text:
I was part of a research work, but not going to be included in the paper
I'm a student. I was part of a collaboration with a different lab. I worked extensively with another student (and sometimes alone) for several months to produce material that was later used in the other lab. After finishing that, I moved to a different lab to continue my studies. Today I realized that the project is going to be published soon, but no one talked with me.
I feel that I contributed enough to be part of that paper since the material I participated in making was part of that collaborative research. What should I do?
I got a message from the PI that according to "McNutt et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Feb 2018" I do not stand for all conditions, therefore not eligible for that credit.
Again, I don't understand anything in those political rules, all I know is that the material I made and worked on for several monthes was a significant part in the later experiments. I can't understand the reason why not to include me.

Have you talked to the authors and shared these thoughts?

This paper wasn't officially published yet, and no I didn't talk with them yet. I'm about to do that really soon.

Nothing much else to do until you've done that.

"I worked extensively with another student (and sometimes alone)" Are the supervisors and PIs responsible for the paper actually aware of that in general and specifically of the extent of your work?

So i talked with the PI: I'm not quailified to be part of the paper .

@Noname did they give a reason as to why you're not qualified?

Yes...the Pi said that according to "McNutt et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Feb 2018" I'm not qualified to all conditions together. This is weird for me, I significantly contributed to the preparation of a material that was later used in the other collaboration lab. I also have proof for that. I also cannot understand the reason why not to include me, since I actually worked on that for several months.

@justauser For example, since I didn't "approve the submitted version" or something weird like that, it's like I'm not part of it.

@BryanKrause, I talked with the PI, feels like I'm getting weird answers...

Ask the PI for their advice on how you should present your work in a CV. Also ask them whether they think they could,  in the future, write you a good letter of recommendation for your work. Don't burn bridges over this.

If you're not one of the authors (which, if you contributed directly to the work, you probably should be), then you should be mentioned in the acknowledgements at the very least.

@isolatedmatrix the other student that worked with me did the same work and he's included as an author...what should I do if I don't get it?

I can't tell you what you should do, because I'm probably not the best judge. You could speak to some of the other authors and see what they think (particularly the other student). You could also go to another academic you trust, or the head of department, and discuss it with them.

Have a conversation with the lead author or PI about your participation and whether you contributed enough to earn authorship. It is hard to say what the outcome will be, but you, at least, likely deserve an acknowledgement for your work.
The decision will (should) be based on whether your participation contribute intellectual, creative, content or, instead, was work at the direction of others. The first earns authorship. The other may not, but at least an acknowledgement.
Talk to them. Make your case.
However, it isn't just hard work and effort that makes you an author. More is needed: contributions to the intellectual content.
A couple of examples where hard work likely doesn't result in authorship:
If someone, A, designs an experiment requiring recording interviews and B carries out those interviews at the direction of A, the B might not be an author.
If B creates a physical model from blueprints designed by A for some applied project, the B might not be an author.
If B writes a computer program from a solid design by A, then B might not be an author.
If B is paid for work in some research project the B might not be an author.
And some feel that undergraduates, especially, are "paid" in the learning they get from participation. I won't necessarily condone that, but it happens.

Even if it was work at the direction of others, it qualifies the OP for authorship as the OP did a substantial amount of work for several months and he/she is only a student so can't be expected to do much else at this stage.

I talked about it. I'm not qualified to be included according to what I've been told by the PI. Even though I contributed to producing the material used in the paper

@Buffy, although my status is a student,  I did not do that work as a undergraduate student. I did that work as part of the mission I got from the PI because they needed to close that gap in order to send that material to the collaborators. I indeed was working with another student, I wasn't learning from him, but we worked together.

Here is a fairly common view on requirements for authorship. Some others omit the second bullet(as I would): https://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html

"Final approval of the version to be published", if it means for the material itself than yes Im accountable for all.

I disagree with your list of instances where you think someone wouldn't deserve authorship. I think in every one of those circumstances the person doing the grunt work should absolutely get authorship but maybe not the first author. The person who conceived the idea and designed the experiments should obviously get the first author but it makes no sense to exclude someone. Science is inclusive and collaborative not exclusive. I always advocate erring on the side of giving credit rather than not. The OP absolutely should be part of this paper

@sarat.kant, welcome to the site. You are free to disagree, of course, but I'll stick with what I wrote. Authorship requires creativity IMO. I won't judge the OPs contribution here, but that should be the general idea.


text:
How much professional development should I share on my CV?
I am currently in the process of applying to Ph.D. programs in sociology and, as such, have started compiling my CV to accompany applications. As an M.A. student, I only have one publication to date and a couple of conference presentations. However, I have also taken part in several professional development activities over the course of my graduate study. Examples include...

a workshop for which I received a certificate of completion
a Lynda course relevant to my work
attending non-conference presentations on topics relevant to my work

Which, if any, of these sorts of activities could (or should) viably be listed under professional development on my CV?

•a workshop for which I received a certificate of completion Is that workshop relevant to your work?

@scaaahu Yes. It pertains to diversity in the classroom.

It is very much better to include those courses/workshops you've attended, which you think has helped you to improve on that particular topic. After all, a good CV is the one that stands out from others. Also, when you add, it would be better if you could mention what you've learned from it(instead of just writing  "Attended the workshop on.... Etc etc.."). All the best!

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
How to find papers from conference proceedings?
I'm starting out in a new field, and reading papers from top conferences in the field seemed as a natural starting point to understanding active research areas in the field. I realized I have never really searched for papers from a conference before, instead I've searched only by keyword. Any way to go about this?

Did you try Googling for "AwesomeConf 2017 proceedings"?

I suggest a three-step easy solution:

Open the Web page of a search engine in your browser, type in the name of the conference you are interested in, and click the search button.
Go to the Web site of the conference.
Find the name of the publisher on the Web site of the conference, go the Web page of the publisher, and search for the papers from the conference proceedings there.

This solution has an advantage of being universal and might require small adjustments on a case-by-case basis.

1 - Talk to your supervisors or professors in your department and they will tell you which conference proceedings are more relevant to your specific area.
2 - Check with your university if you have an online-portal area that allows you to search for conference proceedings that you would otherwise have to pay for. Universities, in general I think, provide access to all their enrolled students to various institutions. For example, if you are a Computing Science student, your University might get you access to the digital libraries of ACM and IEEE.
3 - Use tools such as Google Scholar
4 - When you come across an interesting paper, look at the references.

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


text:
Issuing of CAS number without proof of completion of degree
I hail from Singapore and have applied for the Msc Insurance and Risk Management at City University London and have been offered a place provided I have evidence of the completion of my degree. However, I am unable to provide evidence of the completion of my degree as I am currently in the midst of my Final Year Project (FYP) and will only submit it on 22nd August. Physical evidence of the completion of my degree will only be out in October which would be too late for the start of the program at City University London. Do note that physical evidence of the completion of degree is a requirement set out by UK Visa office, not City University London.
City University London refuses to issue me a CAS number because of the reasons mentioned above. CAS number is required for the application of UK Student Visa (Tier 4).
I have tried the following ways to get City University London to issue me a CAS number
1) Request for the fast track of my academic transcript from my university but it has been rejected by the academic dean of my university.
2) Called UKVI but even they were unsure of what to do with my situations. The advisor said it may be possible for me to get a Short-term study visa before changing to a Student Visa (Tier 4). I am unsure of how this exactly works and if it is even possible. I would appreciate any help.
3) Contact one of the UK Immigration Advisor for help. Anyone have any idea which one would be best suited for me ??
The best I could do was to get my academic dean to issue a letter stating that he is confident that I will complete my degree given my current stellar results.
I am at my end's wits and would appreciate advice, failure to get a CAS number would mean that I have to wait 1 year to enter City University London which is extremely disruptive to my life

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is asking for legal advice (which we cannot offer) for a specific personal situation (whose answer would apply only to you).


text:
Is it possible to create a purely online library?
Many subscription databases only offer subscriptions to libraries and not to individuals.
Do the legal requirements of registering as a library require the library to have a physical building where patrons can attend, or is it possible for a library to only offer services online, through a website/web portal?

What does "registering as a library" even mean? How does having a building mean anything?

Where I work most folks use the library virtually. The books are still there, but all journals are online. Few people visit since you can request a physical book from your computer and get it the next day at your desk.

This feels a bit like an XY problem, where the real problem you want to solve is that you want access to some database, are blocked because the database only offers libraries to subscribe, and now you're wondering if you can become a library somehow without needing to have a library building. Is that right?

And note that the typical subscription fees for common databases are out of range for most of the individuals around the world (tens of thousand dollars/year).

Banks do it; I have a savings account at such a bank.  However, more relevant comments are likely to be those of Bryan Krause and Massimo Ortolando.

Please edit the question to limit it to a specific problem with enough detail to identify an adequate answer.

Yeah, my real question is how I can feasibly and conveniently get access to any information resource I want because I depend on them and for too long I have felt like getting access to academic databases has too many hurdles. I wish there was just one place where you could use any database that exists. Right now all I know is you can search for which libraries have that resource and then you can join each one. Some might be far away, even in other countries. Or maybe national libraries are better, the Library of Congress for example?

You seem to be asking whether an editor would accept your hypothetical online library as a library in their dealings with them. This would depend on how analogous it would be to a brick-and-mortar library. For example, an online university would probably qualify, but a free-lance library set up for the purpose of circumventing business restrictions will not.
Ultimately, the decision on what would be considered a library would lay with the editorial house.

I actually feel really strongly that libraries need to go way more digital-native. Their relationship to society is extremely different from what it used to be. There is arguably almost no need for physical books, public computers or even a physical location. The online media they provide is through slow, ambivalent-quality apps and web portals, and the selection is arbitrarily spotty when in theory a library patron could want any material at some point. There should be a new online-only library with way more convenience, a very fast, usable app like Netflix.

Anyway, here is a useful document I was looking for about how to actually formally register: https://www.nysl.nysed.gov/libdev/register/index.html

@peters "There is arguably almost no need for physical books" This is a horrific sentiment, and if the goal with your proposed online library is to eliminate the need for physical books, then very few academics will (thankfully) ever support this project.

Yes, it is possible, but there are many issues. A publisher will be willing to sell (yes sell) subscriptions to harvard.edu but probably not to flybyniteredistributors.com. The former is established, known to be reputable, and will adhere to any contracts signed. The latter is a risk, if you know what I mean.
But publishers don't give titles to libraries and they restrict distributions. For some (many) it is one copy at a time. For many it is a maximum (usually quite low) number of distributions before a renewal is required. I'm guessing that the low totals are based on the short expected lifetime of print books, not the long life of an ebook.
You can find some of the costs and restrictions here.
But, if you are an established reputable business or organization, then a publisher would be happy to work with you on your library. So, IBM.com can do it and will be trusted to pay the fees and observe the limitations. Likewise www.nypl.org. The building itself is not relevant in either case. The expectation of honesty and stability are.
My local town library distributes ebooks, though it doesn't carry academic journals. There are similar restrictions, with the files becoming unreadable after a certain period, just as if you have to return a printed copy. Then, that "copy" can be loaned to another for a period. In this case, the costs are funded by town taxes.
Note that in theory information could be free. But there are many "frictions" in the system, including royalties on books, costs of storage (even of ebooks), electricity, costs of software systems, security, and many others. The various costs need to be covered. So, in practice, information isn't always free.

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


text:
What systems exist worldwide for providing a higher education degree based on examinations, assignments or demonstrated competence, but not classtime?
I am looking for responses naming any single university, degree program, strategy or other type of degree certification in which you receive a degree for completing (large) assignments or passing exams, but there is no mandatory “classtime”.
The overall point is a degree that is not time-oriented. If you are required to turn in homework assignments regularly and take quizzes, that means a regular obligatory workload punctuating your daily life. The details may vary, but the idea is obtaining a degree by demonstrating in fewer distinct submissions, even if more intensive in involvement, that you possess competence. That could be a few major projects and a few major exams. It’s ok if completion of those validating requirements is only offered at certain times in the year.
I would specifically tailor the question to Bachelor’s degrees, but am open to hearing about Masters and Ph.D.‘s out of curiosity.
To expand, most Bachelor’s degrees are structured temporally, based on ongoing units requiring regular participation, which grant course credit contributing to your degree, and virtually all appear to be 3-5 years in length.
But is that just incidental, just because no university system in the world thought it was worthwhile, useful, in-demand, or effective, to design a Bachelor’s degree dispensed for demonstrating skill in a field of knowledge, in case someone already had acquired skill?
Or is it a widely held tenant of pedagogy that a Bachelor’s degree is meant to validate people regarding their capability to perform well and commit to a multi-year program of responsibilities, involvement, and intellectual work?
There are certifications where it suffices completely to pass an exam. For example, language level assessments are required for jobs or university entrance, and are based solely on exam results. You can sign up for and pay for a standalone exam with nothing else attached.
Is it hypothetically possible to do the same thing in any modern university?
To give some examples to prime ideas:

In Swedish Bachelor’s programs attendance is very commonly not required, regular homework is optional, tuition is free for EU citizens, if you fail a class you can retake it an infinite number of times, if you leave your program you can reenroll years later and continue from where you were, and even large important assignments do not have mandatory deadlines. They are supposed to be submitted by a certain date but there is sometimes no issue with submitting it as late as you want, with no penalty. To an extent, this could amount to a degree based solely on exams and projects, but it is still temporally spread out over years. It’s not the same as proving general knowledge of chemistry with a single (or set of) diagnostic exam(s), sort of like the SAT or GRE.
There are honorary degrees, but you don’t apply for them and they’re not recognized as official degrees.

What field? Math? CS? Chemistry, Biology? Or others?

University programs typically have two goals:

to teach students to be able to do certain stuff
to certify that a person with a given degree can do that certain stuff

A program that just consists of tests without any teaching would fail at half its goals.
That is not to say that many programs have a lot (really a lot) of room for improvement when it comes to goal 1.

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


text:
Why there is low recruitment of Theoretical HEP doctarates as prof. in Academia
"I've heard through the grapevine that you have more chance of becoming a professional athlete than becoming a professor in theoretical HEP(high energy physics)" is one of the things i have come across people talking about in stackexchange often.
If it is really true to the extent people project it, why is this the case??
What do most HEP theoretical doctarates end up doing as
profession?

The number of professors does not grow much if at all in many fields; each professor has a long career and mentors more than one graduate student. I'd hope someone with a quantitative background can take it from there.

Suggest the acronym be spelled out.

Around here, HEP is a branch of experimental physics. While theoretical physicists collaborate with HEP, they aren’t called that. Have you checked what professors there actually are for this in your neck of the woods?

As a matter of pedantry: It seems likely to me that, even if you ignore Bryan's very accurate supply/demand argument, there are more professional athletes in the US than professors who are specialists in any given specific sub-branch of physics. The US DOL puts professional athletes at around 15k. An admittedly cursory search puts the estimated number of Physics profs at PhD granting institutions at 6.1k in 2018.  https://ww2.aip.org/statistics/the-number-of-faculty-members-in-physics-departments

"you have more chance of becoming a professional athlete than becoming a professor in theoretical HEP" What is this even supposed to mean? For sure there are more professional athletes than there are professors in a specific subfield of physics. Now, how many people seriously try to become a professionel athlete and how many seriously try to become a professor of this specific subfield of physics? And what does it actually mean in both cases to seriously try?

@JochenGlueck That statement is just a personal way to express how rare it is to become professor in the theoretical field, as per google, chances to become a professional athelete is ~2%, it seems to be even lesser for a theoretical professor by some statistics i don't know yet. This need not be taken too literally.

@AmitRai: My point is not merely whether a specific comparison should be taken literally, but more generally that giving quantitative estimates for the "chances to become xyz" does not make any sense without specifying very clearly what one means by "chances". For instance, the sentence "chances to become a professional athelete is ~2%" is meaningless without a lot of additional context. You might consider this nitpicky, but I find it important - way too many peoples love throwing around with numbers without thinking about what those numbers actually mean (and what they don't mean).

@AmitRai 2% of the US is 7 million. There are not 7 million pro athletes in the US.

@AzorAhai-him- I don't think that's how "chance to become X" works. US Americans have a (roughly) 50% of experiencing the 80th year of their life. Yet, 80 year olds don't make up 50% of the US population... The need to specify what exactly one means with "chance to become X" was exactly the point of the previous comment. For age it can be fairly well defined. Presumably, it is possible to come up with some definition of odds for becoming a pro athlete too. But it's probably not worth it.

@user2705196 Yes, I was illustrating the concept by pointing out one possible interpretation of "chances to become."

What you cite is a quote by a random Master's student from a random thread on reddit, not in my experience something "people talk about in stackexchange often".

Do successful professional athletes have a better chance at getting tenure in High Energy Physics than other people? :) Or vice-versa? :) Annoyingly-ironically, the (irrelevant?) factors predicting success in the one are (in my amateur assessment) non-trivially correlated with those in the other. :)  Ok, well, maybe the question is not answerable in a useful (as opposed to "humorous") way.

The question does not make much sense because asking for probabilities without priors is pointless. To give you an example:

After getting my PhD I would have given myself a 50% chance of finding a professor position somewhere. I was willing to give it that high a chance because I'm pretty good at what I do.
After getting my PhD I would have given myself a 0% chance of becoming a professional athlete. I'm pretty sure that number is accurate because I was already 29 at the time and because while decent at some endurance sports, I'm not even close to good enough.

The point I'm trying to make is that probabilities of "becoming a professor" or "becoming an athlete" are pointless to state in a vacuum because you're not taking a random, unbiased sample of society. Perhaps you can ask that question if you wonder how many of the children born over the past year will make it in one or the other, but surely at the time of getting a PhD or at the time of being elite amateur sports people, there has already been a large amount of selection and very few from one camp will eventually end up in the other camp.

If what you are really asking is why there are few open positions in high energy physics: Well, there are few open positions in any particular discipline. That's because we don't need all that many high energy physicists/Shakespeare scholars/numerical analysts/flexible membrane materials scientists, and people have 30-40 year careers before they vacate a position.
If you are asking whether the number of open positions in high energy physics is less than it used to be -- I don't know whether that's actually true, and it's not worth speculating without actual evidence.
If you are asking why there are fewer open professor positions in high energy physics than graduating PhDs -- well, that's the same in all disciplines again, and has to do with the fact that more people want to get a PhD than there are positions, and universities are willing to accommodate these desires for a variety of reasons (including the fact that most of these people find useful employment elsewhere in society in which they get to use the skills they learned as part of their PhDs).

"If it is really true to the extent people project it, why is this the case?"

Yes, this is true.
For much more PhD`s in this area are produced than faculty or researcher positions are opened.

"What do most HEP theoretical doctorates end up doing as profession?"

Applied physics, applied mathematics, engineering (especially math- and science-oriented), software development. Also quantitative finance, military applications, what not.

There is no rule without exception.

At this juncture, and possibly for several more years to come (with no warranty given), one subarea close to HEP may be granting its PhD`s a better chance of employment: Quantum Computing. Not very exactly HEP, it certainly is a topic emerging from QM and, in some applications, overlapping with QFT.
Figuratively speaking, this is a bandwagon. It is now attracting enthusiasm and investment, both from governments and industry. So, if you are finishing a BS or MS in physics, cogitate on this option.
As a possible starting point, I saw favourable reports on this book.


text:
Doing a PhD in a slightly different department than research focus?
So I have been offered an amazing fully-funded PhD to do a project that I love, with lovely, supportive supervisors and the opportunity to work closely with a non-academic partner in a way that will help my career. The project relates closely to my master's research and I will be able to continue and expand the work I did during my MSc, using similar research methods.
The only catch is the PhD is in a different (but overlapping) department to the one I did my bachelor's and master's in. I had a look at the department I will be joining and it seems like there are not that many people working on similar themes, issues or even using similar methods. I'm slightly worried I will feel out on a limb.
I'm also worried that I will find it hard to continue being a part of my original field- which I love- even though my research focus and methods will basically stay the same.
Does anyone have any insight into this? It's such an amazing opportunity, an almost perfect project, great city, I just have a slight doubt about feeling out of place in the department.

This is very similar to what I am doing for my PhD (also in the UK). My background is in Computer Science, and I'm currently in the second year of a PhD in Health Informatics. I have found the opportunity to broaden my perspective really valuable, and feel that the change in field has made me a stronger researcher overall than if I'd stayed laser-focused on my original field. I would see joining a related department as an opportunity to branch out and learn more about methods you might not have come across otherwise, and make interdisciplinary links that may benefit your future research.
In my opinion a supportive supervisor is one of the most important factors in your experience as a PhD student, especially when you have funding and you're doing a project you love. I took a project I was lukewarm on in order to have a supervisor I already had a strong relationship with, and I've warmed up to the project while watching other students with projects they're passionate about struggle with their supervisors. I would strongly advise jumping on the chance to have both a project you're interested in and a good supervisory team!
Some practical suggestions that may help with feeling out of place:

Make yourself go along to departmental meetings, open research group meetings etc, even if they don't seem particularly relevant. It will help you build links with others in your department and you may be surprised by what you get out of them.
Ask around and see if there's a mailing list for seminars/talks for the department your background is in, to maintain your connection to your original field.
Join your union branch and go to branch meetings! Most UK universities will have a UCU branch, and it's a way to meet people from a bunch of different departments.

This is great advice that I will definitely take- so thank you. I will try to get involved as much as possible and embrace the opportunity to learn from others who have different backgrounds + perspectives. My supervisors have wide-ranging expertise and I am really looking forward to working with them so that is a huge positive.

What you write indicates that this should work out fine with one caveat. Having a supportive advisor and a good project (along with funding) would seem to outweigh the fact that others in the department aren't going to provide help.
The caveat is that if there are comprehensive exams in that department then it might take you away from the breadth and depth you need in your desired field.
In the general case, which you don't indicate, is when the degree would be given and listed for a field in which you have no real association. But you indicate "overlapping", so I don't think that is an issue here.
Letters of recommendation from your advisor, along with the work you do, will normally outweigh the detail of the name of the department and its main focus.

Thank you for the reassurance, that's good to know. For context, my background is in social anthropology and I would be moving into a geography department. There is a good amount of cross-over between anthropology and cultural geography in the area I am researching.

Perhaps the knowledge of geography you will gain will be an asset rather than a liability when you return to social anthropology.

@greenbean687 If it is of any help to know this, my father had a PhD in cultural anthropology (and a juris doctorate).  In his career, he did work which was both anthropological and sociological in nature, and he comfortably taught undergraduate classes in anthropology (including archaeology), criminology, sociology, and geography.  There tends to be a lot of overlap in these areas, and I can only imagine that having a more diverse background / training will be beneficial in the long run.

I can give some insight on the point Buffy mentions, which is the qualifying/comprehensive exams.  My BS and MS were in electrical engineering, then a detour into an MS in computer science, and finally a PhD in computer science. (And some long years between some of those.)
I don't know how well that compares to social anthropology and geography, but it seems similar enough.
The qualifying exam for the PhD was difficult.  Very difficult.  But I knew that going in.  I knew the ins and outs of the exam format cold, and I had a definite strategy for managing what I knew on my own and just needed to review, what I could take classes for in the first year, and what I was going to have teach myself in my copious free time.  I made use of auditing classes, too, when I just wanted access to the lectures without the burden of doing the homework.
I passed.
It can be done.
But I don't want to misrepresent this as an easy project.  It was not.  It was a lot of hard work, stress, and anxiety.  I didn't really have a social life that year.
But it can be done.

Thanks for your comment. Luckily in the UK (at least in humanities/social science) you don't have to do qualifying/comprehensive exams. You normally do a transfer or an upgrade at the end of your first year, where you write a literature review or the first few chapters of your thesis and defend it. It is a lot of work but not something people generally fail, and is more to see that you are making good progress with your research. But I would not have an exam in geography

I made the same decision 14 years ago and found it a huge asset. My path has been: MSc in social psychology, PhD in developmental psychology, postdoc in sociology, assistant/associate professor in methods and statistics, moving towards social data science.
Yes it can be hard to be the odd one out, but there is a lot of value in bringing perspectives from one field to bear on problems from another.
You can ask your supervisors if they will support you attending conferences/workshops/etc from your other field as well. This sets you up for career flexibility post phd.
I also think this kind of interdisciplinarity is better suited to some personalities than others. If you're broadly interested, it will suit you well. If you're more focused on doing Kuhnian 'normal science', then it will be an awkward fit.

I did my PhD in physics. At least formally because an awful lot was about neural networks and genetic algorithms, which in the mid 90s' were not really mainstream.
My supervisor was a fantastic man but he did not help me at all with the topic of my research. He did help enormously with everything else.
My team was great, they knew nothing about what I was doing. They helped with several auxiliary (scientific) questions.
It was a great and unique PhD. So do not worry if you have a good context for your resarch.


text:
Can I not pay the APCs in IOP? They offer only open-acess
I submitted my paper in IOP-MRX without knowing it only offers open-access. It went through peer review and got accepted. When I received the email for paying APCs, I requested a waiver from the editor. They declined my request, telling me nothing can be done. Meanwhile, the paper went through publishing, a license was issued and it got published. I have been receiving emails for payment, but I have requested a waiver multiple times and asked them to redact paper if any waiver cannot be granted as my last resort. They said redaction isn't possible at this stage either. What do I do? Please help.
I am concerned if they can take any legal action.

If you are concerned about potential legal problems, then you need to seek advice from a lawyer not random people on the Internet. Than you need to think what is more expensive: paying the fee or paying the lawyer...

Does this answer your question? https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/201921/the-article-publishing-charge-of-775-was-not-settled-and-now-there-is-a-debt-co

It is hard for me to understand how you didn't know that IOP isn't exclusively open access. They are very clear about that.

When you say "redact", do you mean "retract"?

I am not a lawyer, but, yes, they can take some action. I think it unlikely that they would sue you, since the amounts are relatively small relative to the costs of litigation. But they could affect your credit rating negatively, which might make some things harder, like getting a credit card and such.
In some places Small Claims Court is used for recovery of modest amounts of money and failing to pay after a judgement against you can have legal repercussions as well.
I suggest that you find a way to pay the charge at this point, even borrowing funds to do so. They seem to have behaved honorably, given how they present themselves to the world. You would do best to behave accordingly.
Perhaps your own institution can help.
I doubt that it will have negative effects on your academic reputation, but you should understand the policies of any publisher that you submit to. This is just "due diligence". Sorry to be blunt.

Note that even in small claims court, lawyers need to be paid. That results in two effects. First, it makes it less likely that a suit will happen, but, if the rules permit lawyer's fees to be passed on to be passed on to an unsuccessful defendant, then the ultimate cost is greatly increased. That depends on local rules, of course, and they vary.

"Note that even in small claims court, lawyers need to be paid" - at least where I live, small claims court is specifically designed to not require lawyers, which is what makes it distinct from Big Claims Court. Of course you're still allowed to bring a lawyer, but the whole point is to allow the legal system to handle disputes too small for it to be worth paying lawyers.

@BryanKrause, yes, true for claims between individuals. But the company will, indeed, have lawyers and they get paid, probably handsomely. I don't, of course, know whether local rules permit the passing of litigating costs to the loser.


text:
Will Israeli Military Service Affect My Chances of a Physics Master's Program?
I'm currently studying for a bachelor's degree in physics and computer science in Israel, after which I will enroll into the military (due to Israel having mandatory military service). I will most likely find a position that uses my physics degree quite a bit, and gives me a good deal of experience in applied physics as well as some research, perhaps.
How will my service in the Israeli military affect my chances of getting a PhD/Master's? In Israel it is of course no concern, and I'm more interested in how it can affect my application in other parts of the world, mainly the US and Europe. Again, I will most likely gain a good deal of experience in physics from my service, which is on paper a good thing.
I'm obviously making this post while ignoring the elephant in the room. I'm not looking for your opinion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I'm looking for an answer to my question.

Please note the controversial banner above. Any comments or answers that are not strictly responsive will be deleted.

There are places, of course, that will discriminate against you whether you have army service or not. But it won't be an issue in most of the world, including Europe, US, Australia, etc. And, I assume you won't apply in the obviously problematic countries
You might find individuals who look down on you, given the world situation, but not everyone will be like that. And, there are people who look down on others for lots of reasons, so it can't be escaped.
While the war is a terrible thing, it isn't your fault, personally. And, as you say, service is mandatory.
Hope for early peace, of course, for lots of reasons.

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

No.  Most physics programs will not care at all.  There is a longstanding "boycott, divestment, and sanctions" anti-Israel movement in universities (which is irrelevant to admissions), but it seems my physics colleagues have never heard of it.
The many Jewish-American physics faculty also are not going to be biased in either direction.

This is the crucial answer. As far as the US goes, the Jewish-American faculty will likely oppose this kind of discrimination. Other than that, the admission process is non-transparent and therefore malleable.

There are also a significant fraction of faculty which have had undertaken mandatory military service and understand the situation. This includes many US baby boomers who were subject to the draft in 64-73, Germany (until 2011), South Korea, Singapore, Russia, Finland, Sweden, etc. Personally, my advisor had to serve in the US Air Force, one guy we worked with got into teaching due to his service in the Korean War, and my brother's advisor served in the Wehrmacht.

From my experience, however, MINT (or STEM) topics, including physics, are nowadays relatively indifferent to political developments, as far as they are not concerning legal constraints on citizens from non-friendly countries in security-relevant domains (such political indifference was not always the case, e.g. in the 70s, where antinuclear movements were strongly felt across especially physics departments). Chances are that your prospects to find a PhD will be pretty unaffected, assuming that your resume is strong.
People with practical experience (whether being in the software industry or army) have an additional advantage in terms of maturity and experience to students that never left academia.
On the legal side, we cannot foresee what sanctions, if at all, the UN may decide to put in place on people serving in the army. So, this response can not address that.
As for general discrimination that might affect your general life as a consequence of your service, here, again, nobody can predict the future. The 30s saw first disorganized attacks, then organized brutal repression of the "wrong" academics in Germany, for essentially confabulated reasons. Assuming you would not fall afoul of any laws, in a functioning Western democracy, one would expect that a government will protect its residents - and that would include a foreign student - against threats and violence.
Theory and practice may differ, and, in these unstable times, discrepancies may be more pronounced that they would be in quieter times. This means that you will have to read the room (or rather, the map) once your time to search for the PhD abroad comes.

Factually wrong. For instance, Iranian students cannot participate in chip-related research funded by some US bodies. Even when funding does not come from there, the bias in this area of research is the norm. Russian students have been heavily discriminated against for decades, as early in the process as obtaining a student visa.

@yujaiyu What you talk about is legal/security-level discrimination. As such, I didn't include it, because it is neither individual, or institute-specific; nor is it likely relevant for OP for the countries they seem to envisage. I don't think that their security level is going to drastically change compared to now. Probably OP won't achieve Five-Eyes level security clearance, but would qualify for regular western foreigner clearance level. As such, I do not believe that your comment applies here, as the countries you list have a non-friendly to adversarial relation to Western countries.

@yujaiyu And, as you mention chips, OP's country has one of the main chip design industries in the world, with heavy US involvement. Clearly, a completely different situation than the one you mention.

And therefore "[...] MINT (or STEM) topics, including physics, are nowadays relatively indifferent to political developments" is factually wrong. Please amend.

No, I am not talking about legal/security-level admission decisions. These apply to individuals who appear on certain risk-monitoring lists (e.g., membership in terrorist organizations). Holding citizenship of a country does not make you a security risk. That wasn't true even in the Cold War era.

And if it is legal/security-related, then it is not discrimination. I am talking about the discrimination based on the country of origin.

@yujaiyu Amended to qualify the statement.

@yujaiyu I think it is very much linked to nationality, especially in times of international tensions. The boundaries between security considerations and discrimination might be (perhaps intentionally) blurred, but, from how it looks from my perspective, security considerations would be the main obstacle for OP rather than wilful discrimination; this might be different in humanities, but this is my impression about the current status in STEM fields. If you disagree, please write your own answer.

It is a matter of fact, not agreement. National Origin Discrimination is well understood and regulated under the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Please refer to https://www.eeoc.gov/national-origin-discrimination.

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

Probably don't mention it to be safe.
You got an undergraduate degree, you spent a few years working, and now you want to get a postgraduate degree. It's not that uncommon for life to get in the way and for mature-age students to go back to university years some time after they finished their undergraduate degrees.
Maybe just don't mention that you were working for the Israeli military in your application unless you're specifically asked about it. While not everybody is prejudiced against Israel, there is a significant "Boycott, divestment, and sanctions" movement within academia that opposes the current Zionist state of Israel, and if an academic who belongs to that movement is judging your application, including that you were an Israeli soldier could lead to them finding an excuse to reject you.
An exception, perhaps, would be if your work for the military would be directly relevant to the work you'd be doing for your degree. For example, if you're a military drone pilot, and you're applying for a position at a lab that studies drone airspace management, you might want to mention it.

You can choose not to mention it, but that won't work. It is fairly common knowledge that Israel has a conscription army. So it does not take a genius to figure out what happened when someone in Israel has a blank spot in his CV in that age range. Moreover, blank spots in CVs attract more attention than just saying that you did what the law required you to do.

@MaartenBuis Draft dodgers are a thing that exists, and they probably wouldn't want to admit to it in writing.

I don't understand: does your comment mean that not mentioning his service would suggest that he is a draft dodger? That is certainly not how I would read that CV.

@MaartenBuis No, not mentioning it would leave it ambiguous. It would not confirm nor deny that they served their draft.

It's almost instinctive. You see a CV from Israel, South Korea, or Singapore, and you expect them to be slightly older due to mandatory service. For a while, Germany was on the list. The Nordics and Eastern Europe are the ones that you have to look up.

Just adding that although I don't think it will affect your chances of admission, you might have trouble with the authorities. It might be more difficult and more troublesome for you to obtain a student visa if you'd served during a war - you'd probably have to explain yourself. If your future research could involve dual-use technology (or just research funded by military-related agencies), especially nuclear technology, there is a slight chance that there would be some trouble.
Is it likely? I don't think so (unless you are personally involved in questionable or outright wrong acts, that is). Is it possible? We have no way to know; it would depend on issues of international politics that is far beyond our control. But Chinese students have been denied visas just because the universities they've received their degrees from have connections with the military - so I don't think one could rule this possibility out.


text:
ERC starting grant to move back into academia
I wanted to get opinions on an issue that has been raised to me about applying for the ERC starting grant scheme.
After my 3 years postdoc at the University, last August I obtained a Senior Scientist job in a biotech company we collaborated with for a project. They asked me to lead a new unit on the targets we found during the collaboration.
I’d like to apply for the ERC starting grant this year with a public research institute in Europe as a host institution. Essentially apply for an ERC starting grant to move back into academia, capitalising on a recent Nature paper published as a result of my previous postdoc.
Some people I have asked about this have been raising concerns on how my current job in a company can be seen in the ERC application.
What do you think? Is this seen a bad move from a reviewer's point of view which has to judge my academic career the fact I left academia to join this biotech and now want to go back to open my research group? Will I start already with some points behind?

The ERC eligibility guidelines explicitly say that "Research must be conducted in a public or private research organisation (known as a host institution/HI)." I fail to see how a Senior Scientist position at a biotech would not fall under "private research organization".

I was mistaken, I meant an ERC for opening my group in a public university in Europe. I am just worried that my new job can be seen as an escape from academia and thus it will not be judged well by the committee. What do you think?

So you want to apply for an ERC starting grant to move back into academia? That changes matters. Please edit this into your question, or clarify if I misunderstood.

Edited, thanks! Any thoughts about it?

You need confirmation from your host institution that they will support your application and host you if the grant is approved, but if memory serves that is built into the process.
I do computer science rather than biotech, but honestly "I went into industry to lead a unit on the targets I found in my postdoc" sounds like something which strengthens an application rather than weakens it. Check with mentors in your area, but it might actually be a good idea to highlight your ability to move between academia and industry in your B1/B2. (Your letter writers should address this, too.)

@NeelKrishnaswami: that sounds very much like an answer. Want to post it as such?

Like I said, I'm a computer scientist, and do not know enough about what the cultural norms in biotech are for me to feel comfortable making it an answer.

I've reviewed multiple ERC starting grants in materials/surface science and chemistry. In every case, the proposals were highly competitive, with prospective faculty that had very strong backgrounds and academic pedigrees.
You will be judged on the strength of your background (not just one paper, but the body of work), the strength of your proposal, and if it looks like you will have a high likelihood of success. A Nature or Science paper on your CV looks good, but that will not carry you through all the way, especially as that is seen as your postdoctoral advisor's work, not yours.
If you have been actively involved in R&D and publishing in industry, it will look good. If you have not done so and wish to return to academia, you will be up against people who have been actively publishing numerous papers per year, including top shelf ones in Science, Nature, Cell, etc...
So it will not be explicitly held against you, but it is a highly competitive funding scheme, and those who are very active in the academic setting are likely to hit higher metrics for potential of further academic success.
Take that for what you will. You should definitely still apply, and focus on providing a strong proposal, one that is clearly forward thinking, and that can be achieved at the proposed institution; i.e. the institution has the right facilities and framework to support what you propose, so for example if you propose to study protein structure but the University lacks high end NMR or crystallography facilities then it's not a great fit.


text:
Reading a book with multiple endnotes
As a doctoral student in an interdisciplinary field, I come across a number of books that mention multiple 'endnotes' (as opposed to footnotes). I have no particular way of reading such books, but sometimes, dabbling between the main text and the Notes section at the back of the book becomes cumbersome and disrupts the rhythm of reading. Conversely, trying to read the notes once I finish the chapter, or the book, seems a bit out of place. I would appreciate if you could suggest efficient ways to read books out of your own experiences.

I personally find extensive backnotes (endnotes) painful as you suggest. There are different strategies, depending on what you'd rather do and somewhat on the material.

Ignore the backnotes.

Use a bookmark for your current reading position and another for the current backnote and page back and forth. (I often use this)

Read the notes later, as needed.

Read the material twice (at least), employing 1. on the first reading and 2. on the second.

If the material is only peripherally useful to you then 1. might suffice. But if you really need to know the material, either 2. or 4. might be needed. With 4, the first reading gives you a good overview and the second provides what may be needed detail.
But it is a personal choice, influenced by the importance of the material.
And, extensive footnotes can be painful also. Note that including all that material inline would probably be worse, making reading even more difficult.

Thanks for the suggestions @Buffy! I have tried 2, and 3 before on different occasions, but each strategy after some time starts to pain! Of course, 1 is not helpful either as I feel like I am missing out on some crucial information. I will try 4 now! :)

And if electronic, having two separate windows on two separate monitors is a big help.

Photocopy (or print out) the endnotes section, and keep it handy while you read.  I have found this strategy to be quite useful (though it has been 20 years since I've tried to read a book with endnotes---switching to mathematics may have been the smartest decision of my undergraduate career in that respect). :D

In addition to Jon Custer's and Xander Henderson's suggestions, when I read a (hardcopy) book with endnotes (I've read books in which at least 20% of the pages are endnotes), I put a sticky note at the top of the endnote page corresponding to where I'm at in the text and use that to "thumb back to an endnote" as they appear. I've always thought it would be nice to use to different notations for endnotes so as to distinguish those that only cite the source of something and those that (either in addition to or instead of a source) actually give useful or interesting tangential commentary.

All are very helpful suggestions. Thank you, @Jon, Xander, and Dave! It would be so much easier if readers are made aware of such particularities, I agree, Dave!

A basic rule for authors (see Chicago Manual of Style) is to avoid long or unnecessary endnotes or footnotes. If it's important, put it in the main text. If it's not that important, consider whether you need a note at all. Given this basic rule, you're not obligated to continually interrupt your reading to go to the endnotes. You can have some confidence that you might not be missing much if you don't read the notes. You could check the endnotes if there's something you're especially curious about.

It can be worth checking a few of the notes to get a sense of how important they are. Especially since a reader may be interested in something the author did not consider all that important for the point they were making.


text:
I am on scholastic warning. What should I do?
I am currently a first year PhD student and I just finished my 2nd semester. I am an international student and I was out of academia for a few years as I was working and didn't have the habit of studying. It was difficult to get back into studying but I was passionate about my degree and research. I scored 2 Bs in my first semester.
In the 2nd semester I took an easy class and yet I got a B- which reduced my GPA to less than 3.00 and now I am on scholastic warning, meaning that I only have the summer semester to get my GPA back up to 3.00, else I am dismissed from the university. I spoke to my advisor and he said that if I have to take a summer class, then I have to. The problem is that my department doesn't offer any grad classes during summer, especially related to my domain and there aren't much available in other related departments as well. So I guess I only have 3 more months here.
My research also isn't going well, I am basically at a dead end and don't know what to do. I feel like a failure since I had no problem in academic or research a few years back.

Discuss options with the grad chair or department chair.

I'm not sure anyone outside of your university can help you with this. Certainly they wouldn't have given you a warning if there was no path forward for getting your GPA back over the threshold. But what those paths may be, only your department knows.

Conversation with your advisor and a bit of self reflection on how you got here might be in order now. Your lab mates put you down?

To make the habit of studying, you can start with small portions of time and increase it gradually. Since you lost this habit by being far from education, it is hard for you to start by long hours and keep concentration.

Start by getting more information about the policy.
If you haven't already, find out:

If you really only have the summer semester to increase your GPA, or if it's fall.  Often some university policies include summer when referring to "semesters" and others may not.

If there are any summer courses at all that you can take, whether or not they seem relevant to your degree.  It may make a difference whether they count toward your formal graduation requirements.

If it is possible to petition for an exception.  Most universities have a process like this.  Find out how the process works at your university, who makes the decisions, and what kind of evidence or arguments you can include.  Pay close attention to the details of the process, including specific forms, deadlines, etc, as missing a detail could lead your petition to be denied.

Your faculty advisor may not be the best person to ask about this; individual faculty aren't necessarily familiar with these processes.  Try someone like a department chair or graduate chair / coordinator who is more involved with the administration of the graduate program.

If it really turns out that you cannot do anything to stay in the program:
Well, start making plans for what you will do with your life instead of graduate school.  There are lots of possibilities.
Since you mention that you are an international student, this would likely also mean that you will have to return to your home country, since your student visa would become invalid.  Check with your university's international office to find out more about this process, and the relevant deadlines.  You may find that you have to leave within a short period of time after ending your studies, possibly just a few days.  If you can't or are unwilling to return to your home country for any reason, you will probably need to consult an immigration lawyer.
It would be worth finding out if you can voluntarily withdraw from the university instead of being dismissed.  This might help your transcript look better if you decide to pursue graduate study again in the future.

My research also isn't going well, my lab mates are very unsupportive and always try to put me down.

Well, if you're not staying in the program, then this is moot.  If you do stay, then this is a separate issue to address.  We have lots of other questions here about similar situations, but for instance you could find ways to work more independently from these students, or switch to another lab.

I feel like a failure since I had no problem in academic or research a few years back.

Just because you may not succeed at one particular pursuit, does not mean that you are a failure as a person!  It is normal to be frustrated and disappointed, but if these feelings are severe or interfere with your life, talk to your university's counseling service.


text:
How to ensure the research continuity when dealing with uncooperative administration?
Let us assume you have secured a hefty funding to do some exciting research. The problem is, the funding is about to end, you have done that hard part already and are interested in a follow-up, but it would be a project much smaller in scope - maybe you have created a compound or an apparatus previously and now what is left is putting it to work. And that creates a conflict of interest.
For researchers, the gains from the continuation are obvious and plentiful: your own creation is viewed as an asset, and it would be absurd to not reap the fruits of your own labor. Building the LHC or Webb's and then letting it collect dust would be unthinkable, but for some reason it still happens with smaller projects.
That is because for (a given) administration, the old project is just a liability at this point, given they have gotten their chunk of the funding pie. They want to do a bare minimum to wrap it up and, simply put, only care about financially large projects where they get their cut for moving papers from one side of their desk to another. In this extreme case the proposed follow-up is not just low value, it is seemingly perceived as negative value - they would not only have to work for relatively cheap, their "managerial success" which is already almost at hand now goes back under further scrutiny. Thus, the administration tries to shut the proposal down by action or inaction.
Are there any reasonable strategies for gaining leverage while being a researcher in that scenario? More broadly, what are the instruments one employs to have a measure of control over their own research/lab so to not get involved in what is, well, corruption and still grease the wheels of the bureaucratic machine to get it going? Even the trivial "scientific output is still - at the end of the day - funding" seems to imply getting someone on your side - who would that be?
This is fairly similar to a question about a PhD and their ex-head of the lab, but plays out at another level, which is why I feel it warrants a separate one.
For context: this is not an immediate concern of mine, but I have seen a fair share of this kind of dynamics in play. The situation in here (Russia) is infamously bad, but I also believe similar things happen elsewhere as well. If that is heavily region-specific, I would be interested in learning about offices and facilities getting involved regardless.

Somehow this feels like a fairly, idk, specific problem? I would imagine in the general case the "value" for the institution, in terms of papers and reputations, is not in owning a specific device, but in actually producing important findings with it? It feels that more people should have the opposite problem - unwillingness of the org to invest into a new line of research as long as papers could still reasonably be squeezed out of what they already have ...

Planning for what happens after the funding ends usually starts before the funding begins, and often the funding agency wants to know what the plans are as part of the proposal (or in evaluations during the grant).

"Let us assume [...]" Agreed with @xLeitix Is it a real or imaginary situation?

@xLeitix Welp, I guess it is indeed specific to Russia then. Sorry. Long-term planning is basically nonexistent on the administrative level here, everyone knows the heads will roll every three years or so, so administration, including that in funding agencies, prefers to handle each individual grant as uneventfully as possible. Similarly, everyone subsided by the government tries to show some tiiiiny gains to stay afloat - doing too well is dangerous. And if in 5 years all the funding is funneled into nanotechnology, your project better be about it even if you are doing astronomy...

@JonCuster In theory and on paper - yes. The situation with funding agencies is a bit paradoxical here: they seem to incentivize the right things but it often ends unsynced: the lab would produce a PhD during project A, submit it for metrics on an unrelated project B, take a PhD from C and submit for A. I'm sometimes at a loss for why is that so, maybe the mentality plays a role here. Anyway, yes, it is the most common to not show stellar results to the funding community, they don't like it (why is not everyone getting them? Maybe cut the funding?..)

@enthu Very real. The situation that prompted me to ask this is recently witnessed few million euro project being consistently driven into ground by shutting down prospective collaborations, but this is far from an isolated case (although especially egregious).


text:
CS Associate's degree in Brazil: go straight to master's or get a bachelor's first?
I am 23 years old and finishing my associate degree (3 years part-time) in Computer Science. I've been thinking about pursuing a career in academia; I've started to do research and got a paper accepted to a relevant conference in my field (pattern recognition).
I already have some experience in industry (4 years software development), so it's something I've tasted before, but nowadays I see academia fulfilling me better in the long term (big thanks to this post).
My goal would be to grow a career in academia (pattern recognition) and work as a consultant on the side.
Would count against me to go directly to Masters without a Bachelor? Or is there some better option? My concern is that my associate's degree didn't have a good mathematical foundation; it was focused on market-related technologies (programming languages, databases, software engineering, testing).
At this moment I've been thinking about two different paths I could take:

Take 2 more years to get a bachelor's degree, and then go to master's (at age 25). This would allow me to grow more (both in foundation but also in maturity aspect) and make the most out of my master's.
Go straight to Masters I believe I would have a really hard time with this, due to concepts I haven't seen before (calculus and linear algebra). Certainly I would try to learn beforehand, but this kind of knowledge takes time to grow. At this time I feel that I wouldn't make the most of it, but it would save me two years.

Note, I am in Brazil. College is free, and the only requirement for a master's program is to have an undergraduate degree, which both associate's and bachelor's are, so this wouldn't be an impediment.

Go with 1. 2 is going to be very hard, and in fact, very few masters programs will take someone with just an Associates.

@JoshuaZ in my country (Brazil) this is not a requirement, once both associate and bachelor are on the same level of education (undergraduate).

Welcome to Academia.SE. I've cleaned up your question a bit; please feel free to edit if I ruined anything. Also, I do not know what the situation may be in Brazil, but in the US, faculty positions are very competitive; I would be concerned if this is your only reason for pursuing a higher degree.

You will almost certainly need to obtain a bachelor’s degree before enrolling in a master’s program. Virtually all master’s programs in STEM fields have the requirement of a bachelor’s degree in either the same or a related field as part of the admissions process. It will also give you the opportunity to make up for deficiencies in your previous experience before beginning the more difficult master’s program (relative to the bachelor’s).

I agree with your point about the deficiencies, once it will allow me some extra time to grasp concepts I haven't seen before and will for sure be required lately. About the master's requirements, in my country (Brazil), the only requirement for master's program is to have an undergraduate degree, which both associate and bachelor are, so this wouldn't be a problem.

I hope you are interpreting that correctly. I would guess an associates degree wouldn't qualify as an "undergraduate" degree for the purposes of going on. It seems more like it is shorthand for bachelor's degree as it is most other places. Best to check and be certain.

First, I agree with others saying to double-check that an associate's degree is acceptable for admission to a master's program. This is not true in most countries, and it's not clear to me from a quick search that it's true in Brazil.
Now for the CS answer: I would point out that computer science and programming are very different. Knowing the latter is certainly helpful for the former, but computer science also has a lot of fundamental math -- potentially even at the level of theorem/proof, depending on your specialty. Thus, I would have very serious concerns about you moving forward without a very strong background in calculus, linear algebra, and real analysis. I don't know the typical ordering of courses in Brazil, but I would expect these classes would be taken before starting a master's program. For that reason alone, option #1 seems better to me -- though perhaps an "option #3" would be to do CS associate's + 1 year of math courses, not sure if that is practical in Brazil.


text:
Do international students have a lower chance of getting accepted in STEM-fields PhD programs at US universities?
The reason that lead me to ask about this is the following paragraph I found on this page (some guidance written by a STEM-field professor at CMU for applying to grad school), he says,

I'm not a U.S. citizen -- how does that affect my chances?
Unfortunately, if you are not a U.S. citizen and you don't hold a green card, your chances for admission are very significantly reduced. One simple reason is that we get an overwhelming number of applications from overseas. The extra work and time we spend on cultural acclimation and language skills for these students means that we can only accept a few of them, and of course this is a very few out of a huge application pool. If you already have a degree from a U.S. institution, that helps considerably with this issue. Also, it is more difficult to obtain funding for non-U.S. students, and so further increases the effort required to bring them here. Historically about half of our department's graduate students are non-U.S., although that proportion tends to be closer to one quarter in my research group.

The bold italics are mine. I personally find the "cultural acclimation" argument utter nonsense, and the "language skills" seems even more nonsensical, since almost all programs require quite good TOEFL/GRE test scores. So I suppose my question has two components really, and it concerns PhD programs specifically:

Did you experience difficulties funding a student in your department (STEM field) solely because he was a non-US citizen? If so, does this influence your decision of admitting non-US citizens?

Does your department has a specific quota of non-US citizens to be admitted?

Edit: In light of the new statistic I found, it seems absurd to say international students (i.e. non-US citizens) have a hard time getting accepted, especially in ECE. I think the professor's remark above doesn't reflect the bigger trend (he is with the ECE department at CMU), and his research group (where the proportion of international students is about 25%) is more of an exception to the "rule".

Your feelings on the issues have no bearing on a given professors actual experience with those issues. As to difficult to get in, seems like half the students are from outside the US, and not knowing the percentages of applicants from overseas, nor their qualifications, then it is hard to say.

"it is more difficult to obtain funding for non-U.S. students" is probably the part most deserving bolding. The cultural acclimation bit seems to be just this one person's opinion, and is probably based on some of their past experiences perhaps with a bit of racism mixed in. The program in which I was a grad student had a high percentage of international students who were "direct admits" to a lab - basically they needed a lab to fund them from the get-go because the program's available funds for rotating students were restricted to US citizens. Otherwise they needed other (difficult) support.

https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/33023/17254

http://nfap.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/The-Importance-of-International-Students.NFAP-Policy-Brief.October-20171.pdf

I'll note that the author of the quoted material clearly presents his position as a "personal opinion". He also seems to be in a system in which he has a lot to say about who gets admitted as his advisee. So, take this with a heavy dose of skepticism as a general statement. The full statement is easy to find via google.

@Buffy - indeed, and as one professor's opinion that means it would only take one bad experience with a foreign student to impact it.

Is this just a theoretical question, or do you ask because you'd like to study in the US? In the latter case, I'd have a bit of advice.

@Buffy It's the latter case, I am considering to apply for a PhD in ECE.

There are circumstances that may make a particular program or lab more inclined towards US citizens, but it's difficult to know in advance where this is the case. I'd be surprised if there were many departments that prefer international students to US citizens that the admissions committee believes are equally promising candidates. From that perspective, the answer to your question is a qualified yes, but shouldn't dramatically impact your decision making process.

Your table needs to split out Master's from PhD students.  Master's are dash cows for universities, and there is very little commitment to the student

Since you can't change the situation and suddenly discover your US citizen parents, you can only apply for positions and make your best case. As I mentioned in comments, the quotes are from an individual who is clearly expressing an opinion, not the results of research.
Yes, you will find people who will mark you down a bit or a lot based on your circumstances, but you will also find people who take a broader (and IMO, wiser) view that applicants are individuals who should be evaluated on a relatively fair basis.
But, you will find that competition in some fields and in some universities is intense and you have to make the case that you are an excellent candidate with many expectations of success.
Note, that some parts of the article that you didn't quote are more general. The writer is correct that funding in the US for doctoral study is normally not a problem as nearly everyone has a position as either a TA (most common) or an RA. This provides sufficient funds to live (if a bit humbly) and pays all tuition and fees. While the funding may not come from the professor, it is almost always available to anyone who is admitted and who requests it.
Visa problems may be intense at the moment as is the difficulty of travel, but those are outside what can be advised here.
What matters, much more than trends, however, is what it means for you as an individual. If you present an excellent application, showing hard work and past success and people are willing to write you good (great) letters of recommendation, you will have a chance.
But don't apply to too narrow a range of institutions. Give yourself flexibility and backup.


text:
Is it okay if a PhD student's work seems insignificant compared to others'?
I am a theoretical computer science student working on algorithms. I am doubting myself a bit, as I have spent the last 6-7 months working on one problem. Although I am not able to solve the desired problem, I have been able to solve some specific cases. I am currently writing a paper as my research supervisor advised, but when I look at the work of other researchers in my field, my own research works seems insignificant. To me it appears that my (one- or two-page-long) algorithm may seem trivial to an established researcher.
Question: Is it okay if the work of PhD student seems insignificant as compared to other researchers in the field?

Are you comparing yourself to other established researchers or to other PhD students?

Are you working alone on your topic? What about the others that you are comparing yourself to? Are they large teams?

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11765/ive-somehow-convinced-everyone-that-im-actually-good-at-this-how-to-effect

You set a bounty even after there are quite a few answers. What do you expect to answer your question in a way you would like? This is a serious (not rhetoric) question, you seem to want to attract another type of answers as there already are and I think it is rather unclear what aspect you want to have discussed, which isn't discussed yet.

Even as a professor, I still feel this way. Keep that little voice out of your head :)

Measuring the impact of an academic paper after it's publication can be done with the h-index. Predicting the outcome before publication is possible with a co-authorship model. Academia never works by evaluating a single person, but his social skills in a group of researchers. If you know the names and the number of co-authors it is possible to estimate if the work will be significant or not. And if the outcome is known, it is possible to adapt the behavior into the desired direction.

It is entirely normal that beginning students would achieve incremental results that compare poorly to the best papers from the best researchers in the field. Sometimes researchers need time to mature, and sometimes research directions just don't pan out even for the best of us. Not every worthwhile paper is revolutionary.
That said, it's impossible for us to tell whether you should be concerned or not. It's possible you did everything exactly right and this is where the science led you; it's also possible that you did not. The person best suited to judge this is your advisor. Since your advisor wants you to publish, it would seem that they are not too concerned. Still, asking them for feedback is likely a good idea.

It is actually very difficult to judge how significant your work is before you publish it and others try to use it or build something upon it. There are many examples of great scientists misjudging their work.
My favorite is John Nash's paper on equilibrium in games. Nash thought it wasn't a big deal so he allegedly didn't even bother wasting time to publish it. The story goes his adviser published it on his behalf. Now it is considered the most important paper in economics, if not all social sciences. He got a Nobel prize for it. Nobel committee usually features him on top of their economics website. 11 or now 12 more Nobel prizes were given for work directly based on this paper.
Just publish it and see how it works out.
In response to comments, this is just a story about Nash's initial attitude towards his discovery of equilibrium that I heard many times. Even if it is exaggerated, it is clear Nash couldn't have know the greatness of his discovery until much later. This documentary has some pieces of this story.

This is a mind-blowing anecdote. I know of anecdotes along these lines, but none that come close to comparing to this.

That header doesn't mean that. In the past, articles published in Proc. National Academy of Sciences had to either include an author who was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, or be sponsored by a member, who selected reviewers themselves. "Communicated by" means that Nash's advisor sponsored it, because Nash wasn't a member himself. At one point, papers could bypass this process, like normal journals, and in 2010, communicating was abolished. If Nash wasn't connected, he couldn't have gotten the paper in PNAS. Today, a NAS member author still greatly improves your chance in PNAS.

Strictly speaking the economics prize is not a Nobel prize. The dude never wanted economics to be part of the price when he was alive. It's the prize of a national bank to honor his memory.

@user71659 Of course it was his work, but the anecdote goes that Nash was so obsessed with producing something worthy of Fields Medal that he didn't want to bother with anything that didn't have that potential. He was a mathematician after all. Little did he know that the little method he discovered/invented would revolutionize social sciences, and some subfields of biology too, in fact

@ArthurTarasov You missed the point. You misinterpreted how PNAS articles are published. When a PNAS article says "Communicated by", it does not mean anybody "published it on his behalf". The name listed there is the NAS member, who acted as the editor and arranged for the peer review of the paper. In the past, if you weren't a member of the NAS, the only way to get in PNAS was to have a NAS member you know, in this case Nash's advisor, act as an editor for you. In normal journals this would be a blatant conflict of interest, but its how PNAS, and some other national academies, work.

See https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7645/article-communicated-by

@user71659 But it might have been. It just provides support for the anecdote that's all. Another support is that Nash's PhD thesis that he wrote based on the paper is only about 30 pages with 2 citations. It was pretty evident he didn't think much of that work at the time and spend his efforts working on something he thought would be more significant.

@ArthurTarasov That line provides no support. If Nash did everything himself, the logical person on the NAS to send it to would be his advisor, so the end result would be the same. It's unfair to use who communicated his article as evidence.

"His adviser published it on his behalf, as you can see in the header of the paper."  The NAS member listed in the header is Lefschetz.  Nash's advisor was Tucker.   Nash wrote his PhD thesis on the topic, which "wasted" (obviously not!) more time than it takes to write a 2 page paper.  Finally, Nash wrote three more papers on the topic in the next three years (he only wrote 21 papers in his entire career).   In summary: your narrative about his attitude doesn't make much sense, except that he was also deeply interested in several pure mathematical topics.

As per the comments, Nash might not have been "that guy", but Ernst Ising definitely was. Distraught over seemingly insignificant work, he tried his hand at business and eventually became a school teacher. Quoting his obituary - "It was only in 1949 that Ising knew the importance his model attained in scientific literature, 25 years after his Ph.D thesis. Today, each year, about 800 papers are published that use the model to address problems in such diverse fields as neural networks, protein folding, biological membranes and social behavior"

I am not that thrilled that in response to precise comments falsifying some of the claims in your answer, you've merely tacked on "allegedly" and "the story goes."  Apocryphal tales can have their place, but I don't see any relevance to the OP's question: you are saying that it is okay if the OP's feels his work is insignificant because someone once said that John Nash felt that way about his very significant work?  That's pretty weak.

To suggest an answer, based on personal experience and experience of my friends:  I propose an illustration on how the 3 key variables in student's cognition, usually evolve during PhD studies (including completion of the thesis and peer-reviewed article publication), below. On the graph we have t axis for time period, orthogonal axis for relative value of the variables over time and: the psychological milestone of the PhD research.

So, in your cognition there are variables:

Cr - confidence in your research, i.e. that you'll successfully complete the research, defend the thesis and get the PhD. diploma
Rs - your impression on significance of your research in the relevant field and relative to the significance of the related works.
|Rw| - aggregated knowledge about fundamental and recent research approaches / works / proposals, i.e. number of related works you reviewed and really understood, in all relevant aspects

The interpretation of the graph:

After you formulate the research directions and initial draft, there is typical illusion that your work would have huge impact in the field i.e. that your contribution will become regular reference in future review articles in the field. Of course, such high value of Cr is just product of enthusiasmic-peak & ignorance on relevant works.

As you review and practically re-evaluate more and more of related research, Rs will continue to drop, however, you'll get better understating what is big and what tiny contribution in the field. i.e. the precision of your impression on Rs will rise.

The ultimate outcome of the whole game is function of criterion:

Would you reach the psychological milestone of your PhD research, before Cr breaks you down, causing you to leave the studies?

So, if you are still worried if your research is / will be / significant enough - you are on the left part of the t axis. Therefore, what you have to do: continue to dig and study related research -- as it would, beside discussed above, provide you with ideas how to adjust and/or re-frame your research to fit what seems to be ok significance.

Or, to provide simple answer: yes, it is ok (compared to research articles, published in journals with IF > 1.0).
But, if the law on postgraduate studies / the statute of your university / PhD. studies / is anything similar to my case (or in general to European standards) - you should think on how to produce a research article (focused on a chapter from PhD. thesis), that should be "in the league" with related research article -- maybe not in the top, but in the same general cluster.
Hope this helps :)

Researchers always need some time to mature. In a few exceptional cases, that maturation may happen before officially starting the PhD. Don't compare yourself against those exceptions. From my experience, the typical researcher only starts producing good papers in the second half of their PhD, or only after becoming a postdoc.

I agree. PostDoc especially. Maybe it is something about these 10 000 hours.

I wouldn't be concerned at all. In fact, I ask "seems insignificant to who?" As you say, you doubt yourself, but your advisor (and others) may have no doubts at all.
In CS, as in mathematics, some problems are just harder (much harder) than others, so small results may actually be significant in search of a larger goal. I've worked on problems (in math) for which no progress could be made at all.
It is almost always good advice to follow your advisors direction in such things.

For many people, your own research will often seem insignificant compared to others for the simple reason that you've thought enough about the topic for things to feel obvious. This is especially the case in math and computer science. If you really do have such doubts, talk to your advisor. They should have more of an idea of how good your work is.

Question: Is it okay if the work of PhD student seems insignificant as
  compared to other researchers in the field?

It is clear that the answer to your question is a unanimous yes, based on all the answers.
You are experiencing a (mild, hopefully) form of the impostor syndrome, a well known disease in academia which is especially virulent among PhD students.
As a scientist, you are probably aware that you can't objectively evaluate your own work (by definition). In academia, the evaluation of a researcher' work is done by anonymous reviewers when you submit a paper. So don't worry, your work will be duly evaluated, and the reviewers will give you some more objective feedback about your work (as objective as peer review can be, there is always a fair amount of chance in the process). Reviewers are unlikely to hold their punches so it might be unpleasant, but at least you will have a clearer idea of where your current work stands with respect to the expectations in your field. Whether the reviews turn out positive or not, they should give you indications about what is good and what should be improved in your approach.
In the meantime, try to avoid evaluating your own work, but more importantly avoid judging your own value based on a few months of early work. For many people, the PhD is a time of self doubt because for the first time one faces their own limitations in a very concrete way. In my opinion, the way to move forward is to consider it as an opportunity to not only explore one's own limitations, but also their skills and especially the unique ones: try to find out what you are particularly good at (it's generally the same as what motivates you), and direct your work in this direction as much as possible. But in case this kind of thoughts causes you too much anxiety, don't hesitate to seek psychological advice, there is nothing wrong with that.

The answer is referencing to the problem of evaluating somebody owns work. In subjects like Biology or Pedagogy it is indeed not possible. The only exception is Artificial Intelligence. If somebody has an idea, he can test it without asking anybody for advice. Such a workflow is sometimes surprising, because a single researcher can write a paper, recognizes that his neural network isn't working and decides to not publish it.

@ManuelRodriguez yes, in experimental domains there are objective evaluation methods which can validate or invalidate an idea. But even then, the quality of the scientific contribution is different: an experiment might be successful but its design flawed; conversely an experiment might fail but this negative result might be a significant contribution to the field.

I wouldn't call Biology an experimental domain. It is more based around telling stories and encourage people in independent thinking. A successful experiment in biology is equal to valuable group communication with the supervisor.

Yes, it is not only OK but is also the expected.
A PhD student is (ideally) someone seeking to learn how to do independent, quality research. This means that the academic focus therein should be on methods, standards, showing a professional capacity to do research.
Not all research is groundbreaking per se. Furthermore, the most influential ideas in History did not look so powerful at first. Research conclusions must withstand the test of time. In fact I am very suspicious of self-appointed hot research.
Relax, focus on the details, do your best, and forget about what others think or how to "look impressive".