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No reimbursement from grad school for canceled open house flight expense
Expedia and the airline I booked a trans-Atlantic flight with, have told me I cannot get a reimbursement. Only a refund for airline credit for a future flight. I do not need this.
The grad school I was traveling to for the open house (which was canceled obviously) is not reimbursing me because I was given the option for a refund/flight credit.
I have extremely tight funds... this flight's price was highly non-trivial on my budget.
How can I handle this?

This is a legal issue, not actually an academic one. You can appeal to them or get a lawyer.

If it makes you feel any better, many universities do the same thing to their own employees.

I don't give legal advice, but I strongly suggest that advice to pay money to a lawyer over a matter that is worth less than what a lawyer charges is highly misguided.

Why did people vote for "out of scope?"  I could understand voting for "institutional preferences."

Sorry Lopey Tail, but they probably wouldn't do this unless they ran out of money to pay for reimbursements.  Could you tell us the job title of the person who told you would not be reimbursed?  And the country of the graduate program?

You say they do not reimburse you, because you were given an option for a refund - but you weren't? Flight credit is not the same thing, as you do not have the money and will have to use it for a flight that's perhaps not even going to happen (company may go bust). BTW, what is Open House?

@NateEldredge You mean not reimbursing employees for expenses they incurred if the service is not offered? Where (what country) is that?

@AnonymousPhysicist IANAL, but is there something like a "Small Claims Court"?

@AnonymousPhysicist  grad director for US STEM PhD

@CaptainEmacs precisely my issue... i would not have bought the ticket if not for the open house (visit day for PhD programs to help those with multiple offers to decide where to attend)

The underlying issue is that if the university reimbursed you, you'd essentially have made money. That's because you end up with the university's money plus the flight credit. That seems like a good deal for you, and that makes it a bad deal for the university.
In many cases, airlines give you a choice: (i) take the flight credit for a future flight; (ii) cancel the flight and get a part of the cost back, usually the ticket price minus a cancellation or rebooking fee. You want to go with (i) but that didn't work, so try to go with (ii) in which case you can demonstrate a concrete loss of money, namely what you paid up front minus what you got back in the end. That cost is what a reasonable university would reimburse you for.

the issue here is that the FLIGHT was canceled, not only the event for which I was traveling.
I find it very odd that the airline is not providing reimbursement in this scenario.

@LopeyTall, did you ask for a refund before the airline cancelled the flight?  If so, you might be out of luck.  But if the airline cancelled and offered you the future flight credit, know that most credit card companies will give you a refund if you paid for something but didn't receive it through no fault of your own.

@RayButterworth really?! i will look into this! cheers

The starting point is probably to respond politely but firmly to the academic in charge of the admissions process, pointing out that you cannot eat a flight credit, and that the grad school's actions have led to a substantial and unexpected hole in your budget. Frame it as a 'moral' obligation rather than a 'legal' one. If you've had significant interactions with any of the professors as part of the applications process, you should cc them on the email.
If you do not get a satisfactory response, you might then escalate matters by emailing the Head of Department/Dean/University President's office. Again, being polite and non-antagonistic but persistent is probably your best option.
If none of this gets you anywhere, your options are probably to involve a lawyer and/or a journalist.

The dean's office seems the most likely of your suggestions.

My main concern now is that, I very much intend to attend this school now. I do not know how well arguing over a $300 ticket would go. (Especially considering PhDs are still forced to pay something like $1000 in "fees" a year.)

@LopeyTall I pay $1600/yr, but I would caution that this may not be a good time to start a PhD if a $300 expense truly blows a hole in your budget. That isn't too say you aren't owed it back though.

@AzorAhai this phd is funded/tuiton-waived

@lopey Of course. They still don't pay a ton, though

If you intend to attend, why did you go for the open house then? Anyway, this changes consideration. Perhaps you can try to be insistive, but be aware that universities have a lot of things to worry now, so you should balance your need of getting your money back now and your expectation of joining that place. That's quite sad, but it is not clear whether you can have both.


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I made it past the first round and I'm a Fulbright semi-finalist — should I tell the graduate programs I applied to?
I have not heard from any of the programs (Physics PhD) I applied to yet.
My thoughts on the effect of a brief email to the graduate coordinator are:
Pros —
The admission committee at the graduate program will have the knowledge that another committee (for a prestigious scholarship) has reviewed my project/profile/etc and found me of a high caliber.
Cons — The admission committee may be annoyed by my contact, viewing me as trying to score some "brownie points." It is only semi-finalist, I still have to be selected in the final round.

I doubt that it would have much effect, actually. If you have been, as you say, found to be of a high calibre in one committee, it is likely that you are so viewed elsewhere as well. So I don't think either the pros or the cons carry much weight.
Of course, if there was one program that you were especially interested in and would decline a Fulbright to accept it, then it might be worth trying to "goose" the committee. Otherwise, just congratulate yourself and celebrate with an appropriate beverage.

Interesting! Thank you for the thoughts. Oh no, the Fulbright would mean the world to me — I made sure to reach out to each program regarding their deferred attendance policy, as I will hear from the final round of Fulbright after being accepted (hopefully) somewhere.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Fall grade reporting
Some programs require fall grades (which I'm happy about, mine are good).
However, some neither require it, nor do they have the ability to upload them through the online app.
Should I email someone on the grad admission committee something along the lines of:
Hi,
greetings and thanks for opportunity to submit my app and thank you for the time you take to read my app
rewording the text above^^^
happy holidays, thank you
Thoughts?

I assume that they don't actually want them. They probably wouldn't know what to do with them in this circumstance. Why bother?

Are you asking if you should submit/ have our university send an updated transcript?

Whatever you do, don't use "app" as shorthand for "application" in this context.

Hi all! Thank you for the comments. One step in the graduate school application process is to update our unofficial transcripts. Some schools ask that when we receive our fall grades, we update that unofficial transcript. Hope this helps explain what I'm asking :) Since my grades have improved (albeit from 3.93 to 3.94) I think it would pay to at least ask the programs/ or at least the department to which I'm applying, if they would like they.

You should never submit your grades directly
Students should never be in charge of submitting their own grades or recommendation letters to programs (I'm assuming you mean graduate program).  The risk of cheating would be extremely high, and your current university is almost certainly well-versed in sending (and receiving) grades in a safe, secure way.

Hi Sevensevens! Please see my comment above! While you are correct about letters of recommendation, I have not encountered one school/program thus far that does not accept unofficial transcripts. While some do require us to mail official transcripts, most allow unofficial until you are offered a spot — then you must submit your official transcript prior to matriculation. Hope this helps!

If they told you to send them, then go ahead.  I was able to digitally send a copy of my transcripts when I applied, and I assumed this was the same across the board.  As long as they verify the transcripts after, you probably couldn't forge anything, but why have to do the work twice?

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


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Publishing images
I submitted a paper to a journal and just found out that I was accepted. This is my first time publishing and I wrote the paper for a class assignment. I submitted all of my citations and figures but now I am worried that I will run into copyright issues. I scanned several of my figures out of books, which the journal team knows, and I am nervous. What can I do to avoid issues? IS this something that I should contact the book's publisher over?

An image copied from a book is almost certainly under copyright unless the copyright has expired. The journal should know this and should have taken some action on your behalf to obtain permission to republish it. Any reputable journal would find a way to deal with this, either directly through the other publisher (assuming it isn't themself) or through you obtaining permission. Images are very seldom fair use for copying since they carry so much information (A picture is worth a thousand words).
Some materials might have a permissive license for reuse, such as a CC-BY license, but that would be clearly stated in the source. They might (probably will) require a citation in any case. Some images are themselves already public domain if the original is old.
You should ask the journal what provisions have been made, if any. If none, then you should withdraw the paper until you make a suitable correction. One correction might be to provide alternate images. Another might be to get permission from the original publisher.
But, publishing it as it is now will do some damage to your reputation.
Note, however, that copyright law is almost everywhere a civil matter. It might result in a lawsuit by the copyright holder against the infringer. Such a suit is more likely to be against the publisher than yourself, though you might be named. Suits are expensive, so those suing go where the money is. It is nevertheless, a stain on your reputation if it is published. Put a hold on publishing until you work out the details. If you haven't yet signed over your copyright you are perfectly able to stop publication with just a notice. If you have already signed it over, then it is a deeper problem.

Edited to add: These images seem to be art. As such, the book you copied from might have, itself, copied from public domain sources, in which case they aren't actually copyrighted by the publisher of the book. You can probably find public domain sources for most art (especially anything fairly old) with a web search. There are millions of images online.

Thank you for your advice! The journal is one through UC Berkeley's Art History department and they just started. I have sent off questions about this to them but while I wait for a response I searched for public domain versions of some of my images. Now out of my 10 figures only half are now an issue (and three of those I can cut out if need be).

You might find public domain images for most art, actually, unless they were created in the digital age. A web search for "public domain art images" will turn up a lot of possibilities. In fact, the images you copied might have been copied from public domain sources.

The only images I am having trouble finding public domain versions for are from the Theoi Project. Others are from a museum catalog and have a hefty licensing fee should I want to use them. I am reworking my writing so as to omit the images to avoid paying the fees (I am still in university and don't have the funds)

I'm an art historian. Obtaining image permissions for articles is one of the bugbears of the profession. Not only will you need to consider who took the photograph of an artwork, but you also need to consider whether you need to request permission from the artist or the artist's estate prior to publication. In some cases, you may need to request permission from the rights agent, like the Artists Rights Society, which permits licensing of artwork.
The College Art Association publishes a helpful guide on fair-use guidelines for images. It's available here: https://www.collegeart.org/pdf/fair-use/best-practices-fair-use-visual-arts.pdf
I would also suggest taking a look at articles published in one of the College Art Association's journals to get a sense of what types of credit lines are necessary for image captions.
Here are a few screenshots of image captions from the art historian Melissa Ragain's 2021 book Domesticating the Invisible: Form and Environmental Anxiety in Postwar America to give you a sense of which organizations you will need to credit. The first image is from page 111 and the second is from page 115.


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How to figure out the pros and cons of a review paper?
My professor has asked me to do a literature review of a review paper. This is my first time doing a review. What method should I follow? any tips for beginners?

This is very field specific and is something you should probably discuss in more detail with your professor.

Kind of weird to say "do a literature review of a review paper". "Do a literature review of a field" makes more sense. Best to ask your professor what they had in mind.

Find your professor's publications in or adjacent to the area. If they're cited, that's a pro. If they're not, it's a con. I'm only half joking about that...

Literature review FOR a review paper?
What field are you in?

It depends what the literature review is first: is it a scoping review? A systematic review? A meta-analysis? That will make a difference in the specific way it is framed and understood methodologically. You must clearly define your exclusion/inclusion criteria, find sources with key query terms that address your research question. I also recommend using a reference management software for extracting sources (e.g., Mendeley, Zotero, EndNote).
As long as you follow PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses) then you should be able to conduct any review.

Just set up a spreadsheet, make a list of the literature cited in the review paper, categorize it as book/paper/conference proceedings, get the main message of cited papers, do a short statistics of each paper citation and self-citations.
Basically do something, write a short discussion to this something, write an introduction to this something + discussion of something, and put everything in a slideshow that lasts 15 minutes max and show it to your professor.


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Advice on Picking Grad School with Goal of Getting Academic Job at Small College
I am a student looking to pursue an academic career in computer science. I enjoy doing research and understand that is a big part of getting tenure and jobs. Importantly, I also very much enjoy teaching (I've been a TA frequently and taught full units of courses before).
I would be okay if my academic job search after my PhD did not work out, but because I genuinely enjoy teaching in addition to research, I think academia is a preferable environment for me. Specifically, I think I would enjoy working at a small college that values teaching equally with research (think Reed, Grinnell, Davidson--a sample to demonstrate location is not important to me).
I am trying to decide if I should accept a PhD position at a public school in the US that is generally prestigious but not particularly known for computer science (i.e. not in Washington or California)--rankings are fickle and subjective, but this school would probably be considered a top 30-40 school for CS in my estimation. I love the advisor who I would be working with personally and believe them to have a strong record of publications and capability for mentorship. This prospective advisor is very young and publishing very frequently, if that matters.
I was pleased to be accepted to this program because I am a late convert to computer science and do not have a strong publication record, although I do come from a very prestigious undergraduate institution and have strong (top 1% of class) grades. I say this because only because the alternative to accepting this offer is to wait and apply during next year's cycle, but I am not sure I am the ideal candidate for super fancy programs--I think my best work is yet to come.
I understanding the competitiveness of the academic job market. I am not an idiot and know that an MIT PhD is probably more helpful when applying for jobs, all else equal. However, if I think this environment will allow me to publish a lot and be a good fit personally, does it give me a decent shot at getting a job at a small teaching college, or does going to a non-top n school drastically lower my chances, even if I think I would publish more somewhere else. Please be honest.

Have you looked up the PhD institutions of the faculty at the places you're targeting? They're often listed on a department webpage. I'll guarantee that a substantial proportion of them have degrees that are not from whatever short list of places you're think of when you say "top".

I think the comment above is the advice you want/need. Check out the most recent hires at the places you are targeting for. What are their profiles? That will tell you what you need to know about how much these schools value “pedigree”.

@user176372 I only say "top" because otherwise I have noticed people tend to dismiss me as not being ambitious. I believe the list of "top" schools is highly personal and depends on one's fit with individual faculty memebrs, hence why I intend to attend one that I think other students may not consider "top."
I actually asked this question after being alarmed at the lack of diversity in the graduate educations of Professors when I browsed pages of some targets. E.g. Davidson and Williams College.

@Dawn Thank you! This is great advice that I received from an advisor and it has been helpful to see. Generally there are a few alma maters that appear a lot (maybe students interested in academia self-select into those schools as well). I think what I am looking for is insight from someone who has been on a hiring committee and can speak to how much the schooling of a candidate is discussed relative to research output. I am sure I will need to publish a lot to have a chance at a job, so I am taking it as given that without doing that, the institution does not matter.

@zack-overflow Just glancing from the link to Davidson you posted, several if not most of their tenure-track profs have their PhD from strong R1 state schools (in contrast to one of the California privates or an Ivy)! Same with Williams. As Buffy says in his answer, any R1 is likely to be more or less good for you. Sure, if you're choosing between two comparable places and one has a boatload more funding, you should probably go there. Otherwise, it's unlikely to change your trajectory a lot.

Honestly we talk about pedigree because we are trying to hit the sweet spot of “well trained but not out of our league” - we care more about interesting research agendas vs raw number of publications.

@user176372 I think some schools have an outsized representation, but in general it is true there is far more diversity than when I look at the page of (e.g.) Stanford. I think my confirmation bias may have blinded me when I first looked. The program I am considering attending happens to have a lot of funding in my area for entirely circumstantial reasons, which is a plus!

@Dawn I am surprised me that people talk about not getting "out of their league," but maybe that is a hidden plus for me in this case! Is an interesting research agenda one that is in the news, one that garners a lot of citations, or one that happens to align with the preferences and interests of the hiring committee?

@zack-overflow I earned my degree from a fairly-respectable institution in the US (not MIT or Harvard by any means, but I believe their math PhD program was ranked around 40th in the US when I attended). I was upfront about my intention of going into academia because I was interested in teaching -- I enjoy research, but teaching is my preference as it's less stressful (in my opinion) and I get to do the research I want at the pace I want to research it. Four years after graduating and spending time teaching at one major public university, I'm now at a smaller public university in a... (cont'd)

@zack-overflow ...(cont'd) different state. For how things worked out, I actually got my dream job at my dream institution. All of that to say: pursue teaching if that is your interest. You'll stand out amongst most of your peers as a top educators and be able to effect positive changes that will help you land your dream job (hopefully!) :) Best of luck!

@Clayton Thank you! I have gotten a lot of conflicting advice; it seems like it may be hard to generalize experience across institutions. Some say to give up on teaching since that will never be considered, while others say that smaller schools value teaching highly. I think the best choice for those like me is to pick an PhD environment where you will be valued and given opportunities to excel in research (mostly up to you and your advisor) and teaching (you can benefit from wider support).

I would think that any R1 school in the US will be fine for your needs. And a 30-40 ranking is quite high, actually. Public Universities normally have good faculty advisors in almost all core fields, especially STEM fields. There are a few states that underfund their State Universities, but those won't rank anywhere near 40.
The future of your career depends more on what you do than on the ranking of the university you attend. And not every expert in every field can teach at MIT just because of the numbers. And not everyone wants to live in or near Boston in any case. Expertise is spread around.
Yes, the academic marketplace is tight now. Find a good and supportive advisor. Do good work. Live long and prosper.

Thank you, genuinely! This is a fantastic answer because it faithfully engages with the circumstances.
I think my difficulty in grappling with this has been that most advice online simply assumes PhD students entering the job market intend to work at a "top" R1 university, hate teaching because it distracts from research, and view anything else as "settling." This is unfortunately true even of advice from those I speak to personally who should know better because I explain my unique situation.

From the viewpoint of a Hiring Committee at a small college, you application will look much stronger if it contains a record of your collaboration with undergraduate students, undergraduate interns, or even high-school interns.
So, while in grad school, and later, while working as a postdoc, try to involve undergraduates in your research, if your supervisor approves your doing this.

From my personal experience (not in CS), this is true. But honestly I think the thing that has worked for our candidates is to have research that feels interesting to undergrads vs. stuff that is very much “inside baseball” in a super niche subfield. Would undergrads be excited when they hear about this new professor?

Thank you for this tip--I actually an undergraduate RA working with me on my master's thesis! I genuinely appreciate working with younger students and serving as a mentor. I have had great mentorship and enjoy paying it back. This is why I want to work at a small college, not because I am lazy or hope to get by with being worse at research (this is often the assumption made when I say I would like to teach at small schools). I plan to be great at research! But I also want to help others learn to be great at my field, too. Is that too much to ask?

@Dawn I generally don't work in the abstract symbol manipulation/math areas of computer science and instead prefer work that can have near-term and real-world impact. I hope this is generally interesting to undergrads!


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Marshall Scholarship question
Please let me know if there is a better place to post this.
From the document, http://www.marshallscholarship.org/applications/2020_rules_2_year_updated, I have,
"In addition if a candidate puts Oxford, Cambridge or Imperial College, King’s College London, LSE or UCL as their first choice institution none of these universities can be listed as second choice institutions."
I'm not sure how to read that. It seems from only that sentence, that it is somehow more difficult to get a Marshall at one of those institutions, and it would benefit you to choose an institution not listed there so the cohorts for each year are spread around...? But then looking at previous years this is simply not the case, http://www.marshallscholarship.org/scholars/winners_2018
Is there any benefit to applying to say Durham/Edinburgh/Southampton over Oxford/Cambridge?
Thanks in advance!

I urge you not to overthink it and to just put down where you actually want to go.

I think this ought to be my first priority, I think I will start by researching all the departments I'm interested in and making a list of my favorites. Thank you:)

Without asking them directly, it's hard to say for certain what their intent is, but it seems like a mechanism to dissuade applicants from applying solely to those institutions. For example, they don't want everyone putting Oxford as 1st choice, and Cambridge as 2nd choice.


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google scholar view all authors
Google Scholar only allows one to see the first few authors

this is annoying when you want to get to the other authors google scholar profile on an article with many authors

Anyone know how to enable all authors to be shown?
Cheers

You could use the cite option on the paper and the author's names come up. And just copy paste on the search from there. There is no option for generating hyperlinks for all the authors.


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resumbitted paper proper citation
For a CV/ grad school application, is there any benefit to noting that after a paper my group submitted to a peer-reviewed journal it was returned with comments from reviewers and we addressed them and resubmitted?
For example,
[1] A. Author et al., Brilliant Title That Draws Attention, Submitted to J. Phys. B, [arXiv:1908.12345].
versus
[1] A. Author et al., Brilliant Title That Draws Attention, Re-submitted after peer-review to J. Phys. B, [arXiv:1908.12345].
Or something like that?

I don't see any benefit. Seems inconsequential.

Thank you! I figured, but wanted to hear what the common practice was! Cheers

I'd write "under review at journal X".

Also a nice option! :)

I think the few different statuses you would typically indicate are:

Submitted: after submission but before you’ve received any indication that it’s being reviewed
Under review: during the entire back and forth of reviews, revisions, rebuttals, etc.
Forthcoming (also called “In press”): once it’s been accepted but hasn’t yet been published.

As for formatting, it probably doesn't matter much as long as all the relevant info is there, but a few options to consider are:

[1] A. Author et al., Brilliant Title That Draws Attention, J. Phys. B, submitted August, 2019. Under review. [arXiv:1908.12345]

or

[1] A. Author et al., Brilliant Title That Draws Attention, under review at J. Phys. B, submitted August, 2019. [arXiv:1908.12345]

I'm sure you can find other examples elsewhere (such as this post).

Under review in journal name?

I've updated the answer to include a few formatting options. Personally I might go with "Under review with the Journal of Applied Such and Such", but the particular conjunction ("in", "at", "with") probably doesn't matter much

Hmmm I think I refer,
[1] A. Author et al., Brilliant Title That Draws Attention, Under review in J. Phys. B, [arXiv:1908.12345].
since the submitted date is confusing, as the article was submitted in august, reviewers got back around october and we resubmitted around november..
Moreover, how you list it (submitted) makes it seem the citation should go under your category #1 (Submitted), i.e. there hasn't been any concrete evidence of peer-review as there is in my case

the "submitted November, 2019" was just an example - typically I think you would list the date of the original submission, and besides that will indicate how long the review process has been underway. again, these are just suggestions of possible formatting options. Definitely you should indicate somewhere that the paper is "under review" and not just "submitted", but having a date is usually good practice too


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Masters in education during physics PhD
How feasible would it be for a PhD student in physics (who is interested in teaching high school after their PhD) to receive a masters in education from the university they are receiving their PhD from?
I would think that at least during the first 2 years of a PhD program, before qualifying exams when you are taking courses and being a TA, this is in no way feasible.
What about if you had permission from your PhD research advisor to do so during the later years of your PhD, when you are only doing research and have less (or none if you're funded) TA duties?
How competitive would getting into the school's masters in education program be? I would think that being a PhD student there would help.
Would being a current PhD student help in receiving scholarships to alleviate the costs of the masters in education?

Most universities have significant restrictions on what you are allowed to do outside working on your PhD. At my university, this was limited to 10 hours per week, and even then it required approval. Pretty sure you can't fit a master's degree into 10 hours per week. You should consider finishing one degree before starting another.

In the US, even with a MEd, you would still need to get credentialed sooner or later. Here's a brochure on what California offers.

This is a classic example of something that depends on your institution's regulations and values.  Identify your goals, and talk to the head of your program and the head of the education program about how to achieve those goals.

My department would not have allowed me to register for those classes - they were paying me, and paying my tuition, and they were not paying for me to be taking those classes. (Sadly, this view also extended to the hotel school's class in wine tasting that we all wished we could take.)

Seems to me like a long shot. There are a lot of obstacles. But first, few secondary schools require a doctorate to teach. So, what is your real goal? The doctorate? Secondary teaching?
Next, you won't have much of a life if you try it. Think 80 hour weeks for a couple of years. A doctorate doesn't often get easier after you pass comps.
Just the scheduling will be an issue. If you are taking courses in two departments, they won't coordinate class times to make it easy for you.
But, perhaps, the biggest obstacle is fining an advisor who thinks it is a good idea. "Where is your commitment?"
As for being competitive for admission, I think it might be a minus. Again "Where is your commitment?"
Costs might be an issue or not. A doctoral student in the US normally has funding sufficient to live, but it normally comes with duties that take time. Tuition is normally waived. But it might not be for the other program.
But, it may be possible (just) if you want to completely set aside all other concerns for a couple of years. Hard, though.
Most secondary teachers with degrees in field, get their education credits over time through continuing education. It is the normal practice in the US. Finding time for a course or two in field-related pedagogy is a more modest goal, and more feasible. But still not essential, as few people actually do that in the US.

High schools might not require a doctorate to teach, but many of them would like to hire PhDs if they were able.  I don't agree about commitment.


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PhD application question: "Why do you want to join my research group?"
Whenever somebody asks me "why are you interested in joining my research group", I find myself helpless. What are the usual points or aspects I should talk about in reply of this question?

Well, why are you interested in this group and not another? Have you done your homework and figured out what kind of research the group is engaged in?

@Anyon First of all your name is very fascinating. There is a group working on models of fractional quantum Hall effects, and I want to work in that group. Why do I want to join that? Because they are doing simulations of many-body systems. I love simulations. Now, I do not understand what things should I write on motivation letter. Should I write about simulations? Should I write about why I love simulations?

You have to decide what you want to write to represent YOU... This is also, basically, the thrust of a similar question here : https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/118190/72855

@Luqman: Okay, so say that thing then.  If you love simulations, tell them that.  Tell them why you love simulations, etc.

Advice: ‘because you have money’ doesn’t work like 99% of the time.

Essentially, what the potential advisor is asking you to show is that you've "done your homework" before applying. Why do you want to apply to Prof. X's group? What is it about their research that is attractive to you? Why do you think you'd fit in to the group? If you just send a generic email that inquires about positions and don't have an outstanding CV and transcript, you're not going to get very far. However, if you make it clear that you've looked into the group and can explain why you're interested, you'll have a better chance of getting a response.


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Is it a good idea to ask my Master's supervisor to help me finding a PhD in other universities?
I am in final stages of my Master degree in physics. I am looking for a PhD position in Europe. Is it a good idea to ask my supervisor to help in me finding a position for PhD?

Yes, it would be a very good idea to ask your supervisor. They know the field much better than you do. They likely have contacts in many places and also know which universities would be a good match for your interests. Many places will want a recommendation from your supervisor anyways, so it would be good to have them on board.
I would not phrase the request as "Please help me find a PhD position" but more casually, for example: "I am interested in doing a PhD, do you happen to know of any openings?".

Agree except for the last line. I would be more direct/ask for more specific types of help. In other words “what universities or research groups would be a good match for my interest?” “Can you help me strategize about the best way to reach out?”

@Dawn Thank you. I think it will be a better to ask for direct help, as you are saying.


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Is a career in academia still viable after mediocre phd and break?
I'm looking for some honesty and perspective if you can help me out :)
I completed my PhD in humanities in 2020 (after small corrections it was awarded in 2021). It was a hot mess, I had a scholarship but i had a totally absent supervisor which went on sabbatical for my first year and then came back only to complete their paperwork for retirement. We basically had less than 10 talks overall during two years.
When they left they did zero to support my search for a new supervisor, so I found someone from my department to take over provided i found a co-supervisor as my topic was not their specialty. I did, but the arrangement was highly unusual and as you can imagine not very effective (zero funds for the co-supervisor which did all in their free time).
New supervisors were nice, but fundamentally i worked the PhD in survival mode ( including having to take a break myself for health reasons).
In the end i had only 2 publications in minor journals and a couple of presentations at conferences.
After that i wanted to distance myself to all of it so i got a job in the "creative industry sector." This was a purely administrative job - full time.
During this time i realised that while my phd was a bit nightmarish, i still wanted to work in research. In these years i managed to present to some conferences as independent, and begun an MA in social sciences thinking that SS research methods might be more usable in a non-academic research position. Also got a paper accepted in the programme's working paper series which should come out this year.
So in short my question is: how realistical is a re-entry in academia, and if so, how to do it? If academia is not viable, what can be a career path where one can do something else than look at excel sheets 8 hours per day?
I recently (few months ago) got in touch with my phd co-supervisor and he said i should look to get my dissertation published. This sounds a bit overwhelming as a "free time" project. Any thoughts if that would be a reasonable project to undertake?
Best, and thanks for the inputs!

First: you do not have anything in hand, so start looking for any part-time job.
Second: re-entry in academia is a state of mind, almost all of the PhD are out of academia as soon as their PhD is awarded. You are in good (and large) company. You are for sure showing some motivation, since you published a working paper during your last MA, you also showed some capabilities, since you completed your PhD (under hard or easy conditions is not relevant for the first approximation).
Second second: do PostDoc positions exist in your field/speciality? probably you should try to apply for a research grant. Do you have a list of 5-10 grants/research funds you can apply to? Check univeristies and your country public research bodies for that informations.
To succesfully apply you need the support of some tenure academics.
Do you have a list of 5-10 names? they should be experts in your field that you can contact with a concrete proposal ("I would like to apply for this grant xyz ...").
Writing a proposal is almost a full-time job, that's why I recommend looking for a part-time job (if you can pay your expenses out of it).
Good luck!

"To succesfully apply you need the support of some tenure academics. Do you have a list of 5-10 names": please note that you do not need to already have contact with them, but for sure it is best to start with the few ones you know, before cold-emailing the others ...

Your PhD is research training, not the be-all-and-end-all of your research career
There is no great necessity to have had a highly successful PhD experience (beyond having graduated) to get into academia and become successful.  The program is primarily for research training and it is a bonus if you get good publications out of it.  For most (but not all) academics, the publications that come out of their PhD will usually be minor and will ultimately be dwarfed by later research.
You have two minor papers from your PhD program, which is something (and more than some people who have become successful academics).  Your first goal should be to get into any job that allows you the time to work on more papers/research, ideally a fledgling academic position where you can take the time to publish more papers from your dissertation or pursue other research avenues.  Failing this, try to find some of your own time to finish these off to make yourself more competitive for entry-level positions.  Academia is intensely competitive, with many many more PhD graduates than positions, so the position you are in is a difficult one.  Nevertheless, there are many people who become successful academics who had mediocre outcomes in their PhD program (e.g., graduated, but with no or few publications) but go on to do later research of great value.
In summary: Entry into an academic career is highly competitive to begin with, but it is still viable if you have a poor/mediocre PhD experience.

The importance of publications from the PhD is very subject area and also culture dependent.


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Use of colon and other symbols in citation
I'm currently working on a uni assignment regarding a piece of academic work, but I'm confused about some of the punctuation and symbols used in citations. 1) Consider this extract: "“phenomena of translating and translation(s) as they manifest themselves in the world of our experience” (Holmes 1988: 71)". I did some search on this aspect, but I'm still unsure. Does 71 means page 71 of that issue in this case or is it something else? 2) It could be a typo, since I couldn't find any info on that, but perhaps it does have some meaning behind it. Consider this: "Appropriateness for the purpose in a given context is described by norms and conventions which operate in a culture. Reiss and Vermeer (1991: 178f) prefer to speak of conventions instead of norms...". What could "f" beside the number 178 stand for? Thank you in advance for the answer!
P.S. I'm sorry if question like that has already been answered somewhere, I really  couldn't find exactly this question asked and answered. Also, I apologise for any mistakes, I'm not a native speaker

I would consider what comes after those colons to be page numbers. The use of ‘f’ usually means ‘and following’ - so not just page 178 but ongoing for at least one page more.

Some citation styles use(d) colons before the page number in parenthetical citations, so 71 being a page number is indeed the right interpretation. This becomes especially clear upon googling the sentences you quote, as the corresponding entry in the reference list is

Holmes, James S. 1988. “The name and nature of Translation Studies.” In Translated!: Papers on Literary Translation and Translation Studies, James S. Holmes; with an introduction by Raymond van den Broeck, 67–80. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

which looks like a book chapter with a page range that includes p. 71.
In the second citation, the letter "f" stands for the Latin word folio, which is typically interpreted as "and the following page(s)" Sometimes the intent refers to some other "components" of the cited work, e.g. paragraphs, verses, etc. (The potential ambiguity is typically resolved when reading the cited work.) This format is somewhat outdated, and best avoided in your own writing.

Specifically, "p. 71f" typically means "page 71 and the following page", and "p. 71ff" would mean "page 71 and following pages". The convention of adding "f" and "ff" is fairly widely used in German writing, for example.

@WolfgangBangerth I think you're right for sources that use both "f" and "ff", but I think I have also seen sources that never used "ff" but were on occasion clearly referencing several pages.


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Is it necessary to repeat the axis labelling if the images have the same axis?
I have two graphs that are part of a multi-panel figure. It is clear from both the caption and the graphs that the axes mean the same thing. Should I repeat the axis labels in both graphs, or should I leave them out in one graph to avoid redundant information?

I should be able to tell at a glance what the graph is showing. The caption is not sufficient. The text may well be on some other page, so is not useful at all. And, frankly, in your example there is little to indicate that the right panel has anything to do with the left panel, that is itself quite busy.

"It is clear from both the caption and the graphs that the axes" wrong assumption: it is not clear from the graphs themselves...

Keep the axis labels. It may be obvious to you that they mean the same thing, but it may not be obvious to a reader. Also, if somebody wants to excerpt one of the panels to discuss in isolation, it's good if the axis label goes with it.
The one exception to this that I would give is if you are packing together an array of graphs (as in the example below, excerpted from this paper), in which case the graphs can be treated as a single panel and the "interior" labels omitted.

It's often largely a style thing, but since your two y-axes don't share the same scale, the fact that they're the same variable isn't as clear as it normally would be.  For this particular case, I recommend including a label.
An alternative would be to be very descriptive in the caption of the figure.

On the other hand, if OP were to go without the axis label, I would definitely suggest adjusting the scales so that they match

@user2390246. I considered that, and it would deemphasize the rising slope, which is probably why the scales are different.

@ScottSeidman In some/many(?) cases, if you need to change scale to emphasise a rising slope, you've not got a rising slope that's worth emphasising.

@TripeHound  you're right about that.  If I were the referee, and that slope was the basis of any interpretation, I'd expect to see a p-value for the slope.

To add to the reasons why should label the figure axis: you (or other people) may wish to use the RHS figure in other contexts (e.g., in a talk) where it does not appear alongside the LHS one.

Bugbear of mine: if you are using a figure in a talk, make a new version! If figures are copied straight from a paper into a talk, they usually end up with unreadable font sizes.

@user2390246 That's because a lot of people make them with unreadable font sizes in the papers too --- let your figures breathe, people!


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Can an experiment be started with conditional approval from the IRB of record?
We intend to perform an experiment with human subjects. As part of it, teams will answer questionnaires on technical subjects like math, work in teams to develop some technical documents on algorithms and answer a questionnaire on their team dynamics (team cohesion, their skill levels, etc.,) while working together.
The IRB is conditionally approved by the IRB of record and the only pending is obtaining a reliance agreement with PI's university. Conditional approval was provided for all research interventions, questionnaires, data storage and risks discussed. The reliance agreement states that we are the IRB of record, only final results will be shared with the PI and nothing else (such as the participants' private data) will be not shared with them.
Can we run the experiment while we wait for the reliance agreement and full approval?
If we do, what sort of penalty can be expected?

Sounds like a question for the IRB.

Out of curiosity, what action would you take based on the guidance of folks on the internet, outside of the advice to ask the board?

For the last part, see: What possible consequences could one face for not getting IRB approval for federally-funded research?

Do not rely on anyone else's guidance on this but your own IRB. The risk of consequences for your study if you get it wrong cannot be overstated.
Ask your IRB.
Otherwise, assume "conditional" has its normal meaning: when something is conditionally approved, it's not approved yet.

The answer to IRB questions is always "Ask your IRB."
Not even "Ask your advisor, he or she should know."  I saw a fellow student nearly shredded because his advisor steered him very very wrong.  And that was a simple, clear-cut situation that everyone else who ever heard about it asked, "What were they thinking?!" at an R1 institute known for having a very sensitive IRB.
If that situation could go wrong, any situation can go wrong.
Always ask your IRB.


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Selecting studies and papers for a literature review
We aim to conduct a literature review that concentrates on specific regions, encompassing 21 countries. Our objective is to include all studies conducted within each country, recognizing that a single country may have a hundred or more publications on the subject. Should we strive to incorporate all studies from each country? Furthermore, could the selection of certain papers over others introduce bias into our review? I seek to comprehend the criteria employed in selecting articles for the review. Specifically, I am interested in the number of articles considered and the basis upon which certain articles are included in the review while others are excluded

Welcome to Academia SE! This is a good question, but unfortunately, in my opinion, not a good question for this site. This site is for general questions about academic life but it explicitly excludes questions about the content of research projects; see https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic. Such questions are too specific for this site. In other words, your question's answer is too specific to your research project and would not be generally helpful to academics with other research questions.

I think there's A LOT to unpack here, the first and most important aspect being that you don't clarify what exactly you want to study.
If you want to study relationships between authors/institutions/countries, then a bibliometric analysis is what you want. Specific packages exist for this (such as Bibliometrix for R or websites like connected-papers), mainly for automation of article meta info collection, categorisation and graphs generation. Such programs mean that there's not a lot of work for researchers, but you have to establish good search queries for each database you're accessing.
If you want to do a narrative review, then you just have to read a lot about the subject you're interested in. A narrative review is more or less a story putting together the results of other papers, without creating new knowledge directly. It's subjective, and (as far as I know) not many people would hold narrative reviews to a high standard. As such, those are seldom judged for biases, because it's assumed that the authors have picked their preferred sources anyways.
Lastly, what I think is probably what you want, is a systematic review. The systematic review is based on a highly specific research question, and all articles on that subject are collected and analyzed. PRISMA is a tool/guideline that explains the steps of a systematic review better. Such a research has a well-established protocol even before starting the review, which is prospectively put up on the web in a database such as PROSPERO (CRD from University of York). Once you establish a protocol, you have to adhere to it, even if some countries are under-represented in your sample (unless you explicitly mentioned ways to select articles based on country - see later).

Should we strive to incorporate all studies from each country?

Yes, otherwise you would have to establish a mechanism to choose specific articles from each country when there's too many, and that would introduce a bias.

Furthermore, could the selection of certain papers over others
introduce bias into our review?

Yes, depending on how you're choosing which articles to prioritize.

I seek to comprehend the criteria employed in selecting articles for the review. Specifically, I am interested in the number of articles considered and the basis upon which certain articles are included in the review while others are excluded

Unless you would provide more detail on what exactly you want to study, it's impossible for us to give you a definitive answer. Some criteria can be (examples from biomedicine):

Type of research: observational, interventional/experimental (testing new medicine)
Data collection timeline of original studies: are only prospective studies accepted (being more rigorous) or do we include retrospective studies also (those having their own biases)
Does the article contain the data I'm interested in? If, for example, I'm studying smoking behavior among diabetes patients, I won't include clinical trials for diabetes that don't contain any data on smoking.
Location, time, demographics if relevant: if I'm studying vitamin D levels in a population, I might choose to limit the included articles based on region (I'm interested in countries at specific latitudes, I won't combine data from Greenland with data from Ecuador). I might choose to study only articles based on data collected during the summer (when people are outside). I might even choose to include/exclude articles based on the skin color of the subjects (because of differences in vitamin D synthesis in light/dark skin color).

Lastly, as @Buffy has mentioned, before embarking on making a systematic review, you can do a scoping review, where you try different research questions, search queries, article selection criteria, in order to see what is possible or not.

If your goal is to include all studies, as you say, then you pretty much need to include all studies.
But, if you have a less comprehensive goal then you could restrict to recent studies or to "frequently cited" studies. You would need to include at least one study from each country, perhaps, though that might not fit your exclusion criteria. You might look at a citation graph among those you find to get an idea of the most important studies.
Before you start including or excluding papers, however, you first need to determine whether you are, in any sense, comparing countries or comparing studies independent of country. That isn't clear from your post, but needs to be clear in your mind. And comparing might not be what you are after, I realize.
First get a sense of the scope involved. Tens of thousands of articles isn't a reasonable task to attempt.


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Repeating oneself verbatim: from a word document to a presentation
Is this discouraged? Say I wrote an essay of 20 pages and I'd like to present it in a power point show. Can I simply copy paste what I already wrote in the essay (with shortening it, of course) without the need to re-paraphrase again?

Do you plan to kill your audience out of boredom?

Audience, save for the instructor herself, is not gonna read the word document. The word document is for the instructor only.

There's no better way of delivering a boring presentation than that of preparing slides full of text, independently from the fact that the audience has no access to the original text.

So, what do you recommend?

Don't do that, never. But how can we, strangers on the internet, give any more advice without even knowing what your presentation is about? And what is the context? And have you asked your instructor for advice on this (first thing to do)?

Yeah, she recommended that I just put bullet points and explain from my memory.

What your advisor said, minus the bullet points. Use images.

I have heard talks by humanities scholars who read pre-written text from a paper, sitting down. It may have been exactingly formulated, and precise, but amongst the least engaging talks I have witnessed. It felt like an insult to the attention of the audience. Now, being a non-humanities person, I prefer talks who engage with the content, at possible detriment of precise wording; and it is possible that humanities expect such "read off" talks as standard. But nobody is going to convince me that this style is in any form achieving what it wants: conveying information/impression/expression.

Please, please, please, for the sake of your audience do not create a talk simply by dumping a giant pile of text onto slides.  Prose is dense and meant to be digested slowly and without aid from the author.  A talk is just that: a talk by the author, and any slides should be there simply to enhance the audience's understanding of your words.
Thus, your slides should generally be light on words and heavy on images and diagrams.  You can dump text into the "notes" section that only you the presenter will see, but if you dump it on screen for the audience then 1) they will be reading the text rather than listening to you, and 2) they will be terribly bored and think you are a terrible presenter.
For some better heuristics for approaching the constructions of a presentations, I recommend watching Patrick Winston's "How To Speak" talk.

Everyone has probably misunderstood my question. I am NOT asking about presentation skills or 'dumping large texts' into a slide. This is why I clearly said 'with shortening it, of course'. All I meant is that if I wrote the following sentence in the word document: 'abc has been proved by xyz in order to form this framework', can I copy/paste verbatim the same sentence and dump it on the slide? (Or better to rephrase again?)

@R.AS. If "everyone" misunderstands your question, you may want to reformulate it? "Shortening it" is a very fuzzy term. A talk is a completely different medium from a paper. You can do different things. You can infuse it with anecdotes or analogies which would be inappropriate for a paper. You can explain and pay attention to feedback from the audience ("do they look confused"?). A paper cannot do that. For that, you need to forgo the precision of the paper, and give the bigger picture, also something that's harder to do in a paper. Zoom away, give overview, zoom in on few points, that's it.

@R.AS.: Using full sentences on a slide is a bad idea to begin with. Keep the information to be processed at a minimum so that people can follow your explanations. The slide could say: "Framework: abc [XYZ 2016]"

@R.AS. That is a loooong sentence for a slide. If you're already talking about "abc", simply write "proof by xyz" or, if "xyz" is/are famous put their pictures (with the names) and state verbally that these guys proved abc, or put a picture of the title-author line of the paper where "xyz" proved that.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


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The usage of citation signals such as 'see': commonly used?
When I paraphrase a direct idea from someone, I'd just end the sentence with (John 2010, p. 10). However and sometimes (especially while analyzing to support my claim), I use the citation signal known as 'see' to support an idea.
For example: The company can benefit from its long history (see Company X 2002, para. 1) (where the source 'Company X' does NOT clearly state the idea of the company benefiting from its history but rather 'agree' with my statement since it states that the history of the company dates back to 100 years ago for example).
From Wikipedia:

“See” indicates that the cited authority clearly supports, but does not directly state the proposition given.

I see that such signals are mainly used in legal matters, is their usage in regular academic writing acceptable? I'm using Harvard.

It's certainly common. If you are writing for a particular publication, then your safest approach is to check for similar examples within other papers. But from my own experience, I doubt that anyone will bat an eyelid.

I am using it in my classes assignments and analysis where I can support my opinions, an example of that would be the age of the company above.

In that case you should be fine to use it.

That is the clear intention on how the word 'see' is to be used before citation, i.e., to support the claim you make. However, it is not always the case that the common reader would be able to differentiate the intention of use. That is why I usually state it clear when writing the similar case.

The company can benefit from its long history. X et al. (Company X 2002, para. 1) support this claim.

But, it is perfectly acceptable to use the formal norms of writing; the usage of 'see' as you've stated. Just keep in mind the expertise of the readers you are targeting.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


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Is this an acceptable paraphrasing?
I need to cite different pages for the same source in Harvard style so here's an example of what I am doing (a hypothetical example):

John (2010, p. 10) notes that marketing should not be confused with just the idea of selling people goods and services as it's misleading. The same author claims that marketing is really about value (p. 11) so he coined the term 'relationship marketing' (p. 12).

Is this an acceptable format? I need to find a way to cite specific pages (to pinpoint specific information) instead of simply mentioning all pages as in 'John (2010, pp. 10-12)' at the beginning.

Is there a particular reason why you can't do John (2010, pp.10-12)? I would hope most readers could understand that any information you were citing came from one of those 3 pages and could go and search for it themselves.

Because I simply don't know. Are things usually done that way? Isn't it better to inform readers about the exact place of each particular piece of information?

I guess in my mind it's a matter of readability over specificity. Part of that comes from my background in computer engineering - I subscribe to the belief that when writing code, it's more important that a human can read the code than its conciseness (with exceptions, of course). Similarly, when writing a paper, I personally think it's more readable to combine the 3 pages into a single citation and only interrupt the reader once. Imagine critiquing an author's argument that spans 10 pages - it becomes a mess after a while...

...and I'd rather just see 1 citation that I could dig into if I wanted more specifics. Also - remember that not every field of academia uses the same citation style (and not even every subfield within a field). Nothing is "usually done" in a certain manner in academia. :-)

Thanks for the insight. By doing this, it won't be seen as plagiarism or laziness right?

I'd be highly surprised if it was seen as either, but if you're concerned I'd recommend talking to an adviser or your instructor if it's for a course. They'll be able to give you the final say for your circumstances.

Yes but my point is that, isn't it what most people do? How about the way I've done it above?

@tonysdg Can you please turn your comments into an answer so that I can vote for it?

@jakebeal Apologies for the delay, I've turned them into an answer. Thank you!

To avoid reinstating the fact that the author is the one who made these statements, I would develop something in your first sentence that establishes that and makes it clear early on. For example, you could say that John (2010, p. 10) made a series of statements about marketing. That would set the platform to then elaborate on his ideas about marketing, rather than repeating in every sentence that he coined those ideas.
Instead of saying "the same author," I would suggest saying "the author" or "he". The reader should be able to pick up on the fact that unless you are mentioning a new author, you're talking about the same one.
You could also write it out raw, then go back and edit to make connections and develop a 'flow'....example "The same author claims that marketing is really about value..." you could maybe shorten this into "He mentions that it should be about value, leading him to coin the term..." See how this develops a 'flow'? It goes from describing what the author thinks marketing should NOT be, to what he thinks it SHOULD, and then into a term that he developed to explain that. Think of it as a conversation you had with the author. If you had to turn around and explain that to someone who's never heard of any of this news, how would you best explain it?
Paraphrasing, in my thoughts, should sound less like a listed bullet-note, and more of a concise explanation that would make sense to the reader in your own words. I hope this helps!!

This partially helps as I am not looking for how to paraphrase but rather if citing multiple sentences with only '(p. x)' for the same author is acceptable.

(At @jakebeal's request, these are my comments turned into an answer.)
Is there a particular reason why you can't do John (2010, pp.10-12)? I would hope most readers could understand that any information you were citing came from one of those 3 pages and could go and search for it themselves.
In my mind it's a matter of readability over specificity. Part of that comes from my background in computer engineering - I subscribe to the belief that when writing code, it's more important that a human can read the code than its conciseness (with exceptions, of course). Similarly, when writing a paper, I personally think it's more readable to combine the 3 pages into a single citation and only interrupt the reader once.
Imagine critiquing an author's argument that spans 10 pages - it becomes a mess after a while:

Smith (2nd Age, pp. 389) claims in his book "The Art of Dragon-Ryding" that red dragons are the easiest to ride. He backs this up by pointing out their smaller stature (pp. 390), their powerful hindlegs (pp. 391), their intelligence (pp. 392-393), their natural resistance to werewolves and other such creatures (pp. 394), and so on.

Much simpler would be to use a single citation and allow readers to go searching for specifics - so long as they know it's not YOUR idea and where they can go to find the idea. Note that (at least in my opinion) this is easier to read with little if any loss of accuracy:

Smith (2nd Age, pp. 389-94) claims in his book "The Art of Dragon-Ryding" that red dragons are the easiest to ride. He backs this up by pointing out their smaller stature, their powerful hindlegs, their intelligence, their natural resistance to werewolves and other such creatures, and so on.

As a final note, remember that not every field of academia uses the same citation style (and not even every subfield within a field). When citing papers or books, the standards may change even from journal to journal within a particular subfield. So when in doubt, talk to the authority in charge - be that a course instructor, a journal editor, a conference organizer, etc.

Thanks for the answer. In my case, I'll do whatever keeps me away from plagiarism, even if it was a minor or an unintentional one.

@R.AS. I think you may overestimate what counts for plagiarism (based on this and other questions you've asked recently), but that may also be field-specific. Plagiarism is usually much more egregious than citing once for a group of pages - it's more like omitting the citation entirely and then claiming the idea as your own with no mention of the original author.


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Is this unprofessional academic writing? How to cite it anyway?
I am currently preparing some case studies written by Harvard Business School professors. The case is a 'real marketing' case; based on a true story. It is mostly compiled from many sources such as newspaper articles and books. Aside from common knowledge, the authors sometimes provide information (i.e. factual) without any reference, other times they do. I, sometimes, try to 'find' an original source for their un-referenced claims (and always track the referenced ones).
My question: If I don't bother to find a primary source by myself and simply cite the case writers for the information they are presenting (the ones without references), is this a bad practice? Is it plagiarism? (Since the information could have belonged to someone else)
One more thing I noticed which is really confusing is that, sometimes, the authors write an idea without a reference and then, by accident, I discover that such an information belonged to reference #24 (for example) which is like 5 pages away (How did I discover it? By tracking the reference #24 and reading it and discovering that this information is the same presented in page 1 for example (which was without a reference))! How should I handle such a situation? Can I, again, simply cite the authors for whatever un-referenced information they are presenting? (Assuming that they are HBS professors and know what they're doing)
I am just worried about plagiarism and crediting the wrong people.

Plagiarism is passing off someone else's work as your own, so that is only an issue if you take stuff from the work without reference.
The bigger problem for you is that you can't entirely say your source is reliable. Your choice is between trusting the writers or doing the work to find out for yourself what you have other evidence is true. Ideally, you should read the references they have given find out which support the bits you want to use (even if the reference was given some pages away), and reference both in your own work. If you're not willing/able to locate the earlier source for something, you might want to consider how central the point is to your work (how bad you would look if it turned out to be inaccurate).

The case itself was provided by my instructor to just brief it and answer its questions. Citations and references aren't even required in the presentation since the prof knows that it's the case we're talking about. I, however, like to do some extra work and provide citations/references. That's it. Yes, I am always tracking whatever piece of reference they're providing, read it and cite the original one instead. However, sometimes they don't even provide a reference, that's the issue.

@R.AS. To be honest, I can't work out what it is you are doing.

You mean you can't understand what I am trying to do with the case or you think that what I am doing is pointless? Please clarify.

If you cite the secondary source (the book written by the sort-of-careless Harvard professors), you are not at risk of plagiarism.  That does not mean it is great practice: finding a primary source or something close to it is always a good idea.  But you will not be at fault if you simply site the Harvard profs and take them at face value.
One thing you could do is find secondary "primary" sources to back up the profs.  Then you could site an idea like this:

... and that is why monkeys like to steal bananas from the Harvard library (Mr. Fancy Harvard Prof 1, Mr. Fancy Harvard Prof 2, 1999) (Mr. Honest Zoo-Keaper Who Interned at Harvard, 1998).

Wherein the "Mr. Honest Zoo-Keaper Who Interned at Harvard" is the primary source you found on your own, externally, who seems to back up the less-than-well-documented assertions of the illustrious "Mr. Fancy Harvard Prof 1" and "Mr. Fancy Harvard Prof 2".


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What does "CoRR" classification mean in papers on openreview.net?
I frequently encounter papers on OpenReview.net that are classified as "CoRR 2024". While I understand this might be related to arXiv classifications, I haven't been able to find a clear explanation of what CoRR means in this context.
So I have some specific questions:

What does CoRR stand for in this context?
What's the relationship between CoRR classification and arXiv?
Why do many preprints on OpenReview have this classification or other type papers?

CoRR is just the Computing Research Repository in arXiv, basically the computer science section of arXiv, which probably started with a different name (CoRR) before it joined arXiv.
More information can be found at arXiv info: Computer Science archive

If I publish my paper on another preprint server, will it also be included in CoRR by openreview? For example, Elsevier's preprint server.

@Junhao No, OpenReview just show CoRR's contents, OpenReview and CoRR are not related.

I found a related paper. I wonder if CoRR is similar to DBLP?

@Junhao No. I'm unsure how to make the answer even clearer than it has already been stated but: CoRR was a preprint server that at one time merged with arXiv but retained it's name. DBLP is not a preprint server. DBLP merely indexes CS papers published elsewhere.


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Citing the same idea in different studies
Say like you have an idea that says: 'X is a cheap alternative to Y' (Smith 2010, p. 2). Now you write a paper about ABC and paraphrase Smith's idea. Next week, you write another paper which happens to have an idea similar to ABC and you had to use Smith's idea again to solidify your choice or analysis. The same thing happens for a third time, etc... Can you use it again over and over? Albeit I will admit that I try to differently paraphrase the idea each time I use it.

Of course! If you write multiple papers in the same area, you'll cite many of the same papers in each paper. No one should be required to know your history of publication to get a fully account of related work from one of your papers.

And is my practice of trying to paraphrase the idea each time in a unique way (in order not to repeat myself verbatim), is it a good one?

At a certain point, rather than finding new paraphrases, why not just quote Smith verbatim, put it in quotation marks, and insert the appropriate citation?

@R.AS. That seems like a good thing to do.


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Length of a master's thesis and its literature review?
I am pretty confident that I will be getting answers pointing out that this is something too specific and should/will be decided by my university and that a general answer does not exist. But anyway, I just want to have an idea.
I was aiming at 120 pages of my upcoming marketing master's thesis but I thought that I could reduce it to 100 (pure text speaking of course as I am pretty sure that with references and appendices, it will be +120 though). So what is the average length of a master's thesis? Business and marketing field. As for what I've found online, the general consensus seems to be between 60 and 120 pages.
As for its literature review length, again, the general consensus seems to be between 20% and 40% of the overall thesis length, any personal experience with that? I was aiming at 50% but after doing some research, I am decreasing it to somewhere between 20% and 30%. However my instructor demanded it to be between 30% and 40%.
Thoughts?

That seems like a lot to me. I'ld say max 15,000 words similar to an article published in a marketing journal.....

You mean the thesis' length or the literature review? 15,000 is around 30 pages so that makes it 30% if I am planning at 100 pages of the thesis.

Your school should have prior master's theses available either online or in the library. Take a look at them, especially ones with the same advisor. What's acceptable at my school isn't going to be what's acceptable at yours, and what's acceptable to my advisor isn't necessarily going to fly with yours.

I found 5 theses related to my master's thesis topic on the Open Access Theses and Dissertations website. All of them were 120 pgs - 150 pages, although this was for engineering. The literature review was (appx) 30% of each thesis. My suggestion is to check the OATD website, find theses in your field and closely related to your topic to get a pretty general idea of the length and breadth of literature review.

Will definitely check. The ones you've checked, were references/appendices part of the 120 - 150 pages?

I think you pretty much answered your question yourself (as you expected). You seem to have a good idea of what the length of related theses is and you know that your university has the last word. 100 to 120 pages seems reasonable for your area.
If you really want to know you have to ask you advisor or former students who already wrote their thesis in a related subject.


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Is citation required when answering/giving own opinion on case study questions?
If I am reading and analyzing a particular case study and then answering its questions, if I am just giving my opinion or a solution, should I 'cite' it? For example, if we are talking about branding and the question is about the power of the brand in the market, if I answer with the following:
'To lead a change in an industry, I think that it really depends on the brand equity and the market concentration factors'. So should I try to 'cite' my opinion? Perhaps someone spoke about this particular point before, but at the same time, I am just giving my view on the matter and the solution to the question.

Based on your comment to dan1111's answer, I think what you're really asking is: "Can I give my opinion in a paper, or do I need to find where other people have the same opinion, and cite them instead?"
You can give your opinion, and since it's created by you and not previously published, you do not need a citation. However, earlier in the paper you should lay the foundation for your opinion, and that may require citations.
For example, suppose my opinion is that Academia Stack Exchange is a very useful site for academics. Before stating that opinion, I need to lay the groundwork. I might do this by providing some statistics on the number of people that have been helped by the site, which means I'll need to cite the statistics. That way the reader can see how you came to that opinion.

Right. Personal opinions without cited substance backing them up are worth very little (maybe unless one is a big-shot...)


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Direct quotations and quoting 'questions'
If I am solving a case study for a class and I had to mention the questions asked by the authors above or below my answers in a Powerpoint presentation. I made it clear that the questions are asked by the authors of the case, however they were not put into direct quotation marks (questions were, obviously, copied verbatim). Is this a form of plagiarism? (I have added quotes later on and resent to the instructor just in case)

No
I don't see a strong case for plagarism here. According to Google:

[Plagarism is] the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own.

It doesn't sound like you've tried to do this if: despite not being in quotation marks, the quotes were clearly indicated as the work of others. Furthermore you've corrected your mistake which shows good willing. I'd rest easy and wouldn't lose sleep over the matter.

My instructor doesn't even care since it's only a class assignment as my colleagues don't even cite anything. I am just annoyed that, despite the entire checking and proof reading the night before, I noticed the missing quotes AFTER ONLY sending the presentation to the instructor so I corrected it immediately and resent again with no issues.
It's just that, for me, I consider that once officially sending something, there's no return! Even if I have (by mistake) missed a quote or a reference or something, in my mind, I have plagiarized! Am I putting too high standards?


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Is a newspaper/magazine editor considered an author or an editor in terms of referencing?
Should I reference him/her as a normal author or as an editor using the abbreviation 'ed.' (Harvard style)?

Usually, magazine and news articles include the author name at the beginning or the end of the article, or at least some short form like an abbreviation that denotes the relevant author that you could look up. This is the person you ought to refer to as 'author'.
If you're not sure about the author, it would be better denote the editor as the 'editor' not as an author. It would be best to contact the editor to know the identity of the author if possible. But this would not always apply since a few authors prefer anonymity in certain articles.

Sorry, I should have added that my question falls in case where there's no clear author, just a name and the word 'editor' beside it.

@R.AS.: Then the second paragraph would apply. Anyway, the first paragraph would serve to add clarity.

But I am confused, aren't all newspapers/magazines authors actually 'editors'?

@R.AS.: It is ambiguous when you look at this as there is a clear meaning when you use the term journal editors but not the same in this case. At times it is similar to a journal editor; an editor's job would be to compile the articles they collect from the concerned authors.

Exactly. That's my point. Unlike a journal or a book editor, newspapers/magazines editors are the majority I think...

@R.AS.: Well, it would be better to confirm whether the concerned editor is really the author of the article. Otherwise it would be perfectly safe to refer to them as just the editor of the article.

"Usually, magazine and news articles include the author name at the beginning or the end of the article." - this may be culture-specific. At least in Germany, newspaper articles often only feature an author code consisting of two or three letters. Often, you can find a mapping to real names somewhere, but I am not sure its existence is guaranteed. This custom seems to declining in online newspapers, but it's common in printed versions.

@O.R.Mapper: I agree; just made the edit on the abbreviation/code.


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Fair use amount in short journal articles?
When it comes to how much one is allowed to copy from a book or a journal article, I often read about it as being 10% of the total pages number or a whole complete chapter (whichever is higher). However, how can one apply this rule if, for example, the journal article is only 10 pages? Copying just 1 page is often pointless as, unless one is quoting a definition or something, it's often not enough to convey a point or to highlight some ideas. Any insight?

For what sort of use are you copying it?

10% sounds like a lot. Source for the statement?

Fair use amount often is is not explictly given in the law. Where are you? (Or are you only interested in the ethics, not the precise law)
In Australia for example fair use is never legally defined, but I do often see the 1 chapter or 10% on signs next to photocopiers.

What did your librarian say when you asked them?

@TobiasKildetoft educational/research only. As for the other comments, this article http://www.umuc.edu/library/libhow/copyright.cfm, for example, tells that one can use up to a chapter from a book and an article from a journal volume or issue. I've also read about it elsewhere (don't remember where). I live in a 3rd world country where they don't, really, care about such stuff so I am mostly following the American law.

Here's another link: https://www.brockport.edu/copyright/fairuseworksheet.pdf

Fair use is a concept that is defined in quite a fuzzy manner, at least in the US, and there is no defined "safe" amount.
The key question is why you want to copy so much from somebody else's work, and for what purpose---i.e., how it relates to the other elements of the "fair use" test.  If you are copying into a scientific article that you are writing, then even a fairly short amount is likely to be quite high and hard to justify, whereas if you are making a handout for discussion in a small class you might be able to reasonably use the full work.

In my university, we should copy only the important things, maybe in percentage for 1 page we could copy only 5%. If we have whole page, for example 10 page, I rather copy the important things like 1 pages of source to become 1 statement. So you don't copy whole things.


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How many words are considered to become subject to verbatim copy?
How many words can become 'subject to verbatim copying'? For example, if I write 'to disseminate content' in my paraphrasing and later on find that 'to disseminate content' is used exactly elsewhere. Is it considered as plagiarism in such a case? (i.e. 3 words matching)

There is no single "number of words" threshold, because the issue is the degree of creativity and salience in the choice of words, which is dependent on the exact phrase and context.
If those few words are extremely significant and clearly attributable to a particular person, you might need to quote them, e.g.:

"Eat my shorts" (Simpson, 1997)

On the other hand, some words are just not very interesting, and have a much higher threshold for quotation, e.g.:

On the basis of the data presented, this study concludes

My recommendation is that rather than stressing about particular thresholds, you read the original source that you are paraphrasing, then set it aside and do something else for a while.  Then come back and write your summary from memory, in your own words; what you produce will almost certainly be different enough from the original to be not problematic.

That's interesting to think about. What do you personally think of the 3 words I mentioned above? (i.e. 'to disseminate content') Do you think they are simply generic and general? I mean, I wrote them from my memory as I considered them to be 'straight generic English wordings'.

@R.AS. "to disseminate content" is really generic: "to disseminate" is really just a single verb, and "content" is one of the most typical nouns to be associated with that word.  It's almost as generic as "to eat food"

Google Scholar suggests a lower bound of 940 publications mentioning "to disseminate content" -- https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q="to+disseminate+content" By comparison, "On the basis of the data presented" generates 11,200 hits -- https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22On+the+basis+of+the+data+presented%22


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Citing 'several' studies in one statement... cite all of them or use 'for example'?
Let's assume that 10 empirical studies have been done for topic x. If I want to mention the following: Several studies have been conducted to deal with topic x (study 1; study 2; study 3).
My question: when I mention the word 'several', am I obligated to cite ALL the 10 empirical studies in the citation? Can I just cite a few? Should I use 'for example' to tell the reader that I am citing only 3 related studies, however others studies do exist?

Assuming the empirical studies with topic X involves the application of various methods associated with X, aspect of citing the number of available examples depends on your motive.

If you are illustrating a method, then citing only a few like two or three would be fine. This can be when you wish to show the applicability (or inapplicability) of a method Y for the topic X citing only few of the papers that uses Y on X.
On the other hand, if you wish to do a detailed study on different methods applied in different ways on topic X, then you would have to cite all the available empirical studies done on X. Note that you would also have to give an account on each of the material you have cited. This would be the obvious case for a proper survey.

Thanks for the illustrating example. I am just writing an essay and would like to inform my instructor that there exists many empirical studies done on topic X by showing her a few like (study 1; study 2; study 3), of course, there could be 10000 studies related to this topic, I don't want to cite ALL OF THEM! Can I just do like (study 1; study 2; study 3) without saying for example? I don't want my readers to assume that only 3 studies exist on this topic.

@R.AS.:  Just make sure you include the 'for example' part along with the citation list. For instance, "Many empirical studies have been done on X (e.g., [5], [7], [8])...". It would be better to explain at least one of them if you are stating this in the Related Works / Literature Review section.

Definitely. But is 'e.g.' the same as 'for example'? I am not sure...

@R.AS.: Yes absolutely. E.g. stands for exempli gratia used in the place of 'for example'.

If you doubt that a study should be included in the bibliography, then probably you don't consider it worth citing. Make a selection and then include every one of them in the bibliography. In the body you could say something like, "An exhaustive body of empirical studies exists on this topic [see: Study 1, Study 2,... Study N]. In particular, [Study X, Study Y] are most relevant to our work...".
Not including cited work in bibliography will be considered at best a sign of laziness and at worst an indication of unethical behaviour.

Thanks for the answer but I am not asking about bibliography. Of course, every study I am going to cite in-text is going to appear on my bibliography list. However, assume there are 100 studies related to X and all of them are related, should I write in-text: see study 1, study 2, study 3, study 4, ..., study 100 (e.g. ALL OF THEM) or can I only mention a few without saying 'for example' like see study 1, study 2, study 3.

That's why I suggested to make a selection of the most relevant ones. It's unlikely that there are dozens of case studies with unique/equally important findings. After a specific number of studies, the marginal utility of including additional studies quickly diminishes. Unless it's your job to really list of all possible studies ever published, stick to a few that best help your article.

Indeed. That's what I am looking for. Should I include something like 'for example' or 'e.g.' to inform my readers that my list (of 3 or 4) is not exhaustive and others studies do exist?


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Are U.S. governmental reports a reliable source of information to cite?
I am trying to cite this document but I found out that, apart from informal in-text citations such as 'according to x' (which I can cite as a secondary source because I was never successful in locating the original primary source), other information are not cited/referenced and there's no reference list. Can I rely on such information to cite the report? Why don't they provide references I can track for their claims? Do they consider such information as part of common knowledge?

There is no single such thing as "a US government report": the US government is a vast and complex organization with lots of different elements writing lots of different types of reports for lots of different reasons.  These reports range from absolutely standard peer-reviewed scientific papers to high-quality primary data to informational digests to purest propaganda.  As such, you really need to specifically attempt to understand the context of a particular report in order to know how to interpret it.
In the particular instance that you cite, for example, it appears that this is part of a yearly assessment prepared for Congress by the US State department as a digest of primary source material gathered by various US embassies.  Thus, I would recommend considering it as primary source material which attempts accuracy but not the results of a scientific study.  You will have to assess for yourself what credence to lend to particular elements thereof with respect to the use you wish to put it to.


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Is this an example of common knowledge?
When I cite examples of competitors, say like I mention that the competitors of company X are: A, B & C. Do I have to support my claim with a reference? It's just out of my personal observation that I know these are/could be the competitors of company X.

The more facts you have and list, the better, if you are the original author. Or you cite other people, that puts some (not all) of the responsibility on the sources, as people know H. Hyong is always reliable, and they also know that J. Smith never gets his data right and C. Winkish used to work for B and more than likely serves an agenda.

This is not a common knowledge and should be best supported by some reference. Example reference for this could be market analysis papers, industry analysis reports or, at the very least, interviews with people from company X identifying A, B and C as competitors. The reason these claims should be supported is that you, personally, may not know some details about how A functions (making it target other audience than X) or miss a competitor D who is snapping at X's heels.
Now, how strict the requirement to support the claims is varying, depending on what kind of report you are writing. If it is a business plan for company X, apparently, you don't just use your personal observation, but should base your claims on something. If you are writing a general overview of some product that X, A, B and C produce, you might get away with using your personal observations, but it's still better to back up your claims with sources.

Thanks for the valuable answer. I am indeed writing a business plan. How about saying something like: 'competition is present in this industry (e.g. A, B & C)' while citing the country website (to prove its presence) of A, B and C?

This may be sufficient to prove that the competition exists, but you might be missing some D, E and F. Also, depending on your goals, you might want to deliver more details on A, B and C, such as their revenues, unique value propositions of their products, if they are making some innovations in the field -- all of which should be backed up with sources, and finding these sources is a big part of your work.

Yes definitely. At this point of the plan, I am just doing a SWOT analysis and mentioning that competition (as part of the threats) simply exists as evidenced by the presence of A, B, C, etc... (that's enough eh?) I am going to explain more about the competitors in the competition analysis part, all with sources.


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Citing a collection of work (i.e. literature review) by 1 citation?
There comes a time when one is reviewing a certain model of a certain author (let's call him X) who claims that his/her model was built upon the work of Author A, Author B, Author C, etc... with detailed investigation of such authors and their works.
If I want summarize and not repeat everything, can one simply say something like this:

This conceptual model/scale was developed  by X in 2010 and was based on his review and analysis of the various available literature in the domain (X 2010, p. 2).

By 'available literature', I'd want to mean Author A, B, C, etc... Sometimes though and if the studies are really limited (2-5 studies), I'd be citing them all or mention a few such as in this way:

This conceptual model/scale was developed  by X in 2010 and was based on his review and analysis of the various available literature (e.g. Author A, Author B) in the domain (X 2010, p. 2).

However, sometimes the reviewed literature is too large and so based on that, can I follow the first example?

Do not automatically cite everything X has cited. You should only cite a paper you've read, and it will be assumed that you have read everything you cite. Author X could have made a mistake, misunderstood something or deliberately misrepresented something.
Whether it's worth tracing back every reference cited in X's paper depends why you're referring to it. If your paper describes an alternative model and the differences can be traced back to, for example, the data sources you've used, then you should go back to them, read them and cite them; ditto if your paper is a critical review of X's model. If you're simply using X's model out-of-the-box you don't necessarily need to go back and pick over every source for every parameter estimate.

Yes, I always track back whatever citation an author is claiming just to double check the ideas. No doubt about that. But my question was more like can I say something like this: 'he scanned the literature to build his model' (A 2010, p. 2) instead of 'he scanned the work of A, B, C, D, E, F, etc... to build his model' (A 2010, p. 2) (In the latter way, I'd have to check and place a reference for each study mentioned)

Okay (I hoped that was the case) - in that case the second paragraph is the most relevant bit. If it is relevant to cite what sources X used, cite them; if it isn't, don't bother. It depends what you're writing.