text:
Who should be listed as authors on extended abstract of thesis?
I want to submit an extended abstract of my Ph.D. dissertation to a workshop that looks for summaries of recent work. My dissertation is based on several publications done in collaboration with other researchers (and my adviser).
Who should be listed as authors for the purpose of the workshop submission? Just myself, because I am the sole author of the dissertation, and would be the sole author of the newly written extended abstract. In which case, I knowledge my collaborators. Or do I list all the collaborators as authors of the extended abstract?

It's safest to ask your collaborators what they would prefer.  You can't include them as coauthors of an extended abstract without their permission, and they might be upset if you leave them off.  (Even if doing so is standard at this workshop, they might not know that or might disapprove of this standard.)  I'd guess that they would politely decline authorship of the dissertation abstract if asked, but there's no way to be sure other than asking.
But first I'd recommend asking your advisor about this issue.  I'm not sure what sort of workshop you mean, which suggests that this may be field-specific.  In that case, you need to be aware of the conventions of your field and this workshop in particular.  Presumably you aren't the first person to submit a dissertation abstract to this workshop, so this issue must have been dealt with before.  If your advisor doesn't know offhand, then it's worth looking through past years to try to find examples.  (As a last resort you could ask the workshop organizers for advice, but you shouldn't bother them with this unless you have to, and I'd be very surprised if you had to.)
Then you can write to your other coauthors and say "I'd like to submit an extended abstract of my dissertation to Workshop X.  When people have done that in the past, coauthorship of papers appearing in the dissertation has been handled like this: ...  Is it OK with you if we do the same here?"  It's worth including a copy of your proposed submission, so they can see exactly how they would be mentioned if they won't be authors.
If you don't include them as formal authors of the abstract, then of course you should make it very clear that this is merely a summary of work published elsewhere and who the authors of those papers are.

Well, you will mention your co-workers in your dissertation, and I would recommend to add the significant ones to the paper. If your new abstract is just discussing your own work, you should be the only author, but from your question I got the ipression, that original work of others is included and therefore they should be co-authors.
One exception could be if you are just citing already published material, then it would be formally correct to be the only author - but personally I would not choose this option unless I really have t,o because it lowers the motivation for others to collaborate in the future.


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How to determine compensation for developing new course for community college?
I am a startup entrepreneur in Chattanooga TN.  A few days ago, I was approached by a representative of Chattanooga State community college to teach a community course and/or course series on 3D printing and product branding.  This will be a new course, unlike any other that they have taught before, so I am sure that there will be plenty of developmental work involved.
When I asked about the compensation, the representative told me that the pay varied from instructor to instructor, and that I needed to come up with the amount.  I have never taught a course like this before, so I was wondering how I should gauge this amount.
Should I base it on hours taught in class, total hours material covered, students involved, or is there another standard?

At the very least, if the salaries are public, you should look at what they offer their full-time folks now to gauge the range as well as how many courses those people teach. The offer will not be high. If you want to do this, you will do it because you love it and want to share with others.

I think you're going to find that they want to pay you their adjunct rate for teaching the course, which might be $3,000 or so.  If you want to be paid more, you will probably need to negotiate a list of deliverables, which would then allow someone else to teach the course next time.
I believe there are two motivations for being an adjunct instructor.  Some people make a living at it by piecing together adjunct appointments from two or more institutions.  Others do it for the love of teaching; they have to have day jobs to support their teaching hobby.  I got paid about $2,500 to develop and teach a course in web applications in 1997.  Now I am retired from the day job I had then, have a full-time faculty appointment, an office at school, and everything!
Edited to add: I missed that it is a community education course.  You might get a few bucks more for that, or extra pay for classes over a certain size.  It will still be a four-figure amount.

Thanks for the great response.  Is that per month or per course?  If it's per course, then how many classes?

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text:
How to get free programmatic access to citations counts for a given paper?
What databases allow free, programmatic access to cited-by counts for papers?

Google Scholar doesn't have an API, and they block crawling attempts.
SCOPUS only seems to allows you to retrieve a branded, watermarked image of the number.

Do you have a specific field in mind?

@nate, yes, primarily biomedical science.

If you are an R user, you can use the scholar package. This package allows you to analyze data from Google Scholar and obtain citations, publication list and even perform predictions of the h-index. An example R code:
library(scholar)
id = "xJaxiEEAAAAJ" # Isaac Newton's id
cit=get_citation_history(id)
barplot(cit[,2],names.arg = cit[,1])

Wikidata has some incomplete citation information and you can access it programmatically via XML dumps, RDF dumps, web API and the SPARQL endpoint called Wikidata Query Service.
In Scholia at https://tools.wmflabs.org/scholia/, we use Wikidata Query Service to generate citation counts and citation list, see an example for "The Alzheimer's disease-associated amyloid beta-protein is an antimicrobial peptide" here:  https://tools.wmflabs.org/scholia/work/Q21090025
If you follow the link on the page you can get to the SPARQL queries. For the SPARQL query that generate the "Citations to the work" table with citation count, the SPARQL query currently reads:
#defaultView:Table
# List of works that is cited by the specified work
SELECT ?citations ?publication_date ?citing_work ?citing_workLabel
WITH {
  SELECT (MIN(?date) AS ?publication_date) (COUNT(?citing_citing_work) AS ?citations) ?citing_work
  WHERE {
    ?citing_work wdt:P2860 wd:Q21090025 .
    OPTIONAL {
      ?citing_work wdt:P577 ?datetime .
      BIND(xsd:date(?datetime) AS ?date)
    }
    OPTIONAL { ?citing_citing_work wdt:P2860 ?citing_work }
  }
  GROUP BY ?citing_work
} AS %result
WHERE {
  INCLUDE %result
  SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "en,da,de,es,fr,it,jp,nl,no,ru,sv,zh" . }
}
ORDER BY DESC(?citations) DESC(?date)

You can obtain the information programmatically, e.g., in Python
import requests

query = """
#defaultView:Table
# List of works that is cited by the specified work
SELECT ?citations ?publication_date ?citing_work ?citing_workLabel
WITH {
  SELECT (MIN(?date) AS ?publication_date) (COUNT(?citing_citing_work) AS ?citations) ?citing_work
  WHERE {
    ?citing_work wdt:P2860 wd:Q21090025 .
    OPTIONAL {
      ?citing_work wdt:P577 ?datetime .
      BIND(xsd:date(?datetime) AS ?date)
    }
    OPTIONAL { ?citing_citing_work wdt:P2860 ?citing_work }
  }
  GROUP BY ?citing_work
} AS %result
WHERE {
  INCLUDE %result
  SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "en,da,de,es,fr,it,jp,nl,no,ru,sv,zh" . }
}
ORDER BY DESC(?citations) DESC(?date)
"""

response = requests.get('https://query.wikidata.org/sparql',
                        params={'query': query, 'format': 'json'})
data = response.json()['results']['bindings']
format = lambda paper: paper['citations']['value'] + ' ' + paper['citing_workLabel']['value']

>>> print("\n".join([format(paper) for paper in data[:5]]))
75 The genetics of Alzheimer disease
25 Alzheimer's disease - a neurospirochetosis. Analysis of the evidence following Koch's and Hill's criteria
23 Mild cognitive impairment: pathology and mechanisms.
22 Immunotherapeutic approaches for Alzheimer's disease
18 Amyloid-β peptide: Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde?

It doesn't have data on most researchers

In many areas, the citation information in Wikidata is very incomplete. For papers in PubMedCentral it is better, - but likely incomplete.

Microsoft Academic Search provides an API as a part of the Cognitive Services Lab. Unfortunately, you cannot look up papers by DOI; you will need to manually retrieve the Microsoft Academic paper ID or use title search for lookup. But it gives you citation count as well as an estimated count for widely-cited papers. I am successfully using it to include citation counts in my CV.

I was hunting around for something like this recently to create citation count "badges" for papers. I came across scholar.py by Christian Kreibich. It uses BeautifulSoup to parse Google Scholar HTML output.

Extracts publication title, most relevant web link, PDF link, number of citations, number of online versions, link to Google Scholar's article cluster for the work, Google Scholar's cluster of all works referencing the publication, and excerpt of content.
Python module
Command-line tool prints entries in CSV format, simple plain text, or in the citation export format.

For example:
./scholar.py -c 1 --author "Hutchison" -t -A "Avogadro"
     Title Avogadro: An advanced semantic chemical editor, visualization, and analysis platform.
       URL http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1758-2946-4-17.pdf
      Year 2012
 Citations 743

Let me add Semantic Scholar to the list.
There's both an official REST API for Paper/Author lookup and a Python package.
Metrics include 'citations', 'influentialCitationCount', 'citationVelocity'

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Why are professors' websites so ugly?
I can't help but notice that even in CS, professors' websites are almost always difficult to navigate, poorly-organized, and just generally hard to look at (poorly-tiled backgrounds, inconsistent fonts, etc.).
Why is this? Is it expected of academics? I'll be applying to graduate programs in the Fall and took a few hours to update my personal website, and was outright told by a professor that it was "too much". If I have a "fancy-looking" website, will this reflect negatively on me as an applicant?

You are asking two different questions: one about the website of an applicant and one about the website of a professor.

Because if professor's actually could make their websites pretty, they'd be web developers instead. I'm here all night.

even in CS, professor's websites are almost always difficult to navigate, poorly-organized, and just generally hard to look at — [citation needed]

Why is it surprising that "even CS professors" aren't graphic designers? Most CS professors would also be terrible at Windows tech support or helping for advice on picking the right motherboard for a custom build. None of those things have anything to do with CS.

They're built in the Prof.Dr. style.

Please take all extended discussion to [chat].

Its not just professors.  Tim Berners-Lee is considered by many to have pretty much invented the WWW.  Yet his personal site could also probably benefit from the help of a professional web designer.

Ah, but Tim Berners-Lee didn't create CSS ;)

@Szabolcs I wonder how do you define pretty and simple?

Not ALL professors' websites are terrible. As referenced in this nature commentary, many academics acknowledge the potential benefits of having a good website. This article also links to a contest where submissions for the 'best lab websites' were solicited. Many of the links there are great examples of lab websites with elegant aesthetics and intuitive navigation.
I think a lot of this boils down to the fact that many faculty are older or too busy; making a good website takes time and skills that most academics simply don't have. Some labs will hire web designers to help with design, but today's funding climate makes that impractical for most PIs.
Having a good website for your own interests and professional development can only help you. I can't see any downside to this...

+1. I am honestly amazed that all the other answers, along with the question, tacitly assume professors will build and maintain their own websites. How many professors, even in engineering departments, will maintain their own car? How many med school professors will treat themselves outside their own specialty? Most departments have sysadmins nowadays, and for good reasons: specialization makes sense. Same for website design and maintenance. This should really be part of the sysad's duties (who, with modern CMS, can hand day-to-day maintenance back to profs), or of a specific web designer.

@StephanKolassa Basically, there is no sysadmin (in most cases I know of). Nobody pays for a person to do that. Universities should probably recognise the benefits of attractive web presences, but right now researchers are left alone with the stuff.

@StephanKolassa Web sites are a lot easier to maintain than cars.  And sysadmins have more important things to do than maintain web sites.

@JeffE: I won't argue about cars. But: professors also have more important things to do than maintain web sites. Which is why I'd argue for a dedicated web site maintainer at a departmental level - even if it's only a part time job. Universities have HR departments, secretaries, lab technicians and so forth for the same reason.

@StephanKolassa I'd argue for the same, but the current reality is that almost all universities don't have such a position. In my department, we occasionally have this done by taking undergrad CS interns, who are supposed to practice web development on a real or semi-real project.

Apparently, my background (in industry) is showing through... ;-)

@StephanKolassa while university or department-wide websites are the norm in the universities I went to, it seems like in many institutions, it's a luxury that they cannot afford.

Some of my undergrad peers had their first web design jobs for the various enlightened departments at my university that understood that a good website fostered collaboration with outside institutions. The cost of my undergrad friends was about $12 per hour.

There is another aspect that I have not seen mentioned in other answers.
In some scientific fields/cultures, a stylish website could be viewed as unnecessary or even pompous. In this view, the textual content of a website is the only thing that matters, and if you "need" to make your website stylish perhaps it lacks real substance. This is the same line of thought that supports simplicity in presentation with minimal graphics. I have encountered this especially in math and theoretical CS.
There might also be a prestige factor, along the lines of "I am so important, my work is so well-known and I am so busy, that I don't need a website".
In many other cases I agree it is simply a lack of knowledge/time/benefit.

I truly doubt that anyone thinks having a bad website will increase their prestige.

@CapeCode: sure, but aesthetic standards of what makes a bad or good website vary greatly between subcultures.  I’m an academic mathematician; I have friends who are professional freelance musicians.  If I styled my website like theirs, it would be seen as insufferably over-designed and pretentious by most other mathematicians.  We tend to favour simplicity in both style and content, probably to an unreasonable extend.

Upon observation, some reasonably-good mathematicians have disdain for websites, and say so in conversation. This is highly correlated with substantial computer/internet-incompetence, and, commensurately, with professed disdain for the latter. I've occasionally asked whether they disdain Writing as undercutting The Oral Tradition, but I don't get clear answers.

This was one of my primary concerns. I'm relatively good at HTML/CSS (I held a job in web development while in high school) and don't want that to come off as not-dedicated, or lazy with respect to research.

While I have seen an academic's website that I thought was "too fancy" and left me with a bad impression (like he was selling something), there is a big difference in being over-stylish and having a clean, well-organized and aesthetic webpage.

From my personal experience, I can confirm that such an attitude exists, even if subconsciously, and that it is not (only) a byproduct of technical incompetence. It is the same reason why people frown upon overdressing in conferences.

Note that the hallmark of truly good design is that it supports the content rather than detract from it. A stylish minimalist design with clear navigation should not be seen as pompous. Of course this is no protection against the Luddites @paulgarrett mentions.

Because there is no need for them not to be.
Professors and academics, per their job descriptions or the scope of research grants, mainly have research, teaching, and students supervision duties, mitigated by administrative hurdles. None of these are addressed by polishing their website.

I disagree -- I've had professors direct me to their websites for things like, say, solution sets. These can be buried six levels deep starting from the middle of some densely-packed wall of text.

@AlexReinking it's not surprising since she/he has no benefit in you accessing them quickly. What I'm saying is, in my experience of academia, professors are not paid to maintain a good website.

When you say "there is no need for them not to be", do you mean there is no need for them not to be ugly?  Or there is no need for them not to be difficult to navigate, poorly-organized, etc.?

@TrevorWilson yes the ugly part (in the title of the question). For difficult to navigate, poorly-organized, see my comment above.

I see.  Then I disagree with your comment, but not with your answer.  Of course professors should make their course websites easy for their students to use, and this is part of what we get paid for.

@TrevorWilson But do you? Will you lose money if you don't have an easy to use website? Is it asked about on those student surveys? Do students give higher scores on anything for better websites? You can say it's part of your job of helping students, but if no one is complaining, no one is evaluating you for it, and you won't get paid less--is it really? In other words, I put the blame not on the professor but the students and the institution. If it's not a priority to them, it's not going to be for the professors.

This. I put a lot of effort into my course web site because unless a hundred students can find the information they need to succeed, there are immediate, unpleasant consequences. For my research, on the other hand, my web site gets just a little love---the important mode of communication is via peer-reviewed publications. Those are polished to a fare-thee-well.

Web technologies change rapidly and so does the criteria of a non-ugly webpage and standards of ease of navigation. Most professors are not so web savvy (even CS) as to keep up with the new developments. At best, they might update the contents but I think this simply not happen to be a priority. Web development is increasingly a highly skilled and specialized profession and takes quite a bit of dedication to do right in my opinion.

I disagree - high level web development is getting more specialised, but anyone can throw a Wordpress site together with minimal effort

I think part of the problem is that a lot of professors made their websites before they could "throw a Wordpress site together with minimal effort", i.e. WordPress didn't exist when they made their site.

Right.  It's basically the economic concept of marginal utility.  I learned HTML 3 back whenever that was current, and since I'm not a web designer, there's insufficient marginal utility for me to learn HTML 5.  I suspect many professors are in a similar position.

It seems to me that it takes very little effort to create an easy-to-navigate and non-ugly course website (except for people with an unreasonable idea of "non-ugly".)  It is as easy to do as it was in the beginning.  New developments in technology seem irrelevant.

"anyone can throw a Wordpress site together with minimal effort", sure they can throw it together, maintaining it and keeping it secure is another matter. I would reccomend any non-experts running a website to stick to static html pages unless they have a very good reason.

@JonStory My experience (as a person who created their own web page in '95 in vanilla HTML) does not match with yours. I would say that anyone can learn vanilla HTML, but Word Press is a huge mountain to climb. Particularly when the only support provided by the university admin is a link to a manual explaining how anyone with admin rights and a decade of experience with UNIX can install Word Press in a matter of days. No thanks.

Because to at least some people (I'm one, and I expect many professors are also) a "pretty" website can often be a horribly dysfunctional piece of crap.  When I look at a web site, I don't want to look at your choice of fonts & colors or your distracting patterned backgrounds, and I especially don't want to be "entertained" like the web was an effing TV.  I want information, with as little fuss as possible.  And I especially don't want web sites that use gee-whiz features that are only supported by a few browsers, or sometimes only one.
PS: I can think of any number of commercial web sites, starting with Amazon, where "prettyness" gets in the way of the site's primary function, which is selling me stuff.
PPS: Seeing the comment about Tim Berners-Lee's web site above made me consider another reason that some professors might choose not to have 'pretty' web sites.  It's the same reason I don't have a personal web site, or FTM a Facebook page: privacy.  I've never really understood why some people feel the urge to tell the world all about their personal lives.  If I had to have a web site for my academic work, it would be a lot like Berners-Lee's: Here are links to my published work, here are the homework assignments &c for the classes I teach, now go away.

I agree with what your answer says, but it doesn't seem to address the OP's question apart from the word "ugly" in the title.  In the body of the question OP asks why Professors' websites are "difficult to navigate, poorly-organized, and just generally hard to look at (poorly-tiled backgrounds, inconsistent fonts, etc.)"  Assuming for the sake of argument that they really are like this, they sound a lot more like the "horribly dysfunctional pieces of crap" that you describe rather than "information, with as little fuss as possible."

@Trevor Wilson:  While I've not seen the same subset of professors' web sites as the OP, by and large the ones I've seen are quite usable.  (Of course I have my user style sheet which usually ensures that I get my preferred fonts &c, rather than the designer's dictates - and isn't that the way it's supposed to work?)  OTOH many that I suppose were done by professional designers are pretty bad.  Which is the trouble with generic questions: we need some concrete examples of what the OP thinks are bad to really give sensible answers.

I think your premise may be incorrect.  For example, looking at the websites of CS faculty at my institution (http://www.cs.uci.edu/faculty/index.php) it looks like almost all are easy to navigate and well-organized.  Almost all are either (1) pretty or (2) written in very basic HTML, and if (2) looks ugly then it should be considered the web browser's fault, not the author's fault (but I don't think it does look ugly.)
As for your second question; if you make your website neither fancy nor ugly, then everyone can be happy.  Fancy is not the opposite of ugly for websites.

I agree with @Bitwise. But I also want to mention that as a PhD student I had a site with colours etc. but when I got a bit older that began to look pretentious and like I had too much time on my hands, so I switched to a site with plain text and links to things I had done. This seems to be a typical pattern in mathematics. Having a spartan website sends the message that you are too busy doing research to bother with such trifles as CSS.
Personally I also think the plain text looks nice. I saw the website of one mathematician who was (and I believe still is) a prominent media personality. To enter it you had to click on a picture of his head. You could click on the left or right half of the brain to access his mathematical articles or his artistic pursuits/newspaper articles. Amusingly, since his head was facing towards the viewer, the two sides of the brain were labelled the wrong way round.

"you had to click a picture of his head".  Talk about having a big head!

I'd like to throw in one more fact into the ring:
Before a professor gets tenure, she often hops between several institutions (e.g., a PhD institution, two postdoc instutitions, one assistant professor institution, one institution to switch to after tenure, etc.). This means that the homepage has to move with them. Some institutions actually insist on using their design, and adapting an older page with lots of material to a new technology (the new institution may use a content management system) can easily take days that is probably better spent with doing research. So a simple copy&paste solution is often preferred. Obviously, that doesn't quite improve the visual quality of the page.

That is a very relevant fact.

I believe @BillBarth's comment says it all:  It's a matter of Cost vs. Benefit!  Why bother updating your website to meet users' quality expectations when:

it bears no influence on your job peformance evaluation (i.e. tenure evaluation) and
It takes too much time and effort to make websites look nice.

The only exception to this rule is if you have a rather large laboratory and Public Relations is a necessary evil.  Then, you might find professors hiring website developers/administrators.  But never would you find a professor doing this all by themselves.

Re users quality expectations: just who are the users in question here?  Seems to me that the vast majority will be from two groups.  One, and by far the largest, will be students looking for course info like assignments &c.  The other will be other researchers looking for information about the professor's research work.  If both those can be provided by a plain, no-nonsense site, why worry about some web designer's notions of 'pretty'?

The thing people tend to overlook is the fact that CS professors do not always have experience in the areas needed to design good interfaces. Making something work well and making a good user interface are often completely different skills; a web programmer is not a web designer, and vice versa. In most cases, you need to take specific design courses in order to understand what it takes to design a good user interface.
Ultimately, web design takes too much dedication of time for most busy people to consider investing their own resources even if they can build the website from scratch, and being able to build a website takes enough dedication already. It is also worth mentioning that being a professor of programming does not imply they know about web programming. For example, teaching data structures has no dependency on being able to use a database within the core of a website.
That being said, a "bad" design to most might have been the "best" design to some people. This is called an opinion, and these have changed a lot since just the past two decades. Just be happy tiled animated gifs and auto-play midi files have lost popularity since then.
And as for your site being too flashy, it depends on the situation and your personal preference. If you want it to be flashy, then go for it. However, the content of a personal site will have a bigger impact on more pragmatic people, which is common in the CS department. The most important aspect for a personal website is to provide a quality experience for the right situation in order to show you know your stuff. This will vary depending on what you need to accomplish.

This was true when this question was first asked seven years ago, but in the last few years, the average quality of professor's and research group websites have improved remarkably.  Nowadays many professors, especially younger professors, have very nice websites.
Having a website is a good way to present one's research, and many postdocs and even graduate students are starting to make their own websites.

Your last paragraph, however, doesn't imply that they aren't ugly. Mine is, but I have better things to do than rebuild the crazy thing from scratch with more modern tech. (Early html adopter). "Pretty" websites are built by people with artistic design chops. That wouldn't be me, I guess.

I agree (anecdotally, of course) that younger academics' websites have improved in the near-decade since I asked this question. I would be curious to know why that is... have tools improved to make doing so easier?

@AlexReinking yes I think a major factor is the rise of website builders like wix or squarespace, not targeted towards academics of course, but academics are taking advantage of them

You have to ask yourself what makes a website poorly designed or well designed? If a website executes its purpose is it then really poorly designed? You have an idea of what an academic website should be but what if the website in question's design philosophy was simply get the information out there as quickly and cheaply as possible, how bad was the design really?
That being said I do think it is an error for any institution of learning to not have a website that is more in line with what you consider 'good design'.
The website is the first source of information about an institution for many people, if this source looks poor then it simply reflects badly on the institution.
If you have a job somewhere and you have a mullet and an earring do you really think that your employer is going to be all that happy about the impression you are leaving on his customers?
That may not have any bearing on you as person or the work that you do but still that is not going to make your employer all that happy.
First impressions rarely have any bearing on reality but that does not make them any less long-lasting.
You would like to think that the type of things universities generally teach are of intellectuall standard higher than basic web design and that these places would put a premuim on good website design just for the mere fact of trying to give the impression that someone has mastered the type of skills the sysadmin mastered when he was 14.


text:
What would be the potential consequences of offering to fund your own graduate degree?
I am aware that being funded by a grant greatly improves your chances of receiving a master's degree, however, hypothetically what would be the potential consequences of offering to fund your own? If the negative consequences are minimal, how does one go about offering this to a potential supervisor without under-selling themselves?
I'm applying to programs in Canada.

I don't think there's any evidence that self-funded graduate students have better or worse outcomes than grant-funded ones. Also, in the US at least, it seems like a self-funded student might have a better chance of finding a supervisor. The primary reason I turn inquiring students away is that I don't have any money to fund them.

Are you suggesting you would forgo funding to fund yourself?  Or, are you wanting to use this as a possible leverage for admission if you are rejected?

It depends on the discipline.  I believe MBA students usually get no funding from the institution.

Getting funding usually stipulates that you have a project that is related to the fund that you have applied to. That being said, it is not always the case. Whether you are self-funded or funded does not necessarily mean that a particular supervisor will work with you. If your research interests are not aligned with the professor's, then it is likely that he/she will reject working with you, even if you are funded. It does not really matter if you are funded or not. It looks better on your CV, however, if you do get funding.
Furthermore, being funded does not guarantee that you will receive a master's degree. Hard work and dedication do. It is the same in any academic program.
If you want to work with a certain professor, I would suggest that you email him/her with a research proposal. That way he/she is able to 1) know that you exist and are keen to work with him/her, 2) that you have a project in mind, and 3) you are open to criticism concerning your research proposal.
Professors like working with students who want to work with them, usually, and they also like students who have similar research interests, or have stimulating proposals for new avenues of research.

One potential problem is what I'll refer to as "Lack of Responsibility", and I experienced a little bit of it when part of my degree was funded by a university fund not tied to any particular project.
While it gives you a tremendous amount of freedom, it means that you're not tied to any mentor/group/project/grant. Your work product doesn't need to go in the annual report, or be written up to make the lab look good  for a renewal, etc. There's no pressure to settle down and get to work - which means the freedom to explore, but also the freedom to drift aimlessly.
Basically, it removes "Because someone needs to keep the lights on" as a motivating factor behind getting work done, and that is a powerful motivator.


text:
How to stop weird labmate from staring at me doing experiments without damaging work relationship (too much)?
A few months ago my lab had a new member. Shortly after he joined I started hearing from students in other labs that he was being very weird, hinting that they were somewhat bothered. For instance he would roam around near other people's benches, stand really close to a student doing their work, or even follow them when they move to another machine.
We are in an open-lab environment so a lot of labs share the same area. Maybe it was confusing to him and he thought it was fine to do what he did. Still,  I talked to my PI and he had the situation dealt with. However, when I am working he still likes to stand on the side staring at me. Apparently my PI forgot to tell him don't do that to your colleagues either. I know he's just being curious and wants to learn. I could probably use this as a precious opportunity to train myself to focus and ignore distractions. And I have learned over the years to tolerate some social behaviors in scientists which are not accepted by the general public. But his behaviors can be REALLY disturbing sometimes.
How should I talk to him about this without making the whole thing too awkward? I am afraid if I tolerate him any longer one day I would just blow up and yell at him... I don't want things to turn out ugly.

Have you tried a simple "hi, can I help you with something?" If they reply "no", you can simply tell the truth: "If that's the case, then I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't stand there watching me; I find it very distracting."

In these cases it's probably better to talk to the offender first, then to the boss.

When I ask he would just turn away, maybe it's a pride thing. Then he repeats the next day and I wouldn't want to ask any more.

@tonysdg this should be an answer. Actually, the answer.

Assuming the stare is not sexual in nature, it could be this: "The Asperger's Stare" see http://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=101650 It's not limited to people with Aspergers, my mom had it on some occasions before her life ended. Once she freaked out a waitress, she was really sorry she did that. It's not like she was consciously doing it. It happened when she was stressed.

I think person have special needs, that is strange, if you are in USA? you cannot discriminate against these ppl, but in europe some lab would not accept him

It's more of a comment, but I just want to voice that in my teaching career, I did encounter a couple people with these traits and they do have what we called Autism spectrum disorder (ASD). I am not diagnosing OP's colleague, but I'd like to suggest this possibility, and we should be mindful that it may not be fair to assume the person of question can fully function socially.
After talking to faculty and doing some homework searching for resources, what I found useful was i) talk to the person privately about your expectation, and ii) be direct, don't use social hints. In many ways it's not that different from what other users suggested you to do, but I'd just like to add another point that sometimes some people can appear to be rude because they don't know it's rude, not because they are rude.

I'm quite sure that he doesn't realize he's being rude. It's also almost impossible for him to take a hint. That's why I'm worried if he'll be really hurt if I'm direct with him.

It is fine to be direct, just don't be mean. "Unless you need something, I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't stand there watching me; I find it very distracting." It will likely happen a few more times, and you can start saying, "Just a reminder, I find your watching me distracting!" It doesn't need to be a big conversation.


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What is the minimum contribution expected from an M.Sc. thesis?
I am writing a thesis for my M.Sc. dissertation, and I am struggling to identify how big the contribution of my paper has to be.
I've heard professors in our campus saying "you don't have to save the world, just add a little bit of something to an already existing work." But that is vague and seems too little for an M.Sc. program. Do you have any advice on what could be considered a sufficient contribution?
Ps. My field is distributed systems (cloud computing) and it would be nice if you could explain it in that context.

How did your advisor answer this question?  (You did ask your advisor, didn't you?)

Asking "how little do I need to do to get by" is not the best way to look at it.  It's better to ask "how far can I go with it" instead.

I agree with Paul here. Any time you start with 'what is the least I need to do to get by' you're probably coming at the problem from the wrong direction. We all do this to some extent but you may be setting yourself up for trouble in the long run.

you don't have to save the world, just add a little bit of something to an already existing work." But that is vague and seems too little for an M.Sc. program — Really?  This is an honest description of requirements for tenure!

Your school's library should have copies of previous theses. Read several that have your advisor -- you'll get an idea very quickly of what you need to do.

In my opinion and experience, it is relatively rare for an MSc thesis to yield truly original research resulting in a paper. The primary goal of a MSc thesis is to teach you important research skills: come up with a general idea of what to do, researching literature, coming up with a specific question that you want to address, performing research (computations, fieldwork, lab experiments), and finally writing it down in a thesis. If you successfully complete this cycle, I think your MSc thesis is a success. If the thesis, after some editing, is original enough to end up as a journal paper this is a big bonus.

This is largely depends on your supervisor expectations.
Some professors have certain requirements for their MSc students to graduate (i.e. publishing one paper) others do not have contribution requirements and knowing the literature is enough to them.
Even if you do have publishable work, some professors will keep pushing you and you will end up with three years MSc thesis similar in away or another to a PhD thesis.
In general, you are required to know the current literature of your subfield/problem area very well and summarize it in a thesis. It is definitely better to implement/compare different techniques, trying to identify challenges and trying to tackle one of the challenges.
For example, your general area is cloud computing, your thesis topic is about materialized views or query processing under cloud computing infrastructure. This requires finding the current literature of query processing, how it is different under cloud computing settings and what are the main research challenges

As someone who supervises MS and PhD students, your question makes me very nervous. Why are you now, at this point in your career, trying to sneak by accomplishing as little as possible? You are at the age and time when you should be envisioning great things and trying to create new knowledge (or at least add to it). I always tell my students that the aim of the MS is to generate something publishable (conference or journal paper). The reality is that not all achieve this (and I still let them graduate) but this is what you should aim for. It is for your advisor to know the field, but you need to ask him/her the question: where is this topic publishable? When can we take it to a conference (or to a journal)? If the advisor can't see how your work could be publishable (if it works out as you plan), then find another topic or find another advisor.

You are right sir, thanks really for your candid comment. I just fumbled across so many topics and I kinda burned out. I have started to think that academia is not the right place to make meaningful contribution. Some of the researches that we do are in search of a problem and we then write it convincingly enough that evil lurks unless these problems are addressed; there by magnifying our contribution.  I feel like I'll contributed once I started working for some company. But deep inside, I know that this is some sort of procrastination.

But can't you more comfortably aim high when you know that you can't fall too deep if you fail? That's why I would pose such a question: to reassure me that I could just calmly do my best without fearing for the worst.

MSc thesis requirements vary. It is best to ask your course director.
I know some students in the UK getting distinctions for literature reviews, while other departments only give a distinction if the work is publishable or potentially publishable.
I was in fact at an UK university where MSc dissertations quite regularly gets published either during or a little after the course.

@VahidShirbisheh - Good point. +1

The requirements probably change depending on where you are, but, having just finished my MSc in the UK, I can tell you what I was told supervisors are looking for in a Master's dissertation.
Some of the requirements I had have already been listed by seteropere. Basically, demonstrate you know your chosen topic very well, identify some challenges, perhaps try to tackle one.
But the main thing that supervisors here are looking for is that you have gone beyond the material in the course. They want to see that you took what you learnt throughout the taught part of the masters program and applied it to something that wasn't covered, or in a way that wasn't discussed. Alternatively, you could also choose a topic that wasn't covered at all in your course and provide an overview of it, discussing challenges, open questions, important examples (which is where dissertations that are basically just literature reviews come in, as mentioned by Legendre).
Good luck with your thesis! Unfortunately I don't know much about cloud computing, but I hope this helps anyway!


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Will once turning down Master's admission impact a PhD application in the same department
I notice there have been some similar questions, like Will turn down a graduate (Master's) program have effect on my application for the same program?.
But my situation is a little bit different.
I once turned down a Master in statistics admission at University A and accept another Master in applied mathematics at University B.
At that time, I think the Master program at University A focus more on the applied statistics but I want to learn more math and theoretical statistics to prepare for applying for statistics PhD program.
So I accept the applied math master program at University B.
I plan to apply for statistics PhD program at University A this fall.
Question 1
Will I be put into a less favorable place compared to other applicants because of this?
Question 2
Should I mention that I once turned down the master's admission?

I don't know the answer, but I'm hoping that University A will be objective in their decision making and not play favorites. Best of luck!

I think it would be highly unlikely that they would disadvantage you, unless you are applying to a truly small and petty department. The small part is really key here: for most departments of any size, you would likely be one among potentially dozens to hundreds of applicants. That they would even remember your name on a later admissions from an MS application would be unlikely, unless they already felt you were someone special (which wouldn't hurt you).

Thank you so much for your reply. But should I mention that I was once admitted but declined the admission in my personal statement?

@MasamiNagasawa No, I wouldn't do that.


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Is citation bias a studied issue?
I have noticed in a number of papers, including those in top journals, a common dirty practice which consists of self citing your previous works and omitting other important references in the area (I admit some of them at least include the classic references). For instance Prof. John Doe writes a paper and his references look like:

[1] John Doe (1970). Paper 1.
[2] John Doe (1971). Paper 2.
...
[200] John Doe (2014). Paper 200.
[201] Issac Newton (1687). Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica.

I am aware of the concept of Publication Bias, which is related to a bias with regard to what is published. I wonder if there is also something related to self-citation bias or citation bias (it might also be the case that a person only cites a group of researchers (friends?))?
This, of course, is not just a matter of taste, but it is a practice that complicates the literature review in a certain area.

One complexity is that it is hard to distinguish between "dirty practice" and the natural fact that someone is more aware of her or his own work than the work of others.

@MaartenBuis Good point. I agree it would not be something easy to study.

In a perfect world, peer review should ensure that no relevant citations are omitted (and no irrelevant ones are added). Unfortunately, we do not live in a perfect world, so we get both this issue and the complementary one of referees asking to include semi-relevant citations to their own papers.

It's not necessarily 'dirty'. In some fields where the number of researchers is very small, it's just normal that bibliographies have a high rate of name recurrence. Also if you publish a lot of methods papers, you will inevitably cite them in the following publications.

@MaartenBuis I've thought about this before, I think one way of getting at it might be to count the number of cites to said self-reference per article. Many cites to one reference in an article indicates they're closely related works but a single citation could be more likely just there to inflate the author's count.

@blmoore: Doesn't that seem somewhat implausible unless a single citation to someone else's work is considered with the same degree of suspicion?

@O.R.Mapper I guess they're irrelevant when investigating self-citations but agree might similarly be a good indicator of exactly how central or peripheral the cited work is to the paper in question.

@blmoore: What I wanted to say is that basically, there is no issue at all with citing something that, in its entirety, is peripheral to the paper as a whole. After all, one often cites only single statements or examples from otherwise unrelated work (and that's how it's supposed to be; that's how knowledge gets abstracted, adapted, and combined across research questions). Of course, one's own essentially unrelated work could be cited for the same reasons (and intentionally citing someone else's work in such situations would be the same bias, just in the other direction).

@O.R.Mapper Indeed, I'm not petitioning that all references must have many citations or that citing things once is a nefarious act, however disproportionate self-citation of peripheral works seems useful evidence to distinguish "I publish a lot of closely related material" from "I plug my papers whenever I can for extra citations", per the comment I was replying too.

@blmoore: Ah, such a relative approach (self-citation vs. non-self-citation among peripheral works) sounds reasonable, if not as a definitive indicator, then as a warning sign that suggests further investigation. I agree.

This problem has been receiving significant attention in recent years.  Among other thing, there was a recent scandal around "citation cartels", in which journal editorial staff organized not only to ensure their own journals self-cited but also so that groups of conspirator journals would cite one another in order to raise impact factor while adding a layer of indirection to make it harder to track.  Such journals also sometimes strong-arm authors into adding citations to other publications within the same journal.
I don't know if anybody has tried to further tease apart the different between intentional (i.e., citation cartel) and unintentional citation bias.  It would be interesting to study, but may be difficult given the amount of intentional bias that some are using the game the system.

While relevant, this mostly deals with journal-level citation gaming, which is quite distinct from self-citations at the author or research group level, and the motivations also differ alot.

I would say that the use of self-citations that you describe is very common, but whether it's dirty is not clear-cut and it's probably difficult to study. I can also see several different perspectives, some more malicious than others:

Bias due to better knowledge of your own and related researches (friends) work. I find this rather benign, often unintential and natural.
When providing a reference to support a specific point, everything else equal, most researchers will probably cite their own work before the work of others. This with the assumption that both papers provide equally good evidence/arguments, and that the author can only use a maximum number references for his paper (which is commonly the case). This behaviour is probably most often seen in soft/weak references of general points in e.g. introductions and discussions. I personally find this behaviour maybe not ideal, but rather human.
The concious choice not to cite other researchers work that would be relevant. This can come in (at least) two forms: 1) ignoring researchers with a critical perspective on your work (~academic feud), 2) wanting to "claim" the field as your own. Both of these cases should ideally be spotted during the review process, but I think it is very common so still see traces of them in published papers. The problem is probably to prove bad intent, and it is also dependent on reviewers that know the litterature in the specific field extremely well and also bother to speak up about it. This form of behaviour is naturally the most problematic one.

Under point 3, the first form (ignoring criticism) has recieved most attention. However, reading between the lines, I feel that the second form is relatively common as well, where groups of researchers try to "claim" a specific topic (intentionally or unintentionally), so that their body of work is the go-to reference for this topic. A good way to achive this would be to preferentially cite work from within the group, especially if you are already a well established researcher. This can be particularly powerful if you are writing review papers of topics, since these can be used to define the core literature of a topic for future researchers that discover the field (probably related: Matthew effect).
I don't know about studies that try to quantify how common these specific behaviours are. However, the study of citation patterns and self-citations is common, and two papers that touch upon the things mentioned here are Hyland (2003) and Fowler & Aksnes (2007). Hyland (2003) looks at how self-citations can be used for different purposes, while Fowler & Aksnes (2007) tries to quantify the "value" of self-citations (which seems to be quite large).

For another study of this and related practices, see Nefarious Numbers, by Doug Arnold and Kristine Fowler.  They review how gaming citations led the Internation Journal of Nonlinear Science and Numerical Simulation to have by far the highest impact factor in its field, despite being a third-tier journal according to expert opinion.
Another famous case involved the journal Chaos, Solitons and Fractals.

In this article you find empirical evidence for the self-citation bias:
Marc Brysbaert & Sinéad Smyth,
SELF-ENHANCEMENT IN SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH:
THE SELF-CITATION BIAS, Psychologica Belgica 2011, 51-2, 129-137.

Welcome to Academia SE. Can you please summarise the results of the linked article and also link to the journal’s page of the article and not directly to the PDF? Otherwise your answer would be a link-only answer and would thus have to be deleted.

Also, as you appear to be the author of the article you link, perhaps you could include a summary and elaborate on the position presented in the paper?


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What to do when expecting a negative recommendation letter?
I'm a postdoc having a difficult relationship with my adviser. Rather unexpectedly, he started literally bombarding me with all sorts of mostly unjustified accusations, including that I'm not productive enough and all sorts of personality-related complaints. I'm in the process of applying to a new postdoc. Will have the first interview in 1.5 days. Given the present situation, I don't expect a good recommendation letter from my adviser. However, I have already listed him among my recommendations.
What should I do?

A. Not say anything about the relationship with my present adviser during the interview.
B. Be upfront and mention that I have a poor relationship with my adviser and can provide more details if needed.

I'm quite confident I'm treated unfairly and can explain the situation to my advantage.
I talked to two professors whom I trust, and both of them suggested I should not say anything about this in the first interview. One of them thinks that I might get a good LOR after all; this is his justification. I would prefer not to rely on this. Thus, I don't know what is the best option. I will get another, strong recommendation letter from a very reputable professor who helped me in the past.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. This is a follow-up to my previous question.

A bad review from your present advisor will probably hurt you significantly. However, I think you will do more damage if you try to discredit your advisor's reference ahead of time: you risk sounding like a poor employee, particularly if your advisor is respected in your field.
Instead, I would prepare evidence to counter a possible negative recommendation. If you expect your advisor may critique your productivity, emphasize work you have completed in your interview. Unfortunately, if you have failed to publish your work in your current position, that may be difficult to prove, and the responsibility for that is not only on your advisor but on you as well.
If you anticipate critiques of your work ethic, how well you play with others, etc, and your other reference has not yet submitted a letter, you could ask them to specifically highlight those qualities. If they already submitted a letter, hopefully they already addressed these issues.
I would be careful about how you describe your relationship with your current advisor in the interview: keep the high ground, and don't make judgments of value. If you produced one good publication where your current advisor expected two, don't say "Bob had ridiculous expectations for my productivity" - instead, try something closer to "I worked on two projects with Bob - we were able to publish project 1 after ___ months but ran into setbacks on project 2."

Wow, that's brilliant! I think I can put your proposal into action. The new professor already knows about my former submission and thinks good enough about it, if he decided to go on with the interview.

Keep in mind that other people have likely seen it all. If you are professional in the interview, without blackpainting your current advisor, and you get good LORs from earlier posts, many people will understand that the current supervisor is not objective and there may be other, non rational, reasons for them to write you an unpleasant letter. It is well known that some people do not want to let their strong staff go and therefore will not produce fair LORs. Stay true to yourself, do not criticise your current employer, be factual.

An interview is never the place to bring negativity into the discussion.  Always, have nothing but positive things to say about all your committee members.  Even if you were treated unfairly by this person, anything negative you say only makes you look bad. Include him in the references...he is/was your advisor.  If he gives a negative response to those who inquire about you from him, then that reflects on him, not you. By all means, take the high road, it will show your personality and professionalism in a positive light.

The fact that you included them in the reference list shows that you trusted them (and that they clearly weren't worthy of that trust if they really blackball you).

I would ask your current supervisor if you can expect a good reference letter or if you should look for another reference in the future. Perhaps it would give you the opportunity to talk about his negativity towards you and to find an amiable way to continue to collaborate. And it would let you justify to him or discuss frankly his expectations and yours and try to come to an understanding.
If he is going to give you a negative reference, which he probably won't do because, in that case, he should've said he would not write a reference for you, then you can prepare your game plan.

Thanks for advice, that's another good point. I asked him for a recommendation letter before our relationship deteriorated, so nothing to change here. Now I try to reach an agreement with him to at least soften the blow he might give me.

Supervisors sometimes get prickly about things but, being cerebral, have little recourse to declare their feelings hurt. If the relationship has been good in the past then it is salvageable. Maybe he doesn't realize how much his comments have affected you. I've found that treating them like any other, adult human being is the best way. :

We are on a path to reach an agreement. Now I'm optimistic about finishing the current project with him. He could have made his points so much nicer! Anyway, thanks for all advises. Answer above is still a good and totally safe way to go, regardless of what sort of letter he will write.

Under the perspective of an interviewer: the value you hold of your advisor is the value that you might be inclined to hold of your prospective boss.
Hence under all circumstances talk positively of your supervisor. State that his guidance was indeed helpful and that his feedbacks were constructive and indispensable. If your advisor's LoR were positive after all, your qualities would be attributed. It will still support you even in the case of a negative LoR.

Negative LORs have to be fully backed up with actual evidence. These are professional working documents and have consequences on career advancement.
Any form of negative reference can be considered libel (written) or slander (verbal) without supporting proof and should be reported immediately to the departmental administration. This is why they get the big bucks - to prevent expensive escalations.
Junior advisers are more likely to err on a LOR. Take quick and firm action if this occurs. Admin can yank an adviser's leash quite effectively. Everyone can benefit from a little adult supervision now and then.

I haven't heard of a successful libel suit for a bad letter, at least in the US. It would have to be pretty blatant to have any risk of that kind (like an unfounded accusation of serious misconduct). More importantly, a letter need not be explicitly negative to be damaging - because this letter is on the request of the applicant it is expected to be glowing - even a lukewarm letter could be seen in a negative view by the future lab.

Yes, a downright accusative letter is very unlikely. An adviser not willing to help his postdoc will more likely write a lukewarm letter that raises a few flags.

Since LORs are intended for an audience with high literacy levels, a damaging LOR can be encoded without explicitly using obvious negative language (actus reas). Such sophistry can still be considered libel if it is decoded to be the intended effect (mens rea). Success in any legal action is irrelevant, since as indicated, department admin would intervene long before such an outcome. They review LORs as a matter of course. They have the right to withhold glowing endorsements for those who have not earned it, since the reputation (and by extension, revenue) of the department is also at stake.


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What to do if you forgot some proofs while writing your thesis?
I am currently writing my master’s thesis. It is like a survey and contains lots of theorems with or without proofs. Everything that I am writing, I studied and proved before. However, I see that I forgot some proofs or even definitions and cannot do it without looking at the books. So, I am studying those again, try to prove them my own, and then write them after I understand them – but I feel lost.
What should I do and what have you done when you face a problem like this?

What is the problem with forgetting things? This is natural. Some time from now you will not even remember your thesis title. :)

This is not a genuine problem. Everyone forgets things. A true scholar may nor may not be blessed with an exceptional memory, but the operational issue is about having personal resources that accommodate one's limitations, and sufficiently point to the relevant resources. So: self-management.
It is true that having a good memory, or an exceptionally-good memory, is generally an advantage in knowledge-based enterprises, obviously, but things are more complicated than memory-per-se.
And, in any case, being able to reproduce fluently all the basic things on a moment's notice is irrelevant. True, a certain fraction of more-senior people happen to have the sort of memory that allows them to reproduce certain things on-the-spot, but this is really not relevant to professional practice.
Yes, the most conflict-laden point is that faculty teaching graduate-level courses, and who've had the misfortune to have either a deterioration of memory, or have always had some memory problems, have difficulties with teaching. Not that they don't "know math", but that the details are not easily present in their minds. The other point is that this does not mean that their critical/critique-ing faculties have deteriorated. An awkward state...
But/and, after all that "too much information", the point is that no one (no professional mathematician) is required to be able to reproduce everything upon command at every possible moment.
(The whole "final exam" or "contest" concept of mathematics greatly and sadly corrupts our collective concept of that the thing is.)

Well, as the OP is still at a starting research stage, it's not necessarily bad to want to know the bedrock of his research inside and out, assuming he hopes to continue doing research.  But, certainly, as a long-term professional outlook this starts to get in the way.  Talking with other mathematicians gave me the comforting realization that it's normal to make (really) stupid mistakes or forget "important" things as we're working something out.  Soldiering on and knowing where to look and who to ask eventually wins out.

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know
  where we can find information upon it.

-- quote by Samuel Johnson.
So don't worry about it. I know (roughly) the statement of the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus, but being able to prove it from scratch is another matter. But I know where to look.


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What are some altruistic reasons for submitting to top-tier journals/conferences?
It seems to me that there is a preoccupation within academia to getting published in venues which are highest-ranked in terms of some sort of metrics rather than venues most suited to one’s subject area albeit not high-ranked.
It occurred to me that any reason for this must be self-serving. I don’t feel comfortable with this idea. As opposed to self-interest as the actual motive, are there any better reasons for submitting to top-tier journals/conferences rather than low-tier ones?

I don't think I understand the question.  Journal publications are not an act of altruism under any circumstances that I can think of.

I agree with Pete Clark. Or to reword that, please define altruism (a word that is used in somewhat different ways at least in philosophy). It's hard to imagine circumstances where an individual actor motivated by altruism would think the best outlet of that is submitting to "top-tier journal/conferences"

I have edited my question. I hope it is clearer now.

Well, if you think your results are very useful to a broad audience and you want as many people as possible to know them for the advancement of the field, then the greater reach and audience of the more renowned journal would be an advantage.

@GDumphart, good answer. But does the more renowned journal necessarily have the greater reach of audience? And the more renowned journal is not necessarily the higher-ranked either.

@adipro I think this is hard to tell in days where many people find literature with Google Scholar instead of browsing the newest issues of their your journals of choice. But there is definitely a tendency towards articles in renowned journals getting more citations (authors want to increase their acceptance odds with "strong" references, b/c there are indeed some reviewers who will reject papers whose references are not mostly top journals 2013-2016), thus getting assigned higher index or relevance (or whatever) by search engines like Google Scholar, and thus getting more exposure and reach.

There is a false dichotomy in your question. People don't choose highly ranked venues instead of most suited ones.

@CapeCode, people in my field do.

By submitting your work to highly ranked, prestigious journals, you are typically confronting it with the strictest scrutiny and highest standards in the profession. You also accept that the novelty of your work will be judged by experienced researchers of your field. That's how journals get their reputation and rank.
The consequences are that you will have the very valuable opportunity to improve your work by receiving reviews or rejections. When your work will be accepted you'll have made a significant contribution to your field.
Submitting your work to journals that have lower acceptance standards, or pay-to-publish megajournals with no desk-rejection, you are possibly (and I mean possibly because I can't judge your work) watering down the literature with redundant or irrelevant material.
So yes, by aiming high and accepting that your work could eventually not be worth publishing there, you are doing the scientific community a favor. That's altruistic.
Also if you're an established researcher who do not need the exposure and prestige anymore to secure your career moves, you might have co-authors that are not that far yet. Making sure your common work gets the attention and scrutiny it deserves is common sense to me but also altruistic.

Your 1st paragraph implies that there are different pools of reviewers, where the higher-ranked journals draw from the higher-quality pool of reviewers and so on. I'd like to think that this is true, but I am not sure if I can. I mean, what can stop a lower-ranked journal from soliciting reviews from high-quality reviewers? Anyway, thank you for a good answer.

@adipro I interpret it more as high-ranked, prestigious journals get more submissions compared to others so the bar is set higher as they have to filter out more than for lower-ranked publications.

Assuming that your publication is indeed sufficiently exceptional to be published in the respective journal:

As already mentioned in a comment, high-ranked journals have a higher visibility outside your specific subfield. This applies to scientists of related disciplines who may translate your work to their field, but also to news coverage and similar that communicates the achievements of science to the general public. Indeed many high-ranking journals have a criterion that your work is of general interest beyond your specific subfield.
While this attention benefits you, it also allows the scientific community and the general public to benefit from your insights more than a publication in a lower-ranking journal does. Moreover the additional attention may benefit your field or subfield by highlighting its usefulness to funding organisations and students who might venture into this field. Finally, it slightly benefits science in general by communicating it usefulness to the general public.

If your results are not entirely based on luck, they may indicate that you are indeed a comparably capable scientist and funding you is more likely to advance mankind than funding somebody else. Thus your egoistic interests are to some extent also altruistic. Or with other words: The academic system’s evaluation mechanisms are based on high-ranking publications and getting people properly evaluated helps science and academia. By not participating in this system, you are harming it.

Now, there is some criticism on the idea of ranking journals at all in times of the Internet where hardly anybody reads articles by journal anymore, and one may consider it more ethical to fight and boycott this system than participating in it due to the above reasons. But that’s a decision you have to make for yourself and this platform is not fit for discussing it.

Thank you for a good answer. In relation to your point 1, I tend to think that generalist journals are not likely to scrutinize your work as detailed as the more specialized journals, is this not true?

@adipro: Not at all. Generalist journals will still select reviewers from your subfield, but high-ranking journals usually use more reviewers and sometimes also have stricter rules on past collaborations between authors and reviewers.


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Why can it take more than a month to find a reviewer?
In the mainstream publishing model, it can take more than a month from the time a manuscript is submitted to the time reviewers are assigned to review it. I feel this is a bit unfair as editors from these publishers generally require reviewers to submit their recommendation within a month from the time they agree to review. I believe the effort required to review a manuscript is much greater than the effort to find a reviewer.
My question is: Why can it take so long to find a reviewer?

There are several factors that can play into this:

Some journals have a strong editorial hurdle, i.e., a high desk-rejection rate, and the editor is expected to actually spend some time on the paper to judge its suitability for the journal. Thus editorial handling includes more than just finding a reviewer.
Some editorial systems only indicate that a paper is “under review” (or similar) when a reviewer actually agreed to review the paper, while others already do this as soon as the first requests have been sent to reviewers.
In some fields, it is common that reviewers blatantly exceed the allotted review time, so that the journal requiring their reviewers to submit their reviews within a month may still result in an average review time of two months or even higher.
Depending on the availability of potential reviewers for a given paper in the field, some journals follow a strategy of requiring reviewers to submit a review quickly, but take into account that many reviewers reject the request and they spend a considerable time finding reviewers.
Both, editorial handling and peer review do not take much work time in comparison to the allotted time (a day’s work or less in most disciplines). The main delay arises from the editor or reviewer having to find time for this given their other academic duties. Thus, if for example, the editor is on a conference for a week, they have to catch up with their regular work and the editorial work afterwards, which may amount to a significant increase of the editorial handling time.
Some editors are just slow.

Some papers, even if good science, are badly written. As a reviewer, sometimes it feels that the paper was written by a PhD student whose supervisor did not check the submission. I then feel I need to be diplomatic and encouraging and have to do the job of the supervisor, pointing out possible improvements and the such. Well-written papers are usually much easier/faster to review. With increasingly less time, I tend to increasingly decline such review tasks, as I feel it is unfair to the authors of well-written (independent of scientific content) papers to thus allocate my time.

peer review [does] take much time - not true for serious theoretical papers, at least in math (though this is a good answer)

@Kimball: See my edit.

As a relatively newfangled academic editor of PeerJ Computer Science, I can tell you that actually finding suitable reviewers is substantially more difficult than what I used to give it credit for. For many papers that I get on my virtual desk I am not actually an expert, so I need to invest some time to look over the literature of the area to figure out who actually are suitable reviewers. My current "acceptance rate" for reviews is substantially below 20%, and it would be even much lower if I did not have a reasonable personal network (that is to say, at least 75% of all reviewers that actually accept are people I know personally). Approximately 50% of those that do not accept never respond, so you can't really tell whether they accept or not until you waited a week or so. And - particularly annoyingly - it is not unheard of that people accept a review but then never get back to you.
All in all, I would say taking one month to find reviewers is long, but not outrageous.
Small nitpick:

I believe the effort required to review a manuscript is much greater than the effort to find a reviewer.

While this is certainly true, an editor also typically handles many more manuscripts than a reviewer...

Wow, I had no idea so many people don't respond to review requests.  I always accept or decline within a couple of days.  (If only my reviewing were this quick...)

Yet PeerJ [the life sciences, no data yet for the CS?] claims 22–24 day median time to first decision.  So you do find them much faster than a month?  Or is median<mean?

@BeniCherniavsky-Paskin People simply not responding to requests could have that effect (forming a "long tail" of decision times).

@BeniCherniavsky-Paskin I can't speak for PeerJ CS in total, but my manuscripts typically take substantially longer than 22-24 days to first decision. Not close to the 5 - 6 months of other journals, but definitely more around the 1.5 - 2 months range. The one time I asked a reviewer for a review in two weeks (the default in the PeerJ system), the answer was a short "surely you are kidding?".

If several of the people the editor asks decline to review (and especially, if they wait a while to respond and then decline) then it takes a while to assign reviewers.
Keep in mind also that editors are typically handling many papers simultaneously, which can be a lot of work in aggregate.
In some fields, there aren't that many suitable experts, so it's hard to find enough that are willing to review. See e.g. How long is too long to wait for a rejection because of a lack of reviewers?


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What words should I capitalize in the title of a PhD dissertation?
I am unsure about how to capitalize the title of my dissertation. In my case, I am wondering about  "testing" and "empirical":

Four Essays on the empirical testing of the Efficiency Hypothesis

Should I capitalize gerunds?

Check the journal style guide, or see what the journal has done on other published papers.

It's a PHD-thesis. Unfortunately, there is no style guide.

OK, look at the title pages of other theses in your department or in the library. Check with the thesis secretary.

I found a similar scientific article with capitalised "Empirical testing".

Wait, but why have you capitalized "Essays"?

Where are you? I was taught that UK-style is to only capitalise the first word, and it's a US style to capitalise any other words. Are there local conventions like that where you are?

Off topic, but I might suggest omitting the "the" unless you are referring to some single particular empiracl testing so idenrified in the literature.

My school had a detailed style guide for theses and dissertations that told you exactly what to capitalize in titles.

Are you citing your already-written dissertation?  Or are you deciding how the title should appear on the title page of the dissertation you are currently writing?  Those are not necessarily going to follow the same formats.

The quickest solution (for me, at least), is to type in your title at https://capitalizemytitle.com. It gives correct title capitalization in many formal styles. And it has detailed information to explain the rules it follows.
Style guides vary, but generally, any word of any grammatical type that is four or five letters or longer is capitalized. (Different style guides differ on the four- or five-letter cut-off.)
For just about all style guides, "Testing" and "Empirical" are definitely capitalized.

It gives me "Four Essays on the Empirical Testing of the Efficiency Hypothesis"

@TobKel, I'd agree (from a traditional viewpoint) with that idea...

@TobKel ... that is exactly right for "title case", which is common in the US.  Perhaps not common everywhere, though.

Could put the "Efficiency Hypothesis" in itallics for emphasis if it is the name of a particular well known hypothesis in the field?

What an amazingly useful site. I am in awe of people that create these beautiful, single-purpose websites that do one thing and do them brilliantly. Thanks for sharing, I didn't know that it existed.

I think there are three plausible options.

Four Essays on the Empirical Testing of the Efficiency Hypothesis

This is title case: you capitalise almost all words. The only words not capitalised will be things like articles, conjunctions and short prepositions (and perhaps some other words where a lower case initial letter is significant, e.g. "E. coli"). Exact rules vary, but "on", "of" and "the" would be lower case in all major versions.

Four essays on the empirical testing of the efficiency hypothesis

This is (normal) sentence case. In some disciplines, the titles of articles are usually in sentence case, and IMO it makes sense to do the same for theses in those disciplines.

Four essays on the empirical testing of the Efficiency Hypothesis

This is still sentence case, but regarding Efficiency Hypothesis as a proper noun. If you capitalise it when it appears in the text of your thesis, obviously you should also capitalise it in the title.
In particular, capitalising "Essays" but not "empirical testing" would be inconsistent.

I'm not a language maven, but I'd think that both Empirical and Testing should be capitalized. They seem to be especially important words in the title - the essence of it, actually. The work is about empirical testing, after all.
Some might ask you to capitalize all words in a title, even articles.
In a thesis, your advisor should have good advice.

Maybe not "articles" or "prepositions"...? (unless they're part of the official name of something?)

the Efficiency Hypothesis

I doubt that's a good choice of phrase for a PhD title, regardless of capitalization. "efficiency" comes up everywhere. This is super-vague. At least somethin like "Smith's Efficiency Hypothesis" or "The [process name] efficiency Hypothesis" if that's the process you want to make efficient. Remember, the PhD title will be read not just by people in your specific subfield, but by people with very diverse backgrounds.

This really isn't an answer to the question at all.

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


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Seven years of postdoc with no first-author publication – what are my career prospects?
I have been a postdoctoral fellow for seven years, but I have no first-author publications. I am really struggling with my projects; none of them could be completed. I have several review articles, one book chapter and one publication as a co-author.  I am too depressed and livid with myself. What are the prospects moving to company or other non-academic jobs? I had five publications as a first author during my PhD. Can I become a medical writer or science writer. My professor advises me to try and complete at least one project, because I have one last year of funding left.

Thinking out loud (not sure if this applies to your case/aspiration), what about joining government labs/agencies?

Have you been involved in successful projects that didn't result in publications or for which others were able to claim the "glory" while you did the work?

"I am too depressed and livid with myself."  Discuss this with a mental health professional.

How many post doc positions have you held? And if several, are they with different places?

What discipline is this?

Nanomedicine discipline

This is the only position.

In general companies don't care much about your publication record, they care more about your skills and any achievements that prove it. For example if you have done many projects with other people, you might want to emphasize that you're a good team player.

First, if you feel depressed you should seek professional help. Naturally because you should take care of your mental health in general, but also because you're less likely to achieve anything useful (let alone get a new job) with a negative state of mind.
Ok so publications as first author is not going to be your selling point. Now there are certainly a lot of other things that you have done: maybe grant proposals, supervising students, experiments which require particular skills, organizing scientific events... The publication record is an important indicator in academia, but it's not the only one. And outside academia, it's frequently useless.
Try to objectively identify your skills and motivations: what are you interested in? Which skills do you have that most other people don't? Clarify the direction you would like to take and study your options, usually there are quite a lot for somebody with a PhD anyway. Your PI's suggestion could be a good idea, depending what you are looking for. You could also use some of the year you have left to perfect your skills or expand your professional network, for instance.
A simple way to get an idea of your career prospects outside academia is to contact a recruiter, they are usually eager to find skilled people. Even if you don't apply for the jobs they propose to you, this might give you a nice little ego boost ;)

Good answer, but I would add that your publication record outside of academia isn't "frequently useless." Of course exactly what you published on or where is not as important in industry jobs, but it will be used as a stand-in for "I can finish a project." Therefore OP's advisor's advice to finish/publish at least ONE project in the next year is a good one. Having a good success story will help the OP when they are on the job interview circuit.


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Switching labs, need advice on how to communicate with old PI regarding project
I’m currently a master’s student (rising second year) wanting to applying for PhD, in the US. I completely switched field with the M.S. program so when I chose a lab, it was not an entirely educated choice. Now, after the first year, I knew what I’m passionate about and I am switching to a new lab once the fall semester starts.
I already told my current PI that I’ll be moving and he is supportive. However, he wants to push me to finish my current project, which he says won’t take too long. From my experience working on the project, I know that is not true. I also want to apply to a PhD program with the research interest of my new lab, so work in the new lab will be my priority.
Usually, I wouldn’t mind work the old lab project on the side to finish it up. But I’m taking 60 credits at a prestige private university that’s well known for its stress and heavy course load.
I told my PI that I don’t want to bite off more than I can chew and it’s in the lab’s best interest to find someone who can focus and prioritize his lab work. I would be actively in contact with my successor to help them familiarize with the data. However, he keeps saying this isn’t much work, and I should be able to finish it.
What should I do? I want a good letter of recommendation from him for the PhD application too.

Are you working alone on this project or with others?

The whole project have multiple people working on ti, but I have my own sub-project.

Is he paying you? If he's not, quit immediately and say you can't invest further time into unfunded research.

I used to research for him for credit. During the summer I worked for pay, but now summer is ended and I'm moving to the new lab. I'll be working for that letter of rec.

I can generally see two motivations for your old PI to have you finish the project:

He benefits from a finished project and does not want to pay the price (time, risk, money) of training a successor.

He thinks that finishing the project is a good career move for you as you gain experience in wrapping up a project (and he can write that in his recommendation letter) or possibly a publication.

Something that is very important to consider here and in my experience often underestimated by students is this: It takes quite a while to familiarise yourself with a project so you can efficiently work on it. You never hit the ground running. The details strongly depend on the field and individual project, of course, but just to give an example, my rule of thumb for four-month projects is that the student has to be up to speed after three months and then most of the valuable work is done in the last month.
To estimate this for yourself, think about how much time and energy it would take you to re-do the work you already did on the project with your current knowledge  (i.e., minus familiarising yourself).
Compare this to how much time you actually spent on the project.
Now, there may be some tedious experimental chores involved that simply cannot be made more efficient, but maybe you do not need to do any further of those or these can indeed be done by somebody else.
It may also be worth considering how much energy the remaining work will cost.
It may be very stressful for you, but it may also be some rather enjoyable, relaxing, and satisfying activity compared to everything else you are doing.
Finally, it may be worth noting that one thing your PI may have experienced and wants to avoid the following:
A valuable project that is nearly finished gets abandoned because the student quit or finished and was unwilling to do the few final pieces of work that can be easily done by them and only by them.
The reason for this is that the student does not recognise how much they could have benefited from finishing the project.
And training somebody else to finish the job is not worth the effort.
With all that in mind, I suggest to talk with the PI with all that mind.
I suggest to ensure to address the following points:

What work does still need to be done?
This is both about what he wants from you and what you think this requires.
What of this work needs to be done by you and what can be done by somebody else?

What’s the amount of time and energy you estimate to spend on this work?

How do you benefit from this?
Does this yield valuable experience, a better recommendation letter, a publication, etc.?

Mind that how direct you can be with all of this depends on your old PI and cultural factors.


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Is it possible for an F-1 graduate student in US to do internship in Europe?
I am a graduate student in US with F-1 visa. I have an internship offer from a company in France. Is it possible/feasible for me to accept this offer, or are there any rules preventing me from doing so?
Added:
I am an Indian National with F-1 visa. The internship will be for 6 months (2 terms). I am allowed to do 3 or 6 months internship in US with CPT, but I cannot find any such information regarding internship out of US.

What country are you from? I can easily take such an offer, because I am European. Would it be just over a summer? Is it long-term? All these details are needed to answer your question.

@Johanna : I am an Indian National with F-1 visa. The internship will be for 6 months (2 terms). I am allowed to do 3 or 6 months internship in US with CPT, but I cannot find any such information regarding internship out of US.

From the point of view of the US it shouldn't matter where you go for your internship- you'll be out of the US and out of F1 status for that time period.  You should talk to your international students office about taking a leave of absence from your school.  There are regulations that allow students to take a leave from school outside of the US (more often in their home country) and then return to the US on F1 status after the leave of absence.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is about visa and related topics and not about academia. It may be on-topic on Expatriates.

The question does touch on visa related issues but it is more centered around policies of American Universities on how to deal with international internships.

You should talk to your international office. They should know the best.

U.S. Immigration Law: While doing a summer internship would be seen as compatible with still being a full-time student because of the extended American summer, if you did the 6-month internship you may have difficulty arguing that you are still a full-time, enrolled student. You need to ask your university foreign student's office for advice as to how you can retain your F-1 status.1
French Immigration Law: You need to clarify with the French company that you will have a valid visa status while in the EU.
University Policy: As with US immigration law, you need to make sure that your status in the program is not interrupted by the internship.

1. Note that CPT (Curricular Practical Training) does not apply as you are not applying to work within the USA. The main  concern is that your absence for 6-months is not seen as a disruption of your studies from the perspective of maintaining your F1 visa. Your international students office should be able to advise how to maintain your student status. The bonus is that you should be able to use your OPT year in its full since you did not take a CPT.


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What change should I make in my current resume before submitting it for Graduate school transfer application?
I will be completing my first semester at a Graduate school in 3 months and I have planned to take a transfer to another school in Fall semester. I need to update my current resume that I need to send along with the transfer graduate school application. So what changes can I make to my existing resume.
What all things should I mention about my current school and where should I mention this information in the resume.
Can anyone provide me some resource that would be helpful for resume writing for transfer application?

Update it in the same way you would for anything else. There is nothing special about transferring in regard to your resume.

The main change that you should make is to change from a resume to a curriculum vitae, which is the standard academic equivalent.  Here is a good resource explaining the difference.


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Undergraduate prerequisites for a Ph.d. in combinatorics
I am a double major in mathematics and electrical engineering. Towards the end of my mathematics major, I began to develop an interest in combinatorics (specifically graph theory), and am seriously considering a Ph.D. in the subject.
Having developed the interest late, my senior thesis will be in a different topic (complex ODEs), but I would have completed one course in combinatorics/graph theory (an upper-level undergraduate course using a grad-level text - I expect a strong reference from the professor teaching this course).
The courses I have completed are basically both the undergraduate and graduate-level algebra sequence,  analysis in R and R^n (without a formal introduction to Lebesgue measure), discrete math (for EECS), applied probability, one course in numerical methods, PDEs, applied complex variables, and a "mathematical methods for sciences" course (focusing on special functions, variational calculus, and integral transforms).
I won't have the standard math major courses(i.e,  topology, measure theory, and number theory.) I plan to focus more on applications than theory in my combinatorics Ph.D.
Would additional coursework be necessary for a Ph.D. in combinatorics (specifically graph theory)? (I could potentially delay my degree by a year and spend time as a non-degree student at another university, or complete a non-thesis track master's degree before applying for a masters/Ph.d.). Any advice would be appreciated.

I'm fairly sure they'd ask you to complete some more coursework, but it seems you should be on a good track. the engineering is good background, as is Math of course. good luck!

Thanks. I'm still a little unclear about the coursework expectations for graduate applications. The undergraduate courses I have come across (for example, in budapest semesters) are as far as I understand, a 2-course sequence in combinatorics (of which i will cover nearly everything in one course), as well as one in additive combinatorics and one in applications. In a combinatorics Ph.D. application in a top 50 US graduate school, is all this coursework typically a necessary prerequisite?

The prerequisites in combinatorics will not be significantly different from the overall prerequisites in the program to which you are applying.  Having taken a combinatorics course would be beneficial, but there is no need to take many of them as an undergraduate.  You mention Budapest Semesters in Mathematics in a comment.  They offer a lot of combinatorics courses, more than some U.S. universities, and there is certainly no expectation that a typical applicant will have completed this many courses.
In your case, I expect the main issue will be whether you are applying to pure or applied math departments, since combinatorics could be located in either.  For pure mathematics, the admissions committee will wonder how many of your courses were based on rigorous proofs (for example, applied complex variables and mathematical methods for sciences courses might not be), so it would be best to be clear about that.
I would recommend applying broadly and seeing what happens.  Even if your coursework is not ideal, you may still be admitted, with the expectation of having to catch up in a few topics.  Ultimately, it depends on how compelling your application is overall, and your transcript will be just one factor.