.
It's because you are alleging misconduct that your suspicions should be kept confidential to the editor. Don't send it directly to the author, it is not likely to end well.

I checked other papers of the authors also, they are experienced, and it seems that they should not be such unexperienced that doesn't know the most basic requirements of a scientific paper.

About this, there are a couple more tools that the editors should have access to that you don't: they can see which email the authors used to submit the manuscript, and they can check if that email matches the authors' institution webpages. The editors can also see the cover letter if there is one, and they might have communicated with the authors already for other things (e.g. on whether the manuscript contains any copyrighted material). They are better-positioned than you to investigate, so you should definitely leave it to them.

Should I write some of the problems of the paper in the parts that the authors can see? Do you suggest 1 or 2: 1. I write to the boxes for authors my evidences with a ling list of its problems (e.g, the organization of the paper, lack of any real proposed scheme, non coherent passage,...) without explicitly mentioning that I deduced this is AI generated, and then just write to the editor that I guess this is AI generated". Or 2. I just briefly mention to authors that this paper doesn't have any contribution and experimental result. And then write all my reasoning confidentially to the editor?

@m123 if you're doing my option #2, then I'd take an in-between of your two options: highlight the most major issues, add "I have a lot of minor comments, but I think the major comments are already sufficient to reject the paper", and leave everything else in the confidential-to-editor box.

I recommend reviewing the manuscript solely for suitability for publication in the journal you're refereeing for.  If you have suspicion that the text was generated by AI, and you think the conclusion that observation would drive you to is different from the conclusion you reached based upon the suitability of the manuscript as an academic contribution, mention your concerns in whatever mechanism the journal provides for confidential comments to the editor.

I did that. I reviewed it without assuming that it is generated by AI. But even there is no scheme proposed by them! I don't mean the scheme  they have suggested is poor or trivial. There is no scheme at all!!! In the proposed scheme section, they have written some sub titles, and just wrote some basic definitions. For example, they have written:3. Proposed scheme 3.1. Function. A function is defined as a relation between a set of inputs having one output each.
3.2. Integer: ....
3.3. ...

(It really has these titles!)
This is the sole content of what is called "proposed scheme". There is no section for reporting experimental result, or any other kind of result. The paper event doesn't have such a title. no title, no content. no table, ....Just it is full of discrete definitions. (And the definitions are not new to the field. They are basic famous definitions)

Given what you're saying, you should give the manuscript a very poor review that has nothing to do with any suspected use of AI (which is what I suggest in my answer).

FWIW, the tech has been commonly available for a handful of months, ethical viewpoints are still forming.  There was a time when we though graphing calculators would kill math education, now math classes require them.  If you feel compelled to let the editor know of your suspicions, even though the paper will likely be rejected on "normal" review practices, then you should do that.   I would, again, do it in a "confidential to editor" manner.  IMO, though, the authors will already have a negative outcome (a rejected paper) that is related in some way to their practices.

@m123: A function is defined as a relation between a set of inputs having one output each. --- And what exactly is a relation between a set of inputs? A set of ordered pairs of inputs might be marginally better, but then there's the problem that the output of a function is an input of the relation, or whatever . . . Unless someone carefully explains what a relation is and explicitly defines what it means for a relation to be a function, this "definition" is pretty much useless. Indeed, I would think more people know what a function is than what a relation is.

@Scott Seidman: Yes, we are allowed to use calculator in order to save our time for thinking and generating more valuable. In doing so, we are still reaping the rewards of our hard work. But what if the whole paper is generated by ChatGPT, and the authors just spent some minutes to add ALL references in only two paragraphs. This is the only effort that the authors have taken since they know that ChatGPT is famous for its problematic citations. Soon, the reviewers face lots of jargons and have to waste a huge amount of time to decide about correctness of meaningless papers generated by AI.

@Dave L Renfro: I just wrote it as an example of the content of the sections of this paper. You may get surprised if you know that the scope of the paper is not related to its written definitions at all. Every paragraph of the paper is meaningless. And something more is that its sentences are not natural.

@m123: Every paragraph of the paper is meaningless. --- Hopefully not as bad as Mathgen, which has been around since 2012, and I've seen similar things as far back as (I think) the mid 2000's. Incidentally, shortly after Mathgen came online, the people involved with Mathgen got one of its computer generated outputs accepted for publication.

@m123 the point wasn't that there is no issue with this paper.  The point is that ethical use of the tool under discussion is still under discussion.

I'd strongly echo the opinions of other comments and answers that you should just appraise the thing on its own merits (or lack thereof) rather than the smell of AI assistance.
It may be premature, or insufficiantly "humanist", to propose that a really good AI-generated thing should be considered good "despite" its being AI-generated... but/and, not so long ago, in the U.S., things done by women were not even seriously considered (in any sort of supposedly merit-based competition). And various well-known racist stuff.
After all, if corporations are legally entitled to being treated as legit political entities, why can't AI's be comparably respected? Own copyright? :)
I'm not really inviting debate on the larger issues, but, by-the-way, I certainly do not expect students to mention that they used calculators, though perhaps crediting specific software packages, so that other people can  learn. Is that "giving credit"? I don't know.

After all, if corporations are legally entitled to being treated as legit political entities, why can't AI's be comparably respected? Own copyright? - Well, in that case the AI should be listed as the author, so this would be plagiarism, right?

@Kimball, exactly! Semi-seriously!?! Seriously?!? Maybe. I have no idea. (I hardly manage to cooperate with anyone at all, beyond my five-year-old iMac, with whom I'm on pretty good terms.)

@Kimball: And then, if AI did plagiarism, put it in a blacklist, or in a jail...

Ai-assisted writing is a tool to write content.
Paper writing is a tool to share content.
The scope of peer review is to filter non-relevant content for the peers of research.
The paper you are reviewing has crappy content. Is the content even crappier because the authors are using wrongly a tool? their bad, not relevant for the outcome of the review. There are people that did much worse errors because they wrongly used a tool to defend their "content", see for example an infamous econ/finance paper where the idea was flawed, and its demonstration was based on flaw use of a famous aI (assisted Intelligence) tool.

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text:
Affiliation of an independent researcher while writing research plan, CV, cover letter , etc
I face this problem at every stage of my life after graduation. I have searched for many sample research plans, CVs, and cover letters, but none of them were for someone who has finished their education and doesn't work anywhere right now.
I searched for the answer and even asked it from several people, their suggestion was:

used your home postal code and address for cover letter
use your last affiliation that you had (the university you have finished your education at)
you are not allowed to use your last affiliation since you are not an employee there now. If you were to use your last affiliation it could assumed that your are an agent of your university who applied (for example as a mission)

What should I do? Which affiliation is correct to write? Is it ok to write "independent researcher, Ph.D from X univerisity"?
Whenever I am not allowed to write such a thing, what is another good option?

I think there are a lot of views. My own is that an "affiliation" has to be mutually agreeable. Once you graduate, you are no longer affiliated with the university. If you consult to a company you are probably not "affiliated" in the view of the company.
Independent Researcher is a valid affiliation and saying that you earned a PhD or had a prior affiliation with an institution is also valid.
And each use can use different wording. A CV normally has room for a few qualifying words such as you suggest. Likewise a grant application can list a former affiliation if it relates to the subject. But these are easy cases.
Papers for publication is a bit trickier, since one of the reasons for listing it is so that people who don't know you can find you, say via a permanent email address. But a paper can also usually include a footnote or a paragraph that qualifies "Independent Researcher" as needed.


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Proper punctuation of equations
What is the proper way to punctuate equations following a colon (:)?
Is it:

The Pythagorean Theorem can be expressed as the following equation:
$a^2+b^2=c^2$
In number theory, triples satisfying the aforementioned condition are known as Pythagorean triples.

Or

The Pythagorean Theorem can be expressed as the following equation:
$a^2+b^2=c^2$.
In number theory, triples satisfying the aforementioned condition are known as Pythagorean triples.

(The difference is the period after the equation)

Do you mean "following a colon"? And are you just asking about the period or something else?

Of course. And yes.

See https://math.stackexchange.com/q/4669669/442 and https://mathoverflow.net/q/6675/454 for the same question in other forums.

Neither is correct. Equations are part of the text, and are read like text. Just say “The Pythagorean theorem states that $a^2 + b^2 = c^2$.” No colon required, and obviously a period follows because it ends the sentence.

What you are doing is like saying: “Ecosystems are studied within a subfield of biology whose name is denoted by the following word: ecology.” It doubles the length of the sentence for no reason. Just say “Ecosystems are studied in ecology.”

@knzhou But some equations don’t fit in text.

Then write "The Pythagorean theorem states that $$a^2 + b^2 = c^2.$$."

As the other answers indicate, opinions differ on the matter. If you are writing with a particular venue in mind, check their style guide.
For example, the Physical Review Style and Notation Guide says

Punctuate mathematical expressions as sentences
or parts of sentences.

The guide for the American Chemical Society, on the other hand, says that inline equations should be punctuated as text

In-text equations are punctuated as parts of the sentences in
which they are contained, including closing punctuation.

but not in display equations

End punctuation is not used in display equations.

My impression is that maths/computer science generally recommend puntuation after display equations while chemistry/engineering generally don't use such punctuation, but I did not perform a thorough analysis checking every journal in each field.

This is what I think is the right answer. Treat formulas -- inlined or offset -- as part of the sentence, and then punctuate them as if you had written the formula out in words.

European languages suggest the period belongs. It has nothing to do with math. Few will notice, I'd guess, since you write on separate lines so the line breaks serve as "something like" the period, separating thoughts. A copy editor would probably supply it if you don't.
And few mathematicians would think the period was part of the equation in such a case, though it might be different ins some others.

So, even tho the equation is preceded by a colon, it is probably OK to put a period?

Yes, of course. Better to include it actually. You are writing in "sentences", not tables and such.

For what it's worth, I sometimes exclude the period when the mathematical stuff at the end of the sentence is displayed, and I'm even more likely to do so when there is a colon used as in the OP's version. I'm also more likely to do so when the mathematical stuff is fairly elaborate/long. But if co-authors are involved or copy editors are later involved . . .

@DaveLRenfro, the audience is unlikely to object if they are actually mathematicians and not students. It is important to make the intent clear somehow, that the end has been reached. But it isn't the same a prose. And poetry seldom uses periods.

@DaveLRenfro In that context, I  meant if one chooses to follow such a convention, would a dot after a colon be appropriate.

First of all, I don't think either of your suggested alternatives is good typesetting. In each case you have three paragraphs, one of which consists only of an inline equation. You should either make the first two into a single paragraph, or use a displayed equation, i.e. one of the following.

The Pythagorean Theorem can be expressed as the following equation: $a^2+b^2=c^2$.

The Pythagorean Theorem can be expressed as the following equation:
\[a^2+b^2=c^2.\]

Some people would omit the period in the second example, but that is not because of the colon. It is because they would omit the period after any displayed equation.
The colon doesn't change anything. In English, whatever follows a colon still ends with a period (or other appropriate punctuation mark such as "?"). So you should not treat this any differently than if you had said "The Pythagorean Theorem says that ..." followed by a displayed or inline equation as you prefer.

There are varying opinions. :)  As in other comments and answers, there are rationales for including or not including the period. The colon preceding is irrelevant. Perhaps the "most popular" choice is to include the period... or other punctuation, such as commas and semi-colons, depending how the sentence may continue. (I admit that I do not like English punctuation in displayed mathematics.)
Apart from convention, there is indeed the practical issue of knowing whether or not a display is end-of-sentence. For me, since a period introduces a bit of visual noise (usually trivial, but not reliably so), the way I would signal end-of-sentence is to start the text after the display with a capitalized (English) word, as opposed to further mathematical symbols. If the after-display text is a continuation of the sentence, then likewise make this clear by having a not-capitalized (English) word before further mathematical symbols.
Yes, some co-authors and editors will coerce adding the period, so it's not worth spending toooo much time making choices based on one's personal aesthetic, if it's going to be subject to conformification anyway :)

(+1) For me, since a period introduces a bit of visual noise (usually trivial, but not reliably so) --- This is the background rationale for the things I said in my earlier comment here. (Just to be clear -- upon rereading my comment now, I see that I should have been more explicit -- in the places where I said "more likely to do so", I mean I'm more likely to EXCLUDE the period.)

@DaveLRenfro, :)

For journals, this is often a matter of written down fact in the style sheet.  Different journals/publishers will have different implementations.  Also, publication staff will fix up most author errors in processing -- so getting it "right" isn't necessarily critical.

The American Mathematical Society Style Guide (p 100) reads

Each mathematics equation reads as a clause or sentence and is punctuated accordingly. Authors, however, sometimes leave displayed math
unpunctuated. Insert commas and periods as needed so that the equation(s), the preceding text, and the following text together read grammatically.

So

The Pythagorean theorem can be expressed as the following equation: \[ a^2 + b^2 = c^2. \]

is correct for AMS publications (note the period at the end of the displayed equation).  Note that neither of the options presented in the question is quite right, as those examples use a single dollar-sign delimiter, indicated inline mathematics.  In that case, the most correct typesetting would be

The Pythagorean theorem can be expressed as the following equation: $a^2 + b^2 = c^2$.

Note that the period occurs after the closing delimiter.  This won't make a ton of difference in the final typeset document, but it can make a perceptible difference in some contexts.

Note that the period occurs after the closing delimiter. --- I nearly always put the period INSIDE the right-side math delimiter (LaTeX documents, math related Stack Exchange groups, MathType in MS Word documents, etc.) to avoid the possibility of a new line starting with a period, which CAN happen, especially in SE questions/answers/comments and in MS Word documents.

@DaveLRenfro Yeah, those are issues I have not encountered.  LaTeX typically won't allow a line to start with a period, and most (all?) AMS journals expect LaTeX submissions.  I can't speak to what MS Word or Google Docs or whatever will do, but that might also not be relevant to my answer, as if you aren't using LaTeX, you probably don't need to abide by the AMS style, and can do whatever you like. :D

@DaveLRenfro In Latex documents your practice is the opposite of what Knuth recommends in the TeXbook: "spacing rules within paragraphs work best when the punctuation marks are not considered to be part of the formulas". See also: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/149651/is-it-more-common-to-type-period-inside-dollars-or-outside

@Adam Přenosil: To be honest, I don't know for sure whether a line break could occur just before a period in my LaTeX documents (in case it makes a difference, I've been using "Scientific Word/Workplace" since 1994), but it can definitely break just before a period in the SE groups MSE, mathoverflow, Mathematics Educators as well as in several of the programs I have to use in my jobs since Aug 2005 (1, 2, and a few other such tools).

@DaveLRenfro Sure, I imagine there are various contexts where that's the right thing to do. But in ordinary (La)Tex documents I would trust Knuth.


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Can the editor of a book add citations of individual chapters to his own citation count?
Supposed someone is the editor of a book, in which individual chapters of the book are contributed by different authors. Other researchers cite individual chapters of the book.
Can the editor of the book add these citations (for the individual chapters) to his own citation count?

No. Generally, an individual's citation count includes only work which they have authored or co-authored.
An editor counting citations of individual chapters of an edited book would be substantially similar to e.g. the editor of a journal adding to her citation count every time an article in the journal is cited. Definitely not an accepted practice.

As an addition to what @ff524 wrote:
Automatic citation detectors may include such "inappropriate" citations if in addition to citing the chapter, the authors decide to separately cite the whole volume. This can happen if it's an obscure or unusual volume and the authors want to be extra clear.

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Is there difference between value of Scopus- or ISI-indexed paper in gaining acceptance for PhD?
Is there difference between value of Scopus- or ISI-indexed paper in gaining acceptance for PhD?

Hi, welcome to Academia SE. Please ask each question as a separate StackExchange question. The reason is that you will have to accept one answer as the best, accepted one, so if you are asking two things at a time, it is possible two different answers answer the two questions best. This will be confusing for future readers.

I've deleted the second question. Feel free to ask it separately. You may want to add a small amount of context to this question.

At least in the US, PhD admissions committees do not care whether the journal an applicant has published in happens to be on one list or another (there are plenty of really low-quality journals in both of those lists, and high-quality journals not in them). Rather, they care whether the journal is reputable and highly regarded, and whether the paper itself is any good.
tl;dr Aim to publish solid, high-quality work in a journal that is known for publishing solid, high-quality work.

In my experience, this is also true of faculty hiring committees and tenure/promotion committees.

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text:
Would you go public with corruption?
What if there is a hypothetical situation where someone witnessed an enormous amount of corruption in their department/institution; let us say that it is not simply a whiny graduate student, but a number of legalities were involved and violated.  This person exhausted all possible avenues at the institution.  I will also propose that this person is not interested in maintaining any ties with academia.  This person is already working on a career outside of academia.  This person is also not interested in a lawsuit.
Many hypothetical friends of the described person think the individual should go public with their story (i.e. facts).  It isn't libel if it is true and that truth could be supported by evidence.
Would you go public, and why?
How would one protect themselves from further retaliation?

https://wikileaks.org/

Yes, wikileaks is well known.  But are you saying you would go public, or not?

That hypothetical person shouldn't go public on their own. They should find someone who already has experience with exposing academic corruption and go public through them, because it increases the likelihood that something will change - simply because going public that way will get more media exposure.

if one could do it anonymously, what reason would there be not to?

What sort of entities/persons have experience with exposing academic corruption besides lawyers?

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Hypothetical good men.

Evil and good are very subjective terms. And the OP is in a dire need of an edit, as all those hypotheticals really muddle the question.

Hypothetically, you shouldn't ask questions that promote discussion or rely on personal viewpoints or  aren't focused on a single issue, on Stack Exchange.

Asking if you would go public with corruption is a single issue.  Most answers on SE are personal viewpoints (i.e. how to deal with manuscripts, advisers, degrees, applications, teaching, etc.).  Instead of promoting a discussion, you could have answered the question.

You've asked about at least two issues: would an individual go public with reason, and, how to protect from backlash. These are things that can only be determined personally for anybody, your first question is the archetype of those which receive primarily-opinion-based answers. And "most answers on SE are personal viewpoints" is a caricature of the common practise and professional experience presented on Academia SE, let alone the rest of Stack Exchange.

See the [help/dont-ask] about what kinds of questions not to ask. If you give further details about the situation that narrow the scope of the question significantly, it may be reopened. (In particular, note that the question of whether to go public, and what might be gained by going public, depend in large part on the specifics of the situation.) See other questions tagged [tag:whistleblowing] for examples.

"Yes, wikileaks is well known. But are you saying you would go public, or not?" Your question would imply that you're interested in getting credit for the whistleblowing. In my opinion, there is practically no upside for taking credit unless you want to become a journalist (or unless there is a financial incentive as part of a whistleblowing program). Just imagine how a potential employer would react if he googled your name and found out that you had been a whistleblower. Is being a former whistleblower really a positive attribute for many employers? I don't think so.

Also, I'm not sure you should just dump your info somewhere on some websites for leaks. If I were you, I would look for a journalist(s) that has had a good track record of going after the institution you want to go after.

I had another reason to vote to close this question "unclear what you're asking" an enormous amount of corruption what kind of corruption are we talking about here? This reason still exists. Vote to remain closed.

Hypothetically, what if there is a situation where someone has completely blown perceived issues out of all proportion?

I also want to second @Nij's comment, and his statement that `_ "most answers on SE are personal viewpoints" is a caricature of the common practise and professional experience presented on Academia SE, let alone the rest of Stack Exchange._' This may have been the case on the only other question you have asked to date, but there are numerous examples on academia.SE let alone math.SE, TeX.SE etc which go against your assessment

@Yemon Choi.  Your attitude is persistent across academia.  Without knowing the specifics of this case (I have withheld them for a reason), your comment is silly.  Hypothetically, the misconduct took place on a multi-million dollar grant.  Hypothetically, the feds are already involved.  Hypothetically, this person won't have to go public, as others may do it for them.

Well, I'm sorry that you find my attitude persistent across academia (don't you mean "prevalent across", or "persistent within"?) but I am calling it as I see it. Frankly, the phrasing of your question is disingenuous. Given that you clearly feel wronged, whether on your behalf or on someone else's, this feels more like an attempt to canvas support than an attempt to seek information

Moreover (and it seems that your first question on academia.SE may have set an unfortunate precedent) I do not think this site is suited to questions which just ask "guys, what would you do in this situation?" This is not a forum for discussion, nor is it a blog. If you have a specific question about procedures or legal recourse then that is another matter. If you just want to rail against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, other venues might be more appropriate

@ Yemon Choi.  Yes, let us argue over adverbs over the internet.  Your comments are a microcosm example of how academicians obsess over non-issues when faced with serious issues. No, your assumptions about my question are poorly based.  My question is genuine.  It was merely an attempt to gauge the value of going public with facts concerning corruption in academia.

Why you are using my first question on SE as a basis for a mild complaint is beyond me.  I received many positive responses to my first question on SE. In fact, for what it is worth, I earned a number of points for that question.  Why are the quibbles in academe so intense?  Because the stakes are so low.  This is true unless someone brings law into the question.  Should I have presented my question in the "Law" section?  That said, please review the nature of most questions under the "Academia" section of SE.  Most questions are far more trivial than this one.

@Yemon Choi.  You should be thankful you didn't do something as professionally stupid as others have.  Otherwise, you may have been one among the featured individuals of this question.  I would imagine if you did engage in scientific/professional misconduct, you would rather it never be known to the public.

Corruption and malpractice in academia are important issues, and I am willing to believe -- given things that have come to light over the last deacde or two -- that it is a serious problem. Nevertheless, this is not the site for discussing this! Your question was explicitly inviting a lot of suggestions, and I feel the signal-noise ratio is low on this kind of question, as evidenced by your first question (which is why I keep bringing it up). If you started an anonymous blog where you wanted to vent or discuss I would be happy to enter into dialogue. This is not a blog

Moreover, regardless of my pedantry, I don't think this question was closed because "academicians obsess over non-issues when faced with serious issues." If a serious issue of corruption/malpractice was brought to me or many of my colleagues we'd take it seriously. But since you are understandably omitting details, I'm not in that position, where specific+relevant suggestions could be made; I'm in a position where someone unknown tells me "bad things happened, what does one do". You're asking whether a course of action is "right" or "advisable"; I'm saying it depends on the particular details.

In making the decision on whether to blow the whistle one may want to consider past cases of whistle blowing and learn from these.
Whether one chooses to do his is ultimately a personal choice but a whistle blower would probably want to do some research into past successful (and unsuccessful) attempts.
If one can find a past example of successful whistle-blowing in a similar field then these methods can provide a starting point. There are now anonymous submission systems such as globaleaks and securedrop which offer a certain level of anonymity. However you should regard these with caution:

" Other submission technologies inspired by WikiLeaks, such as the
  European-based GlobaLeaks and the US-based Secure Drop, while both
  excellent in many ways, are not suited to WikiLeaks’ sourcing in its
  national security and large archive publishing specialities. "

--Wikileaks
Since this hypothetical situation relates to academia, the stakes are unlikely to be as high as those faced by Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning. (Although they could be for someone exposing something like MKULTRA)
There are journalists that use these technologies to receive tips, one would also want to establish the trustworthiness of these. (Ask: Have they successfully published in the past?)
Whistleblowers don't necessarily use these systems though, in the case of the nauru files it appears that the journalists worked with a whistleblower.
Ask: Is there a suitable organisation interesting in taking this up? (One with no ties to the guilty party) If something illegal has occurred, police may be interested in addressing this once tipped off. Thus mitigating the whistle-blower's risk.

How would one protect themselves from further retaliation?

Anonymity appears to be an effective method if it can be maintained. (I don't recommend identifying yourself with this stack exchange account.)
One would also need to assess the potential risk. (How powerful is my adversary?)
Ask: Can the whistle-blower change allegiances if found out? How easy this is will  depend on specific situations, Edward Snowden needed to move country. Someone in academia may only need to change university.
If litigation is a concern, anonymity is probably best.

Some institutions that handle whistleblowing demand the whistleblower provide their name. To me, this appears to be a big red flag. I would not provide any personally identifiable information.

“Courage is not the absence of fear. Only fools have no fear.
Rather, courage is the intellectual mastery of fear by understanding
the true risks and opportunities of the situation and keeping those
things in balance” -- Julian Assange

Nice words.  Hypothetically, would it be better to write a book, use one of the whistleblower avenue sources you referenced, or both?

In principle you shouldn't be, but in practice I'd be wary of using my institution's network to research whistle-blowing.

@M11293 It depends on your situation. Writing a book sounds like it would rule out anonymity. But this is ok if you have already been found out. Peter Wright, wrote spycatcher and it became so popular the British government could not even bar him receiving royalties. William McNeilly disclosed his identity to give his claims credibility. His high visibility appears to have given him a degree of protection. I would hesitate to write a book while anonymity was still an option. But if I got caught, a book would be ideal to make the case more visible.

@sav This case is not concerning nuclear weapons safety hazards.  It is about academe and the insane lengths a university went to cover up scientific/professional misconduct in reprisal of being called out.  That said, it could turn a field or two upside down in addition to multiple reputations being ruined.  Those in charge would also suffer greatly.

@M11293 I probably can't say. I suspect the whistleblower is the one in the best position to make that assessment as each case is different. The stakes in academia are not as serious as military matters, however it is best to be wary of making too many enemies.

What did you mean by "go public"?  If the problem is bad science, then contact the journals where the work was published.  If the problem is bad teaching, then contact the body that provides acreditation.  If the problem is something else, please be more specific.


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Is it difficult to be fully funded for PhD in STEM field in US?
I have reached out to some professors for my research interest.  I am wondering whether it is difficult to be fully funded for my PhD program in civil engineering.
Is it appropriate to ask the professors whether I will be fully funded for my PhD?

TL;DR the vast majority of engineering PhDs in the US are funded. See actual numbers for "primary source of support" here.

Furthermore, you  should be fully funded.

Most lab-heavy degrees can fully fund you even if it takes you 8+ years to get a Ph.D.; you pay for yourself in lab work.  Engineering tends to need lots of TAs for labs/classes, and is well-funded to boot.  In mathematics some schools will not have any funding to offer until you're fully vested in the Ph.D. program (passed the written and oral quals.), and even then you may still only get funded through your advisor's grants (so if they're short, you're out of luck).  UCLA had this "problem" when I was applying, for example.  Others can fully fund you for at least 4 years, possibly more.

"Fully-funded" means they pay you and you don't do any work for them?  Or would you include situations where you have to do clerical work/instructional work/laboratory work in return for the money?

I'm in your field, it is not very hard if you have a good application/contacts and work with with a decent professor (R1, R2)

If by "fully funded" you mean a research assistantship -- those are the plum positions and you should not count on getting this.  If you mean a teaching assistantship -- this is very doable, and yes, you should definitely ask.  Count on working 20 hours a week.  The core of your work would probably be grading homework, which can be quite tedious, hence, this work is given to the grad students to do.

I am hoping to work with a professor who has won some grants. I am hearing that it is wrong to do PhD in STEm field without being fully funded (paying nothing out of your pocket).  Hope this becomes true for me too.

Yes it is appropriate to ask, both for the program and the individual professors. Hopefully you ask other important and research-related questions at the same time, but funding is not a taboo topic for a prospective student, and it should be one of the keys to your decision if you are accepted to multiple programs.
Many programs (in STEM in general, can't speak to civil engineering in particular) offer fully-funded programs (tuition+a stipend) for PhDs (less often for masters), but there may be limits (for example you may be guaranteed for only 5-6 years, and if it takes longer you might still get funding just not guaranteed), and you almost certainly won't be free to do whatever you want: you may be required to teach ("TA") whether you want to or not, you may be required to join a lab that has funding available ("RA"), even if that lab was not your first choice otherwise, or you might have to do other work for another lab/group that isn't directly related to your research (as an RA or PA). Fellowships or traineeships are directly funding YOU and are the best source of funding but are often competitive and may cover only a short period of time.
"Fully funded" could include ANY combination of the above, so you should ask questions about the types of funding and not just a guarantee. Current students are also a great resource.

I met up with my potential professor that I want to work for and he mentioned that it will be fully funded with any of the combinations you mentioned. TA, RA or both. It is a great news though. Thank you and everyone else for helpful comments


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In case I have to take a gap year before MS, what can I do in terms of reading and independent study to prepare for graduate school?
I will be graduating with a BS in Computer Science in 2017 and have applied to a couple of graduate school to pursue MS in Biomedical Informatics/Bioinformatics. I'm interested in translational research and research in precision/personalized medicine. I am hoping to apply the computer science knowledge in developing pipelines that will facilitate the process of choosing best-fitting medicine/treatment for the patients.
I understand that admission is competitive and well aware that I have a chance of not getting into any of the school that I have applied to. (I have a 3.2 GPA in my BS, 70-75th percentile GRE, and some experience as an intern in my school's Department of Biomedical Informatics.)
My question is that in the worst case when I would have to wait until the following year to apply again (international student here), what would be the best way to prepare in the meantime in terms of reading journals and independent studies?

As it currently stands, I'm of the opinion that this is a "strongly depends on personal factors" questions and should be closed. That said - I think there's an excellent question in there of "how should I prepare for graduate studies while waiting to reapply?".

@tonysdg I understand where you are coming from, but I disagree. I think I have stated my case pretty clearly with my research interests along with my graduate study plans. I posted this question because I wanted more narrow answers as to how to be better prepared for my prospective field specifically, not just a general "what should I do after applying?"

I can buy that, but in that case, anything about your GPA/GRE/background is still irrelevant to the question.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic. Please follow suggestion made by @tonysdg.

To clarify what you want - do you want to know how to prepare to do well in grad school during a gap year, or how to strengthen your application for the next round of applications next year? They might be some very different answers.

@BrianDHall Hello Brian. I would like to prepare to do well in grad school during a gap year. It would be helpful to find things that would also increase my chances when re-applying to grad schools. For example, learning how to analyze data through R or Python would be something that could help my chances of getting in as well as when I would be participating in a research of some sort.

Try to get a lab position in your field as a tech - this will allow you to build exactly the type of experience that graduate schools will want, show your dedication and interest in the topic and give you the opportunity to build the type of relationships that lead to convincing recommendation letters.

Hi Bryan, thanks for the reply. When you say a "tech" what kind of position exactly do you mean?

@DJB A position in a university laboratory that requires a bachelors degree. I don't know what the exact opportunities would be in CS.


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Protecting unpublished or under review papers from theft
Would you please guide me how can I protect my under review or under revision papers from theft. It is possible that my papers have been stolen and they will be submitted to another journal. maybe a person want to disturb me and submit my papers as I have submitted them. Is it possible to save my papers in a site that demonstrate they are my own papers and I haven't submitted them to another journal simultaneously?

You can consider publishing a pre-print in for example https://arxiv.org/

Also see What to do if I'm afraid that my idea will get stolen during review process?, Prevent plagiarism after rejection of a paper?, How can I “time-stamp” my data without publishing it?