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Is dating other PhD students a terrible idea if I want to stay in academia longterm?
In his book “Good work if you can get it: How to succeed in academia”, Jason Brennan advises aspiring academics against dating other PhD students while on graduate school.
Of course, I know that everyone is free to love anyone.
I’m not in a situation where I am deciding whether to date a particular PhD student or not. But there are things that I could do to increase the possibility of it happening (eg online dating, asking friends if they know someone who might be a good fit, etc).
Having read about the two-body problem that many academics face, I wonder what dating strategy (eg waiting until having a permanent position to date, dating someone with a job outside of academia, etc) I should have if I want to maximise my chances of landing a permanent academic job while having a SO (which I don’t currently have).
Note: I’m a first year PhD student at a top-3 university in the world for my field. My funding is the most prestigious scholarship available in my university for PhD students. So I have reasons to believe that my chances of landing an academic job are significantly higher than for an average PhD student. Might spousal-hires be a possibility longterm? Or dating another superstar PhD student to increase the odds of both getting a postdocs/jobs at the same universities.

You can still have a 'two-body problem' with a partner who isn't an academic. For example, they may need to be in a particular city for their career or family reasons, or perhaps they need to be in a major city while you get a job offer in a rural campus university.  It's hard enough to find a partner you're compatible with, I wouldn't add their career plans as a criteria.

Dating another academic might even make things easier, as they also tend to be open to moving around, and many universities have dual career programs. Or, spouses (academics or not) may want to move elsewhere for their own, personal reasons. This really depends a too much on the individuals involved. If each prioritizes the career over the relationship (like you seem to do: "maximize chances (...) while (...)") it will be tough anyway.

Despite dual-career programs, it's worth considering that dating an academic in the same field/department can be more problematic than an academic in a different one. This is because break-ups and divorces happen, and a department might be reluctant to potentially have to deal with those.

@lighthouse keeper Thanks for the comment. Yes, I’m definitely not particularly interested in dating people in my own field and especially not from my own department.

Your chances of finding a suitable partner in a demanding and time-consuming job are lower than usual anyway, if that's a priority at all, do not put additional constraints on it.

Note, that, even if your partner is not in the same field, there is always the possibility of additional competitiveness and both partners have to be very tolerant of the other partner potentially being more successful than themselves.

One more comment about the last paragraph: While it may be correct that being a PhD student at a top university increases your chances on the job market, it doesn't render you a superstar - the only thing that does is a superstar track record.

@lighthousekeeper And also, dating someone because they are a superstar is probably as effective at finding the right person as dating them because they make the most money or because they are a famous film actor/tress. In short, not a good idea.

@CaptainEmacs I dunno. If they're both highly academically-focused and driven individuals, that could act as a point of similarity between them.

@nick012000 Yes, that works until one of them gets in crisis (which happens in all but the lucky few individuals). Or somehow other cracks appear. It's not a good criterion. Now, I am not saying that driven individuals cannot find common ground, but there needs to be a common ground that is not the drive - the one exception is if they complement each other, in other words, if they need each other's contribution - that can work. Apart from that situation, drive on its own is simply not a good criterion.

Voting to close, this question is too opinion based

@lighthousekeeper Thanks for all the comments. Re the superstar comment, I used it as short for “someone academically driven/focused” etc rather than trying to say that I am a superstar (but I see how your interpretation is reasonable from what I wrote)

@anonymous If you meet someone with whom there's mutual interest, I'd say go for it. If you do go on to an academic career, it is probably 7-8 years or more until you are in a permanent position. Moreover, dating might not be easy then, especially if you end up in an isolated location. Very best of luck to you.

"I’m a [...] PhD student at a top-3 university", "another superstar PhD student", "I wonder what dating strategy": I don't intend to be rude, but you seem to have a rather narrow view on how professional success works; and - even more importantly - you are even extrapolating this view to your private life...

@jochenglueck Sorry to have given the wrong impression. As for being una top-3 university that’s a fact (if you believe in ranks at least) and I’m not saying it to show off, rather to avoid answers of the sort “your chances of landing an academic job are incredibly low anyway”. Re the superstar use, I addressed that in a previous question. Finally, re “dating strategy”, look, I’m not trying to apply any algorithm or any of that stuff, but, as mentioned in the question, there are things I can do (trying to meet many grad students, dating apps, trying to meet people outside of academia, etc)

@anonymous Unfortunately, your chances of landing an academic job are incredibly low anyway.

@BryanKrause That's as truthful as to say "your chances of finding a lasting relationship are very low these days"; it will not keep people from trying (and also should not do so), so I am not sure what the use of it is.

@CaptainEmacs Far more people will have a lasting relationship than graduate students will get permanent faculty positions, and if you fail at the former which almost everyone does several times you get to try again; for the latter, there is little opportunity past a certain point. The meaning of my comment was that OP seems to think that by being a "superstar" in a top 3 school their academic career future is a solid bet such that answers should not address that a permanent academic career is not a solid bet for anyone: neither them nor their potential grad student dating partners.

@anonymous: Thanks for your response! Hmm, I think that you might have misinterpreted my comment. My point was not whether I agree or disagree with any of the specific statements I quoted, but that many of your statements (the three I picked out are just examples) suggest the following: You seem to believe that relations between cause and effect are often quite straightforward, and rather easy to isolate, to describe and to influence. To be honest, the way you phrased your post immediately reminded me of the notion Illusion of control.

Of course, you're actions do have considerable influence on your future welfare, but this is often a very subtle and long-term process. Basing decisions (career or personal) on ideas like "a PhD from a top university strongly increases my chances to land a permanent academic position" or "dating other PhD students is unwise due to a potential two-body problem" heavily overestimates the control that such kind of criteria give you in the long run, while it heavily underestimates the influence of other more subtle but highly relevant factors.

@jochenglueck thanks for the clarification and for your new comment. It may be very true that I’m overestimating the effects of my actions. A PhD from a top uni does increase my chances to some level, but I don’t know how strongly (that is subjective, and Im not giving any actual probabilities here). (I know that publishing etc is very important too as well as luck). And regarding the dating statement, I don’t how negative it is in the longterm to date other grad students, but that’s the very point of my question (I’m asking because I’ve read it and I want to know what others think about it)

Perhaps I should rephrase the question in terms of probabilities or simply ask for personal experiences with two-body problems (I’ve read a few posts about it in this site, but I want to avoid selection bias as much as possible)

The book doesn't say you should never date another PhD student or break up with a current significant other if you are dating one. It says that the two body problem is hard to overcome, and so you should all things equal try to date outside the narrow circle of academia.

but why? all things equal in which sense? why should the 2-body problems be easier in the industry? There are more positions in industry in a single geographic locations than academia positions, but it does not mean that industry positions in different locations can be easily swapped. If that is the line of thinking, it would be much more meaningful to suggest to date inside the circle of very rich people, or suggesting to study medicine because it is the faculty with more chance of employment inside or outside the academia (all things equal, of course)...

If that book gives this kind of advice, it seems a really good book.
To prevent people from enjoying life and becoming unempathic academics, at best ready to get and facilitate burn-outs through their careers, treating their professional lives as a bubble completely split from their human being existence.
Even the suggestion about not getting involved romantically with someone in your department/research topic, you can find so many couples that split as many couple that navigated their career through that. Sure, you should not be dependent on the relevant other for your career&co., but that is a general advice. You can be working in the same department and being totally independent, as well as working in different sectors (i.e. politics and finance) and having strong, unhealthy, professional bonds.
However, the good news is that if you follow exactly the contrary of that advice, you may discover that having a partner involved in the academy makes much easier to move as a couple, because of the intrinsic instability in the academic career, unless you land a permanent job at a decent institution, where the daul-career programs are a great solution to the two-body problems.

Unsurprisingly, the author advocates for the free-market of organs,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvKmmODb7XA
just focusing on one side of efficient allocation of resources.

Do you mean "not a really good book"?

@IanSudbery I am thinking that it is one of these great books that deserves reading, because they are very good at concentrating all the "wrong" ideas about a certain set of topics, with the author weights in with his "experience" while contemporary claiming to be bias-free (always, always consider survivorship bias https://xkcd.com/1827/ )

@EarlGrey I try to subvert this trope. I explicilty explain to my PhD students what the attrition rate is from postgrad to permanent faculty. I explain that I made it, and of course I made it, because you can only be supervised by people that made it. It's the anthropic principle on a down-to-earth scale. It occasionally works.


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Is there a book equivalent to « Good work if you can get: How to succeed in academia » but for European / UK academia?
I found Jason Brennan’s book very useful when applying to my PhD and planning long term about my academic career.
However I am doing my PhD in Europe and although I’d like to explore US academia at some point in my career, I’d bet that long term I may prefer to be somewhere in Europe.
Of course, 75% of the advice in the book applies equally in here, but there are different things (eg sorter PhD without courses or having to TA, I think tenure-track positions don’t exist, etc)

Europe has lots of variation between countries, especially in those aspects you mention (level of coursework and TA-ship during PhD, existence of tenure-tracks). On the other hand, getting informed about these particular aspects might not require a book.

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How should I prioritize whom to ask for a letter of recommendation based on expertise and academic title?
I’m applying for PhD programs in Artificial Intelligence, and I’m currently in doubt about which professors to ask for letters of recommendation.
Here’s my situation:

My master’s thesis professor hasn’t replied to my emails regarding a
letter of recommendation, and during the thesis, I only interacted
with a PhD student rather than the professor. This professor also
didn’t attend my thesis defence, which makes me question whether I
should keep waiting or look for other options.
My bachelor’s thesis professor is very supportive and has already
agreed to write me a strong letter of recommendation.

Now, I’m considering asking another professor for a third letter. I’m wondering how to prioritize whom to ask, especially considering the field and subfield they specialize in, as well as their academic standing.
My main questions are:

How important is it that the professor works specifically in the
same field (e.g., artificial intelligence) or even more
specifically, in the subfield (e.g., computer vision) I want to
pursue for my PhD?
Does the academic rank of the professor (e.g., associate professor
vs. full professor) affect the strength of the recommendation, or is
the content of the letter more important?
Should I prioritize getting a letter from someone who knows me well
but works in a somewhat different area, or from someone in my
specific field but who knows me less well?

Thanks in advance for your advice!

Likely duplicate of https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12959/who-should-write-a-recommendation-letter?rq=1

I don't believe it properly answers my questions because I also have a problem my supervisor of my master's thesis is not responding to my emails.

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"Pausing" my PhD for 3 months to do an internship in industry, pros and cons?
I am a first year PhD student in an interdisciplinary STEM subfield, in a UK-style program (so 3 or 4 years long). I have been offered a 12-week internship in a biotech startup working in a similar subfield as me. My university allows graduate students to pause their PhD in order to take internships in industry (with the support of the PhD supervisors, the Degree Committee, etc). I am not sure if I should take this offer, I list below some of my main considerations/thoughts.
I understand that this choice depends on personal reasons and is only mine, but I would like advice of the form "you shouldn't be worried about X point because of Y" or "have you considered the impact this would have on Z?".

My supervisor said to assume that the internship wouldn't be directly helpful for my PhD (and I agree, it would however give me a good general background of the relevant subfield of biology, which I currently lack because my background is in maths/physics), but that is as much info as advice as I could get -my PhD supervisor seems to be exceptionally busy recently.
I want to stay in academia
I have done an industry in the past and I didn't enjoy it, but it was in finance
I am enjoying my PhD
I would potentially be "out-of-phase" with respect to the other grad students, and this might be a problem when applying to postdocs if they start with the academic year (I would be three months behind)
I can still think about my PhD research questions while on the internship and do some reading, so I'd be buying a bit of extra time before my PhD submission deadline
I don't do experiments so no problem with leaving them halfway
I might lose momentum in my PhD
It might look negatively in my CV that I did this when applying to postdocs (since most academics seem to look down on industry)
The startup is based in the same city as my university, so I wouldn't have to move temporarilly, and could potentially interact with my research group

Seriously reflect on what it means to pursue and succeed in an academic career. Are you willing to make the sacrifices? What happens after your first post-doc? Do you still have your drive to do research? Or are you following a path because it is "easy" to just keep going the same way? I say this because my motivations and drives changed during the course of PhD. This internship sounds like a door-opener to me. You will survive being away from your PhD project for a couple of months, and learning more about how the relevant industry works can only be a good thing.

Postdoc start dates are usually pretty negotiable, so I wouldn't worry about being "out of phase". Anyway, you can probably massage your thesis submission and deadline to get you back in line with the academic calendar if needs be.

Another aspect regarding "I would potentially be "out-of-phase" with grad students": since you state that "it would however give me a good general background of the relevant subfield of biology, which I currently lack because my background is in maths/physics),"  I think it is a fantastic chance to stop feeling the one not knowing the general background, for two reasons:

you loosen your ties with your grad colleagues by spending time away (less social pressure of being the one not knowing the obvious background;
you get exposed to the basics of the biology subfield;

3 months? 50/50 my supervisor wouldn't have noticed

Considering the academic job market and for many students the opinion "I want to stay in academia" changes dramatically from the first to the last year of a PhD. I would totally recommend going for an internship.

One thing nobody has mentioned so far is payment/compensation. In some fields, internships provide compensation over 3 months which is comparable to the PhD stipend for the entire year. The QoL improvement may well result in you being more productive overall.

You don't say what country you are in (only that your PhD is "UK-style"), bit id the postdocs in your country are also "UK-stlye", then i wouldn't worry about timings with regards to postdocs. Postdoc positions are advertised all the time, and don't follow the academic year (at least not in UK biology).  It also won't look bad on your CV, if anything, it will look good. In fact, the PhD program that funds most of our students requires a three month internship outside the university.
In general, for bioinformatics, its good to have experience of as many different approaches and systems as possible.

Your last sentence in the first paragraph seems to have accidentally a word.

Given the situation you described, it sounds like the internship is not worth doing, if you don't want to work at a startup (or in industry at all!) and the work doesn't have any obvious implications for your dissertation. It sounds like your PhD program is well-aligned with your career goals—why pause it to go and train for a job you don't even want?
It is very flattering to receive offers from cool organizations that seem like they're very selective, but I frequently have to remind myself that "someone thinks I'd be good at this!" doesn't mean I have to actually do it, regardless of whether they're right.
On the other hand, if you think maybe biotech could be an appealing direction for your career, this could be an invaluable way to find out whether it's for you. At the end of the day, I think it's critical to keep your end goal in mind: Which choice gets you closer to where you want to be?

This assumes that one knows where they want to be and they won't change their mind over time, though. Depending on the single person, that may or may not be a fair assumption


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Should I avoid telling my PhD supervisor that I have started taking antidepressants (due to some issues in my personal life)?
I have not been having a good time in my personal life over the last ~9 months, and I’m currently having therapy (fortnightly) and taking antidepressants. I don’t have a depression diagnosis but I have symptoms of them. I can still study and be productive in my academic work, which I’m very excited about.
But I wonder if I should completely avoid the topic of my mental health problems should it come up in conversations (“how are things going?”). My supervisor is hands off and my field is not lab-based, but still I might have therapy appointments during traditional working hours.
I don’t really know what the disadvantages of mentioning the topic are, but since this is a sensitive topic, I thought it’s better to ask beforehand.

I do not think this can be answered objectively, it very much depends on your relationship with your supervisor.

As you mentioned that you can "still study and be productive in your academic work", it means your medication does not significantly impact your research and work negatively. So, I guess there is no reason to tell your advisor specially when he has a hands-off approach.

Are you working in a field where your advisor might need to alert medical personnel about your medication in the event of an accident?

@nick012000 can you give an example of such field? I’m not really sure what you mean

It's your supervisor and you know them better than we do.  If it was my supervisor I would personally tell them, but whether you should do so in your case really depends on how you get on with your supervisor.

Why would you consider your health problems to be any business of your colleagues?

@anonymous Something like working with dangerous chemicals where you might need to get rushed to a hospital in the event of an accident, and you might not be in a state to answer the doctors when they ask "have you been taking any medications?".

Side note: While I'm not a doctor, if your therapist prescribed antidepressants, that sounds like a depression diagnosis (there are some exceptions, but generally a prescription for antiX medication means you have X). If they were not prescribed by a medical professional, then you should discuss this with a medical professional ASAP (I'd be inclined to say you should stop taking them immediately, but doing that without medical consultation is probably a bad idea; both continuing to take them and stopping can have negative side effects, so you really need to talk to a doctor).

@nick012000 not lab-based field, so not the case. Of course, I might have a serious accident at the office anyways, but that’s extremely unlikely

@NotThatGuy Antidepressants can improve a number of mental conditions other than depression as a knock-on effect of how they affect the brain. It's possible that they were prescribed for one of those reasons instead. Of course, all prescription medication should only be taken with a valid prescription from a licensed doctor or pharmacist, of course.

This may be country-dependent. IANAL, but here in Italy you have the right of absolute privacy about your health conditions, with some very specific exceptions, and these exceptions may differ according to whether you work in an environment as a student or as a worker/employee. The only general obligations to disclose your health conditions here are about safety laws. You are not in general obligated to disclose anything if the only thing at risk is the quality/quantity of your work. Of course you could get fired if you don't reach your objectives in some jobs, but that's another issue.

I'd add that here an employer trying to force you to disclose something about your medical condition (beyond what is allowed by the law) can get sued civilly or even face criminal prosecution, depending on what they really did.

If there is a reason for taking anti-depressants (which can be quite potent) I think you should mention that as that may influence your capability to produce quality work which in turn may be relevant to meeting the deadline at the end.  You may want to elaborate on what symptoms and medication and why in your question.

This question seriously confuses me.  My co-workers could be on every known psychoactive prescription medicine known to man, and I would not care, as long as they get their job done.  (Heck, I am on a psychoactive prescription medicine, but I guarantee you my boss doesn't know, and it was at least three years before my previous boss knew.)

I would suggest not mentioning it unless it becomes an issue. Your medical condition and treatment is your own business. And you are indicating no issues with your progress. Let it go. You are doing the right thing by taking your meds.
If asked about an absence for therapy, just indicate a doctor's appointment.
In a non-lab based field, the specific hours you work are up to you, as long as there are no objections. I was able to take bike rides or play racketball during the day, but worked at other times. Since this didn't interfere with meetings and such, there was no issue. (It helped my mental health, actually.)

This is highly advisor-dependent!  I'll first give an answer from my perspective, and then some advice on whether that applies to your advisor.
My experience in advising is that when students are dealing with anxiety or depression that I can do a better job giving good advice when the student is somewhat forthright about what's going on.  So if you were my student I'd certainly appreciate a quick heads up.  I don't think medication as-such is relevant, but giving some insight into what you're going through and that you're taking steps to help would be good information.  In particular, I'd find it helpful to know that a student was seeing a therapist because sometimes there's topics (e.g. perfectionism, writer's block, avoidance) where I can give some advice (especially if it's specific to mathematical writing) but where it'd also be good to be able to suggest that certain aspects I'd noticed might be more a topic for discussion with your therapist.  Of course, there's no obligation to disclose any of this, and this is entirely up to the student.
That said, a lot of advisors are going to have a rather different take on these matters, so you're going to want some indication that your advisor would be open to a mental health discussion.  First, think through whether they've brought things up before which indicates that they'd be open to this.  Second, you might bring it up more vaguely, for example saying you've been unhappy this year and have struggled a little with motivation, and if your advisor steers things in an appropriate direction (e.g. suggests mental health resources) then that's a good sign that further conversation is ok.
(As an aside for advisors, I've been thinking about how one makes more clear early on that it's ok to talk about mental health if the student wants to.  One thing I've been thinking about is always having a brief discussion of mental health resources in the context of preparing for oral exams, which are a very common flashpoint for anxiety and which are also very early in the advising relationhsip.)

Maybe it's worth pointing out whether advisors have any non-disclosure obligation toward the advised person. Otherwise, if they may inform someone up the "chain of command" and they do, the OP could be ostracized (I can definitely see some professor not wanting to work with someone with mental issues, even if this could be discriminatory and illegal in some jurisdictions). Without knowing which country are we speaking of, suggesting disclosure to non-medical personnel may backfire in unintended ways.

Disclaimer: I had similar issues during my masters thesis, w/o the anti-depressants. In hindsight I probably should have talked to my advisors about my problems, but I totally agree with anyone saying that it is highly depending on your advisors. Mine very likely would have been understanding.

If you feel comfortable enough, talk to someone besides your therapist. It could be your advisor, it could be someone from your research group, or even someone not work related. Play concerns about the impact of your illness (yes, a depression is an illness - in many cases cureable, in few chronic) on your work by them - get their perspective and don't leave yourself to wallow in your own thoughts. That's not adviseable.
I noticed (way too late) that I wasn't anymore able to think outside the box and clearly reflect my research during that period and it absolutely showed in my thesis. Depending on how severe your depression becomes, you might even not be able to show up to work - this is definitely the point you should already have talked to your advisor.
I suggest you talk way earlier to them. Try to work out a system of adapted feedback. Make them be on the lookout for "unusual" flaws in your work - not in order to correct you, since you can't function as "normal", but in order to point out if you should take a break, take some days off and recharge. Don't fall into the pit trap as I did. Because in the end delivering shoddy work will inconvenient your advisor significantly worse than the need for increased advisional effort on their side and a slightly longer delivery time on your thesis.
I know it can be incredibly hard to talk about this and to ask for help. Nobody forces you - but chances are that people are understanding and helpful. Take this chance.
Please remember: There's nothing wrong with you being depressed - these things happen, especially under the current pandemic situation. Just like a broken leg, it will heal.

If you have a therapist already, you should ask them for their advice rather than trust amateurs like us to help you. It's what they're for, isn't it?

Of course, I’m asking my therapist, but she doesn’t know anything about academia / PhDs, so I wanted to check what other academics think

The following are my personal thoughts about it:
If your job and personal life are completely different and dissociated from each other, then you don't really need to, as long as your problems don't affect your work.
However, if you think your health can affect your efficiency at work, you should talk to your supervisor about it. You can avoid talking about the details, but just let him/her know you don't feel well in your personal life, and he/she might understand that it's not always easy.
Good luck with whatever you are going through! We're all with you.

I tend to agree with the other answers, I'll add this advice.

But I wonder if I should completely avoid the topic of my mental health problems should it come up in conversations (“how are things going?”).

Trust your instinct, avoid it if that's workable.
Here are some things to consider:

The sharing of information is permanent and can not be undone nor constrained. No matter what your current assessment of your supervisor is right now, situations change and evolve. Should other issues arise in the future, you can not limit how and when your supervisor may choose to share this information with others, conversationally or in emails or messages , that you may never know about. And those have a way of diffusing even further. A good meaning supervisor may tell another lab member to be more courteous or helpful to you in an well-meaning way, but that person may react... sub-optimally.
People can not control their unconscious biases and without knowing your supervisor and potentially other people who then have this information may view you through a lens of suspicion. Something breaks or is stolen, there is a complaint, a bit of research has been duplicated and published elsewhere... Despite what we like to think, the veneer of rationality on human thought is pretty thin.

Unless there is a very necessary and compelling reason, don't share personal medical information in the workplace, especially that which relates to mental health.
"How are things going?"
is usually not an invitation to open up and bear one's personal challenges or difficulties, It can be; in fact it can be said with all kinds of different intents, but unless someone goes out of their way to indicate they really are asking about your personal life, they may be completely surprised and not pleased if the conversation goes serious.
And even if you suspect it's an invitation to open up about something personal, unless you have strong reasons to believe it's 100% motivated by a willingness to help and you can trust the person to keep your information confidential forever, you don't really know why they are asking nor what they will do with the information you share.

Sorry to hear about this.  I don't know if it provides any consolation, but it is a sadly common story.  The relationship I had with my supervisor was very much a professional one and he wasn't one I would have turned to for any form of moral or emotional support.  I find that is quite a common situation.  However if there are matters that are affecting your performance, then you should discuss that there are issues (even without going into specifics) as there will be questions raised as to why dates are not being met, productivity is low etc anyhow so you will need an answer.  It is possible though that you can continue and still be able to make sufficient progress.  Unfortunately I fell into a lull for both personal matters and those beyond my control, and while I finished, it was long after the original planned date.  I would also say that universities in general are usually quite sensitive to such issues and they should have support services.  You might want to look into this, but I think they tend to deal more with undergraduates.

'OK, so you've got problems.  That isn't MY problem.  Can you do the work or can't you?'
That is not something you're likely to hear today an academia, or even in many workplaces.  (I HOPE you still would in the military, or in an operating theatre...)
There's no downside to admitting your problem.  There may even be an advantage. That's today's game.  You might as well play it.


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Recommendation letter choice: mild one from a famous scholar or strong one from my previous manager
I am applying for CS PhD programs in the US, most of which require 3 recommendation letters. I have already gotten two letters from my previous university advisors (a professor and an assistant professor), and I believe they will be strong letters. But there is still one left, for which I have two choices:

My manager from a previous employer.

He knew me well and also promoted me once. So I could expect a strong letter from him.
However, he has little contact with academia and doesn't have a PhD degree. Plus, he is not that much older than me. So, I even doubt whether he knows how to write letters for academia or not.

The boss of my manager, a chief scientist.

He is a very famous scholar in the field of my study. I guess it's good to have a letter with big name.
However, he didn't know me well. We've spoken a few times but that is. There is a possibility that he refuses to write for me, and even if he does, the letter will be mild at best.

Moreover, I think it's unwise for me to try both because I need the reference of my manager if I want the chief scientist to write for me. But if he refuses, then it would turn my manager to look like a compromise choice, which could be awkward for him.
I am looking for advice on this choice. Much appreciation for your opinion!

Personally I would go with the employer, because it shows a different side of you. Both the other letters are already from academia. Ask the employer to try to emphasise skills that would also be useful in the program, so send information about it with your request.

Thanks @TanjaU. This is a good idea. I could even do a survey on what a letter could include then contact him with those information.


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Best way to evaluate different MA/PhD programs?
This is connected to my post from yesterday. I'm a rising junior and an English/Philosophy double major from the United States, and I've decided to get a jump on looking into programs I might apply to a couple years from now. But I've always had trouble distinguishing between different MA/PhD programs.
How do I tell which schools are better for one area of specialization than another (I have a lot more trouble with this with English than Philosophy)? Where can I learn a particular program's strengths and weaknesses? How about basic prestige, and job prospects post-graduation—is there any meaningful distinction between, say, UCB and UChicago for an English PhD?
Sorry if this question is a little broad, but this is my first time doing this, and I'd just like to know where to start.

Does this help? https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/66926/ive-been-admitted-to-multiple-phd-programs-how-should-i-choose-between-them

@Dawn It does, thank you!

If you spend a lot of time and effort on this you could be spending it more effectively.
The sort of doctoral education you get depends much more on your advisor, your relationship to them, and what you do yourself than the "ranking of the school.
MA/MS programs are a bit different in that some are pretty much classroom based and some require some sort of creative work, research in the sciences, say. Perhaps a department web site will give you guidance about that. What sort of thesis, if any, is required, say.
But note that all university rankings are an amalgam of statistical measures over several criteria. And statistical measures never apply to individuals, except in the broadest terms.
I'll focus on doctoral studies here. What you need is an advisor whose "technique" matches your needs. Some are very hands on, with a lot of suggestions and a lot of oversight. Many students need this sort of support others are smothered by it. Other advisors are very hands off, perhaps answering questions - or sending you to sources - and just leaving you to it. Some (probably fewer) students thrive in such an environment.
But great and not so great advisors are distributed through the total university universe (so to speak). Some professors at highly rated universities are so busy with their own "thing" that they have little time or effort to spare for their advisees unless they are very closely aligned. It is probably worse in some sciences where PIs sometimes don't really know their "advisees" nor interact with them much at all, leaving it to post docs to supply any guidance.
Moreover, if you are planning on applying for graduate (especially doctoral) study, apply to institutions over a fairly wide range of rankings. If you only apply to the "top ten" (whatever that might mean) you may well be entirely disappointed. It is difficult in the US to get much if any meaningful contact with a potential advisor before you are accepted and maybe not even then for a while. But the 50th ranked university in a field is still a fine place to study.
I'll also suggest that if your ultimate goal is a doctorate, that you don't bother with an MA first. Just apply to doctoral programs. Many will provide the opportunity to earn a masters along the way for little (or no) extra work. But a masters isn't even needed if your aspire to a career in academia.
And, spend some time and effort once accepted in to a place to evaluate the various professors as possible advisors. Ask around about how individuals are to work with and what their "style" is - how helpful they are. A prestigious advisor might be good - or might be so busy as to be of little help. Everything depends. Entering a doctoral program immediately from a BA will give you the time for this evaluation. It is harder if you need to choose an advisor having just arrived at a place.
If you wind up as a mediocre student at Yale, with only so-so letters of recommendation you will wind up worse than if you excel at some "lesser" place. Some true idiots and charlatans have come out of Ivy League places.
Wind up in a situation where you can brag about what you accomplished rather than the "prestige" of your institution. Find a good and compatible advisor. Work hard. Prosper.

Sorry I have no basis to judge particular schools, especially for English studies. Your undergraduate professors are probably a good source of information about what schools are worth looking at.

Would you consider adding some of this to the canonical question? https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/66926/ive-been-admitted-to-multiple-phd-programs-how-should-i-choose-between-them

@Dawn, thanks for the idea, but my answer here (actually frame changing or at least frame expanding) is about how to think about grad schools prior to applying. I think it would be even more of a frame breaker there, where the question is about evaluating offers already made. But, there should be a canonical question on this topic. I say these things fairly often.


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How do I identify predatory conferences? How do I find the 'best' conferences?
Title. I have an inkling this may be a predatory conference, but I'm wondering if there's a way to be absolutely certain: https://www.coreconferences.com/icalh2022/
Additionally: how does one find the best conferences in a particular field? Is it just a 'if you know, you know' sort of thing? As an undergrad, I feel a bit lost.

We do not answer questions about individual conferences, journals, etc. You should feel lost as an undergraduate, you're just starting! You really need an advisor/mentor at your stage, and will continue to need one through graduate school and beyond.

It can be useful to search for "[organizer] scam" or variants thereof. The first hit I got is this, which certainly suggests the organization is predatory.

"As an undergrad, I feel a bit lost." rightly so. It is a long way from "understanding the textbooks on a certain subject" to "understanding new development of a certain subject". Reputable conferences are the ones that provide a "showcase" and a discussion venue for reputable research.
Researchers are quite conservative, so they tend to stick in groups (gangs, sometimes): join your national association of professionals on a certain subject, it will help.


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Use of "would have + past participle" in a scientific article
I want to ask if the use of "would have + verb in past participle" is appropriate in a paper. What is the correct way of expressing a hypothetical outcome when describing past events? I may be wrong, but I think I've never seen "would have + past participle" used in a scientific work.
Example: "We decided not to perform this action, because it would have required ...".
Can "would have required" be replaced with "would require" in this sentence?

It’s not past tense.

What are the …? If it is some time specific condition ("to have more manpower than we did") the construct not only seems okay, but absolutely correct.

@pvpvpvpv If you follow the traditional sequence of tenses in English, the simple past in the main clause ("We decided not to perform this action") actually forces you to use a perfect conditional instead of the present conditional in the dependent clause ("because it would have required [whatever]" instead of "because it would require [whatever]").

Thank you all. @user3840170, you are right, my mistake. I've corrected it.

Seems like more of an English SE question to me.

Don’t overthink it. Either is fine and nobody will (would) notice. It is perfectly clear either way.

Tl; dr: In most cases the past tense is not wrong. The present tense is only correct if the statement is indeed still true.
The somewhat subtle difference is that the simple "would require" indicates that this requirement or possible route not chosen is still existing or possible at the time of speaking. For example, imagine a press conference about an ongoing hostage situation:

We decided against a police intervention because the risk for the hostages would be unacceptably high.

At the time of speaking, the risk still would be too high. One could use the past tense here as well, avoiding a statement about the present:

We decided against an intervention when the group entered the building because the  risk for the hostages would have been unacceptably high. But our snipers are still in place and we are monitoring the situation closely.

But the present tense cannot be used for requirements or possibilities which do not exist any longer. In a report about the same situation a year later, one might read:

We decided against a police intervention at this point because the risk for the hostages would have been unacceptably high.

In this case, the present tense would be wrong because the risk does no longer exist.
I suppose that in scientific articles the present tense is often adequate because the requirement is still there:

We did not check for specific compounds in the samples because the small concentrations would require specialized analytical equipment.

They still do.

There is a chance that the specialised equipment is no longer an issue because they acquired it in the meantime, or analysis techniques evolved. Would it be appropriate to use "would have required" simply to avoid guessing the future situation?

@MisterMiyagi Yes, I'd say so: The past tense here does not necessarily make a statement about the present. "He was not at home when the crime happened" is indifferent about whether he's at home now. The opposite inference, where the present tense is understood to make a statement about the past as well, is only from context: "Why didn't you pick up?" -- "I told you I'm on a business trip!" vs. "Why do I get intruder alerts suddenly, have you gone to our summer home?" -- "Yes, I am in the house" [but wasn't before].

@MisterMiyagi Indeed, if there is a chance that the statement about the past is not true in the present, I'd say it is much better to use the past tense. The present tense clearly implies that it is still true.

I have been stumbling upon this thought here and there. After a couple of thoughts, I decided to use the present tense, because it is shorter in length.


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Teaching my university course on Udemy
I am an assistant Professor at a university and I am actually teaching there a specific course in finance. The materials are mine:  I am the only responsable of this course, it is me who created the content, and I am teaching the course alone.
While I am an assistant professor at the university, I am thinking to start my own business on Udemy in order to earn more money. Is it legal for me that I start teaching on Udemy the same course that I am giving at the university?
I would appreciate any suggestions.

You need to contact your university to investigate this.  Your institution's policies prevail.  It's definitely not as straightforward as you think.  They may have policies limiting your total time commitment to other things (consulting, another business, etc). If they do allow it, then they may also require you to do things a certain way, report things in systems, etc.  Absolutely do not move forward without being fully transparent.  These things can have major consequences if people find out later.  It burns a lot of bridges that you weren't upfront about something that could be managed.

@yourfriendlyresearchadmin Thank you a lot for your comment. Yeah I will see that with the HR!

@yourfriendlyresearchadmin suggest writing that as an answer.

@yourfriendlyresearchadmin. -  no.  Your idea is not bad, but the poster should start with their own representation, who should be skilled in education.

Don't just check with HR, read the details of your hiring contract. It's possible it contains claims on what you've written, regardless of whether that would hold up in court. You need to know the current situation first before you can look for change.

It's not uncommon to have rules against teaching for any other organization.

This is a matter of contract. I suspect that it is mentioned (and forbidden) in your contract, but you need to examine it yourself, or discuss it with HR. A colleague of mine was fired for trying to teach at two places with "their" materials.
It is fairly common for universities to claim rights on some materials created by their faculty as the faculty are employees, not contractors. The same would be true if you were working at a place like IBM or Google. Your work product may belong to your employer.
Read the contract.
It could even be, depending on where you are, that there are civil laws governing work product of employees and its transferability. If you want to start a "business" you need to talk to a lawyer.

Thank you Dr. Buffy for all these information. I appreciate a lot.

I would just point out that there is a difference between "outside activities" and using the same materials to sell.  It could be that your institution allows you to sell Udemy courses, but you are not allowed to use the same content.  They may require that the content does not substantially overlap to ensure something doesn't happen in error.  This is why you have to inquire.  I work at an R1, and the faculty have tons of side businesses.  It's very normal in applied research.  It's no fun to manage on our side, but we do it--carefully.  There are rules, but the answer isn't "absolutely not".

This may help sharpen the concept that the university owns your work.  There was a case in 2021 where the university sold online courses taught by a deceased professor.  It was obviously very controversial, but it does highlight the fact that universities can own your class materials and use them even after you die.  You should check the policies to know what you are bound to.
https://slate.com/technology/2021/01/dead-professor-teaching-online-class.html

@yourfriendlyresearchadmin Yeah I see! very important comments from your part. Probably in this case I would rather talk to the university director to see the situation with him and allow me under some possible constraints.

@AhmadBitar That seems smart, particularly if you are not yet very senior. Here in Sweden the university explicitly does not own any IPR to any material we produce, but I would still recommend everybody to have a prior discussion before going ahead with selling what is effectively an online copy of the university course. They are still your employer, and they still have lots of ways to make your life difficult if they do not like what you are doing (outside of IPR challenges).


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Coauthors from previous group trying to "rewrite" paper for my experiment/idea
Last year, 6 months before finishing my contract with my old post-doc group, I came up with an extremely big idea. I took no holidays, and worked 18 hour days for months without taking off weekends to try to finish it in time before I left. I did this because some of my coworkers were blatantly bad actors, who have done adversarial behavior in the past.
[For example, a small project that I worked on with one coworker was done together, and then after experiment was complete and we took data, he recruited someone from another lab to come in for a few hours to "retake" data, wrote the paper without me, and put that person higher on the authorship ordering. (Which I protested and had fixed.)]
So I got the main results, and the project was essentially 95% done. I agreed to let my coworkers spend a few weeks to take a new set of data and finalize some figures. Instead they kept verbally agreeing to wrap things up and finish the manuscript. But months and months went by where they would claim that they just want to try this one thing and in 2 weeks they will wrap things up and finish.
Now it's been a year, and they've redone the measurements with a completely different experimental setup. They only managed to make some technical improvements to my origonal experiment. Finally, after something like 10 months, they force me in a meeting to discuss patent equity and authorship. I agree that they can add this new data to the existing manuscript. I also agree to share the first-authorship with one of the adversarial coworkers. And I reluctantly agreed to a 7-way equal split for the royalties of patent of my idea (which only one of the people really had a significant intellectual contribution, but strangly this one person advocated for the 7-way split).
So I think that things have at least finally been settled and done with. And now I recieve an email saying that the paper is being "rewritten" to be submitted to a different journal.
For months I have been requesting comments or revisions to my draft of the manuscript, and instead they chose to simply start from scratch and write a different article. I have been linked an incomplete PDF where all the conceptual ideas motiviating the experiment have been removed, with just the results being stated (basically, we discovered an improvement in X and here are our results. Without any explanation for how we knew this, which was in my manuscript). This is a poorly-written, incomplete replacement that has removed almost everything that I have written from the manuscript. Additionally it has a blank section for "results" and "discussion." Implying that they would rather pass around a completely empty section than use what I had written.
My PI is a well-known professor (and has an extremely high administrative position at the university), and it's very important for my career that I can keep a good letter of recommendation from him. But my PI is virtually uninvolved. He is very busy with other administrative responsibilities, and has been well known for having an "in group" and will be adversarial towards those who are outside that group.
Having to spend almost an entire year just waiting for my old group to slowly try to steal the credit for my project has been one of the worst experiences of my life. The amount of anxiety and pain from this is difficult to even put into words, and I fantasize about somehow catching them in a lie strong enough to get them kicked out of academia, and for some justice to be brought to this universe.
Ultimately, though, I really just want this to be finished. And need to figure out how to be positioned in a way that prevents these bad actors from stealing any more than they already have.
Is there anything that can be done that can prevent them from "rewriting" this manuscript, and to revert back to the better version that I have written? Even assuming that they are not trying to kick me off being a first-author, the current draft is objectively inferior to what I have written, and I would not want it published.
At this stage, the only thing that I can think of doing is asking the PI to step in and that if the paper is rewritten that I will be forced to challenge it as a violation of academic ethics or have the situation reviewed externally. I hate to do this because I feel as though it probably burns a serious bridge.
Additionally, unfortunately, there is a second paper that is going to follow this that is in a similar situation, so burning this bridge will likely give them an even easier time to scoop that project as well.
Any ideas on how to proceed?

Are you being denied authorship on the work?

It's extremly important in my field to be first author. I agreed to share the first-author slot as an equal contributor, but I think it's clear that this is an attempt to try to steal the first-author slot (and not list me as an equal contributor).

Can't you publish the 95%, without the new figures and not involve all of them? They could publish whatever new data they acquired in a new paper.

@aqua, I have heard mixed things about publishing without approval. Someone said to me that publishing an manuscript without approval of all coauthors is a bad idea and typically wont work for getting published.  This was an experimental paper, and they of course assisted me with some calculations, so they need to be included to some extent as coauthors. And the PI explictly prevented me from publishing previously.

I did not think about without approval - just publish whatever you have done, without their experiments. Then you dont need to include them...

But they assisted in taking the data (with me), so doesn't that mean that I can't publish without their approval?

If you are on good terms with the PI, discuss this with him. Even if he is not involved in the writing of this manuscript, he is the one who makes the decisions about how publication of this work should proceed.
If this is not an option, then talk to the ombudsperson at the university, their job is to mediate and find a solution fair to both parties.


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Do graduate schools consider my GPA outside of my main university?
I am hoping to attend graduate school but am slightly concerned because although my GPA at the University I am graduating from is good—I spent about a year studying elsewhere (getting GenEds primarily completed) and did not do so well.
My University, the University of Arizona, only includes courses taken at their institution towards my GPA (as I understand it). However, I was uncertain if this was a common practice.
Will graduate schools be concerned about my courses taken elsewhere?

To the title question: yes, certainly. You will have to provide transcripts from all institutions attended. Every institution will have its own procedure for "converting" your transcripts into something that allows candidates to be compared apples-to-apples. While these procedures will vary widely, it would be strange to consider only those classes taken at your home institution. After all, some students specifically take classes at other universities to strengthen their profiles when applying to graduate school.
The key point in your case, however, is that these are "gen eds" (general education classes). Regardless of where these classes were taken, they likely have little bearing on your suitability for graduate study. Even less so if these poor grades are older than your good grades. So you probably have nothing to worry about.
In fact, there is probably no need to comment on or explain these poor grades at all in your application. Your "amazing" transcript speaks for itself. However, if there is a compelling reason for the anomaly that you wish to explain, you may do so if you can do it in one sentence. For example: "I completed my general education requirements while studying abroad in Essos, but as I did not speak Dothraki, my grades that semester were a bit of an anomaly."


text:
References/Database for commonly used quotes
I stumbled upon a quote that is said to be by Einstein: "Je mehr ich weiß, desto mehr erkenne ich, dass ich nichts weiß." ("The more I know, the more I realize that i know nothing") which was him rephrasing a quote that is said to be by Platon. I would like to verify that this is correctly attributed to Einstein but so far I had no luck. Is there a database or a common practice when trying this in e.g. sciences like history, anthropology and/or philosophy to check for such things?
In my search for the origin I found several rephrased versions of this but no reference to any source and I know that wrongly attributing such things to famous people happens. I found that the original quote by Platon (translated to German) actually is „Denn von mir selbst wusste ich, dass ich gar nichts weiß ...“ (Platon: Apologie des Sokrates translated by Friedrich Schleiermacher "Because, of myself I knew, that I know nothing...") which also often is abreviated or permuted when used as a quote. I searched a digitized archive (https://albert-einstein.huji.ac.il/) but also found nothing (I guess for many of their scans of letters and protocols the body of text is not searchable so it might be in there but not extractable easily).
I also asked a friend who is a doctoral student in philosophy (my field is engineering) how he would go about it and he told me that what I am trying to do can be really tricky and that he once spend several days searching to verify a quote of some semi-well known philosopher. He still encouraged me to ask on the internet since people from other fields might know of a data-set that he does not know since he has no (regular) use for it, especially since the specific quote I am trying to verify is by a very well known scientist which might increase my chances of finding something.
EDIT: Thank you for your comments and and answers so far. Since I posted the question I did some further digging and there are such data-bases, at least for e.g. Platon which also use a special numbering system for referencing the quotes. There also is a wikiquote (https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein) for Einstein which of course is not to be trusted blindly, but it has some references to some trustworthy sources that could be checked further. I did not find the quote directly but there is the following paragraph under the "misattributed" section for the quote "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So is a lot.": "... But long before that, the same quote appears in an advertisement for Encyclopaedia Britannica that ran in The Atlantic Monthly: Volume 216 from 1965, p. 139. The ad mentioned Einstein but did not directly attribute the quote to him: "Encyclopaedia Britannica says: A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So is a lot. The more you know, the more you need to know — as Albert Einstein, for one, might have told you. ..." This is close and could be the cause for attributing it to him but that of course is a guess at best. Did not find anything more concrete.
Still I guess wikiquotes could be a first good stop to check for such things in the future. Just wanted to share this finding.
EDIT 2: I found the book "The Ultimate Quotable Einstein" which is a compilation of Einstein quotes with references for each one. Several full-text searches came up with nothing. I guess the chance of the quote indeed being apocryphal is growing. Sidenote: Interesting short article on several (other) quotes wrongly attributed to Einstein (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05004-4).

Asking for a database may be judged off-topic here (and I don't think this exists). Asking for a process is more likely to be kept open. I personally once tried to find the source for Box' "all models are wrong. but some are useful" and simply Googled my way until I found a definite attribution, then went to the library and looked it up in the paper book, and finally cited the exact book and page number in a paper.

The process you describe is more or less how I do it for other things as well. I do not get why it would be off-topic though to ask for a commonly used data-base. If I would be asked for a data-base of publications I would also recommend e.g. checking google scholar which is widely used in the process of finding relevant publications. Not trying to be smart or anything I just honestly do not get the issue which is probably due to me being new to the academia section of stack exchange.

This isn’t really about academia, is it? I mean, yes, you need it in the context of academia but it would be exactly the same in the context of, say, vetting clever postcards (I do incidentally have one with an "Einstein quote" right next to me).

Ok thank you for clarifying that. I get the point now and i think it is actually a fair point to make. I considered it not to be off-topic since i thought it to be quite similar to e.g. finding citation material in the form of paragraphs/equations in a book/article which I would argue is a standard academic practice. What would you suggest? Should I delete the topic?

In the old days, there were books of quotations ("Bartlett's Familiar Quotations", "Oxford Compendium  ..." if I remember correctly), and the particular Einstein/Plato quote should be there. I imagine these books now exist as databases and you may have already  checked them, but if not then they  might be worth a try.

I unfortunately do not have access to either of these books through my university library but a digital searchable version of these would indeed be a great resource for the task of verifying quotes. In the meantime I found a quotations book with Einstein quotes and searched it. I updated my question accordingly.

You could buy a paper copy of one of those books that @AndreasBlass mentioned. They are searchable as you can look up Einstein or a keyword like knowledge in the index.

I know of no such database and would hardly trust it if it exists. Who is to judge whether the contents of such a database are true, definitively? As you have found, that can be exceedingly hard.
Note that some such "quotes" are apocryphal. Note that the "speakers" of some such things were actually quoting or paraphrasing other earlier statements and so, while they may indeed have said something in particular, they aren't the actual source.
As you have found, there is disagreement among sources as to the source of some "quotes". The problem is difficult in general and the older the "quote" the harder it can get.
I've run in to the problem myself, sometimes in answering questions here. When an internet search yields non-definitive results, I tend to mark such quotes as, for example, "attributed to Einstein...". Sometimes that is the best one can do. Trust, but verify [Russian proverb, sometimes attributed to Ronald Reagan].

Thank you for your answer. I mostly agree and the "attributed to ..." method is a good idea. However, I would feel like I did my due diligence if I checked the references given in such a database if existent and would have no issue attributing the quote directly to (in this case) Einstein and depending on context citing the source. FYI: I also updated my question above with some new findings. On wikiquotes I even found the misattributed Reagan quote you gave in your answer (with no direct citation of serious source material though) :)

If the database included citations of courses, that would show whether it was true

@toby544, no, it would show that someone "thought" it was true, not whether someone said something, but whether that was the original source of the quote. That is much harder.

@Buffy If there would be e.g. a lecture transcript including the quote, would you not consider it to be fine to use the quote referencing the transcript even if an earlier documented occurence might exist somewhere? It is always good to quote first appearances of an idea, but e.g. in my field often it is fine to just cite e.g. a paper with the respective equation used. Then again I can see how, taken to the silly extreme, I could record a video of mine saying "veni, vidi, vici" and use the phrase, attributing it to me. I guess it might come down to the question of who popularized a quote then?

@Ben, it depends on whether you need the first use or not.

@Buffy Agreed. Though I guess proving someone was the first to say something is, as you said, harder (I would even argue "proving" it is close to impossible). So I would probably roughly go with "a person/group provably (within reason) said and/or wrote it and is considered to be the first person/group that is on record to do so".

Ask your librarian if they have a Dictionary of Quotations. Surely they will. If not, they may well be able to point you towards more specific resources about Einstein or Plato for your particular example.

This website might be useful. It is not a database but a blog where each entry is about one quote and the writer investigates who said it, and gives citations of books, old newspapers, etc.
https://quoteinvestigator.com/
I don't think it has your quote that is attributed to Einstein, but you could submit that as a question and perhaps the person would investigate it.

Thank you for your answer. I already found this website yesterday and searched the Einstein-related articles. I did not consider asking them directly if they could investigate it. They actually encourage sending in requests, but also state that they have several thousands of open investigations. I think I will write them. If for nothing else, maybe some of my findings can be added to an existing open case in their database.


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Is it possible to change the outbound host on a Marie Curie Global Fellowship?
I recently applied for an MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship using the global route, planning to spend two years with an existing collaborator in Korea and then a year with a home supervisor in the UK. Unfortunately, I'm starting to find the Korean supervisor difficult to work with, and as unlikely as it is that we will get funded, I'm really dreading the possibility of having to work with her for another two years.
Has anyone here had experience with the MSCA global scheme and know if it's possible to change the outbound host after funding is awarded? I know all the funding and agreements are with the home university (which I'm not looking to change), but I also know that MSCA postdoc fellowships aren't intended to be portable and that the choice of supervisor and country has to be justified quite strongly in the application.
I'd be really grateful for any advice anyone has - I'm getting myself very worried here. Thanks in advance!

What is an "outbound host"? If you are asking about finding another supervisor in the same host institution, this may be a duplicate of How difficult is it to change supervisor during a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship?

@cag51 , in the global version of the MSCA fellowship, the fellow spends up to two years on an 'outbound phase' outside the EU and then a then a 'return' year at a university inside the EU. All the funding is given to the return university, who employ the fellow throughout the project, wherever they are physically working. The fellow would normally have a visiting appointment at the outbound host.. To clarify, I'm looking at the possibility of changing the outbound host(supervisor definitely, university/country possibly), but not the return university (where the money/agreements are).

Only the funding agency can give you the definite answer. My suggestion would be to not worry about it for now (there is nothing you can do, and even talking about it alienates potential collaborators). If you do get the award, talk to the program manager to figure things out; if you don't get the award, everyone remains among your friends and you haven't burned any bridges.
That said, take this as a learning opportunity: If you write a proposal in which you promise something, you actually have to deliver. Grants are not free pots of money -- you also have to follow through with what you proposed. Finding out that you can't work with someone after you wrote a proposal in which you promise to work with them is not a good time. You should have known about this before.

I suspect the OP fully agrees that this is not a good time, and wishes they had realised sooner. But that isn't a luxury that we always have.

@Flyto, very much this. I had been working with this person on another project for ~8 months before we submitted the application (including spending a few weeks on site in her lab) and thought it was a really good fit. Unfortunatley as that project has progressed and we've got to know each other better, things have gone downhill very fast...


text:
Could I include non-academical projects to my CV for phd application?
I have just joined this community and I am going to apply for a CS PhD for Fall 2022. Currently, I am preparing my CV.
Since I have been working in the industry as a software engineer for roughly five years, I have some non-academical projects and I wonder whether and how I shall add them to my CV.
These projects can be broadly categorized as followings:

Open source projects with github link (and some stars, forks)
A web app with some regular users (like 10k), which I write personally (not open source, but can provide link)
Some company-based proprietary projects (not open source, and mostly no public information)

My current guess is to add open source project as "Community Engagement" like Should I add E-books and Blog Posts to my CV? . But I don't have a clear idea on the second, and absolutely no clues for the third.
Any advices are appreciated.
Many thanks!

Non-academic projects are fine, as long as they are related in some way to the field. So, for CS, your examples are fine. But coaching youth softball is probably better left out.
Just keep it relevant.

Caveat: this is a US based answer, where prior research experience isn't a requirement for doctoral admission. Other places may be similar or not.

Thanks a lot for your advice! Based upon that I want to go a little bit specific, like what title shall I give for these projects. Is "Software Projects" just good enough or there are some better choices?

That would work.

Thanks @Buffy !


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Reference for a whole section
I want to reference a whole section named TLS 1.2. To not reference every paragraph with the same source, at the beginning of the section I wrote the following "The source used for this section is the RFC 5246 standard document [3] which specifies the TLS version 1.2.".
Is this enough, or is it a must that every paragraph must be referenced?

It is clear and complete, so should be fine, subject to the advice of your advisor (for a thesis).
The exception would be if you need to make specific something you write and how it relates to a specific paragraph. Even then, you could cite the entire section and cite again any quotes you need from the document.
But, check with your advisor.

The dual purpose of citation is to avoid plagiarism, giving proper credit for ideas, and to continue a chain of evidence.

I have a similar issue: I need to cite a section (which is about 4 pages long) where I describe a literature article. Can I insert the citation as follows?
\subsection{title}
The present article [1] reviews the methodology used by...

Should the figures be cited individually or is quotation as indicated above sufficient?


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Looking Ahead: What does the faculty job market for 2022 look like in *your* field?
The job market for Fall, 2022 tenure-track faculty positions can start as early as now (July, 2021) for many fields. To date, I haven't seen many articles on what the the 2021-2022 job market season will look like in the continuing wake of the pandemic. Although it's early, what do Fall, 2022 faculty openings look like for your discipline? How does that compare to the past? Will there be more positions, fewer positions, different kinds of positions (eg. Adjunct, Teaching)? Hoping to help everyone gain a little more "situational awareness" in these still-uncertain times.

I can certainly understand everyone's interest in a substantive answer to such a question, but I'd have no hope of a sensible answer... At my R1 U.S. univ it's still all completely ambiguous... all the more so give the resurgence of ambiguity about the variant Covid strain... Any sane answer here would be negative... and completely imprecise, I think.

Thanks Paul, that's an answer in and of itself, isn't it? "We don't know yet/it's uncertain" is more information than I had when I posted the question! So thank you!


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MSc admission in Canada
Is meeting the entry (minimal) requirements of MSc in pharmacy in Canada enough to get accepted into the program? (For extracurricular activities: I have dozens of certificates of online webinars I've attended, 2 online courses and some conferences and I will take both IELTS & TOEFL exams)
Is it enough?

These kind of things depend on individual factors. I'm not sure if you'll get the required answer on this site.

It is not enough, in the sense that it does not guarantee admission.  It simply means your file will be considered.
Admission to a program will vary from one university to the next, depending on number of applicants, financial resources available, supervisory resources availability, lab benches etc.

Also, for purely course-based master's (i.e. where there is no need for supervisor involvement, lab space, etc.) it would come down to the capacity of the program and the relative quality of the qualified applicants (assuming that there are more than enough applicants to fill the program)

@BenBolker course-based degrees might still have lab components: say there might be only so-many high-end oscilloscopes or oscillators available for some electronics course.  However you are likely broadly right that, given the financial rewards to the university: such programs usually function near capacity.


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Would you include in review/forthcoming articles in graduate level course reading?
I'm preparing a graduate level module for the next semester. With a more senior professor I have co-authored a book chapter that covers much of the material we'll be covering in class, so I'd like to include it. However, the book itself is not yet published. I expect to get editorial comments back before the semester starts, and to have responded to them. So:
Have you ever included draft or forthcoming materials in your course readings? If so how did students respond to this?
If you haven't, would you? Why/why not?

Do you have any doubts about the validity and importance of the material? It would be odd if you did.

As a student, I've read work under review from the course instructor or colleagues many times. They share this under the guidance of not distributing materials outside of the course. Personally, I was ambivalent about this practice, as the under review materials were highly relevant to the course.

Given that quite many good textbooks have been written based on experimental lecture series presented to the students even before the full book drafts were even conceived, I see no reason not to use an almost ready and reasonably polished version of the exposition in the lectures, assuming, of course, as Buffy said, that you know perfectly well what you are talking about and that it is relevant to the course.

@Darla, why were you ambivalent if the material was highly relevant?

@Buffy what I mean here is that some students can have a negative perception of professors forcing students to read their work (along the lines of elitism and lacking diversity in perspectives). I had no such opinion (neither positive or negative) of professors who did this because the work was highly relevant. I know of classes that are created focusing/centering a professor's sole line of work and that can lead to negative experience because of the above.

I haven't done this myself, but certainly would, even if the material was a bit less "mature" than having been submitted. However, I would also inform the students that this was happening, though not that I had doubts about it. If I had doubts, I'd want to resolve those first.
If I were giving them written drafts or notes, I might even be inclined to give some bonus points for errors found or places where explanations confused the students. Sometimes our best efforts at explanation miss the mark. But students can catch that, perhaps better than expert reviewers who might have the same bias as the author.
I think that for a graduate course this would be extremely natural to do. A bit less for undergraduate, but I wouldn't arbitrarily exclude that.
For a text book in preparation, it is very useful for students to suggest exercises based on the material. It is a different way of thinking that can be as valuable as actually doing exercises. But, again, probably more relevant at the graduate level.
I'd know that I experienced it a bit on the student end during my studies. In fact, one of the best math courses I ever had was in my second year of undergraduate where the professor gave us material from a book he was working on. It is one of the things that solidified me as a mathematician, actually. But he was clear that this was his "work in progress".

I have done so. In my case the main reason was to illustrate how research happens by showing them work in various stages.


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Should an extended version of a Paper contain the existing Paper?
I have a conference paper published in A and now they have invited me to submit an extended version of the Paper in a Journal. Due to page limitations, I had a lot of work that I couldn't present at the conference.
Hence, can I include the excess work ONLY in the Journal and cite the conference paper OR do I need to include the entire conference paper and then the extra work?
Kindly help. As you may understand, I am entirely new to this.

If the paper is published it is part of the public record. Cite it as you would a paper by any other author who's work you were extending. Include only the new work, referencing the earlier work.
You will, of course, need to quote or paraphrase some things in the new work, but cite them, just as for any other paper.

Okay got it. Thanks

Note that this include figures as well. In many cases one would basically include everything, in practice. I guess the exact way is field and journal dependent. The fact that you are invited might also help. Finally, the ms text should be cleverly written... Like passing a mini review of your conference paper. Graphs and plots might be crucial for the overall readability...


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Should I discuss the content of pending project proposals in faculty interview?
stackexchange community,
I will be having a faculty interview in the coming weeks and I am currently working on my presentation for the interview day, which should, according to their instructions, focus on my current research activities.
In it, I have included some details on a planned project that I have already submitted for approval to a funding agency. The idea in the proposal is very novel and it would form an important contribution in our field. Note that the application process did not require a research proposal to be submitted.
However, I have started thinking now whether that is a good idea... In the evaluation committee there will be many researchers that are in the same field as I am. Now, if I end up not getting the position and my proposal is not funded either, do I run the risk of giving my novel idea away "for free"? I would want to include it in my presentation though, as it would show that I already have further future plans to build on my current work and make more contributions...
Is that a reasonable concern from my side or should I not worry and choose to believe in the academic integrity of the committee? Is there some middle road or some work-around that I could use?
Thanks for your help!

Personally I'd tend to do it. You have already submitted it, so there's some kind of written proof that it's yours. Stealing research ideas happens, but in my experience it happens very rarely. Ultimately it depends on a number of factors:

How much better do you think explaining this project would make your presentation? It can be very valuable showing your insight, but if you have lots of other stuff it may not be that important.

What do you know about the interview panel and the faculty? Any reasons not to trust them? If it's a small panel it seems very unlikely that some of the panelists would do such a thing.

Apart from the funding application itself, do you have anything else already out in the open (preprints, conference presentations etc.) that testifies that this is your idea?

How difficult would it be to make something out of the idea with just the information you give in the presentation? Obviously you can to some extent lower this probability by being selective about how exactly you explain it.

All that said, personally I'd not be very worried about this possibility. I don't think I know of ideas that were nicked in such a situation. There's no such thing as 100% safety though.

Thanks for your answer! To briefly respond to your questions, 1. it would be valuable, yes, 2. I do not have reasons to not trust them and we are a small community in this country, 3. I unfortunately do not, as the idea was rather new and we packaged it immediately to a project proposal, 4. I of course leave crucial details out, but theoretically one could embark from what I present and try to reproduce it.
Overall, I think you are right and I should not worry too much. Technically, research plans submitted as parts of applications also run the same risk, but nothing ever happens...


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How to deal with a PhD advisor who makes mean comments?
I’m one year into my PhD program, and I recently drafted my first review article. I’m a native English speaker, and was often applauded for my writing during high school and college. My advisor made mean comments during a group meeting, discussing that my writing is too bad to be published. My Advisor is from Northern Europe and is bad at grammar. I admitted that my academic writing wasn’t top notch and promised to improve. I was never ridiculed in front of people, and I feel it as an insult. I’m looking for ways to improve and finding some comfort!
Geography definitely plays a role. My M.S advisor is an Indian, and I had a lot of publications with minimal révisons.

Remind your supervisor that are you a student, and that his/her comments do not help.  Some times, a person does not know he/she is a bully until being told so.  Having said that some supervisors think that's the only way to squeeze blood out of a mosquito.

"my writing is too bad to be published" Perhaps your advisor meant to say that your paper is too bad to be published?  For example, maybe your review doesn't cover papers that they consider relevant and important.

I think I would try to bring this up privately with your advisor and say you are happy to address the comments, but would like to discuss them in private and in the future you would like a chance to get feedback before it is discussed in the group meeting. Your advisor is not under an obligation to tell you your writing is good if they know it is substandard, but they don't need to call you out publicly either. I think their response will be revealing as to whether they are a bully or whether they have your best interest at heart

My advisor was strict and harsh to me in a private circumstance, but never criticized me in front of the public.

A group meeting in an academic context is not really "the public".

What is a "review article"?

"I’m a native English speaker, and was often applauded for my writing during high school and college"
"My M.S advisor is an Indian". Please clarify: are you indian?
The formalities and the strucutre of Indian English are so pervasive that the good english that is praised in an indian college would be rejected in the middle UK school.

“Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem.”  --- Thomas Szasz, Psychiatrist.
Your supervisor's comment sounds like a rather curt observation to me; while it is perhaps somewhat abrupt, in the context of evaluating and instructing a student (and with the limited information you have given about the incident) I would not classify it as rude.  In any case, if there are cultural differences between you and your supervisor, that is all the more reason to grant some leeway if you find that your supervisor's assessments of your work are excessively blunt.  (Obviously there are cultural differences across countries in terms of the bluntness with which such an observation would be delivered, so if you think this is a factor, make an allowance for it.)  Ultimately, if improvement in your discipline comes at the expense of occasional hurt feelings, you will find that that is a worthwhile trade-off in the long-term.
Much of the information you give surrounding this matter suggests that you may be proceeding under some misapprehensions about the standards of a PhD candidature and the appropriate scope of instruction from supervisors.  For example, the fact that you were considered to be a good writer at high school/college level does not mean that you write well enough to be published in a scholarly journal.  This is not unusual for early PhD candidates, and it is generally reasonable in the context of a PhD candidature that a supervisor would openly state this to you, even in the presence of other students/academics in a meeting.  Since you are only one year into your candidature, you are probably not expected to be producing publishable work yet, but you ought to be working on any skills you need to do this.  It sounds like you are already working on ways to improve your work, so that is what you need to be doing.  Once you have submitted a paper for publication you will have the benefit of referee feedback, and this will give you another opinion on the quality of your writing.
Being under academic supervision necessarily entails regular scrutiny and judgment of the quality of your work.  Unless your situation involves repeated instances of unreasonable criticisms (and I see no evidence of that from your post) I recommend that you take this one on the chin and just work on improving your own work.

I would say that the first step is to work out whether what your advisor said is a mean comment, or is it constructive criticism. In this case I'd say what your advisor is saying falls more under constructive criticism than mean comments.
A key thing to keep in mind is that academic writing is a very different thing to any other kinds of writing you've done. You're trying to very clearly explain a very complex idea to someone else using only written works (and probably some figures/equations). In high school the value of your writing may have been more in its creativity than its clarity. In collage you probably weren't writing too many essays, and when you wrote long prose its goal was to demonstrate understanding of ideas to people who understood those ideas better than you (based on your username I'm guessing chemistry major).
Regarding improvements, one text I would recommend for academic writing is: "the sense of style" by Steven Pinker. This author tries to explain rules rather than just giving you a list of rules to follow. In fact, they argue against a number of commonly believed grammatical rules that aren't followed by the best writers (including sometimes those who advocate for them) and your advisor ignoring them might be part of the reason you believe them to be bad at grammar.
The following is specifically for the original poster and probably doesn't generalise to other cases (it's also probably more of a comment but is much to long for that):
Furthermore, based on your question (which I replicated below), I'd lean towards your advisor being a better writer. While its possible your writing is normally better, issues that I can see in a hastily written question are probably similar to issues that keep reappearing in a complicated review paper that you have written. And therefore have probably led your advisor to their conclusion regarding your writing ability.

Title: How to deal with a PhD advisor who makes mean comments?

First one is that you've coded your question in a way that its informal and implies that we are your friends or family from whom you're hoping to receive sympathy. This is mainly because "mean comments" suggests a younger age than I expect you actually are. You should probably have coded your question to a professional audience by using a more 'adult'/professional sounding version of mean comments, e.g. "How to deal with comments from my advisor that I feel to be overly mean?" or "How to deal with criticism from my advisor that I feel is unwarranted?".

I’m one year into my PhD program, and I recently drafted my first review article. I’m a native English speaker, and was often applauded for my writing during high school and college. My advisor made mean comments during a group meeting, discussing that my writing is too bad to be published. My Advisor is from Northern Europe and is bad at grammar. I admitted that my academic writing wasn’t top notch and promised to improve. I was never ridiculed in front of people, and I feel it as an insult. I’m looking for ways to improve and finding some comfort! Geography definitely plays a role. My M.S advisor is an Indian, and I had a lot of publications with minimal révisons.

On my first read through this I felt like something was wrong but I couldn't put my finger on it, but on a second read through I could find a couple of issues which would probably impact your academic writing.
The first was "révisons" instead of "revisions", I googled your word and I could only find guides to French so I'm guessing you know French as well?
The second was that your sentences lack connectors between them, leaving the idea of each of your sentences floating disconnected from one another. This means I need to provide the connections, fine for simple ideas or ideas I know well, but for new and complex ideas not so much. Here you're pushing the workload onto me to essentially re-perform your research project, rather than accepting the workload to clearly explain it to me through your writing. For example your second and third sentences might be more elegant if you wrote:
" I’m a native English speaker, and was often applauded for my writing during high school and college, though my advisor was critical of me during a group meeting. Specifically by stating that my writing is too bad to be published."
Here I've joined the two new sentences by using a connector 'specifically' so I know that the second sentence above is specifying something from the first sentence (what the advisor was critical of).
Third, you seem to be confusing how to use a few words, for example "discussing" isn't right unless they were discussing your bad writing with you (in which case you need to make clear who they were discussing with). And when you say "Geography definitely plays a role" is suspect you mean "Culture/Background definitely plays a role" since the geography of where they work/have worked isn't influencing their language ability. But their background/culture, which you've mentioned and linked to this sentence, does play a role. Though as a side note to my second comment, the relation of this sentence with the previous sentence is unclear.
Fourth, You seem to switch tenses within a sentence, e.g. "I was never ridiculed in front of people, and I feel it as an insult." switches from past tense to present tense.
Fifth, the sentence "I’m looking for ways to improve and finding some comfort!" is confused. You seem to be saying: I'm - (1) looking for ways to improve, (2) finding some comfort. Instead I think you wanted to say: I'm looking for - (1) ways to improve, (2) some comfort from others.
A number of these things are mentioned in the Steven Pinker book I suggested above which might explain what is wrong better than I have here (and probably give some words you can google for even more info).

These issues seem largely like nit-picking to me, particularly in the context of an SE post.  The writing of the OP doesn't seem too bad to me.

@Ben To my reading, your comment was preemptively addressed in the answer:  "Furthermore, based on your question (which I replicated below), I'd lean towards your advisor being a better writer. While its possible your writing is normally better, issues that I can see in a hastily written question are probably similar to issues that keep reappearing in a complicated review paper that you have written. And therefore have probably led your advisor to their conclusion regarding your writing ability."

What each person finds mean or not is very subjective and depends a lot in their personal context. It also seems like a big part of the problem is that the criticism was made in public, since you don't mention any specific derogatory or offensive language.
I would approach them in private and ask them politely to discuss this kind of concerns and criticisms with you in private in the future. If they were downright offensive I would also mention it during the meeting ("I felt/think/etc. this way because" instead of "you are/were").

It is not acceptable to be subjected to derogatory comments in any circumstances.
You can expect robust criticism during your individual one-on-one meetings with your supervisor, but these should never be delivered with the aim of damaging your sense of worth.
Cultural differences certainly can play a part in challenges faced by supervisor and student, but that should never be used to excuse poor behavior.
Who else is on your supervision team? Can you approach them for advice?
You are in your first year. Do you have a preliminary first year review with your Department/Faculty where you can raise these issues and seek advice?
Do you have a PhD student representative who reports to Department/Faculty? Can you talk to them?