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Realizing possible academic misconduct after degree award
A few days ago, I was notified of my degree award, and my imposter syndrome kicked in - trying to see if I've done anything to not warrant earning it. I found myself looking through good academic practice guidelines and noticed something I'd previously overlooked -- that it was considered exam cheating to attempt to look at another candidate's exam paper even if nothing was gained from it. I'm pretty sure that on at least one occasion I've looked at another person's script while they were taking an exam. To be honest, I have no clue which exam(s) I would've done this on (although I know this wasn't a very common behavior of mine) and, again, I've never been able to benefit from it as I've never been able to actually read anything from anyone's papers (My conscience wouldn't have let me forget this) -- so all my work on my exams are my own knowledge and not gained from anyone's scripts. I also can't remember precisely if my intentions in doing so were to try and get answer from him/her or to see which part of the exam script they were on to judge whether I was behind or not and should pick up the pace (although there must've been some instance where I actually tried to get an answer but couldn't make anything out) - I just have a feeling that I've looked at a person's script before and specifics are pretty hazy.
What should I do about this? My friend told me that he himself and friends he knows (who I know as well and are high achieving students) have been guilty of this and most students are and that this isn't a big deal. I also fail to recollect when this would've happened, and how often (although it couldn't have happened more than a few times as I think I would remember an incident more clearly if it happened more often). Should I tell the college about this, or take it as a learning experience and move on? Part of me doesn't want to penalize myself if this is a fairly common thing, and I worked very hard to get the degree award I have.

The way you frame this makes it sound like it's a pattern for you to try to undermine your own accomplishments. That is not healthy mental behavior. I'd recommend seeing a professional about this.

@transitionsynthesis I think your recommendation to speak to a professional is entirely reasonable. Still, do you feel I'm framing it still in a self deprecating manner even if I'm fairly sure I, at some point that I can't precisely pinpoint, did attempt to look at someone's script (to no avail)?

You should probably not tell this to your peers, because they might suppose you will hold them to same standards. I.e. "I looked at Josh's paper to see if I will finish before him. But impost saw it and will probably report me as a cheater now."

You didn't cheat like they are doing here, so there is nothing to worry about.

"trying to see if I've done anything to not warrant earning it. I found myself looking through good academic practice guidelines and noticed something I'd previously overlooked " This is not a healthy behaviour, so I second the above comments about seeking professional help. You will always find something if you look hard enough, so there's no point in doing so. Enjoy your accomplishment and move forward. Congratulations on your degree!

Well, you have noticed now that even people with awards have such minor things in the past. They did not prevent them from being good award-winning academics. So these cases have no any power.

Look, people need to stop with this impostor syndrome stuff.  It's not healthy.  It's in the past now and is minor, enjoy your work and stop searching for reasons why you secretly don't belong.

@Tom It may be obvious that it's unhealthy, but people don't try to have impostor syndrome (or any other unhealthy way of thinking). Therefore it's not as easy as your comment implies, to just "stop". You sound (understandably) frustrated, but consider that many people who have these unhealthy patterns of thinking may be infinitely more frustrated because they are stuck with them 24/7 despite being aware that it's unhealthy and trying their best to change it, so a little sympathy might be appreciated.

What you want is to be tried and sentenced, so I taking it upon myself to do just that, and let my word be final: It was wrong to do so, and a suitable punishment is you living with the guilt. Trying to get yourself in trouble and potentially getting your degree taken away is not a proportional punishment for the crime.

@CONvid19 If you "cannot understand", then maybe you can try to. Please, refrain from falsely generalizing and then posting disdainful, minimizing, and unsympathetic comments on the internet for the apparent sole purpose of proclaiming yourself better than such behaviour. See my comment above, too. For impostor syndrome, a good start for trying to understand would be here and here.

I wonder if this is a troll question.

@RonJohn it's probably not, I've known many people who have asked such questions.

I think this is a troll question because I'm finding hard to believe that someone can think like this.

@CONvid19 exactly.  There's Impostor Syndrome, and then there's "I've got to tell everyone on social media" Impostor Syndrome.

@RaynaGrayson what are you talking about?

@CONvid19 talking about the comment you posted that used to be above mine, but was flagged and deleted

What you should do, is precisely nothing. Take a deep breath. Have a culturally appropriate beverage and celebrate your finishing.
We are human. None of us is perfect. We fall. We get up. We move on. The past is past. Most of us here would probably not like to see a complete rerunning of our past selves in every respect.
But, since it bothers your conscience, vow to do better in the future so you have less to be worried about.

I see. I shouldn't feel like this degree was unearned or forsaken by this? Should I be allowed to consider myself an alum of a university -- as much as anyone else? Sure everyone is human, but do I not deserve some sort of punishment from the school?

The degree was earned. You are an alum. An you are punishing yourself. Let it go.

You can always opt to admit your wrong-doing, black label yourself, retract your degree, admit to every future employer that you feel you don’t deserve your degree, and be severely more disadvantaged than back where you once started. Or, you can accept your degree and move on. It’s up to you OP, it’s that black or white.

@GrayLiterature I think I understand your point in that there are ultimately two courses of action to take (with one being clearly more reasonable) -- but wouldn't the far more self-sabotaging choice be more "honorable" or the right thing to do? Or perhaps phrased in another way -- what the university would expect an alum/student to do?

“The right thing to do” is entirely a subjective matter. But, it sounds like at this point you’re just looking for confirmation in your decision to sabotage your success. So if you are very concerned with honour, simply take your degree and never work in academia, do not apply for positions that require you to have a PhD, scrub it from your resume, do not mention it in job interviews, and it will be as if you never had it. The decision is binary, and the “right decision” is for nobody but you to determine.

@GrayLiterature the alleged "misconduct" is so minor and irrelevant that the college would surely just dismiss it. "You must retract my degree because I am pretty sure I looked at another student's paper from afar during some exam that I can't exactly recall."

I agree 1000%. It’s so minor the university would probably not even take the “complaint” seriously. But OP doesn’t want to acknowledge.

@GrayLiterature I understand your point (re: your first two comments) but considering everything the OP wrote it seems your irony might do (much) more harm than good.

@impost: please, please, forget about this. How are you supposed not to look in the general direction of the exam paper of another candidate in a full exam hall? Unless you did it intentionally and gainfully (and on both points you are on the safe side it seems) nothing happened. In fact, so little happened that you can't even recall a specific instance. You are deceiving yourself. Heed the advice of transitionsynthesis.

@retstuck I believe the OP is deceiving themselves on this part since the behaviour of attempting to cheat fits so badly with the rest of what they wrote, whereas the behaviour of inventing a past cheating attempt in order to justify the feeling of not having deserved the degree fits much better. However, that is of course only an assumption.

It can be hard to have perspective on one's own actions. Let me tell you how this sounds to readers: "I went looking for any tiny reason to disqualify my accomplishments or prove to myself that I didn't deserve them, and even with perfect knowledge (up to memory) and motivated reasoning I can't find a clear example."
This means that you deserve your degree. Even an honor code, which may seem to be black and white, invariably involves some judgement in practice, and not all violations are equal. For example, imagine a student who in the process of turning in their exam catches a glimpse, without even wanting to, of another student's exam as they do the same. This would also be a violation of the letter of your honor code, but not one which any reasonable authority would hold against them.
Listen to Buffy, and maybe reflect on the roots of your desire towards self-sabotage.

My self-sabotaging streak is something worth thinking hard about. To play devil's advocate, however, I feel the example you painted is a bit more innocuous. Although my memory on an occasion is fuzzy and I can't find a clear example, I do feel there was at least some instance where I tried to glance at another's paper to get an answer on an exam albeit to no avail. Regardless, would I still be able to treat this with the same idea that this wouldn't be something any reasonable authority would hold against even with it being written as forbidden?

To be fair, an honor code which includes this as a violation seems silly to me and would hopefully not be used in an institution

@impost The heart of the problem here is that you are looking to an exterior measure- conferral of your degree- of your self worth, when it is not designed or intended to judge this. Furthermore, when you disagree with the judgement it produces, you are trying to "appeal the verdict" to the honor code. But this is all wrong. Whether you judge your actions as good or bad is one question, and whether they violate the honor code is another. And a supposed violation of the code that may have occurred at some indefinite time unknown to anyone is completely unenforceable and therefore meaningless.

As it happens, I don't think you are ethically culpable in what you describe here either. But even if you decide that you are, that doesn't mean your degree should be revoked, because your degree is not a judgement in either direction about whether you are an ethical person.

You are off by a few orders of magnitude regarding severity of your transgression. It seems like part of you is trying to self-sabotage here.
For calibration:
Scenario 1: If I am proctoring an exam, and spot a student briefly glancing in the direction of another exam, I'd tell them to not do that again – and that is the full extent of what is going to happen (assuming I don't see the same person doing it again). Even if I were to bring this up as academic misconduct, it would quite certainly be thrown out immediately.
Scenario 2: Let's say a student approaches me after an exam, and confesses to having glanced at an answer from another student. The most likely outcome is that they would lose the points for that question. The realistic worst-case is that they get a 0 on the exam, and have to resit it. If the confession happens after the grades for the year have been confirmed, I don't suppose anything would happen.
Ok, so what kind of misdeeds would you need to  confess to in order to get your degree revoked? For most universities, cheating in an exam just wouldn't cut it. Something like "I paid another person to attend all exams in my place" or "I completely plagiarised my dissertation" would probably do it.

Everyone else has done very well pointing out to you that this is not at all an issue and you shouldn't consider it cheating. I would like to add one more point: the reason that "attempting to look at another candidate's paper" is on there is to cover for cases where the examiners know damn well that someone was cheating by looking at someone else's paper, but can't guarantee that they saw the answers because they caught the cheater before they could write it down. It doesn't actually mean that the attempt is in itself cheating.
Calm down, you deserved your diploma. Have a nap, call a family member who'll be appropriately proud of you, and listen to the friend who pointed out that this is very common.

Take yourself out of the equation.  Pretend for a moment that you're talking about your classmate Bob, not about yourself:

I'm pretty sure that on at least one occasion Bob has looked at another
person's script while they were taking an exam. To be honest, I have no
clue which exams he did this on. ... I just have a feeling that Bob has
looked at a person's script before and the specifics are pretty
hazy. ...  I also fail to recollect when this would've happened, and
how often.

Now, imagine that you're on an honor council and the above complaint was submitted to you.  There's no chance that you'd investigate that complaint.  There are zero details, only a vague hunch, so you really couldn't investigate it if you wanted to.  It comes across not as a genuine report, but as a poor attempt to slander another student that the submitter doesn't like.  The only thing to do with such a report would be to throw it out (and possibly have a stern chat with whoever filed it).
There's no point in trying to report something unless you actually have something to report.
Hopefully, looking at it from another angle also makes it clear how unreasonably malicious you're being to yourself.  It wouldn't be appropriate to treat someone else that way, so it's definitely not appropriate to treat yourself that way.

(This seems off-topic, but was too long for a comment.)
Quoting some of your comments:

I shouldn't feel like this degree was unearned or forsaken by this?

but wouldn't the far more self-sabotaging choice be more "honorable" or the right thing to do?

It seems like your question is less about the practical matters, and more about whether it is morally right. I don't know if I am interpreting correctly, but it seems like you feel like you did wrong and you find it difficult to forgive yourself, so you are trying to redeem yourself by punishing yourself.
My two cents:

Forgiving yourself will not come from giving up the degree or otherwise punishing yourself, nor from strangers on the internet saying you did nothing wrong; it will only happen if you forgive yourself.

(To be clear, I'm not implying that the reason you need to forgive yourself is because you did something wrong. Forgiving oneself has to do with perceived fault, and is independent from actual fault.)

Redeeming oneself is a fallacy, implying that one is not worthy and must suffer to become worthy. In my opinion, every person is intrinsically worthy; no one has to suffer to "prove" it. Nor do shame and suffering help someone improve; they are often even counterproductive.

Lastly, I second the comments' suggestion to see a mental health professional. I wish you all the best.

I agree with the other answers here about the self-sabotage behaviour you're experiencing, but would like to address one thing nobody else has quite mentioned.

...if I've done anything to not warrant earning it.

This statement works under the premise that a single (in this case inconsequentially tiny) flaw, undoes all the work I assume you have done to earn the degree.

I worked very hard to get the degree award I have.

How many hours of work have you put into the degree? How many hours of sleep have you lost? How many exams did you pass using your brain alone?
At the end of the day, the qualification is a document that says you are qualified to practise in the field. You passed all the requirements without any external help and are a fully capable professional in your field.
If I asked you to solve a problem in this field, would you no longer be able to solve it? Does the fact that you glanced at other exam papers a couple of times means that you actually are incapable of doing the work? You have earned the qualification entirely under your own merit.

Some of the psychoanalytics say. Don't lie. But, if you lie you should know why you're doing it. I.e. if you cheat - you should know why you're doing it, but don't cheat yourself. There are exceptional cases where individual should judge and balance.
It's up to you to be aware whether you deserve award.

Some things in life are a big deal if you are about to do them, but not so much if they happened along time ago, and with no bad consequences.  I would give a good slap to anyone who was about to do what you did.  But I wouldn't bother someone who had done it a long time ago and obviously learned their lesson and then some.  I don't know a single human being who has made it to 25 years of age without doing something they weren't too proud of.  No one got hurt.  You don't owe anyone any damages.  You learned your lesson.  Forgive yourself.

Actually cheating is bad. Trying but failing to cheat is still bad, but not so bad. But you are not asking about that. Rather, you are asking whether you should attempt to destroy your degree. You can think about the ethics of doing that. Would it be ethical to choose to make such an attempt or not? If most people are more ethical than you, and would be disadvantaged by you having your degree, maybe it is slightly justifiable. But if most people are more unethical than you, you would be doing the world a very big disservice if you actually manage to put yourself out of the job market! I would rather you build the bridge I walk across, than someone who cheated on exams and think there is nothing wrong with that!

Let me just quote "A Mathematicians Miscellany" by Littlewood, where he describes his experience with an examination:
"There is only one other question I am sure of having done, and for the following reason. I began on a question on elementary theory of numbers, in which I felt safe in my school days. It did not come out, nor did it on a later attack. I had occasion to fetch more paper ; when passing a desk my eye lit on a heavy mark against the question. The candidate was not one of the leading people, and I half-unconsciously inferred that I was making unnecessarily heavy weather ; the question then came out fairly easily. The perfectly highminded man would no doubt have abstained from further attack ; I wish I had done so, but the offence does not lie very heavily on my conscience."
So at least you're in good company:-)

it was considered exam cheating to attempt to look at another candidate's exam paper even if nothing was gained from it.

I would imagine that clause is largely there as to be something easier to prove than full-blown copier cheating when cheating is suspected. A lot of pressure goes into proving people are cheating (Loss of employment, Loss of Visa, Lots of wasted money) and it may be a way to prove some academic misconduct in the case the professor can't explicitly prove you were cheating to the evidence standard needed but can show that you 'glanced at your neighbor's paper'. The reason that's there is they can do something lower like throw out the test or take some points away as opposed to a full-blown expelling or something of the like. o


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How to not feel offended by comments/edits during manuscript drafting as first author
I work as a consultant in industry where I often get to publish scientific articles on "advanced" methods with pharma. Unfortunately, there is a often a fair amount of politics in the background that serves to (mostly) diminish the quality of the manuscript. For example, authors will simply change the wording or grammar for no apparent reason and move themselves up the author list, or insert/delete assertions without a sufficient understanding of the analysis or the results. There are also many more internal review cycles and numbers of reviewers before the draft is ever submitted to a journal, leading to a lot more frustration and indignation on my part going through the edits and comments and seeing how my precious manuscript has fallen, causing me a fair amount of anguish.
I just wanted to ask how to not feel offended or indignant as first author at comments that you have to incorporate (because they're from people above my pay grade) but would rather not.

This is unfortunate but not unheard of. Think of it as a "slow" pipeline for publications. In parallel, can you author "sole'ish" papers using self-generated data? or using published data (and citing where it comes from)?

There's a big difference between tweaking language and inserting incorrect assertions.

I might have some advice, but it would depend on the size of your author group. How big is it, more or less?

I often get the same feeling as you when receiving comments from coauthors. I find the key to not letting it get to you is to view it as constructive criticism and discuss the matter with that individual. Even incorrect criticism is constructive, as it tells you if your work is inadvertently challenging a common misconception. In any case, the solution is to have a level-headed discussion about it.
I came to this way of thinking when I realised I was doing the same thing as your coauthors to my students. It caused them an understandable degree of frustration. But, I was making those changes to the manuscript because I believed they would make the manuscript better. Sometimes I was right, other times I was wrong - but by discussing the changes we ended with a paper that really was better.
My point is that your coauthors are probably trying to do what's best for the paper. Sometimes those efforts might be misguided, but the point is that the intentions are good. I would thank them for their interest and their time, and then ask them to justify their changes to you.

It depends on co-authors and on how the collaboration is organised. It appears that your team is cutting time on discussions and using it for writing and editing. Understandably it leads to lack of communication and understanding between team members, as well as some frustration. It could be reduced by planning how to share the work so that each author is mainly focused on writing one section of the manuscript and not interfering so much with the writing of others. Final discussion and editing can be done together using video conferencing.
An opposite approach would be to encourage discussion within team as much as possible. For example, the lead author can organise meetings, where a section of the manuscript is discussed, the main ideas are spelled out, the team agrees on the section. Then the main author, or a designated  team member writes down the result of the discussion. Repeat, iterate.
The main issue of course is that we now work in "publish or perish" academia, where the quantity of outputs is often more important than the quality. Hence, people don't have too much time for valuable deep discussions, and automate their writing as much as possible to increase the sheer amount of papers they can produce each year.

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Is it necessary to have many slides when presenting in conference?
Is it necessary to have many slides when presenting in conference, if the speaker can clearly present his or her research with only just a few slides? How to decide when to use or not to use the slide? Science and engineering fields of research are preferred.

Where -- in conferences, seminar or classrooms? Because, with venue; the preference should change.

What field? Also, why do you think that the purpose of a presentation is to get applause?

@Bitwise In any field. If everybody likes that presentation, the presenter will get applause, won't (s)he?

What is exactly your question? The one in the title? Your paragraph is quite unclear, and it looks like you have something more precise in your head - share it clearly if you want relevant answers.

Slides serve the following purposes:

If the title of your paper is too long, you don't have to write the title on the board, losing time.
They keep the audience up-to-date. Gives an idea on what you are doing now, what you are going to do some time after.
Contains hard-to-draw figures. Therefore, you are able to talk to-the-point without losing time on drawing figures.
Contains experimental results. These, if extensive, literally cannot be drawn accurately onto board in about 10 minutes. Maybe they can be, but then there is no time to talk.
May serve you as reminder cards, therefore you don't forget what to talk about 2 minutes later.
In the Q&A session, if someone asks you about a table, a figure or a graph, you don't have to draw them again. Rather, you can just go back and answer the question.
If you are a junior researcher, you are able to write your name and affiliation on the slides, and avoid the awkwardness of writing your name on the board as if you're an instructor and if audience consists of students.
You can always support slides by using the board, and explain your points better.

These being stated, I think slides are crucial for a presentation where the time limit is considerably low (10-20 minutes including Q&A).

In connection with then next-to-last bullet point, "If you are a junior researcher ...", I suggest that all speakers, not only junior researchers, should make sure the audience knows who they are. Ordinarily, a printed program or the session chair's introduction will take care of that, but if not, then the speaker should do so.  I don't buy the idea that senior folks (like me) are automatically known to everybody; new people enter the field and we shouldn't make it difficult for them to identify us.(For the same reason, even if we're not speaking, we should wear our name tags.)

In my field (mathematics) and in my experience it is more common to use slides for conference talks than not, but a significant number of talks use a chalkboard or whiteboard, so it is certainly not necessary to use slides. (By `slides' I mean projected electronic files, such as beamer or powerpoint, not acetate sheets)
I might add my impression that if anything talks that eschew slides are considered better than those that use them. However whether a speaker uses slides depends on other factors such as the duration of the talk: the longer the talk the better the opportunity to give a board talk.
(And I agree with comments above that applause per se is rarely the primary aim of a speaker or the measure of a good talk.)

As a side point, I always advise against choosing slides because the talk is short. If you use slice to go quicker, you will most probably go quicker than your audience can follow, missing the point entirely. The sole counter-example to that principle I know of is complicated pictures which are very long to draw but very short to understand. Long formula are usually long to write and long to understand, and using slides for get them past faster is a bad idea.

@DSVA same in biology (though it could vary with the subfiled). It would look very odd if you give a verbal description (or drawing) of your experimental results.

One advantage of board talks is that you can set aside a part of the board for material that the audience needs to refer to often, throughout the talk. With slides, you need to either repeat that material on lots of slides or rely on the audience's remembering it accurately.

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Is it OK to upload thesis including published work to personal website?
I think the question is simple, but answers may be quite different - I fear.
I have recently written my Thesis, which also includes some peer-reviewed published papers. As a general rule, is it ok to post the .pdf of my Thesis on my personal website?
If it depends on the journal and University where the papers have been sent to, what right should I be looking for on the journals website?

The first place you might want to look is probably the copyright transfer agreements you signed when you published your papers, not their websites.

The Sherpa/Romeo database (http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/) will give you all the information about journal policies concerning self-archiving.

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CS paper rejected for lack of technical contribution; what does this mean, and how can I fix it?
I recently got two papers rejected with the reviewers asserting a lack of technical contribution. They contained good ideas, at least in my eyes, and used common methodologies in the experimentation. So my question related to the CS field is, what is the difference between a good idea that was tested and a technical contribution? What should an idea have to become a technical contribution?
Another observation I had is that other papers, that got accepted, were actually worse from the research methodologies and were previously published in similar form (so the idea was not very original) at that conference, so the “contribution” of these papers is much lower than mine would have been (again it’s just from my perspective). So I don’t understand why those papers got accepted and if the reviewer’s decisions actually make sense, what is it that makes such papers accepted? I aim at enhancing my now rejected papers because I still think they contain original ideas that should be published, I just don’t know where to start.

In the more recent rejection, the reviewer (one) stated in a rather short review that there is no technical contriibution. The same in the other paper, just a little bit longer and some other details. However the consensus was always the lack of "technical contribution" in both reviews I received.

I edited your question to contain this information, as this was not obvious at least to me.

Since you ask those questions, I assume you are relatively new to CS research. I do not know if you have previous research experience in any other scientific area, but let's assume you are new to research all together. Correct me if I am wrong.
When your paper gets rejected, the feeling of rejection sucks. It sucks a lot. But in research you have to deal with this rejection and move-on. It does not matter if other people's works that you consider worse have been accepted. Maybe they are better than yours maybe not. But that is really irrelevant. Focus on your work and how to improve it.
The questions you should be asking:

Is this problem you are trying to solve interesting?
Is your solution substantially better than previous state-of-the-art?
Are you certain that you described related and recent literature thoroughly? Are you up-to-date on related literature?
Did you make clear the benefits on your approach?
Is your paper well presented  and written? Have you explained your approach thoroughly (with pseudocode, figures) and not just with words?
Were your experiments thorough? Did you use many datasets for your experiments? Have you used the datasets that the related papers use or at least similar if not bigger in size and scope? Have you compared your results with previous approaches? Have you many charts demonstrating the various aspects of your solution?
Have you advertised your work by finding many test-cases for your problem?

If any of those answer is NO, then you must turn them to YES, before resubmitting your work. You must understand that if your paper or the problem you try to solve is boring, then it gets rejected. It is as simple as that. In that cases, the most usual reason for rejection is "not enough contribution". So, probably it is also your presentation that needs to be fixed.
Also, it seems rather strange that although you are probably new to research, you have submitted two papers at the same time. Perhaps this is too ambitious and it would be better to focus on one of them, improve it and resubmit it. Perhaps, they should be sent to different venues that are more tailored for each one of them.
And last but not least. Do not worry. It gets better with time. Both the way you handle rejection and the way you write papers. So, improve what needs to be fixed and everything will work out.

@Wrzlprmft I understand the "it" in the cited statement to be the fact that the paper has been rejected, not necessarily the paper itself. I am confident that it does, in fact, suck in every discipline to have a paper that you put much work in be rejected.

@JeffE That is what I meant. Edited the answer

@Wrzlprmft So you would interpret the "technical contribution" term venue-specific similar to "no value for this specific conference" (but could be to others)?

@Alexandros I am working on my graduation project and had an own idea which I was working on, thats why I submitted two at the same time.

@user09123789542: That’s my current, layman’s guess: It’s like having a paper about quantum gravitation rejected by the Journal of Fishery Science. Be aware that I only mentioned my guess as a possible explanation why a paper could be rejected without sucking (which I mentioned as an argument against a sentence in the answer, which I misinterpreted). So, please do not interpret this as a reliable statement. There are many computer scientists around here who should know what this term means in this context.

Also, sometimes a reviewer is just kind of crap. The people reviewing manuscripts are often very busy and don't necessarily work hard at understanding a difficult-to-grok paper. Don't get discouraged, just strive to improve.


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Would it be unethical to take a full time job and quit 8 months later if I get accepted for a PhD program?
I am applying this winter for graduate school and I will finish undergrad this winter as well. Would it be unethical to take a full-time position with the intention to quit soon until I know whether I got accepted for graduate school or not?
I am considering this because if I didn't get accepted, I wouldn't have a gap until I start working, and the company would be a good brand which would certainly not harm my PhD application (but this shouldn't be a discussion on what prepares me good for graduate school). My plan is going back to industry after a PhD, so considering my reputation in the field or possible research jobs lateron in the same company, how could I reason my leave for getting a PhD? Or would you better decline the offer and wait for the admissions result?

So long as you are upfront with your employer about your plans, I see no problem. You should keep in mind that your future boss is probably not stupid: if you don't tell them your plans, and you leave your job for your studies, they'll know that you likely applied around the same time that you accepted an offer with them. Needless to say, if you are not forthright, you probably won't be able to work for them in the future.

Since this is less about academia than relations with a non-academic employer, you may get better answers (e.g. from people who have experience in industry) on Workplace.SE

Moreover, given that there are pretty significant cultural differences on such questions, you should mention your location, and maybe your industry.

Ethics are your own. Personally: 8 months is long enough to change your mind, and an application isn't a done deal anyway.

I left my first 'real' job after 9 months because I saw a great opportunity with another company.  Was that unethical?  I don't think so.  You may or may not get into the Ph.D. program.  Would you stay if you didn't?

Think about how it will look on the CV if you have to drop out of the PhD, e.g. a failed job, then a failed PhD…   Otherwise I don't see a proglem

No, it would not be unethical. To construct the straw man argument, consider: would it be unethical to go to work for McDonald's for 8 months, from January through August of your last year of high school, until you left to go to college? No, of course not. Companies expect turnover - that's why they have HR departments. Pursue your dreams.

@MadJack: be as upfront about your plans as your employer is about their (unmentioned) plans. When you are hired you don't know how long the job will last. Certainly the assumption is that it's long-term, but I've known companies that hired someone for what amounted to a three month gig without mentioning it to the person being hired. When applying for a job you put your best foot forward, tell them how you can help their business, and keep your yap shut about things which are not certain. It sounds like this Ph.D. program is in the "maybe" stages, and thus it shouldn't be mentioned.

@BobJarvis +1, and fair enough. I offered that advice to OP under the assumption that they were keen on remaining in good standing with the employer for any future work possibilities with the company after completing their PhD. Some big companies (to remain nameless) are really attractive places to work for those in some fields, so I just wanted to point out how best not to screw that up. You raise an equally valid point, though.

As a counterpoint to Shane's answer, I would say it strongly depends on what you agree on (explicitly or implicitly) with the company.

If they are actively aware that you are looking into getting accepted for a PhD position (that is, you told them so), and they are ok with it, it is clearly fine.
If they are not aware of it, I would say it largely depends on which job you are supposed to be doing. If it is one where the company is investing a lot of money into training you (e.g., a management trainee program, or they are ramping you up to work on their terribly complex main product), quitting after 8 months is of course still legal, but you should not be surprised if this company is not keen on working with you ever again.
If they specifically tell you that they are expecting you to stay for the long haul and you lie to them (or, only very slightly better, don't tell them otherwise), the ethical question is pretty much undisputable in my book. Mind, you are still legally safe to quit, but I would argue it is definitely not ethical to do so.

+1 too. Although @shane comment about pregnancy is correct, this case is not exactly the same. And abandoning jobs every time something better comes up, may sometimes backfire.

@shane Most countries that have a social welfare system also require that employers grant maternity leave to their employees, so that the employee can return to the job after a couple of months. It's a basic right that's built into most contracts - therefore a very different thing.

+1 for "If it is one where the company is investing a lot of money into training you". As an counter-example, if you're talking about a job at a fast-food outlet, staying 8 months might well mean that you're staying longer than the average, so your employer won't be too unhappy.

You could also try to find out if it's possible to do a PhD while working at the said company. This can be a much better option than going to a graduate school. Getting a proper salary while gaining work experience while completing a degree, it's pretty nice. The one downside is that you'll be probably doing a lot more than just the very specific stuff related to your degree. Well, it's not necessarily a bad thing..

Good idea, +1. Be advised, however, that doing a Ph.D. in parallel to a day job is extremely hard.

No.
You do work, you get paid. You owe your company what it says you owe in your contract. I very much assure you that your employer won't worry about going beyond their contractual obligations.

authors: Bob Jarvis - Слава Україні


text:
What is a "description of professional interests"?
I am about to finish a PhD in computer science and am on the job market. I'm mostly interested in small liberal arts schools, and have been working on application materials directed towards SLACs for the last month or so.
Almost every search committee wants a teaching statement, a research statement, and a cover letter and I've found plenty of resources for writing and honing these documents.
However, one position wants a teaching statement, a cover letter, and a description of professional interest. What is a description of professional interest? I cannot find any information as to what this document should contain, how long it should be, etc. And I haven't seen any other positions that ask for it. Is it just my research statement? Or is it an expanded version of the cover letter?

It sounds to me like a research statement, but I think you have to ask them for specifics.

They may well be interested in professional interests that go beyond conventional teaching and disciplinary research into other areas- involvement in research on teaching and learning, expository writing, public service, etc.

It's legitimate to contact the school and ask how they define that term, you know. There's nothing wrong with admitting that you haven't run into this particular phrase before, or that you're concerned that their definition might not be exactly the one you're familiar with.
"Better to ask and have them suspect you're a fool, than to assume and remove all doubt."

As a professor at a small liberal arts college (SLAC), I've come across this terminology. The point is that some people want to define scholarship more generally and don't want to attach the label "research" to it. One thing to remember is that at a large state school, the organizational structure goes Department -> Division -> College -> University, whereas at a liberal arts college it's more like Department -> Division -> University. We don't have a Dean of Science. We have department chairs and above them is the Dean of Faculty. We only have around 250 faculty total, spread across four divisions (science, social science, humanities, and arts). It's weird to use the word "research" to describe scholarly activities in the arts like directing the philharmonic or writing poetry.
So, in some internal documents, "scholarship" or "professional activities" are used instead of "research." We also count things as scholarship that might not be considered research at an R1 university, including:

Unfunded grant proposals
Scholarship of teaching and learning (e.g., papers in PRIMUS)
Peer-reviewed expository writing
Textbooks for undergraduate courses
Other peer-reviewed teaching materials, like labs you could use to teach calculus using Sage, if it was part of an NSF grant and had to be hosted on a webpage somewhere.

I've seen other liberal arts colleges that also count as scholarship:

Blog posts
Appearances in/on media
Activism that uses your professional expertise
Non-peer-reviewed expository writing
Public service
Serving in the AMS or MAA (these are mathematical professional organizations)
Serving as an external reviewer for a department, a tenure case, a PhD thesis, etc.

We stop short of counting those as scholarship. At Denison, peer reviewed research papers are still the number one way of assessing scholarship, and especially when it comes to getting tenure, these are indispensible. However, after tenure, your scholarly profile could grow in various directions as listed in the first set of bullet points, and it's entirely possible that you could still get top marks in scholarship for such activities.
If you're applying for a job and they want a "description of professional interests" then by all means write a research statement. But feel free to make it even more personal than you'd do elsewhere. You can include ideas for supervising undergraduate research. You can include organizations you do/hope to do statistical consulting for (I've done this). One candidate wrote that he hoped to investigate how good AI could get at writing poetry. We felt that would be a great project to work on with a student. If there's no other place to put "service" goals, you could also put them in such a statement, e.g., serving on editorial boards, founding a new journal, outreach to high schools to improve their data science offerings, etc. Feel free to interpret "description of professional interests" literally, and not limit your vision of the profession to just journal articles.

I ran into the same, I was assuming it was a research statement, but as this school is mainly focused on teaching I am not 100% confident.  I feel that it is the research statement but more focused on how it can support teaching as a whole......maybe.

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


text:
Is it possible to accrue vacation hours during graduate study as a research assistant (GRA)?
I currently work full-time for the Department of Defense.  I usually get three-weeks worth of paid time off every year.  This has been helpful because I like to go back home to visit family for about two weeks or take a long weekend and visit friends around the country.
I will be starting my master's degree program this coming fall and I have managed to obtain a part-time graduate research assistantship (GRA).  In reading the student handbook, I noticed that GRAs are required to work year-round and only allowed to observe certain holidays.  There is a provision that you can work more hours over several weeks in order to get some consecutive days off.
My question is, in the graduate student lifestyle, is my dream of maintaining 2-3 vacation weeks a year completely thrown out the window?  Will I be expected to stay on campus and work every single possible day?  Do GRAs grant vacation hours that you can accrue?
Thank you for your time.

You couldn't swing a TDY and thus remain employed by the DoD while pursuing the master's?

I could have but chose not to.  Please understand that this is just my personal situation and I choose to leave the DoD and study full-time in a major that is completely different than my previous work.

The answer is: it depends.
The biggest factor is where you're a graduate student. For instance, graduate students in Germany receive up to six weeks of vacation per year, while graduate students in the US may only get two weeks' vacation per year, if even that much.
However, I think that in the US, where policies are a bit less generous, the real deciding factor is your graduate advisor. I think that reasonable graduate advisors will permit students to take off a few weeks per year (especially since most of them might do so themselves!), provided that you make sure it doesn't conflict with any major deadlines or events in your group. For instance, asking to take substantial vacation time just before your first big conference is probably inadvisable. But time during the holidays or during a relatively "quiet" time in your group (whenever that happens to be) would probably be OK.

But would that be paid or unpaid leave?

Unless the grad student is filing timecards, it would normally be paid leave.

This matches my experience, and is also very field-dependent.  Many biology students are tightly tied to the lab, while the computer scientists in my area tended to take 3 weeks off for winter holidays ("nobody will be in lab anyway"), plus other vacation time at other parts of the year.

Congrats!  As far as I can remember as a Graduate Assistant we were not offered vacation time or personal time as part of the deal.  You can speak to someone in Human Resources or at your Graduate Student Union to learn more about the policies at your particular institution.  Keep in mind that many schools have fairly generous semester breaks so you might easily be able to squeeze 3 weeks in between December and January.  However, the answer will be specific to your particular institutions policies.


text:
Affiliation during unpaid leave?
If I take an unpaid leave from my institute to work for another institution, is it ok to put my original institution as a second affiliation on publications produced during the leave? That is regardless of the research funding source.

If you are "on leave," meaning that you still have an appointment at your primary institution that you can expect to return to, then yes, you may use both affiliations.  Sometimes it is explicitly noted that you are on leave from this appointment, but that depends on journal policies.

It would be great if someone can provide an example from a reputable journal.


text:
A quote that one has to be rich to engage in science?
I remember reading an article (in popular magazine I think) that attributed to de Tocqueville a quote along the lines of:

To engage in science, one has to own a farm.

meaning that a person has to be financially secure in order to undertake (independent) successful scientific endeavours in a free time – and science itself doesn’t really pay very well. Unfortunately, I can’t find original article nor google the quote with conjunction to de Tocqueville.
Can anyone help in identifying the original phrasing and source of the quote? It’s also completely possible that my memory does not serve me well and it might have been coined by some other person (or maybe you know similar quotes?).

Also please note that I am looking only for a quote and do not want to discuss the financial aspects of academia.

Doesn't Nassim Nicholas Taleb say something like that?

I giggle that this question contains a bounty. It's like a self referential confirmation of the premise. Super meta :)

OK, I'm not really sure if the following information warrants an answer or should be added as an edit to a question, but here it goes:
After extensive googling I think I found the original quote. It was given in a Polish newspaper, by a Polish philosopher Marcin Król - and my memory did not save me very well, as the exact quote did not come from de Tocqueville itself, but from the wife of Marcin Król :). The passage, loosely translated from Polish to English, reads as follows:

University [...] does not teach a given profession. It teaches to think. However, [...] in order to achieve that, it needs able lecturers who do not pursue money, but gracefully share knowledge and intelligence. Tocqueville knew that to think one has to have abilities, free time and money. My wife used the following wise words to express the same idea: to be a good humanist, one has to own a folwark.

So, while - according to the original author of the article de Tocqueville did not give the original quote on having a farm, he did indeed stress the need to have money and time. I'm not sure though, if Marcin Król's summary of de Tocqueville thought was very accurate and did not serve mostly as rhetorical instrument. Consider, for example, this passage from de Tocqueville:

If the democratic principle does not, on the one hand, induce men to cultivate science for its own sake, on the other it enormously increases the number of those who do cultivate it. Nor is it credible that among so great a multitude a speculative genius should not from time to time arise inflamed by the love of truth alone. Such a one, we may be sure, would dive into the deepest mysteries of nature, whatever the spirit of his country and his age. He requires no assistance in his course; it is enough that he is not checked in it. All that I mean to say is this: permanent inequality of conditions leads men to confine themselves to the arrogant and sterile research for abstract truths, while the social condition and the institutions of democracy prepare them to seek the immediate and useful practical results of the sciences

In my opinion it states the opposite: democracy is a good ground for thinkers, who - in place of great overreaching theories - aspire to discover immediately useful truths. De Tocqueville goes even as far as to say in the title of one of chapters of his book that "The Example Of The Americans Does Not Prove That A Democratic People Can Have No Aptitude And No Taste For Science, Literature, Or Art". On the other hand, there are passages that connect wealth with intellectual endeavours:

The wealthy will not be so closely linked to one another as the members of the former aristocratic class of society; their inclinations will be different, and they will scarcely ever enjoy leisure as secure or complete; but they will be far more numerous than those who belonged to that class of society could ever be. These persons will not be strictly confined to the cares of practical life, and they will still be able, though in different degrees, to indulge in the pursuits and pleasures of the intellect

I must say I feel a little embarassed, as I didn't remember the quote well and it came from rather obscure source. I have already upvoted this answer, as pointing in the good direction.

I am not sure the quote actually exists. In Democracy in America, de Tocqueville posits a scenario where the absence of the wealthy would stifle science:

It is possible to conceive a people not subdivided into any castes or scale of ranks, among whom the law, recognizing no privileges, should divide inherited property into equal shares, but which at the same time should be without knowledge and without freedom. Nor is this an empty hypothesis: a despot may find that it is his interest to render his subjects equal and to leave them ignorant, in order more easily to keep them slaves. Not only would a democratic people of this kind show neither aptitude nor taste for science, literature, or art, but it would probably never arrive at the possession of them. The law of descent would of itself provide for the destruction of large fortunes at each succeeding generation, and no new fortunes would be acquired. The poor man, without either knowledge or freedom, would not so much as conceive the idea of raising himself to wealth; and the rich man would allow himself to be degraded to poverty, without a notion of self-defense. Between these two members of the community complete and invincible equality would soon be established. No one would then have time or taste to devote himself to the pursuits or pleasures of the intellect, but all men would remain paralyzed in a state of common ignorance and equal servitude.

(Source: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/DETOC/ch1_09.htm)
However, he immediately goes on to dismiss this argument. There might be some more concrete examples regarding farms/farmers in the book, so you can try to take a look, but it does not seem too likely (or, as often happens, the popular magazine took the quote out of context).


text:
Is asking an editor for soft copy of his book acceptable?
A colleague of mine has recently edited a book whose subject I find very interesting (I know several of the authors personally as well). Unfortunately, like most things published in academia, the copies available from the publisher are quite expensive (and I would have to pay with my own personal money). Is it OK to message him and ask for a soft copy?
I'm not sure as to what is the usual publishers' practice in that case. Would I decrease my colleague's revenue if I don't buy and thus asking for a copy would be considered rude? Or maybe by the time of publication the editor has usually already received her remuneration?

They will depend on the agreement they have with the publisher. My typical tactic to broach the topic tactfully is to ask which outlet gives then the biggest kickback. If they've already gotten all they'll ever get, they'll tend to go ahead and offer a digital copy.

The book is no more than "a collection of papers by different authors"? What kind of book is that? How can I sell one?

@Mark I'd imagine it's along these lines: in effect, something like a special issue of a journal, but published in book form.

@DSVA Actually, I'm changing affiliation now and while the book would fall under the ambit of my previous institution's research, it won't in the case of new one.

@guifa Unfortunately, I'm not a native speaker and I'm not sure if I understand your second sentence correctly. Do you suggest to ask the editor (politely and in an indirect way) about details of the deal with publisher?

@Mark Maybe in other fields it's not common, but in the humanities such books are very common.  Depending on the way the papers connect, each one may be called an article or a chapter.  The editor works with each author and normally contributes a paper themself, in addition to writing an introduction that draws the connections between them.

@Mark In the field of electrical engineering, the IEEE published many books of that type. Of course, they used to sell more when online access didn't exist, but I still go to the library from time to time to take one because there where papers written explicitly for those books which I can't retrieve online.

as everything published in academia — Most things, perhaps, but definitely not everything.

Asking directly for a free copy, unless you have a close friendship or working relationship with the editor, will sound rude.  (And if you do have such a close friendship, there's a strong chance you purchased a copy, or you may have even been gifted it.)
What I have done is an extension of a model I use for friends who publish music or books.  I never expect to get anything free or at a discount, as supporting their work is important to me, and most of the time each work sold has direct implications on the royalties, etc, that they receive.  So instead, I ask them which way of purchasing (directly from them, digital download from a given store, physical copy from a retailer, etc) gets them the most, that way I can also recommend the same method to friends who may want to purchase it.
In academia, I apply the same model, but there's one (not so) small difference: oftentimes, the author/editor has already received all or virtually all that they will get from the book publication, so they don't care if anyone gets a free copy.  When I ask, even for books I intend to purchase because they are worthwhile to have in my personal physical collection, I have occasionally been offered a digital copy of the book at no cost.
In reality, this isn't too different than with articles — many of us will happily send out a copy of our articles to someone on request because rarely (never) does anyone make money each time an article is paid for.  That and citations.
But, if you go this route, note that you should be fully prepared to actually pay if they offer to personally sell you a copy.  It would be at least as rude to reject such an offer after you've effectively said you wanted a copy and were willing to pay $x, and when offered it less than $x, you backed out for cost.

I think this answer most correctly gauges the realities of these situations...

Yes, it's rude. Your colleague worked for months, and possibly years, on editing his book. The amount of money you are trying to save by not purchasing the book is likely on the order of 1-10 times your hourly wage. See the disproportion here? The point is that your colleague has much more invested emotionally in the book than you do in the money the book costs. He is likely to find your request rude and to be offended by it, not because of the lost royalties from the publisher, but because it would signal to him (correctly, as far as I can tell) that you don't appreciate the large effort he made to create something that would be of value to others.
In academia people don't write or edit books to make money (as discussed on academia.se occasionally, that would be one of the lousiest money-making strategies ever devised), but because they feel it's important and find meaning and satisfaction in it. Much of the satisfaction comes from getting the very modest amount of positive feedback the author gets from the rest of the world, which comes primarily in the form of sales figures and the occasional meager royalty check. Your request would be undermining both of those sources of positive feedback. So again, it's rude, and in my opinion inadvisable.
Edit: if the book is really expensive (e.g., 200+ euros, which is a price I haven't seen myself recently but some people say is common), and you would be paying for it out of your own pocket and not from research funds, then asking for a digital copy seems to me a bit more reasonable and less inappropriate.

Thank you for your answer. The general feedback seems to be not to ask for a copy - therefore I won't. However, I do not wholly agree with arguments. Firstly, claims as for my hourly wage are rather unsubstantiated; secondly - my idea of asking about a copy (that I heard once from a professor who said he does that because of publisher's prices) was exactly out of my interest in his work (feeling of its importance). Your answer contributed however to my understanding, that asking might be received as impolite toward the author - something remote from my intentions.

@lukeg the hourly wage thing was only an estimate and certainly not a "claim", sorry if it wasn't accurate. And it was also clear that you are interested in the colleague's work, but the point is that from the colleague's point of view this kind of expression of interest, while potentially somewhat flattering, is much less meaningful than someone actually paying money to buy their book - words are cheap, as they say.

@lukeg Why don't you simply ask your university library to buy a copy (maybe your colleague has already donated one...)? Or buy it with your research funds instead of your own pocket? If you need the book for your work, there should be no issue.

@MassimoOrtolano Unfortunately, the research I'll be undertaking in my new institution is not connected with the content of the book, so the funds would have to be payed from my own pocket.

@lukeg But, really, check with the library: many libraries accept suggestions for books to buy, independently from the field. Don't underestimate the power of libraries and librarians ;-)

@lukeg or also consider ILL.  As a graduate student (and maybe once or thrice thereafter), I requested a handful of books via ILL and scanned  because my library didn't have, and the book was difficult or impossible to purchase due to price, unavailability, etc.


text:
How to get started with PhD dissertation? (Management & Humanities)
I got accepted to a university as PhD Candidate. My research proposal is sent & accepted, and I found a supervisor.
Though we plan to meet at least 1 time/month, I feel a bit confused about the way I should get started with my research. Of course, I plan to complete the literature review I started when I wrote my research proposal before engaging with fieldwork, and then with data analysis and dissertation writing. However, how do concretely those different steps go on? I mean :

When do I know I am over with the literature review and conceptual framework? I feel like I always find more papers and books to read every time I read a new paper. Continuing this way may mean always postponing fieldwork, which I know is not a good way to go...
When should I start writing some serious stuff concerning that literature review/conceptual framework? Before or after engaging with fieldwork?
When should I contemplate writing down a first contribution (i.e. scientific communication for a conference or article)? I feel discussing my theoretical perspectives with other PhD candidates/researchers may be fruitful to confirm/modify the way I tackle my topic. However, I don't know if working on a theoretical paper before engaging with fieldwork is relevant as it may change through time ...

Have you discussed this with your advisor?

We discussed that point quickly, but we did not go to the details. I'd be please to know how other PhD. candidates work with their supervisors in order to propose a way of working with him on september.

Start writing now, every day. Put down any ideas you have.  Don't try to plan the whole project from the start. Don't wait to write until after the literature review, or after the fieldwork. Your daily writing will move the work along even though only a small part of it may end up in the finished dissertation.
Edit in response to comments.
Writing "even before you have anything to write about" is valuable because it can help you sharpen the particular questions you want to ask/research. You can speculate about what you expect to find (but be honest when you finally see the data). If you start writing every day  you can develop a writing addiction that will serve you well as the dissertation deadline nears.
You can rough out a version of the conceptual framework now and  refine it as you see more literature, and as your fieldwork plans develop. Don't think of the project as a sequence of distinct stages, even if the final written dissertation has that structure.
This is the short form of what my wife Joan Bolker recommends in her book
Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day.
(This answer may be flagged or deleted as the blatant product promotion it is. I hope not, since many students have profited from this advice. I haven't included a link to the title so you have to work a bit if you want to get the book. That may make a moderator hesitate before deleting.)

I downvoted, though only partly due to the product promotion. I don't think the advice of "write every day" is particularly helpful in this case, when it seems the OP hasn't done any research they can write about yet.

I do not think this meets the bar for deletion as "spam," since you do disclose your affiliation and do give substantive advice in the first paragraph. However, the advice in your first paragraph is so generic that your post could be considered "very low quality" and deleted for that reason. I will pend a decision on that; in the mean time, I encourage you to expand your answer to give more concrete advice that specifically addresses OP's question.

@cag51 Edited thanks.

Thanks for your advice! Actually, I do write down every idea I have. I try to structure the literature review chapter progressively. Let's continue this way, then :-).


text:
How to improve the language of my master thesis by myself?
I have written my thesis on my own (with my limited English skills) and I gave it to my supervisor to check it. He said the work is fine but the writing is a bit bad and I need to proofread it by myself. I know that my English level is just below the normal and needs time to improve. However, I have limited time (a couple of weeks), so my question is how to improve my English writing efficiently during this period that will lead to an improvement of my thesis?
I have heard that there are some phrases and academic vocabulary list that are given by Cambridge University or other universities for use and are not regarded as plagiarism, does anyone know them?

Does you university have a writing center (e.g. Texas Tech's center)? They will often meet with graduate students to help them with writing.

unfortunately, we don't have such things. they have only some software for plagiarism.thanks for the link

Unfortunately, your best option may be to pay someone to work with you on edits. A local search may turn up possibilities. Other than that, another student might be willing to help you (maybe for the cost of dinner).

Are you thinking about the Manchester Phrasebank? http://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk

Did he say proofread it "by [your]self" or did he mean, "proofread this before I see it again"?

I don't think your question is really about proof reading (therefore I've edited the title), but here are some tips: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/46586/how-can-i-proof-read-my-own-work-more-effectively

@henning I'm not sure what was wrong with "proofreading"? "Languag-edit" isn't idiomatic in my dialect - is that a common phrasing in other areas?

How long is your master's thesis? Depending on how long it is, I might be able to look it over for you (no cost or anything; as long as you can put it in a spot where I can access it from a chat room or something, i.e., no email contact necessary). I completely understand if you can't do that, just thought I'd mention I'd be willing to help a bit. (I am a native english speaker, but I am not a professional proofreader in any capacity, and I have not written any technical papers that have been published, though one is submitted. I am also a highschool student.)

@henning I don't understand the meaning behind your rephrased title, and it's not an expression I've heard in any English dialect I've been exposed to.

heather, thanks for the help. Azor, he meant by proofreading it by myself

@Yaakov I would suggest asking him point-blank whether he truly meant for you to proofread it on your own. I'm sure he's aware you aren't a native speaker, and I think it's more likely he just wanted you to get some help so he can tackle the scientific issues, and not the language ones. If I'm wrong, and he does want you to do it alone, I'd go with Ian's answer.

The difference is that "proof reading" means checking for errors (grammatical errors, typos, possibly factual errors, etc.) and "editing" also includes suggesting stylistic changes (reordering sentences, suggesting different word choices, etc.). From the OP's comment, if the advisor is looking for changes such as "illustrated by" instead of "shown by", that calls for a full editor, not just a proof reader!

Strunk & White to the rescue!

Are you writing it in a country where English is the first language or are you "just" enrolled in an English language program? The quality requirements might be a bit different.

I am in German country and the program is in English. heather,how can I contact you?

Graduate students do get proofreaders or copy-editors now and then. Don't be afraid to get a professional if the language seems like a hurdle you're required to overcome.

I suggest you seriously consider contracting the services of a native English speaker who's also either an academic or has some professional writing or editing experience (literary or academic). You don't write degree theses many times in your life - typically once for your Master's, then again for your Ph.D.; so it's worth it, in my opinion, to make this investment. Not only will this make your thesis more pleasent to follow, it may also improve the clarity for your official academic readers / exam committee; and the corrections you receive will serve you well in your future academic authorship.
If you had more time on your hands, I'd suggest working on improving your English writing skills; as @RichardErickson notes, many universities offer such services to graduate courses, sometimes as proper semesterial courses, sometimes on a less formal basis. There are also resources like Strunk & White's Elements of Style booklet which, if taken to heart and applied to your thesis, will also be very helpful.
Finally - and perhaps most importantly - I would also consider asking colleagues of yours to have a look at your thesis draft, to make sure they can figure out the contents more than to give you feedback about your English.

@Yaakov, this is a great answer, which I think is the most practical for your situation. Here's another tip: although you cannot (by your own testimony) do the proofreading yourself, you can (and I highly recommend it) search for published papers as close to your research subject as possible, and try to find words and expressions that occur across papers, and use them. For example, in planetary science the word 'constrain' with the meaning of 'determine' (e.g. "in order to constrain a planet's temperature...") is very commonly used. Using common words and expressions will improve your writing.

I am going for it but I am not sure about going to contract the services of a native English speaker who will edit my thesis which will make me feel that is not my work.

@Yaakov: They will not submit anything in your stead. They'll make suggestion (either using "track changes", or with a physical red pen, or whatever) and then you submit what text you have finalized.

My partner used to be an administrator at a laboratory in an English University.  She became friends with a number of the students (mostly foriegn), and proof read their PhD theses for them.  In fact, I would say it would be unusual to have a PhD thesis that has not been proof-read by somebody else - paying a native-speaker to act as editor is just an extension of that.

My best tip for proof reading your own work is to have your computer read it back to you. We often notice how things sound weird when they are spoken compared to when they are written.
Microsoft word includes text-to-speech as part of the Word. I use it all the time. Stand alone text-to-speech software is available if you use something else for your writing.

thanks for the tip. according to my advisor, he wants a quality written thesis. for example when we use the phrase following: the figure above shows, we can rewrite it in another way such as: as illustrated in the figure ....I want to improve it so it is better than now where it looks very simple

Well, in that case your supervisor has different opinions on writing :). I'm generally of the opionion that things should be written as simply and transparently as possible. When I read things that have too much flowery language, I generally think "here is someone trying to make themselves sound more clever" and generally struggle to stop myself from adding "than they actually are".  "illustrated" and "shows" are two different things though. An illustration of something is a visual explanation, possibly by example. To show something is generally to provide the evidence for a statement.

These sorts of subtleties are not something you can really pick up in a short period of time, but come with slowly and with experience, even to most native English speakers (i'm assuming from your post you are not a native speaker, but I guess you don't actually say that).
Thus, until you are more confident, it is better to get it clear and correct rather than try to be more beautiful, but make subtle mistakes.

I'm not convinced that this would be effective - someone with limited English skills may not be able to hear problems in spoken English.

Use also a paper dictionnary. It is a good way to improve your English

@NotThatGuy, no, thats entirely possible. But as I said in my comment above, there is a very limited amount you can do in 2 weeks.

@IanSudbery Many technical writers should periodically re-read the “Omit needless words” chapter from Strunk’s The Elements of Style and follow its suggestions in their writing. Academic research would benefit greatly.

@BasileStarynkevitch Actually, I think that could well be actively harmful avice. If you are not sufficiently familiar with the subtle differences between the possible meanings of the words in a given context, you may easily end up picking the wrong ones. Further, if you are not familiar with which words are in common use, you may end up writing something that sounds completely archaic (I have seen this happen several times).

"if you use something else for your writing" I would hope OP uses LaTeX. The world is already full of badly formatted Word theses.

You seem to have a mistaken view of what constitutes plagiarism. The choice of an individual word or trite phrase, such as "as demonstrated in the figure," or "a careful analysis shows that" cannot be plagiarism. The reason for this is because such behavior does not meet the primary criterion of plagiarism, which is the misappropriation of someone else's intellectual work without credit. Even using someone else's term for something is not plagiarism. (For example, it is not plagiarism to use a word like anomie or superego just because someone else came up with it!)  Similarly, grammar checkers such as Grammarly or a built-in word processor feature only offer suggestions for how to fix errors in your writing. Accepting their suggestions is no more plagiarism than working with a professional proofreader.
However, another suggestion for how to handle the proofreading would be to find someone who is a better writer and speaker of English than you are to help you with the proofreading, as we often tend to be too close to the writing, particularly if it's something that we are in the middle of working on intensely. Somebody else's judgment will help far more than trying to do it all yourself.

My name is Headcrab, and I am an alcoho... and I also had to write some scientific papers in English, which is not my mother tongue. There are two tricks that I learned in the process:

Keep some papers of other authors at hand. Copycat their style (not the content). Want to write something but not sure how to phrase it? Find something structurally similar in those papers and re-use.
If in doubt about a particular sentence/idiom/phrase composition - simply google it. The phrase may come out in the search results exactly as you typed (use it, then), slightly different (modify accordingly, then), or it may not be there at all (think of some other phrase, then).
Don't expect the result to be that good, just good enough to be acceptable. If you want it to be that good, there's no other way but to employ a native speaker. If you want it to be really good, that native speaker would also have to be a professional proofreader.

Those are my three suggestions of the Spanish Inquisition. A word about "improving your English writing efficiently during a two weeks period" - you can't. Natural language skills don't get sufficiently improved on such short time scale.
And about the advice to "read it aloud to someone/make someone read it aloud to you". For a native speaker, who has a strong "gut feeling" of the language, that may be an excellent way to catch some mistakes they would have otherwise overlooked. For us non-native speakers, I'm afraid it's not going to work, because we are usually better at reading than at listening comprehension. I tried that a couple of times - while reading aloud, it seems my brain mostly struggled with "how do I pronounce this..." rather than with "what may be wrong with this grammatically..." (needless to say, the nuances of pronunciation are irrelevant when it comes to writing). Tried recording what I read and listening to it, too, but then I was too busy cringing at my own accent, and everything in the text sounded wrong. A computerized reader, or a friend who also doesn't speak that good English wouldn't be much better in that regard. (And I haven't tried, but I suspect that if you make a native speaker read your paper to you, everything would sound right.)

To improve your writing in general and your copy in particular you can:

Search for a book like Writing "your discipline here" for tips and fixed expressions. For example, Science Research Writing for Non-Native Speakers or the freely available 2nd edition of A Primer of Mathematical Writing (chapters 1, 3, 4 can be applied to almost any scientific text).
Use LanguageTool for orthography, grammar and style; it is FOSS and works in LibreOffice and TeXstudio or as a separate application. (I have never used Grammarly, but I think these 2 are similar.)
Check out Oxford Advanced Learner's for synonyms and collocations: e.g. hence.

If you are interested in technical proofreading and not in the content verification you can:

Make the process iterative, do not proofread all at once: review a chapter or two, have a break to do something different.
Read backwards.
Read it aloud. If you get stuck, then this fragment may be worth rewriting.
Read it on another medium: paper instead of screen, phone instead of PC, etc.

(These 3 tricks make your brain uncomfortable and it cannot skip familiar text chunks.)

In addition to the tools mentioned here and in other answers, one can sort the words in the text and have the number of usages shown next to them. First, one will spot inconsistent spellings and hyphenations, second, one can detect overusage of a word.

I suggest to start with the basics:

Use a spell checker. They are normally included in writing platforms.
To correct grammatical mistakes, I suggest the use of platforms like
Grammarly.
Search for synonyms: Thesaurus
To enrich your writing, lists of academic phrases are also a useful resource and can be easily found with a Google search. For instance: http://www.kfs.edu.eg/com/pdf/2082015294739.pdf

isn't it that Grammarly considered as Plagiarim?

As far as I know, it doesn't. I cannot think of why it should.

You should mention them in your acknowledgements, including how you used them.  That way, it certainly isn't plagiarism.

I just put the classic poem that starts ”Eye halve a spelling chequer...” and grammerly missed most of the errors ... So I won’t be relying on it ...

I would add, use grammar checkers with a grain of salt.  If you're not sure whether or not the grammar checker is right, it probably isn't.  Check out the classic Strunk and White's "The Elements of Style" for some mighty useful tips on writing pretty much anything.  Your university or local library will certainly have a copy.

I agree on using grammar checkers with a grain of salt. However, I do find them useful to spot certain mistakes and I think they are a fair tool for autonomous proof-reading.

@gerrit aeismail's answer explains very well why the use of these tools is not considered plagiarism. I would not mention them in the acknowledgments in the same way I would not mention the use of a dictionary or the assistance of a professional proof-writing service.

@fa__ I did not mean to imply that mentioning those resources is a necessary requirement to avoid committing plagiarism, and I agree that it is not required for that. However, I do think it's fair to acknowledge otherwise uncredited help in a thesis acknowledgements, which tends to be a lengthy essay anyway so there's plenty of space. Crediting a spell checker may be exaggerated, but an online resource on good writing will appreciate the acknowledgements, in particular if it relies on volunteers.

+1 for I was going to suggest Grammarly too. I use it also. It may not be the panacea, but it is an excellent tool nevertheless. It tells me when I have overused a word, or if a possible usage is wrong and with that starts the improvement process of my document.

In one of your comments to another answer, you mention referencing an image, and wanting alternate wording to mean the same thing (look at this chart - here's what it is showing you...)

thanks for the tip. according to my advisor, he wants a quality
  written thesis. for example when we use the phrase following: the
  figure above shows, we can rewrite it in another way such as: as
  illustrated in the figure ....I want to improve it so it is better
  than now where it looks very simple

I have that same problem and I'm a native English speaker, well read, kinda educated, and working on a batchelors in a technical field.  Fortunately, I have the English department down the hall from my cubicle so editing help is close at hand...
As Headcrab suggests in his/her/its answer reading other papers that do the same thing - present charts or tables or diagrams - and pick out 4 or 5 ways of phrasing "hey, look at this thing, here's what it is showing..." and simply randomly pick between them each time you need to reference an image, etc.
What I would really recommend if allowed is to pay some poor English major who has taken Technical Writing and ask them to go over it with you - fix the paper, get some help and learning for the next version.