text:
Is it possible to take overseas trips to see family while completing a US PhD?
I am in the final course of my bachelor degree program. I am from the country of Georgia.
I am aiming to complete a PhD in USA without a master's degree in a mathematics field.
So I have one question about it:

Will I be able to fly back to Georgia on holidays and see my
family?  Are there holidays on PhD in the USA? Is it possible to fly back to Georgia without holidays?

A PhD in math takes 5-6 years in the US.
For going back home, there are two things that come into consideration: visa and time off. For visa, most F-1 visa are valid for 5 years so you can travel in and out freely during that 5 years. For holidays, there is the Thanksgiving, Christmas and new year, and summer. If you are not planning on teaching or going to conference during summer, you can do whatever you want.

@k99731 what's the length of each holiday? can I travel  without holidays too?

@k99731 And spring break.

Universities publish their academic calendar in advance. Most are similar. The big differences are whether the Spring term starts early or late in January and the placement of Easter/Spring break. There are a few outliers, though.

Especially in mathematics, advisors tend to be very flexible, as for the most part you can work from anywhere. Every single person in my program visits their family every holiday season (the vast majority of them foreign students), and many of us also frequently go on trips during the summers and breaks.

My experience (a bit dated) is that the departments are very flexible. They will place some constraints though. Many grad students are funded via teaching assistantships, and those involve modest teaching duties. That will constrain the timing of your travelling. Similarly, if they offer a bit extra funding via a summer scolarship, the terms of such extras do include a certain amount of residence. Nothing unreasonable.

IIRC my F1 visa needed an extra ok (a stamp or something) to allow re-entry without questions (basically to ascertain that I was allowed to continue with my studies). A fellow grad student from the UK got into minor trouble when travelling to Mexico for a week with his US fiancée without such an extra. Rules may have changed since though.

If you have a TA, then you need to match travel to the academic calendar since you have time-sensitive responsibilities. However, as @pedroelpanda notes, you can do math even on a plane.

Yes, it's normal for PhD students in the US to travel to visit family. You'll have to pay all costs yourself. You'll want to pay careful attention to any restrictions with your visa, and consider complications of international travel that may make it difficult for you to either return home or get back to the US. Certainly international conflicts and sanctions, as well as health-related travel restrictions as have been experienced along with the COVID-19 pandemic are all concerns, but these are not particularly specific to being a graduate student.
PhD students in the US are most often funded by doing some sort of work while they study; for math, in particular, this is often through appointment as a teaching assistant. Being a TA means that travel during the semester is problematic, as you are likely expected to be present for all course sessions and avoidable reasons for absence (like personal travel) are frowned upon.
University-level education in the US is not monolithic - every institution will have their own policies and structure, but a common structure is to have a fall semester from September to early/mid December, followed by a break of a month or so, with courses resuming for Spring semester mid/late January and continuing to early May. Undergraduates may have a week off during Spring (typically March or April), and a few days around US Thanksgiving (4th Thursday of November). Summers can be complicated funding- and responsibility-wise, as you may either more or less have the summer "off" or may be busy teaching an additional semester.
PhD students do not typically have specified "vacation days" the way ordinary employees do, but you'll want to coordinate your vacation time with your PhD advisor at least. This is certainly a question you should ask when interviewing with prospective graduate programs: "I would like to visit my family in my home country during my PhD; what are the opportunities and limits on taking time off to travel?" is a very valid question to ask, and anyone who reacts negatively to such a reasonable request is not someone you want to work with.

So as I guess the best period to visit family is summer right? ( Maybe If I would have enough  money I could visit my family on winter holidays too.)

@JohnNash The "best" period is going to be different for everyone. Yes, summer is likely the longest duration break in the calendar for most schools in the US. Note that research is a lot different than other schooling - you're largely working on your own, rather than to a schedule, but that also means you will likely fall behind in your research progress relative to your peers if you actually take the entire summer off each year, unless you can work while traveling.

I can work in Georgia too . Maybe even better because I would be happy to see my family after stressful year .

Expectations on how much work students do during the summer can also vary based on program and advisor. This is certainly something that should be clarified ahead of time.

I don't know anything about the visa you may be granted to study in the US, so purely a calendar answer:
There are traditionally three vacation periods in the US academic calendar:

The end-of-year holiday break, centered around Christmas, Hanukah and New Year's. This may be a couple of weeks or longer than a month.

Spring break: Usually a week long, sometime in March or April. This can be a great time to escape miserably cold universities.

Summer break: While most PhD students are not "off" in the summer, it is easier to travel because taking and teaching classes is less common. Summer break usually lasts from May or June to August or September. Many conferences take place in the summer, however.

Some universities also give a whole week off for American Thanksgiving or have a week-long fall break, but this is less common. Many Americans travel home for Thanksgiving, which may complicate or even make a trip home easier.
That said, if you are not doing research that requires your presence, or are able to take classes virtually, PhD programs can be very flexible in allowing you to continue your studies and work while not in your city. However, the pay is probably not high enough to allow you to take many trips home (especially since Georgia isn't a huge travel destination for Americans like say, London or Paris).

@AzorAhai-him- So as I guess the best period to visit family is summer right? ( Maybe If I would have enough  money I could visit my family on winter holidays too.)

@JohnNash That's a personal assessment. I go to school in a city that gets very cold and my parents live somewhere that does not, so I'd choose winter.

You specified Georgia as your home country and unfortunately I don't know what kind of student visa you will get but this can be an issue.
From personal experience graduate students from Western Europe had 5 year visas that allowed unlimited entries and exits to the US, so for them there were no visa considerations.
However students from China or Iran only got 1 year visas which include the possibility to stay in the US after the 1 year is over but not the possibility to leave and reenter. This meant that these students had to reapply for a new visa every time they went home. The Chinese students regularly 'took the risk' to go home and most of the time got a new visa without problems, although some had to stay in China longer than they intended before the new visa was available. The Iranian student did not dare to travel home because he was unsure whether he would be granted a new visa.
So carefully check the conditions on your visa before you do travel plans.
Edit from comments: It seems to be official policy that Georgians students should get 5 year visa. If you indeed have such a visa you do not have to worry about this issue.

IMO this answer is not very useful because it is possible to verify what kind of visas are issued to Georgian citizens so we don't have to tell OP to go look it up on their own. So why not provide a direct answer?

@JonathanReez I don't know whether all Georgian get the same visa but if they do and you know which kind please add it in.

@JonathanReez Are you sure that this can be verified at all? Is it published policy that citizens of some countries get the 1 year visa, or is it just what they do in practice? I believe it's the latter. This is also something that is constantly changing, and not usually for the better. What will happen in 5 years (the typical time to complete a PhD in the US) is anyone's guess.

FWIW, for Georgia, the 2020 B visa refusal rate was 67%, much higher than for China. https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/Non-Immigrant-Statistics/RefusalRates/FY20.pdf Having had rather unpleasant experiences at some US embassies, I can only imagine the conditions there ...

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/Visa-Reciprocity-and-Civil-Documents-by-Country/Georgia.html (click on F) says that Georgian citizens should be getting 5 year F-1 visas by default.

@JonathanReez It says the same for China ... Going by that information would be very naive.

@Szabolcs only some groups of students from China get 1-year visas. Or you might be remembering an older policy because 5-year visas were only introduced in 2014 for Chinese citizens. There's nothing secretive/mystical about the US visa issuance process, it's all well documented.

tl;dr The US makes it significantly more difficult to visit home than most other countries.

In most countries, the visa is the document that grants you the permission to: (1) enter the country and (2) stay within the country. The US is unusual in that these two things are separated. A US visa is only for entering the country. Many students find themselves in the situation that they do have the authorization to stay and study in the US, but their visa is expired. Thus once they leave the country, they must apply for a new visa before they can return.
Citizens of some countries typically get visas with short validity (1 year). In practice, they must apply for a new visa each time they go home. It is not guaranteed that the new visa will be granted. Therefore, the visa application can be stressful, and can take time away from your holidays.
I have seen cases where the visa was initially denied, and the student was unable to return to the US for some time.
I have seen cases where people did not leave the US because of the difficulty and risk in obtaining a new visa.

Yes, there are holidays. Exactly when they are depends on the school.
The biggest problem for international students is the possibility that your visa will be revoked or your home country will not allow you to return to the US. But these are not questions that can be answered here. You need to know what the current diplomatic status is of Georgia with the US and whether that is likely to change in the future.

Note that Georgia is working toward NATO membership and has close ties with many EU countries and is a UN member nation. Diplomatic ties between US and Georgia seem secure.

@Buffy Sure, but s*** happens and is happening right now.

Truly, but Georgia seems pretty firm in its western focus.

You're giving too much credit to American voters. My point was only that students not from the EU or a Five Eyes country need to take into account the possibility that things could change quickly.

-1 because said revocation of visa status has only happened once to students from 7 Middle Eastern nations and is unlikely to happen again soon. The odds of being banned from leaving by Georgia are minuscule as well. Let's not scare OP with events that have a 1 in 1000 chance of happening.

@JonathanReez Wasn't trying to scare anyone and I'm certainly not pretending to be an expert on international politics, just pointing out the potential issues. BTW I'm pretty sure a whole lot of Chinese students recently had visas either denied or revoked for dubious "national security" reasons.

Yes, you can visit family; you will have annual leave in your program
I have no experience with US programs, so I base my answer here on information in the sample of leave policies in this related question.  A standard PhD program provides annual leave that can be used at the discretion of the candidate.  You can review the PhD rules at specific universities of interest to you to see how much annual leave they provide.  In the linked question there is some discussion of the average amount of annual leave in a PhD program in the US, so it may aid your understanding of common levels of entitlement.
Additionally, in current circumstances it is becoming common in the professions to have "hybrid work" where workers do some of their work remotely.  Depending on your field of study and your advisor, it might be possible for you to do some of your candidature remotely, at least for small periods.  Once you have an advisor in mind, you can inquire into options for working on your candidature remotely for relatively small periods to augment your leave entitlement and give you some additional time with family.  Bear in mind that this option would depend heavily on whether your advisor approves, so it is really a conversation that you would need to have with specific advisors during the application process; you should also be careful to ensure that potential advisors are aware of your overall commitment to the candidature.

"A standard PhD program provides annual leave that can be used at the discretion of the candidate, just as with any normal full-time job" - this is highly variable in the US (and grad students are not typically seen as having a full time job from a legal perspective), and at my institution it even depends how exactly your position is funded. It's important to recognize, though, that even if a position does not come with explicit leave it is still considered normal to take some by all but the most insane supervisors.

This is misleading from a US standpoint. I think the system in Australia is quite different from that here. I don't even think that in mathematics the advisor's permission would be needed or relevant. Pure math, at least. Doctoral students are students, not employees. A TA position would imply constraints during the academic term(s).

Whether or not the advisor's permission is needed for remote work, the advisor presumably has significant input into advising the university on whether the candidate is performing adequately and meeting their performance obligations (e.g., in performance milestones) so it would be wise to have them onside.  The linked post suggests that even at most US universities there is an explicit period of formal leave, and that appears to me to validate my answer.  I haven't even raised TA positions, so no idea how I could mislead on that score.

@Ben "The linked post suggests that even at most US universities there is an explicit period of formal leave" - I don't understand how you gather this. The top answer there says what my comment does: there are often not explicit policies for vacation for PhD students because they are students, not employees. It mentions something typical for entry-level employees, not students. All the other answers state that this varies, except for one that lists some schools that have explicit policies posted, but they've cherry picked from those that have a specific number of days granted.

I also cannot comprehend the idea that it's okay to not mention a TA position or other source of funding that will almost certainly impact OP's ability to take time off. As Buffy suggests, this is very important; leaving it out of your answer makes your answer misleading for most US PhD students, especially when you imply a graduate student position is like a full-time job: you've left out the most job-like part!

The linked answer that lists leave policies (which you have noted) confirms the existence of formal leave policies.  I have no reason to believe it is "cherry-picked", as opposed to just being a non-exhaustive sample of policies.  Re TA positions, that is not part of the question, and it should go without saying that one needs to obey explicit job requirements for an additional position.  (Yours is the only answer that mentions it.)

@Ben All the other answers are telling you that it depends and that there are often not leave policies. One answer that found some institutions that do have formal leave policies does not contradict those answers. If you aren't familiar with US academia, maybe that should be clear in your answer. If you're treating a graduate student as an employee, you can't ignore the job part of the gig, and for a PhD student in mathematics that's almost certainly as a TA. Why insist on misleading?

The answer listing leave policies appears to be the only case where the answerer has actually gone to the trouble to look up and link to policies, so I find it more trustworthy than the other answers (some of which are directly contradicted by the linked policies).  As you are well aware, I do not "insist on misleading"; I merely have a different view to you; your remark is trolling.

For purposes of alleviating your concern, I have edited to note that I have no experience with US academia, and I base my answer on the linked question.

In case it needs clarifying, I am not saying that a PhD candidature is always treated as a type of employment, only that the existence of annual leave is like what you get in a job.

@Ben In the US, there is no requirement for a normal job to have any paid leave and some/many jobs have no paid leave, while other jobs have unlimited/as-needed paid leave. So "just like you get in a job" is, in the US, anywhere from 0 to infinite depending on your specific contract (can even be different for different people doing the same job with the same employer, if one of them negotiates more leave in their contract). https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/holiday

@user3067860: Thanks for providing this information.  Since the analogy to a job appears to be the sticking-point in the answer, I have edited to remove that part.

@Ben I think actually the opposite... "just like a normal job" is about accurate, in that there is no paid holiday leave unless specified in your contract. The problem is that since no paid leave is the default, a search for leave policies won't turn up all the programs with no paid leave...because they just don't mention anything. (The PhD programs that DO mention it in their policies are (probably) the outliers, but more visible because they are more searchable.)

With the added complication that PhD students are still students, so depending on how someone's particular funding is, what type of project they are doing, etc., they could be even not "employed" at all, in which case their schedule is like any undergraduate student (show up for classes and the university doesn't care if you teleport to the moon in between, but won't pay you for it)...or they could be employed with a lot of constraints (they may have classes to teach or they may even have experiments that require they be physically present at very arbitrary or long hours).


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Will US universities consider the application of a person with a PhD from India/Singapore/Australia for a faculty position in the US?
If I have a PhD degree from other English speaking countries like India/Singapore/Australia, can I apply for a faculty position in the US?

You probably need to be competent in English, but don't need a degree from an English speaking country.

Since I know a variety of professors from those countries who are professors in the US, the answer is Yes.

Yes, you can apply, there is no requirement to have a PhD from any particular country/countries in the US.
At a research university, you'll be judged primarily on your research record. Tenure track positions are extremely competitive, you can be well qualified and have a great record and not get a job even if you apply for many open positions; you need to be supremely qualified and have an excellent record and also be a good fit for the hiring institution.
It varies a bit by field, but many positions will expect applicants to have postdoctoral research experience, as well.

It's also worth noting that they'd have to get a work visa for them, presumably, assuming they didn't have one through other means. I suspect someone nabbing a faculty position would qualify as "exceptional" in their field. But the organization still has to do all the paperwork and wait until they're authorized to work so they have to be that much better than the next best applicant to justify it (obviously, for a long term position like faculty, it will be fine for the obviously better candidate, but if they're split, a citizen may pull out ahead).

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Found a severe error in a conference paper after presentation but before the proceedings
I am a final year undergraduate student and had worked on a very fundamental project(there is no available literature on this field presently) during my sophomore year. The results obtained were quite interesting but there was no available literature to back up my results. My supervisor suggested me to submit it to a conference and get reviews on the work.
I did the same and when I submitted the final paper, I got a strong accept with quite positive feedback. I presented the paper at the conference and was also appreciated by my conference chair who said that it was an interesting finding. However, while working on the journal version recently, I discovered a severe error in my paper which completely invalidated the claims I had made in my work.
The conference was highly reputed and delegates from all over the world were present. I feel really ashamed of presenting the wrong work at such a big stage. I discussed this with my supervisor and he told me that we will decline for publication by stating the reason when they will send the copyright form for inclusion in the digital proceedings. This gave me a sense of relief.
However, I cannot stop thinking about having presented the wrong work and seems like I should not have gone for it in the first place. Please suggest me what should I do. I have a deep interest in research but I am in constant fear that my habit of premature celebration will land me into trouble someday.

Hey, don't beat yourself up. Near as I can tell, you are ready to join my industry. Admitting your mistake as soon as you find it is the crucial thing.

Relevant xkcd https://xkcd.com/2239/

It sounds like a lot of people missed this mistake, not just you. A short note on why this mistake was so easily missed might help others avoid it in the future.
This isn't a necessary step to take, but if it's achievable, it could be very valuable.

There's another aspect to this. A coworker wrote an analysis program for thermal hydraulics in nuclear reactors. In the first version, the coolant came out of the core at supersonic speeds, and at a temperature of negative 30°C. The t-shirt for the project was great! Later he fixed his error. Still later he became head of the department.

Related, not a dupe: I realize I made a huge mistake in my thesis and am not sure what to do. I'm defending very soon (days away). What should I do?

Invalidate the results as in you have proved the claims are false or you have proved that your original proof is completely wrong but the claims might still be true? (maybe with some small changes to the claims)

Basically, I had tried to compare two models, and one of them performed better than the other in a particular scenario. Turned out that I did not keep few parameters constant while comparing both of them(it is difficult to ensure that all the parameters are the same in both cases). Now there is only a slight change in their performance. However, I was recently able to figure out them while I was preparing a journal article

Let's see:

You wrote a paper of sufficient writing quality that it was chosen for presentation at a conference and publication.
None of the peer reviewers noticed anything wrong with it.
None of the people in the audience questioned it.
Your supervisor saw nothing wrong with it.
You gave an excellent presentation.
You found a flaw in a paper that had already been accepted for publication.
You had the integrity to withdraw your paper from publication.

That's a long list of things to put on your "plus" list.
Most undergrads don't achieve even one of them.
None of them should be seen as a negative.

Be warned that you'll become more jaded as you progress.
I remember as a grad student being asked by my supervisor to review a paper that had been sent for him to review.  It was well written and obviously the result of a lot of hard work, but I found a fundamental oversight that would have allowed the entire problem to be reduced to something very trivial.
We told the publishers about this, and they wrote back requesting that we recommend it for publication anyway.  My supervisor said that the author could publish another paper later that would re-analyze the problem and present it differently.
That's one (of many) reasons I eventually didn't bother finishing my own PhD.

Thank you very much, Ray. That really helped

@user118612 I built a physical device for my thesis.  It didn't work.  In fact, my original theory was so far off it couldn't reasonably be made to work.  I took numerous measurements, explained in detail the reasons it didn't work, and got an A.  A negative result is still a result.

ELI5 Ray's second-to-last paragraph. They published anyway so they could get a second publication out? That would basically say "remember that paper last month on X? Well, turns out we improved our method!"

@CristobolPolychronopolis there is no such thing as a “negative result” from a well conducted study, and its unhelpful to labels results which are not what was hoped as negative. It makes people devalue very valuable study outputs. Knowing something doesn’t work is often more useful than knowing it does.

@rhialto I meant negative in that the hypothesis was disproved.  I agree that the knowledge is just as valuable either way.  Did you read my comment past the second word?  Has "negative" made the politically incorrect list now?  I hope my doctor feels free to continue using it.

@CristobolPolychronopolis when talking about clinical trials I really hope your doctor does not use the word “negative”. I don’t think it’s useful when talking about diagnostics with patients either. As a medical doctor, it’s a word I don’t use unless prefixed by a definition. It’s too easy to misinterpret.

Yes, “negative result” is indeed a very real thing in academia, and heavily underincentivized for publication (i.e. low accept rate, low likelihood of being cited etc. - so journals are less likely to want them, even if they're useful). As a result we get p-hacking and many other forms of dysfunction.

@CristobolPolychronopolis "negative in that the null-hypothesis was not disproved"? I don't remember anything being proven or disproven by negative results.

Relax. You're not the first person to make a mistake, and people are not likely to know that you had been celebrating (besides, even if you were ... so what?). The fact that you found the error yourself is furthermore a good sign, since it means you're taking your work seriously and subjecting it to the scrutiny it deserves.
Take a look at this. The first direct evidence for dark energy goes back to the late 1990s, when two groups claimed to have discovered it. This was a big deal since dark energy supposedly makes up ~70% of the energy content of our universe. After follow-up work confirmed it, the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to the discoverers.
And then in 2019, we get this paper:

Thus the cosmic acceleration deduced from supernovae may be an artefact of our being non-Copernican observers, rather than evidence for a dominant component of “dark energy” in the Universe.

In other words: the paper claims the discovery was wrong. Let's say that again: this recently-published paper claims that the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded incorrectly.
Imagine you are one of the three 2011 Nobel laureates in physics who's been celebrating for 8 years, and this result turns out to be robust. Is your reaction:

Yay! Our knowledge of the universe has advanced yet again! Or is it:
Oh my God, people are going to look at me and think I'm an embarrassing failure. I've been celebrating for twenty years, given plenty of talks discussing my results, even won a Nobel Prize, and my work is wrong. Panic!

I think most people will think the second reaction is pretty silly. If you think so too, then listen to your supervisor, who's a much more experienced academic than you and should know what to do. Perhaps there's something you can salvage from the work, which might make it less interesting but still a solid result, for example. Or perhaps the method you used can be adapted to a different problem. Either way, you've learned something. If you stay in research, you'll be meeting this kind of issue often, so don't worry too much about it.

OT how normal it is that the pdf you have linked is for free download? It is a sign of its special importance? Normally journals do so with breaking outcomes and results. Of course this might be

Thank you very much Allure. I hope withdrawing would be the right option. In case I don't submit the copyright form, will that affect my association with the conference organizers?

A rebuttal of the paper you mention is found here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.02191. However, I agree with your general sentiment. Science is often wrong. Finding mistakes is how we progress.

A 2018 Nobel Prize winner recently had to retract a paper as well: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50989423
Good company :)

There is one other thing you can consider doing, after getting agreement from the conference committee.
You can put a note in the paper for publication, noting that you have found a serious error and explaining the nature of the error. Don't bother with apologies and such, but just point out where the paper is wrong.
This assumes, of course, that you don't have a correction. If you do, then a corrected version for publication would be better.
As your advisor notes, withdrawing it from publication is also a good plan, but a notice that you can honestly evaluate a failed result is valuable to those who have already seen the work (at the conference) and might want to see the outcome.
But yes, relax. Any errors here are shared with a lot of people.

The second option seems better to me since I am presently in my final semester and would be graduating soon. The work would rather require a detailed analysis and I have also switched my field(I am carrying over the project which I did during my internship). I feel that I should withdraw my paper since I have the option, work on the problem again from scratch(if time permits) and maybe submit the corrected work to some other conference, what do you suggest? Also, will not submitting the copyright form affect my association with the conference organizers?

You have a decent plan. But you need to be more proactive with the committee. At least let them know why you believe it isn't appropriate to publish it in the proceedings and that you wish to withdraw it. They may have suggestions. But just silently withholding copyright won't win you any favors for the future. Make it explicit.

Your list of accomplishments is still very impressive, and I would moreover add that this is extremely common, even for very established researchers. I don't know your field, but in computer science my empirical belief is that the majority of papers contain mistakes; usually minor and hopefully simple fixes, sometimes more major fixes that don't invalidate the whole paper, and occasionally something major that invalidates the paper.
Such mistakes are not a serious cause for concern as long as you acknowledge them professionally, which you have already done.
For instance, in theoretical computer science, Laci Babai raised a lot of buzz for posting a proof of a major open result, then later retracting it saying the result was not true, and then later reinstating the claim and saying he had a fix. All this was posted on his personal webpage and went out as news to the entire computer science community; you can imagine the embarrassment he must have faced when having to announce that this major result everyone was excited about was wrong! Yet he still announced it, and he is still well regarded by the community.
People understand that sometimes results can be wrong for subtle reasons -- that's the whole point of doing research, to find errors, fix them, iterate, and progress. If everything were already known and certain, there would be no work left to do!

I agree with the other answers, but think that it's worth considering what it's worth to have your contribution out there for others to benefit from--the whole point is to make each other smarter!
As perhaps an extreme example, if this were medicine, and your imperfect paper could jump start others in saving lives, then surely it would be moral to make the world better by publishing despite the flaws.  Presumably your case isn't as extreme, but if the next opportunity to share your value with the world isn't for another year or so, then getting people moving in the right direction is still probably better than withholding valuable information or ideas.

Medicine seems like a strange example to use, given that if there were a fundamental flaw in an important medical finding that had impact on people's lives, it would be especially important to redact the paper and publicize the flaw immediately.

Agreed. I was focusing on the academic research part of the process, vs. the procedure development or drug production part.  CRISPR, for example.

Others told you already that it is not uncommon to have mistakes or errors in papers.
I go a step further: consider that scientific work means being right at the edge of what is currently known. Honest mistakes will happen every so often, and maybe more often in science as a consequence of venturing into the unknown*, and without any particular fault of the one who makes them. In the sense that good scientific work may still fool you at some point and only later on that will be realized.
* and the additional "complication" that AFAIK there is no known procedure to ensure that all potentially important influencing factors have been considered. It's a genuine professional art to not miss important influencing factors.

So the task at hand is to deal with the mistake and learn from it.
That being said, I've once been in a similar situation. Just that I found my mistake (which was of the embarrassing sort that could and should have been avoided; and could have been caught early on had I formulated better unit tests than I had - but in hindsight it's easy to see how the testing could have been better.) With the difference that I found my mistake after manuscript submission.
The procedure then was to retract the manuscript with a letter explaining that a mistake had been found so that we please ask to retract the manuscript. IIRC the editor responded that if we hand in a corrected version until $deadline it would be considered a resubmission - otherwise (later) we'd be required to submit as a new paper. That was all, and I can tell you that it's not particularly painful.
Also, as a reviewer I once received an email just a few days after the manuscript came (so long before the review deadline) that my review was not needed any more. No reason was given, so I don't know whether the manuscript was retracted or whether there was another reason.
Lessons learned:

gained experience in formulating unit tests.
retracting a manuscript because a mistake has been discovered is more or less a standard procedure and a proper step for dealing with a mistake.

My recommendation to OP:

correct the mistake and then submit the paper. If it's too late for the proceedings, submit to a journal.
if your presentation slides/poster is publicly available, put a warning slide/notice on it that a mistake was discovered and later on that a corrected version was submitted: $link-to-paper.

Well, no one got up and pointed out the mistake during the presentation, so you were spared that embarrassment. You should retract the published paper officially, via the editor, offering profuse apologies. This is the only course of action that will not come back to haunt you, and even if they remember this, they will remember you doing the right thing. If you can come up with a version minus the flaws, they may be prepared to publish that one instead. This depends a lot on the mode of publication, since open access online only is obviously a more flexible medium then a print for all eternity on acid free paper.
About premature celebration. Get into the habit of always thinking: "Right, I can be pretty sure there is at least one thing wrong with my calculation / paper / code. Now, how can I find it?"

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


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Recommendations for project management software
Does anyone have a recommendation for project management software that is well-suited for academia? I am thinking something along the lines of monday.com, asana, jira, etc.
Some of the example applications that I envision are:

Managing a grant submission: letting collaborators know deadlines for budgets, narrative contributions, etc. I often have half a dozen grants in the pipeline, and it is a nightmare trying to keep track of what is due when.
Managing a project with graduate students: giving grad students/postdocs tasks (e.g. presentation for this conference, submit manuscript for my review, etc)
Teaching a course: managing deadlines for me and my TAs for creating / uploading / grading assignments and exams.
Managing committees and service duties: deadlines for reviewing faculty applications, submitting minisymposium proposals, that kind of thing.

My non-negotiable requirements are:

Inexpensive (< $300/year). We do not have lots of money to burn on non-essentials. Ideally the software would have an academic plan option.
Work well with external collaborators without forcing them to create an account. I don't want to force an entire project management ecosystem on my colleagues. When I assign an item to an external colleague, I want them to (for example) receive an email and maybe a calendar invitation, with a button that they can click when the item is completed. (Every service I've tried so far requires external collaborators to create an account.)

Ideally, this would also integrate with cloud services such as slack, office 365, canvas, and workday.
I've tried most of the big players, but none of them seem to be a good fit. Has anyone had success with project management software in academia, and can you recommend any products or services that work well?

Just a reminder that while questions like this would normally be considered a "shopping question," there is an exception for software recommendations.

Working at all with external collaborators seems like a tall order. Personally, I've never had a research collaborator ask me to use software like this. However, various admin units (e.g. advising) have adopted similar software, and I've gotten frustrating automated emails "assigning" me work where it's not clear what I'm being asked to do, who to contact with questions, or whether this is actually my responsibility at all. That said, adopting something just for yourself and those you supervise seems like a very interesting idea, and I'm curious to read the answers.

@academic Exactly. I have no interest in forcing a complex system on my overworked colleagues. On the other hand, I need to clearly communicate deadlines to them and to keep track of the deadlines myself. (This is done extremely poorly in academa IMHO)
The ideal format would be based on simple calendar invitations, which are universal and platform independent. Second-best would be emails with a one-click "mark completed" button, and the option to add automatic reminders until completed.

@mrp I'm not sure that even these calendar invitations are universal. My email client supports them, as does pretty much everybody's, but I don't use the underlying calendaring software to manage my schedule.

I'm a research administrator who works in Engineering.  For complex proposals, I am having my team show deadlines in Clickup to help explain the workloads and how the tasks flow into each other, which is often difficult for PIs to visualize.  Here's an example of a Gannt made on a free account.  We submitted a MURI with 4 subs, and we showed the PI this during meetings to show how we were crunching tasks into the end of the timeline prior to submission.  It was helpful to show that pushing tasks off was increasing the burden to the PI (and right before the new semester started).
In some ways, the exact software package is less important than the commitment to use it as a team and deal with what the software tells you-- e.g., when you are running out of time and need to reprioritize efforts.  Some people respond well to this level of organization, but not all of your collaborators will.  Just be mindful of who you are working with and their own knowledge of project management.  Even with senior PIs, this varies a lot.  Some people are actually really put off by this level of organization.  They find it micromanaging.
If you are the one leading the use of the software, this also is easier than asking staff or other collaborators to learn the software for you.  You may find that if you use the visual in a meeting and ask others to help you tweak the deadlines as time moves forward that you can get through the organization process pretty quickly with the least amount of negotiating with other parties.  I've worked with well-organized PIs like this in the past, and they tend to get funded because they have a great command over the process, but they do take on a lot of the burden themselves.

Thanks for the answer. I agree that this level of detail is micromanaging. MURI is a great example. I do not want to overload PIs with a complex system and a bunch of individual tasks. For a project like this, I want to give them maybe 3-4 hard deadlines (budget due, your portion of the narrative due, etc.). I am happy if they only see this through email and maybe calendar.

Yes, in this example, there are subtasks for each sub, where we show that we will ask for all of the documents in the sub package.  We only shared this Gannt with the PI and no one else.  On this project, we started down the path of the sub package, and then part-way through, we ran into problems with the budget split, and then the PI had to see that this set us back at square one for all subs -- which pushed out all the downstream deadlines.  It helps for people to see the impact of simple errors and how important it is to get the decision correct so you don't have to redo work.


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What is the proper way to denote coauthorship in a presentation?
I have attended many presentations where one person is presenting work that was completed by multiple people. In most of these presentations, the presenter listed the names of each coauthor in a different way. For instance, two common styles I have seen are:
presentation slide with presenter's name first and coauthors listed underneath
presentation slide with presenter's name listed in bold at the same level as coauthors' names
Is there a proper (or more polite, or generally accepted) way to list the names of coauthors in a presentation?

Related if not duplicate: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/66657/20058

The format is usually given by the conference organisers. And should be, too, it's very stupid and a waste of time that you, and everybody else, should have to wonder what the order of names means.

@Karl I've never seen a conference giving the format of a presentation. Do you have any example?

@MassimoOrtolano Not the presentation, but for the abstracts. And you'd usually confer those, wouldn't you?

@Karl Many conferences don't have abstracts, but short or full papers and the presenter is not specially marked (also because they might be unknown at the time of submission). And in any case most people would use a different style in the title slide of the presentation.

Both styles are widely in use, at least in my field (computational mathematics). A common variant is that the presenter's name is underlined rather than in bold.
I don't perceive a difference between the two --- it's not like one of them feels "more polite" than the other. Just choose one, and don't overthink it. :)

What I see a lot is a slide titled "Acknowledgments".  Can either be position 2 or at end.  I slightly prefer position 2, since you're not rushed, but at the end, can also make sense.
I would leave the title slide clean with the name of the presentation and the presenter (and perhaps an image or an explanatory subtitle).  When you do an actual journal publication (even conference proceedings), it is obvious who the authors are and typically first author placement for main worker.  A presentation is not a publication (it should have more explanatory material).  And the others are not "co authors".
It is nice if you can mention a little of the contributions of the different people as you go through the acknowledgements slide:  "Jane did the electrical measurements, Bob did the X-ray, Pete is my advisor, and NSF funded the project".  (This is if you are main researcher).  If you are the PI and a student did the main work and/or the slides, it is graceful to verbally let the audience know that.

It's not a scientific article, where you should worry about such things. Normally, nobody follows certain strict protocols when it comes to listing authors' names in presentation.

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


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Can I withdraw a paper from IEEE conference after signing the copyright form?
I have submitted a manuscript using figures from google. I have cited the web pages from where I have found the figures in my article. The figures are actually figures of apparatus. Later I learnt from IEEE website that IEEE discourages usage of figures from web pages without prior permission which I have not taken. But I have submitted the paper and copyright form to IEEE conference. As the date for camera ready and pdfxpress is already over I can't edit my manuscript now as told by the conference chair.
What should I do now? How may I withdraw it from here and publish it in other place? Is it possible to withdraw after signing copyright? Is it worth requesting the conference chair to open the pdfxress for few minutes so that I may upload my new manuscript there? Please help me.

Have you registered the paper for presentation? If yes, you can not. Else you can.

"IEEE discourages usage of figures from web pages without prior permission which I have not taken." - Any reputable publisher will require you to have a license/permission if you use images that you don't own the copyright to.

I have not registered yet. But have signed the copyright.

I believe your situation falls under fair use, see http://libguides.mit.edu/usingimages ... It is not considered good practice to use images the way you have, but technically it is not a problem. I don't think you should, or need to, retract your paper because of it.

@Arnfinn IANAL, but given that IEEE is a for-profit entity who sells technical papers I very much doubt that this is a case of fair use.

@xLeitix The OP has taken pictures of apparatus from the Web; as far as I can understand, that would be product photos. The OP could have taken similar, almost identical, pictures using a good camera. I can't possibly see how using product photos would have any market effect for the company who commissioned these photos for marketing purposes, or benefit IEEE economically in any way... I see this all the time in presentations and sometimes papers.

Email the programme chair and ask them how they would like you to proceed.  It is possible that they will still allow you to make changes to the paper, even at a late stage (provided it doesn't substantially affect the content).  If nothing else, they can ask the IEEE for advice, this is unlikely to be the first time this has happened, so there may be a standard answer already.

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


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Is it possible to work full time and do a part time PhD in software engineering in England?
Is it possible to work full time and do a part time phd in the area of software engineering in England saying that I want to use my job earnings to pay my tuition fees? And if I start a part time PhD funding myself this way then how difficult is it to get some funding from the same university (waiving the tuition fees at least) so I can quit job and focus totally on my PhD?

You could do both part time, but would struggle to do one full time and one part time. I've always thought if you can't get a PhD with funding don't do one, it's hard enough without the added stress of financial strain.

I dont imagine finding part time job in software engineering is that easy ??

If you are a British national (or EU citizen) there is plenty of full funding for a PhD, I would pursue this. Please don't pay for one yourself (unless you are very wealthly!). A part time PhD is likely to take you 7 years (working 2 days a week), working a full job on top of that, would be difficult for anyone.

Thank you @FChm, unfortunately I am not but I am almost becoming one, neither I am wealthy unless I would not think of working to fund it, but I agree with you, phd students should always be paid to do a phd, it takes many years and it is a job at the end

There is still funding for international students but rarer, you could try reaching out to some universities you are interested in and asking them for advice. If you are self funding a PhD and are an international student I believe tuition can be ~£15,000 per year. Personally, unless you have a lot of savings it would be very hard to fund this while working a PhD.
The best bet is once you have British citizenship just apply for PhD positions at universities - they will nearly always come with funding and you can then do one full time!

If you will be in London, check out Birkbeck, a University of London college specializing in evening and part time study.

As far as fees are concerned, it is a bit more complicated than nationality. See Home student (United Kingdom)

Answering the question as asked, the answer would be yes. There are part-time PhD positions available at many UK university Computer Science departments. There are currently part-time PhD students currently attached to many UK Computer Science programmes and the regulations and fees are arranged for both full-time and part-time students. However, that being said, the situation is far from being that simple, as indicated in the many comments.
The majority of part-time doctoral students are likely to be experienced industrial practitioners who are enhancing their qualification portfolio with a PhD or are working for a commercial research based organisation and have linkage between their work and a potential PhD. It is less likely, and indeed less acceptable that the student is working purely to fund the PhD. This will be considered by the university to be an unacceptable situation which does not give the student sufficient hours to perform the necessary work.
There are also further hurdles to this route. One is employment. Would an employer take on someone who is planning on a part-time PhD? Perhaps; but if you are not from the UK or the EU, then there is the issue of study visas and work-permits  to contend with.
If it is finance, then as also mentioned in comments many departments have fully funded PhD research positions available and often advertise these in the academic press and online. The main database of these funded positions is hosted on behalf of UK universities at jobs.ac.uk and in that database there are 94 advertised PhD positions in Software Engineering as of today's date and four of those are advertised as being for part-time students.


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How can a I check plagiarism free of cost before submitting my research paper?
My graduate school doesn't offer TurnItIn facility.
All tools available online charge money.
How can a I check plagiarism free of cost before submitting my research paper?

Surely if you wrote the paper you already know whether you plagiarised any of it?

@avid, some sentences need to be paraphrased.

@user366312 care to elaborate? Do you mean you wrote some sentences that you think are to similar to sentences in published papers? Or do you mean you copied them and want to check whether you can get them past some software?

@user366312 There is no need to paraphrase. If you need to copy a sentence from another paper, you need to do so with a citation and a very clear indication that it is copied (e.g., quotation marks and italic fonts). Hiding the copying by paraphrasing is plagiarism too. If the tool is detecting the sentences as similar by coincidence then it is not a problem. Nobody with a clean conscience would need to check their paper for plagiarism.

@Christian, I wrote some sentences that I think are too similar to sentences in published papers

Then I do not see a problem. If you wrote them yourself they are probably something like "standard sentences". I fully agree with @TomvanderZanden - if you took them from another paper you have to cite them anyway.

Depending on the type of paper, 10-20% flagged as potential plagiarism are totally fine. There are many standard sentences used, e.g., to describe a figure or in the lit review. If you cite all the content (incl. ideas) you use, you're fine.

It’s notable you’re interested in using what’s probably a sophisticated, evidently valuable to you, service but without having to pay for it.

Ask yourself a simple question: Did you plagiarise?
Assuming the answer is no, there's no need to check whether you plagiarised.

Some online tools are detecting some sentences which need to be paraphrased.

@user366312 Did you plagiarise?

no. absolutely not.

You have your answer, you should submit

Even if you know you didn't plagiarize, there is value in knowing, before submitting, whether widely used checkers will falsely report that you did.

@NateEldredge You'd merely learn that widely used checkers don't work, but we know that already

Yes, but we also know that many institutions and journals use them anyway, and that a false positive can be at least a hassle for the author, or even affect the fate of the paper.  It is not good but it happens. So the author might want to know up front if this is an issue, or want to reword their paper to avoid the false positive, even though they should not have to.

Perhaps these sources may help (I found them after doing some searching around), though to use them for free you may need to copy and paste your paper in chunks:

https://plagiarismdetector.net/
https://www.paraphraser.io/plagiarism-checker
https://www.quetext.com/plagiarism-checker

I think Grammarly also has a plagiarism detector, if I recall.

I've never tried a plagiarism detector before (nor have had anything I've written submitted to one, at least not that I know about), so on a whim I copied/pasted about 3 sentences from my highest voted Mathematics Stack Exchange (MSE) answer to your first link and got 100% plagiarised. I then did the same for about 3 sentences from one of my lowest voted MSE answers and got 0% plagiarised. In each case the selection I chose was something I felt was sufficiently uniquely phrased to not have been written by anyone else. I wonder if this means higher-traffic stuff is more likely found?

@Dave L Renfro I think that the more common a phrase is, the more likely it will be "caught" by the detector. I like to use it as something not too absolute; in that case I would use it just in case, but I wouldn't completely agree with 100% of what a detector would say

Strange, but now I'm getting 33% plagiarised. The phrase in question is: In 1977 Cliff Weil [8] published a proof that, in the space of derivatives with the sup norm, all but a first category set of such functions are discontinuous almost everywhere (in the sense of Lebesgue measure). When Weil's result is paired with the fact that derivatives (being Baire 1
functions) are continuous almost everywhere in the sense of Baire category, we get the following: From the middle of this MSE answer. FYI, Weil is my mathematical grandfather.

If it's catching things like "published a proof" and "space of derivatives" and "with the sup norm" and "all but a first category set" and "discontinuous almost everywhere" and "sense of Lebesgue measure", it may as well be set to catch the use of certain isolated words. Catching these phrases is like catching "Centers for Disease Control and Prevention" in a U.S. policy paper in epidemiology.


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CV and cover letter for PhD admission
I am wondering about the CV format for PhD application. In professional setting, for example, in the research experience part, I write a lot about what I did in my research rather than doing so in the cover letter. The cover letter on the other hand should be short. This is recommended by the career service center.
Should I do the same for PhD application? Or maybe I should write about my research in my CV and repeat the same thing in the cover letter?

If you have this center, could you ask them? It's very likely country dependent.

They know nothing about PhD application

@user111388 Career service centers often have very bad/outdated advice. I would not trust what they have to say about either industry or academia (many people who work in these centers haven't been applying for jobs in years and often propagate fad advice surrounding gimmicks that generally catch attention but don't communicate value and waste employers' time). In academia they are even less helpful, but luckily you, OP, are on a college campus so have actual academics you can talk to and get advice from!

PhD applications have cover letters????

How you distribute things depends on what documents are needed. Is there also a Statement of Purpose? Letters of Recommendation? Personal Statement?

You should read and follow all the directions from each specific school you're applying to, and be as responsive to them as you can.

Write about your research (interests, current and relevant former positions, and your experience/skills/goals, all in relation to the position you are applying for) in the cover letter. Only mention positions and education milestones (and possibly supervisors of Bachelor's/Master's thesis) in your CV (and publications, if any, in a separate section).
The cover letter doesn't have to be short "short", 1-2 pages is totally fine in my experience.

This is my approach too, although I would try my best to keep a cover letter to <1 page.

When it comes to the CV format for a PhD application, it's important to strike a balance between providing detailed information about your research experience and maintaining a concise cover letter. I've not heard of a cover letter for a PhD program before, but there's nothing stopping you from including it even if its not required. Here's some guidance on how to approach this:
CV:
In your CV, you can provide a comprehensive overview of your research experience, including details about the projects you've worked on, methodologies used, key findings, and any publications or presentations resulting from your work. This section should highlight your specific contributions and showcase your expertise in the field. By providing this information in your CV, you ensure that the admissions committee can easily assess your research background and skills. Also, applying for a professional job and an academic position / PhD, I would consider reorganising my CV so the academic experience and qualifications are first, sections for papers, grants, awards might also be important to prioritise, whereas in a professional CV your work history would be the priority (depending on the job of course).
Cover Letter:
The cover letter should complement your CV and focus more on your motivations, goals, and how the specific PhD program aligns with your research interests. Rather than repeating the detailed descriptions of your research experience, you can mention the key highlights or the most impactful projects briefly, emphasizing the relevance to the PhD program you're applying to. Use the cover letter as an opportunity to convey your enthusiasm for the field, explain why you're interested in pursuing a PhD, and demonstrate how the program and research environment align with your academic and career aspirations. A lot of this may overlap with other statements that are required by the PhD application process, e.g. research statement, diversity statement, personal statement. Every PhD program can have slightly different application requirements, so be sure to customise it a little for the specific program.
By separating the detailed research experience in your CV from the broader motivations and goals in your cover letter / statements, you provide the admissions committee with a comprehensive view of your qualifications without redundancy. It also allows you to effectively utilize the limited space in the cover letter / statements to make a compelling case for your suitability for the PhD program.
Good luck with your application!

I think the need for a cover letter is quite country-dependent, linked to whether PhD recruitment is centralised or handled by individual professors.


text:
How do I talk about methodology mistakes In a scientific project report?
I'm writing up my 3rd year engineering project (The equivalent of a dissertation in other subjects), and I'm struggling to write the chapter in which my method failed I couldn't get any results.
My project is on Neural Networks, and when I started my project I tried to program my own Neural Network from scratch, however this did not work properly (The feed forward part worked, but because of the convoluted way I had programmed it I couldn't implement the back propagation part). After I realized this I used an off-the-shelf program to create my neural network, which worked much better.
The problem is that I must have spent about a quarter of the year programming my own Neural Network from scratch, so I want to include it as a chapter in my report to show the marker that I have put over the recommended 300 hours work into my project, and that I understand the inner working of Neural Networks.
How should I write this chapter? So far I have started the chapter as if it is going to work, then I wrote about exactly what I have done and how it works, and then at the end where the results should be I want to explain that the custom implementation of the neural network meant that I couldn't implement back propagation, and therefore couldn't get results. But I can't do this without it looking like I have lazily given up on that chapter, and abruptly given an excuse to move on to the next chapter (The working version of the neural network).

Can you clarify what level this is? It's a semester project in a 3rd year Bachelor's in engineering?

3rd Year working towards a Masters in engineering. The project started at the end of my second year, and will finish in a few weeks.

You wrote:

I want to include it as a chapter in my report to show the marker that I have put over the recommended 300 hours work into my project

Nooooooooo.
Don't do that. This is a postgraduate degree, and you're expected to take the research seriously. It's not a 9-5 grunt job or prison sentence where you turn up, serve your time, and get the reward at the end of your allotted time.
Show what you've learnt. That's what the markers are interested in. You say that you've learnt the inner workings of neural networks. That's great. So demonstrate and document what you've learnt.
And don't document the tortuous process you used. Don't describe how you went from A to B via C,D,E,...X,Y.
Just report that you started at A, ended at B, you've found that the shortest route between those points is {whatever it is}, and briefly document the dead ends and traps that future researchers should avoid.

to show the marker that I have put over the recommended 300 hours work into my project

So what? It's a thesis, not prison time. Your task in your thesis (or project) is to solve a given problem, not serve a given amount of time. To be brutally honest, the time that you spent on what was presumably a rather bad idea in the first place (re-implementing something for which apparently suitable standard software exists) does not make your thesis better in any way. Detailing your failed labouring will not make your project seem better. Rather the contrary.
To answer your title question:

How do I talk about methodology mistakes In a scientific project report?

You don't, unless:

The methodology mistakes are somehow common in your field, i.e., you would assume if another researcher would start the same project, he would likely make the same mistake (in that case there is a lesson learned to take away from the failed attempt, i.e., that the standard approach does not work in this case).
The methodology mistakes have, inadvertently, led to a different interesting result / observation that you did not expect.

Arguably, both is not true in your case. As such, I would consider this quarter of a year as sunk costs in terms of thesis time.

Thanks for your answer. Yours and @EnergyNumbers answer are saying that I should put less emphasis on the part of my project that didn't go well, and you're right, my first method was a terrible idea, but I really don't want it to feel like a waste of time. I put a lot of hard work into it and it will be sad not to let it show. I was hoping that there was a standard way to do this that won't confuse the reader. I know that this would be a bad idea for if I wanted this to be published in a science journal, but I don't, I just want a good grade.

But usually the same principles apply. You do not get a good grade for wasted efforts.

I'm afraid I disagree with the comments above.
The purpose of a 3rd-year project is not simply to solve a problem - it is to train the student. Learning from doing and learning from making mistakes is an integral element of this. For exactly this reason, the report is not just a scientific report of results, but also a report on the process, and I would say that there is no problem in reflecting some of the 'tortuous path' in the report.
Of course, it would be wise not to dwell too long on the mistakes. I would briefly describe how the 'wrong' path started, how you found out that it was wrong, and - especially - describe how you now understand why it is wrong, and why the later method is better. If this is done briefly and honestly, I would very much appreciate reading it, and it would score points with me as a reviewer.

Exactly. While I agree with the other answers for situations where a novel contribution to the field is expected, at the undergraduate level, reports should document the learning process. Re-coding an existing algorithm is a common exercise and typically involves a comparison of the performance of both.

@Jigg But we don't answer undergraduate questions here. So we've assumed in good faith that this is a postgrad question, and answered accordingly.

This. In my group, my advisor has his M.S. thesis students write up the good and the bad. Not only do I think it benefits the M.S. student, but it also helps future M.S. students avoid commonly encountered pitfalls (the thesis acts in some ways as a "user guide" for those future students working on similar projects).

It strikes me that there are strong opinions on this question. To me, it's not so much of an issue; I'd be happy to read about the process, as I answered above, and I'd also be happy not to. To some of the other answerers this seems to be a major issue, however. Can someone explain why the question of including the process or not is so important?

@EnergyNumbers Sorry I didn't realise this site was not for undergrad questions. The answers have all been useful nonetheless.


text:
How to join a research group when not affiliated to any institution
I have just completed my bachelor, and wish to pursue a masters in the field of robotics. However, during my bachelors, I was not able to build a good research profile and do not have any publications in my name.
Therefore, I would like to join a project group in a university and work under the guidance of a professor to build my research profile.
I have a two-part question.

Is such a thing even possible.
Is yes, how to approach professors for the same.

I understand this might not be the best place to ask, but since everyone in this community is related to academia in some capacity, your guidance would really mean a lot

This is possible and called “volunteer research assistant”. Write to professors and ask to get research work experience. You might even get paid.
Keep emails short and send as many as you can. Don’t worry if you don’t get response, professors might miss your letter. When writing, mention specific projects or papers by that professor.
I am currently working with one undergrad and one 1st year PhD student. Previously I've worked with high-school students and undergrads.

Thanks a lot for your answer. I will give it a try

What you are asking for is very difficult to achieve unless you bring some special expertise or talent that the professor would find valuable in their work. You are, in essence, I fear, asking for an education and use of the professor's time and knowledge without actually being part of their institution. It is all cost and little to no benefit for the professor.
Professors, on the other hand, might be interested in collaborations among people, even students or independents, as long as there is some common skill-set and understanding of the problems to be solved. Your status as independent has no bearing in this case. But what you know and what you can contribute is very important.
Some professors, if they hold a research grant in robotics might be able to hire technicians to help in the work but they need skills and probably won't learn too much on the "research side".
So, it is difficult to encourage you.
However, it might be possible to take a course or two as a non-matriculated student prior to applying for a masters. And, in some places, such as the US, research skills aren't normally required for entry into graduate programs. Building a "good research profile" is difficult in many places.
And, if you have the skills and background to convince a professor to work with you on research, you probably have the skills and background for successful admission to a masters (or even a doctorate in the US).

Thanks a lot for your answers.  I do get your point


text:
PhD application - including dual degree in your application and or SOP
I was wondering, what admission office values more:
I have 2 degrees, but my 2nd degree (dual degree) has a low GPA, it is lower than 3.0, but my 1st degree is above 3.0.
I know graduate admission likes to see good grades above 3.0.

So, should I even mention my 2nd degree? (statement of purpose)
if I mention it, does it mean the admission office will want to see proof (transcript)?

A small note: for my 1st degree, the university gave a diploma supplement that only mentions and shows courses related to that degree. So, I am planning to use that, since it doesn't show a lower GPA that comes when combined with my 2nd major.

Should I include my dual degree as a separate degree earned in my application?
(even though my GPA is lower than 3.0, it will still strengthen my application)?

or just make an application and mention only 1st major.

Thank you so much for your help.

If you don't mention it, what is the likely reaction of the admissions committee if they find out about it? I think honesty is always the best policy.

I don't think that's the issue since, with my 1st degree, I already satisfy their prerequisite conditions. Is it an obligation to mention all your education history?

What does your university transcript show? Usually it will show all classes taken and all degrees granted. Not providing a full transcript will not go down well if found out.

So, with the diploma comes a Diploma Supplement (it is an EU model). It works just like the normal transcript with additional details on the accreditation of the degree.


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Is doing a PhD equivalent to studying for an undergraduate diploma?
Can a person do PhD with same knowledge as that of undergraduate level.

Sure, if a university's standard is low.  I've had faculty members from some countries with a 'PhD' email me wanting to do a post-doc.  However, their PhD thesis is at the level of my university's undergraduate theses.

Your question isn't clear. Are you asking if one can do a Ph.D. without getting a Master's first? Or if doing a Master's can give you enough knowledge to start a ph.D. in case you did not have a Bachelor's degree?

Almost everywhere, much more is expected of doctoral students that is expected of undergraduates.
There are a few places with such low standards that the above "rule" isn't followed. There are a few students who have studied so hard and attained so much as an undergraduate that doctoral studies seem to be about the same. But both of these are rare.
In the US, at least, doctoral studies include advanced courses that may not be available to undergraduates and they are expected to do well in them.
Moreover, few undergraduates have sufficient knowledge or experience to do an acceptable dissertation.
So, the answer for most is no, you need to go beyond. Perhaps far beyond. The answer for a few, very few, I think, might be yes. There are, in fact, people who complete undergraduate studies at around age 13. Very rare. Sadly, some of those exceptional people burn out.

Note a couple of things. In many places a masters degree (not a PhD) can be very similar to undergraduate studies. Courses, exams, papers, grades. Other places research is also required.
Also note that getting a doctorate isn't an ability you are born with. It is something you do. It takes hard work and, I think, most people can do it if they put their mind to it, starting with undergraduate studies. It is a lot of work. Hard work. But it can be learned.


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I found an error in software implementation in the paper currently under peer review
I found an error in software implementation in the paper currently under peer review.
Modifying the software does not change the idea of the paper and does not change the major conclusion and discussion. But all the values in the result will be changed, so I have to change all the figures.
If I receive a request for a revision (If they do not reject), I plan to inform this problem to the editor.
In this case, how will the future process generally proceed?
I wonder whether all the submission processes should be restarted from the beginning or fixed in the revision stage.

It sounds like you have already decided what to do.  What is the question?

When I inform the editor of my mistake, I wonder about how the editors usually handle it.
That link is helpful to me. Thank you!

You should probably inform the editor that you have found errors that don't (dramatically?) affect the results and can clean them up in a future revision. Don't withdraw the paper, I suggest.
Let the editor decide what is sensible to do. They may be fine to let the process continue. But if reviewers flag the error it might be worse in the end.

Thank you for your answer.
When the result comes out, I will inform my mistake to the editor and wait for the decision.


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What can I do if I need econometrics skills, but cannot get into econometrics courses?
I am a first year Businesss major PhD student. I need to learn Econometrics, but my math is so bad that the professor does not allow me to attend the Statistics foundation course for Econometrics. I feel very bad because I cannot do research if I don’t take Econometrics courses, what worse is that other 2nd year courses are based on Econometrics. It means that I am very screwed that I am not able to do research methodology courses in my 1st year of PhD. Anything I can do?
Update: I am in a US-based university and the program is usually 5 years. I managed to enroll in an Econometrics course in another university, but as one may guess, I find it difficult without taking the prerequisite statistics course. Instead of struggling the whole semester, I decided to drop it two days ago. Now I feel a bit regretful, because that means I would not have chances to do Econometrics again due to the coursework plan.
It also means that I now need to study Math, Statistics, and Econometrics all by myself. I am owing a lot. What's the problem of me?

One thing you can surely do is take a math course improve your skills, so that you can then be accepted into the Statistics course.
Unfortunately, as the saying goes, there is no royal road.

This is the right path, and in the US it should be open. Talk to your advisor about getting the background you need.

Yes this does mean it may take you longer to finish your PhD.


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Manuscript Revision: How to include the response to reviewer comments as an attached file?
I have recently received a major revision from a journal. In the manuscript upload portal, I find only one place in the form of a text box where I could include the response to reviewer comments. But there is no place link to upload a document. I am thinking of choosing to include the response file as an attachment as it includes mathematical equations.
So whether a separate file can be attached to include the response to reviewer comments?

This depends on the editorial management system used by the journal. If they let you attach multiple files, then upload the response to reviewers there (be sure it's clearly labelled as a response to reviewers), and write in the text box "see attached file". If they don't let you attach multiple files, then merge the response to reviewers with the manuscript's PDF, upload that, and write in the text box that you've added the response to reviewers to the manuscript because it contains mathematical equations.


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Once tenured, is a faculty member guaranteed a minimum salary?
Tenure protects a faculty member's job from many threats; however, does it also generally guarantee a minimum salary?
I am especially curious about fields, such as engineering, where there may be an expectation for the faculty member to bring in a certain amount of funding.  If a faculty member did not bring in funding, would his or her salary be adversely impacted.  Similarly, if a faculty member brings in lots of funding, would his or her salary be supplemented?

If you have grants (that allow it), you can pay yourself 'summer salary'. More common for STEM perhaps than other fields.

There’s no extra protections that don’t already exist before you’re tenured if that’s what you mean. But all regular faculty positions, tenured or not, have some base salary they pay regardless of grants or other measures of performance. So the answer is “yes (but not because of tenure)”.

This will depend somewhat on 'hard money' vs 'soft money' appointments, and whether there is a tenured faculty union, what strength that union operates with, and details of bargaining contracts.

I think there is no formal guarantee of a minimum salary, but, equally, it is my impression that in the U.S. there are few situations in which faculty have any formal contract whatsoever. For better or for worse.
University administrations can unilaterally "furlough" people, or reduce salaries, for whatever reason they wish. As (perhaps not unreasonably) at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Likewise, insurance plans, etc., can be unilaterally degraded.
An extreme case some decades ago, that apparently went through the courts, was a person on the medical school faculty somewhere in Chicago, who kept their position, but was given no salary. The courts decided that tenure did not entitle them to a salary... Happily for everyone, such a scenario does not seem to play out very often.
(Also, in my R1 univ, there's no cost-of-living increase, anyway, ... Even after tenure, there's incessant adversarial stuff about "merit", which has an increasingly short-term, objectifiable sense... apparently mostly designed to give an excuse to higher-ups to not give a better raise.)

I've seen that scenario play out a number of times at a number of universities-- not all the way down to zero salary for research faculty, but certainly dramatic pay reductions for faculty in grant trouble.

There is minimum wage, but professors usually aren’t close to that line.

@JonCuster Some of them might be, if the $15 minimum wage happens. I know that some of them are minimum wage (or darn close to it) down here in Australia, where the minimum wage varies depending on the field, qualifications, and amount of experience of the worker (the "award" system).

How can they not have a contract?  There must be an agreement between the employer and the employee that the employer will pay the employee a certain amount. I'd accept that in some casual labour situations this contract would be verbal (if I employ a friend to help paint the house I might not have verbal agreement, but even then a contract exists).  I can't believe that a university would not have normal written contracts just like any other business.

@JamesK, it is an odd situation, yes.

"The course decided". Should that be "The courts decided"?

@FaheemMitha, oop, yes, indeed. Thx! :)

@JamesK - the search term you're seeking is "at-will employment", and it's the default position here for most employment these days. Just about blew my mind when I moved over to the US after coming from a country with much stronger labor laws.

But surely the company agrees to pay the employee... and the employee agrees to work for the company?   This isn't really about labour laws.  If you don't have an agreement to do some work and get paid, then you don't know what to do or if you'll get paid!  The agreement might say "we can fire you any time..." but that's still in the agreement

@JamesK "We can fire you at any time" can be the law, instead of the agreement.

While there is probably a minimum for any given institution and you wouldn't be reduced below that for any reason, future salary increases depend most places on performance. There might also be a maximum. The limits might change from year to year, generally moving upwards for various reasons, such as inflation and cost of living. And there are wide differences between institutions and even between departments within a given university.
Chairs and/or deans usually have some discretion on awarding increases, but likely little in lowering salaries unless a person requests reduced duties also. This assumes there is no misbehavior, of course, which is more likely to result in dismissal than salary reduction.
I don't know, but suspect, that some laws affect the possibility of lowering salaries. In particular, there are some discrimination laws that might apply.
Most salaries are set on an annual basis and some grants might provide some additional funding for an individual. Salary may depend on an annual (or similar) evaluation or self evaluation.
However, at State Universities, the budget is influenced by political action. The budget for a department might be reduced, requiring difficult decisions to be made. But this isn't a performance issue, but a political one. Some departments are abandoned, though tenured faculty then are usually offered positions in other departments to the extent possible. And, at private universities, the budget may be dependent on outside factors that also require difficult decisions. But such things often involve faculty input in some way.
Moreover, I think that salary reductions, if known would be disruptive and a stain on an institution for other than misconduct or financial exigency. And both of those often result in hits to institution's reputation.

University managing bodies are rarely committed strongly to academic traditions and ethos, and will gladly chip away both at your tenure - collectively and individually - and your employment conditions, salary and otherwise.
Whatever guarantee you may have - if it is not upheld vigorously and in an organized fashion, it will disintegrate and be lost; and conversely, guarantees you need or desire, and are currently missing, can be fought for and won, although naturally at great effort.
Thus, in modern times, and in most research institutions in most world states, the only thing guaranteeing your rights and privileges as a faculty member is a strong union:

At the individual institution, whether for academic staff only (craft union) or for all university employees (industrial union); and
At the country-wide/national level, both for academic staff at all universities and research institutes, and the general strength of organized labor.

PS - I realize OP is asking about the US, while my answer is more general. but as @AnonymousPhysicist points out, the USA is an example of weak academic staff unions and deteriorated employment conditions, including, apparently, no reasonable all-US/per-region pay scales.

This was never my experience, actually. Unions provide some protections for low level employees (adjuncts) and non-academic staff, of course. And, political action is necessary because of external attacks, but not "University managing bodies".

@Buffy Do you have experience with a strong, national union?

No, actually, and I don't think there is any such in the US. It may be different (worse?) in Israel. I never felt the need or desire and there was no union organizing (except low level or non-academic folks) anywhere I taught. Note the tagging on the question.

Since the question is about the USA, this answer is essentially "No, there is no guarantee, because there is no strong union."  Which is a good answer.  Keep in mind, though, that a union provides no protection if the university has no money.

@AnonymousPhysicist What do you mean by a "strong national union?" My faculty union's chapter (AAUP, Portland State University) voted to authorize a strike in the face of bad faith and exploitative bargaining by the administration, a few years ago with ninety-something percent of the vote in favor and a large turn-out. The then university president wrote a public apology in the regional paper the next day expressing both contrition and lessons learned, and the subsequent contract was much better for us.

@Alexis Well, that's good.  AAUP isn't really national and is not strong in any major regions of the US, so it can always be undermined by 1.  Students moving to cheaper, nonunionized universities.  2.  Faculty being replaced by nonunion workers.  UCU in the UK and NTEU in Australia cover a much larger portion of their nations, but I'm not sure they are "strong."  Owing to more-centralized government control of universities in the UK and Australia, the other side of bargaining is a bit different too.

"Keep in mind, though, that a union provides no protection if the university has no money." <- It provides a lot of protection if the university "has no money": 1. Usually, the university only "has no money" in the box of what it expects to be paying; 2. If the university is owned by the state, then there is no such thing is "no money" - money can be re-allocated by taxation or by printing/minting; 3. When money is short, a strong union can focus on non-monetary objectives, whether it be personal employee benefits or a stake at controlling toe university. ...

... 1.5 A strong union is necessarily for achieving budgetary transparency. 4. If a university is collapsing due to "no money", a strong union arranges mutual support and aid amongst its members; tenured faculty might have less need of this, but some will.

Faculty in the US are covered by university policies, their contracts, including a letter of offer of a position, state law, and Federal law.
Federal law and any state law specifies a minimum wage. The minimum wage law applies to all employees, including tenured faculty. So yes, there is a minimum wage for them.
Some faculty are expected to raise all of their salary and fringe benefits as well as other costs through sponsored research. This is a matter of university policy or their contract. It is likely that they are still owed the lawful minimum wage as long as they are an employee with the obligations of employment.
Tenure does not guarantee employment. Every university has procedures for terminating tenured faculty, though the process might require several months.


text:
regarding coding scheme in a thesis
I want to ask:
where should I give tables of interview codes in my PhD thesis? should I give themes in ch 4 and codes in appendix or codes should also be given in ch 4?
i am using embedded mixed method Qual+quant.
thanks in advance!

Hello, welcome to the site. Unfortunately, questions about the content of research are outside of the scope of this site, so your question is very likely to be closed for being off topic.

Ask your advisor.
We don’t have the knowledge of your particular paper to be able to give in depth answer on how you should structure it. Your advisor, however, probably does, so you should probably ask them about it.

+1.  This is one of the (many) things an advisor is for.


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Advice on career move - from industry to academia
I think my situation is somewhat unusual and goes into the opposite direction: I have the possibility to move from industry back to academia.
Background: I have been working in an industry position in my home country since I finished my PhD (6 years ago). My sector is going through mergers and acquisition, however my situation seems to be stable right now.
My job is kind of OK but I don't want to live in my country anymore. I always wanted an international career and dreamed about the possibility of going back to live in the USA again. For this reason, I applied and has been offered a postdoc job position (in the USA) and need to make a decision as soon as possible.
I do not mind going back to the lab bench and doing basic functions again, once it leads me to live in America. My overall idea is to work for 2-3 years in this postdoc position, so I would have enough time to obtain the permanent residency and then move back to industry, entrepreneurship,  or another postdoc position (I really don't want to get a teaching related position).
Concerns: Am I being crazy about considering going back to academia? My salary and benefits would be way lower, but I don't need much to live. There is no other way to move overseas with a guaranteed income.
It has been a long time since I left the academic universe, so I would appreciate any feedback regarding my plan.
Thank you.

Every argument you give points in the same direction. Why are you hesitating? Your life is yours to define.

The only problem with your reasoning is that, as I see it, you do this primarily so you can "live in the USA again", because "[t]here is no other way to move overseas with a guaranteed income". Regardless of whether this is true, you should be careful when idealizing places, institutions, people, etc. Greener pastures are usually only greener from the distance. And it seems you don't want to get back to academia, just use a lower payed job as a foothold for the same kind of job you have now, only in the US. In my opinion, that is a very very weak reason and I urge you to reconsider.

You are likely to be on a J visa, and there are residency rules around that. For example, it may have a clause meaning you have to go back for a minimum period.

Do you have a R&D position? If so, then why consider a step-down to postdoc? Why not a sideways step into academia?

If your goal is to immigrate to the US, you should think carefully about how this post-doc will help with that- what kind of a visa will your employer be sponsoring you for?  Post-docs are typically on J visas that don't provide a path to immigration.

Let me be clear: you don't want to move back into academia; you see academia as a stepping stone in a lateral move to a different country. I think this difference matters, because most of the conventional problems that people have when moving back into academia (is my track record good enough? are my connections still active? etc.) don't apply to you, given that you already have an offer. For your ultimate goal it matters little if you are successful or not in your postdoc. Consequently, I am not sure what good advice we can give you: if you want to move to the US, and this is a way to move to the US, what more is there to say?

That said, I can't help but wonder if there are not much more direct ways to achieve what you try to achieve. If you are employable now for an US company, can't you find a job remote and move directly to industry? If you are not employable for an US company, will a postdoc really change this? If you don't mind a pay cut, would an internship not be a better way to get into companies? Have you fully understood the visa implications? What will you do if at the end of your postdoc no industrial positions are forthcoming?
All in all, this seems like a fairly contrived way to achieve your goal. I am not saying it's necessarily a bad idea (there may be industries were "being around" is required for job hunting, although my field - IT - is certainly not one of them), but it feels you should still explore alternatives before committing to this plan.


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Math vs. CS for Software Engineering
I'm currently trying to decide what to major in undergrad and I'm between math and CS. I've taken multivar/linear alg/intro to abstract math so far and would really like to continue with math as my major rather than CS. The problem, though, is that I want to go into software engineering (couldn't really see myself in many math related careers like actuary, analyst, etc). So, does anyone know what the odds are that I'd be able to get a SE job with just a pure math degree in today's market? Should I just go for the CS major to have a better shot at landing a job?  Unfortunately, I cannot double major due to schedule constraints. I could minor in CS if majoring in math, but would this help me very much in securing SE jobs?
In future years (say, the next 30 or 40), what would you guess will be the more valuable degree in the long run?
Thanks for the help.

I disagree with the votes to close.  I don't believe this is a shopping question or one that depends on personal preferences, etc.  It simply asks (but with usual student verbosity) whether a CS or a math degree is a better choice for someone planning a career in software engineering.  It's a simple question with a simple answer.

This question might very well be closed as not being about academic careers, or as an opinion question, but I'll give an answer anyway...
I studied math and computer science as an undergraduate in the early 1980's and ultimately ended up with a BS in Computer Science because it was a better degree for getting a job.  After a few years as a software engineer at Motorola, I went back to graduate school in mathematics and then entered into an academic career as a math professor.
Although some of the more theoretical aspects of computer science that I studied in the 1980's are still relevant, the programming languages, operating systems, and computer hardware that I worked with are long out of date.  To paraphrase a quote from Charles Stross, having a degree in Computer Science from 1984 is somewhat like having an Aeronautical Engineering degree from the 1920's.
On the other hand, most of the mathematics that I studied in the 1980's is still relevant and hasn't changed very much.  For example, I've recently taught an Intro to Ordinary Differential Equations course using a later edition of the same textbook that I used as an undergraduate in the early 1980's.
The two points that I'm trying to make with this story are that

Computer Science and Software Engineering are very rapidly changing fields.  You'll have to keep updating your education as the technology changes if you want to stay in it.
You might very well change careers one or more times over the next 30 to 40 years. It's unwise to plan for a career as if you'll be doing the same thing for the rest of your working life.

Thanks for the answer! Yes, wasn't sure if this was the right place for this question but it's great to get a viewpoint from a math prof. You confirmed my hunch about the longevity/versatility of the math degree over CS -- math doesn't go out of date, but CS can pretty fast. Thanks!

My experience was quite different.  I graduated from Stanford in 1973 but I find that much of what I learned about data structures and algorithms from Knuth, computability and information theory from Hellman, and, in other courses, about  operating systems, compilers, machine architectures, etc., still serves me well.  Yes, any details would be out-of-date but the concepts endure.  They set me up to be competitive and remain competitive by continuing to learn and update my knowledge.

If you want a career in software engineering, the CS degree will be far more helpful to you.  It's not even close.
Hiring managers in software engineering will expect you to have the knowledge and skills taught in a computer science curriculum.  Interviews invariably consist of putting you in front of a whiteboard and asking you to code something.  No one will ask you to derive anything using calculus.
Hiring managers in software engineering want people who can code and possess basic knowledge and skills with algorithms, data structures, operating systems, databases, machine learning, robotics, security and so on, because that's what the job is.  This is what you will learn in a CS program.  This is not what you'll learn pursuing a math degree.

While math is a great base for a lot of things including SE, once you have a math degree you still have to learn all the things you mention here before you really know what it is about. Math will actually help you learn some of them, but that isn't the same as actually knowing, say, algorithms. My degrees are all in math and I taught CS for almost all my career, but it was actually years before I was able to put it all together.