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What to do if my university does not offer any advanced math courses?
I am enrolled in a university close to my home in a bachelor of electrical engineering and a bachelor of data science. The university I am attending does not offer a lot of math courses. The only math courses they offer are first year calculus, discrete math, vector calculus, differential equations, linear algebra, abstract algebra, real and complex analysis. I am intending to do all these math courses as electives for my bachelor of data science (they are not core courses). My university does not offer any courses such as topology, analytic number theory, differential geometry, measure theory and other advanced math courses which undergraduate students in other universities have access to.
The only option I can think of is to transfer to a university where they offer the math courses I need but that requires me to travel about 6 hours each day (3 hours each way). Also, moving out is not an option since accommodation is expensive and I can not afford it. So that only leaves me with studying in my current university.
What options do I have to learn and do more advanced math courses?
I may be going to graduate school in math and I do not think that the math courses my university offers is suitable for graduate level math since other students have done a lot of advanced courses not available to me. What can I do to ensure
that I am a good candidate despite the fact that my institution does not offer any advanced math courses? Would self studying suffice? How can I then convince the graduate admission committee that I am ready for graduate level math courses?
I live in Australia and I like to do my graduate school in USA.

Are you saying that the university does not offer the maths courses to support the courses ( Elect. Eng & Data Sci.) that you chose? Or you want your local uni to provide another maths course to support a course which it does not offer but you want to choose?

@SolarMike I listed the math courses my university offers and I like to do more advanced courses that my university does not offer. If my question is still not clear, let me know.

I thought my question was clear... Do you want your local uni to provide another maths course to support a course which it does not offer but you want to choose?

You are in Australia, you want to go to grad school in the USA, but you can't afford to travel or live away from home? Something doesn't add up there … (bad math pun intentional).

Are you sure those advanced courses are really necessary to be a good candidate for graduate school? They seem like classes that only math majors would be likely to take, not electrical engineering and/or data science majors.

@SolarMike I think you’re confusing “course” meaning a single class (which is what OP means) with “course” meaning a degree program (or what Americans would call a “major”). As I understand it, OP wants to take advanced elective math classes (in addition to, not instead of, the classes required for his degree programs) to prepare for graduate school in math, but OP’s university doesn’t offer his desired classes.

@alephzero I don’t understand your confusion. No one in their right mind pays to go to grad school in math in the US.

@JeffE I understood what you took so many words to explain... And check the detail the OP may not be "he"...

It is very unlikely that your university will start giving full-fledged advanced math courses at one person's request. However, there are multiple things you could try instead. I suggest discussing these with your program supervisor. (or whoever you can best talk to about your course program)
Take a single course at another university
It might be possible to follow a course at another university without enrolling there. Advanced mathematics courses tend to be highly specialized, so it is not uncommon that a single university is unable to provide a diverse program of advanced math courses. For this reason, some universities have programs to 'share' their advanced math courses. (see e.g. the Mastermath program in the Netherlands)
It is possible that your university does not have such arrangements with other universities, but you may be able to make arrangements for yourself.
Guided self-study
While self-study is an option, feedback from a teacher is be very useful when learning. You could ask a faculty member at your university whether they would be willing to have a short weekly meeting where you can ask them questions and they look at your progress. An additional advantage of this is that while you will not have this 'course' listed on your diploma, you can mention it during applications, as there is someone who can 'verify' that you have learned this topic.
There may be no faculty at your university that can or is willing to help you here, but they probably know someone at another university who would. It never hurts to ask around.
Research project
Since you mention you want to do research, consider approaching someone to do an undergraduate research project. This may not work out due to a lack of pre-knowledge, but as there is usually an expectation that some self-study is required, you might be able to find a project that fits.

Sometimes your second option is called "Independent Study". It might be possible to join with another student or two to set up a "Seminar" under a professor's guidance if the subject was one of their interests.

Does your university offer any graduate courses in advanced mathematics? If you're an advanced undergraduate, you should be able to sit in (audit) a course at the very least.

Since you say that transferring (which sadly would be by far the best option, see the note at the bottom) is not feasible, the next best solution might be to just will those courses into existence. From your question I get that you haven't done the available courses yet, so start doing those as soon as possible. Most of them are soft prerequisites for the more advanced courses anyway. Try to excel in those courses, in order to get noticed as a bright and interested student. (I assume that you are good enough to do so, otherwise going to grad-school will be a bad idea.)
Then, once you are finished with some of those courses, talk to the professor and tell them what you told us. Make sure that the focus is on you being interested in learning about things, not in padding your transcript (which is just the means to study more math in graduate school). Teaching the same old basic level math year in and year out to students only interested in their grades can be quite boring, so at least some should jump at the chance to break the monotony.
From there on, I see several different options you might discuss, in rough order of desireabilty:

The course you want is actually created, at least as a one-off. This is more likely if you find a few other people which are interested as well, but don't be disappointed if it doesn't happen, as preparing and holding a new course takes quite a bit of time which simply no professor might have.
You do the advanced topics as a "reading course". This is not a common format, but the basic idea is that the professor assigns you a textbook to read and you periodically meet up to discuss your understanding and any problems you might have had. Then in the end you do an oral exam to determine a grade. I'm not sure about Australia but at least here in Germany this can count as equivalent to a regular course and is sometimes done in this exact situation if there aren't many interested students and the prof has not enough time.
The prof might just assist you in studying the topics on you own, by giving you some hints and opportunities to periodically discuss things together. Sadly you will not have formally passed a course, but this might be the only solution in the not completely unlikely case that bureaucracy simply doesn't allow for a certain course to exists in your university.

In any case, an important goal will be to get a good personal letter of recommendation. This won't get you to your top choice of place but could at least open up some possibilities at places where the professor is known. So to maximise your chances, before you choose a professor to ask, have a look at their CV. Find out under whom they did their PhD and with whom they have collaborated in recent years. If those people are still actively involved in some graduate program, your prof might be able to send you there even with holes in your transcript. Just never tell him that this is the reason you chose him...
Footnote:
But all this being said, the harsh truth is, if you truly want to have a career in math, try to transfer to a university with a proper maths program as soon as you can. You'll be able to learn much more at a much faster pace by having more proper courses and by simply having other math students around you.
Also while it might be a prejudice, math courses from some applied university without a proper maths program are generally seen as second rate and lacking in depth. So given the choice between a student who passed introductory math courses for engineers with perfect grades and a student who only got mediocre grades in identically named courses at a place renowned for its math program, many will choose the latter. In the same way, your professors generally won't be the best mathematicians, both in terms of ability as well as in terms of connections, otherwise they would teach at some "better" place.
So I'd suggest to think about transferring again. There might be a scholarship program that you could get into, which would pay for accommodation or a way to condense your physical presence at the other university only to certain days in order to make traveling more feasible. Even if you decide to stay at your university for now, keep looking for opportunities.

I will put in a minority view that complements the answer suggesting doing a guided study etc.
Your list was "first year calculus, discrete math, vector calculus, differential equations, linear algebra, abstract algebra, real and complex analysis."  It is true that for an elite PhD program in the United States (which you mentioned as your goal), that would not be enough.
On the other hand, very few people get into such programs at all (by the numbers).   There are plenty of smaller regional universities which have PhD programs that might be eager for "the best maths student in a generation at our college" (if that is you) to apply, and get a full assistantship.  Some (not all) of the domestic students getting into these programs may not have significantly more theoretical preparation than these courses (though they may have more math total).
Nowadays there are more and more ambitious people coming from other than the "usual suspects" who are pursuing research careers (granted, also pursuing working in finance or risk analytics) so if this is your goal, it is plausible to do so without being at a "top-10" place (as might not have been the case 30-40 years ago).
So I wouldn't necessarily say you need to transfer.   Abstract algebra and real analysis will show you can do proofs.  Crush the math subject test GRE (which basically has the topics you mention), do as many of the other things mentioned as possible - particularly an undergraduate research experience or two.  Then work hard to find a program that will be interested in you and want to invest in you succeeding.

Final note: In the US there are also many (even) smaller regional universities which have master's (but not PhD) programs that would offer a lot of the types of topics you are mentioning.  Some of these also have assistantships.  I don't know whether that would be the case in Oz, though, nor whether the ones I'm thinking of typically have overseas applicants.  That is a possible route as well, though not one I'm as familiar with people eventually going to a PhD using (I do know of some very successful examples of this).


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Doing second master's degree on same subject vs applying for PhD without supervisor's letter of recommendation
I have finished my master's in mathematics from an UK university with a first class distinction. I have always wanted to do a PhD in mathematics. But my supervisor is saying that the recommendation letter that he is going to write may not be the most positive one. I feel devastated, since he didn't mention any reason throughout the supervision. Now, to continue my study in mathematics, I have two options in my hand
(i) To apply for PhD without supervisor's letter of recommendation preferably from usa.
(ii) To do a second master's degree, I prefer from Germany.
I was wondering, what are the chances for me to get a PhD in a decent university, and what are the chances of being accepted for a second master's degree from Germany in a good university. I feel so stuck right now, it will be great if you can help me with this!
Edit: From a second masters degree I am expecting to do a serious research on my topic so that I can get a strong lor from my supervisor for phd

What would a second masters give you?

From second masters I am expecting to research extensively on my favorite topic, and get strong letter of recommendation from the supervisor also so I can apply for phd programme

I think you are simply asking the wrong the question ...

What should be my question then?

There are a lot of ways to do research other than in a second masters; in a doctoral program, for example. I think the only thing you might gain is a better letter of recommendation. And that isn't guaranteed.
Of course "not the most positive" is open to interpretation, though you know the person better than we do.
My suggestion would be to apply to some doctoral programs along with  applications to second masters programs simultaneously and see what you get. The effort would be approximately the same, except for the number of applications. Use the masters applications as a backup in case none of the doctoral ones work out.
But also apply to a fairly broad spectrum of doctoral programs, not just the top schools in the field. This will increase your chances of success. And your other accomplishments may weigh against a letter that isn't glowing in all details.
I hope the old advisor isn't trying to sabotage your career. That would be cause for complaint. Maybe you can talk them into a better position. Maybe you can get one of their colleagues to speak on your behalf. Maybe you can get much better letters from other faculty.
Don't give up too easily.

Thank you so much for helping me. I was wondering, what are the chances for me to get phds into medium universities, that is not the best ones in the field without giving my supervisors letter of recommendation

Also, will I be at disadvantages position while applying for the second masters degree?

I don't know how Germany would treat it, but I think that it would be at least somewhat of a disadvantage anywhere. Especially where funding is supplied and the university wants to spread it widely. Generally you want good letters. Who they are from may be less important than that, though questions might be raised without one from your advisor. Maybe especially in Germany, but you'd need advice from someone with specific knowledge of admissions there.

Thank you so much for your reply. I am thinking about applying for second master's degree in Germany, and phd at usa. I believe, in my second masters degree letter from my supervisor may not be as important as in the application of phd. Though, I was wondering in general while applying for second kasters degree would I be atba disadvantageous position

I'd guess that in the US a doctorate would be possible, but the admissions process is broad based. Letters predicting success are relatively important. But they probably don't need to be from your supervisor.

Yes it's  not written anywhere, but I thought getting a funded doctorate in US without letter of recommendation from the supervisor would be impossible, that's why the question. Do you know anyone who went through similar situation as mine

Almost all doctoral study in US is funded. Usually with a TA position. These almost always come with tuition forgiveness as well. The big problem will be getting accepted (and perhaps getting a visa). There are very few funded positions with no "work" requirements. More in some fields but not so much in math.

Thank you so much. Just one last question, do you know anyone who got accepted into Phd without any letter of recommendation from supervisor of masters thesis?

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What is the purpose of international editions of books sometimes omitting some problems, footnotes, or other content?
I've noticed that - at least in the US - a book is published and sold at a non-trivial price to US residents. However, the author/publisher may also make an international version.
This version is subpar in my opinion. For example, they are cheaper, but also typically paperback, and I've seen in a science textbook things such as "this problem has intentionally been omitted for this edition" and "this [foot]note has been intentionally omitted for this edition."
Why are international editions stripped-down versions of their original counterparts? Why the need to omit certain problems and footnotes?
(I had asked this question first in Law Stack Exchange, but they deleted it and suggested I ask it here. So, any help on the legality of these reasonings would be appreciated).

Related question: Difference between International edition of a book and a non international one

Thanks @scaaahu . However, there's still the question of 1) why the omitted problems and 2) omitted footnotes?

What does this have to do with law? What do you mean by "legality of these reasonings"?

@ff524 precisely :) . Basically, are there legal reasons for the omissions? I presume they are, but they may not be.

Oh, I see. Although it's possible the reason is a legal issue, I don't see any reason to presume that it is.

I believe they are stripped down for marketing purposes, because a single "Not for sale in US" label won't stop people in the US from buying intl. editions for half the price via online shops.

The Indian edition of a particular book (on semiconductors) is available shipped from india to the UK for less than half the price of a second hand UK copy (both paperback). So maybe 1/4 the price of a new UK copy. The print and paper quality are worse but in this case the page numbering and layout are identical. So it's not a universal practice

I always thought the cheap "international" editions were pirated.  Not sure where I heard that originally.

@aparente001: The legality of importing international textbooks is actually a relatively recent thing in the US.

In some cases, these international editions are sold at a fairly steep discount compared to their U.S. versions. This is intended to increase their accessibility to students in developing countries.
The intention behind omitting material that is in the "nice, but not essential" category, such as a particular problem etc. is to interfere with its utility in the U.S. and other "expensive" markets. Basically, it's to prevent the international versions from being marked up but still sold below the cost of the U.S. version.
As for the legality...the publisher owns the content. They can do pretty much whatever they please with it.

I bought some international editions of textbooks and I'm in Germany. It's not really limited to developing countries (I'd even suspect that they're still too expensive for most of those). I've only ever seen this as a US version and a rest-of-world version.

@MadScientist All of the ones I have are expressly regional, and in my case, developing countries (I have a set of Calculus books expressly limited to India and Bangladesh, and have seen some for Africa). But this is admittedly a limited sample.

Yeah, there are probably more variants of this kind of thing. The one example I have lying around here just says "not for sale in the US". My impression that this is mostly about the US comes from the huge price difference, the US textbooks are around 2-3 times as expensive as the international editions or even the german ones.

This is known as price differentiation (or price discrimination, but I don't like the pejorative connotations) in standard economic theory. The idea is the same as for student discounts in cinemas etc.: the producer (here: publisher) would like to sell his products to customers who may not be willing to pay full price, but are willing to pay a reduced price that still exceeds the variable production costs - and he needs a way to avoid freeloading.

In some cases, the publisher has been granted license to include content -- like a figure used with permission.  I wonder if sometimes the exclusion in the international edition might have to do with license not granted for such use.

Copyright problems, generally.  The publisher has the US rights, but not the international rights and doesn't want to pay for them.
I ran into this problem with the archival version of a journal on DVD.  Many figures and pertinent photos/illustrations were missing, and I felt cheated.  So I wrote to the publisher, and that's the answer I got back: they didn't have the rights to DVD publication for those missing elements.

Publishers belive that american students have an abundent supply of money on tap and want to get as much of that money as possible into their pockets. Furthermore they know that many US profs are lazy and will just set problems out of a book rather than setting their own practically forcing their students to buy the book.
But they also know that students in other countries (even other rich countries) have far less money available. They still want to make some money out of these students but they know they won't/can't pay the american price.
So they have a main edition targetted at americans and an international edition targetted at people from other countries with wildly different prices.
They will have distribution contracts in place that make it difficult/impossible for american retailers to legally carry copies of the international edition of the book but they can't do much to stop individual american students from importing it.
Removing small chunks of content means that the book is still useful in general but is problematic to use for a course built arround the main edition of the book, thus putting more pressure on american students to buy the main edition.

I have an international edition Giancoli Physics textbook, which omits some problems involving U.S. units (since international edition is metric), and introduces new problems that deal with unit conversions.
It also states that some problems were omitted due to them being meaningless (i.e. hard to visualize) for non-US resident.
It appears I confused this textbook with something else; I wasn't able to find a note stating this in Giancoli's textbook. Sorry :(
My international edition of Stewart Calculus is the same - although it doesn't expressly state it omitted some questions, it says that

10% of the [international edition] exercises are different from those in the [US] version

Another plausible reason is copyright: if a question references something that has a different copyright owner abroad than in US, publisher/author/editor may want to play safe and omit that part.
Yet another reason may be differences in pre-university curricula: some countries offer more comprehensive courses in natural sciences than USA (or so I was told).

"due to them being meaningless for non-US resident" - now I'm really curious what those are. Anything involving a trip from East coast to West coast or vice-versa might be "meaningless" for residents of many countries, maybe? ;)

As far as I know most of the international engineering textbooks that I got didn't omit much compared to the NA counterpart.  I think I ran into one thermo book that only had metric units, but I'm Canadian anyways so that was fine by me.

@O.R.Mapper  -  what's so particular about a trip from West coast to East coast? :)

@Gallifreian: Plenty of countries do not have both a West coast and an East coast. But I was just kidding, of course just because something does not exist in one's country doesn't make it any less relevant, because people travel abroad ;) That's what made me wonder what problems would be "meaningless".

@O.R.Mapper  -  it may have said something other than "meaningless", but very close in meaning. Giancoli probably meant they would be hard to visualize for a foreigner - that's what I mean by meaningless.

IIRC, there are some problems about baseball in Stewart, where it's a lot easier to leave the problem out than to sufficiently explain the rules and mechanics of baseball to someone who's never seen it.

@Max Even some well-educated US citizens have very strange ideas about how much the rest of the world knows about the US. The most extreme case I've observed personally was a US college graduate on her first overseas trip, who was utterly amazed to find not only that you could buy Apple computers in the UK, but even that there were McDonalds franchises on the high street in most towns. Believe it or not, we can even watch major league baseball on UK TV as well.

@alephzero, that's true, but on the other hand I think most people from non-baseball-playing countries (myself included) have as much understanding of baseball as Americans have of cricket. Just because we can watch it, doesn't mean we do (I have personally never seen baseball on TV).

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Letter of Recommendation is very short and mostly nonspecific - What should I do?
I'm an undergraduate mathematics student at a US university applying to graduate school.
I took two classes with a professor and did extremely well - he loved me, and when I asked him to write me a letter of recommendation he promised to write a very strong one. He liked me so much that he actually sent me his letter so I could see what he thought of me.
The letter is highly flattering and I am extremely grateful, but it is only two or three paragraphs long, less than half a page. This made me nervous so I looked up features that a letter might have. This letter has only a bit of specific information and mostly speaks in vague, but highly positive, generalities - i.e. "the student did well in my very rigorous class" with no supporting evidence as to what made the class rigorous.
I am very worried that an admissions panel may see it as a vague, formulaic letter and discard it. I truly believe this professor has very high confidence in my abilities and that the letter is sincere, but I don't think that it is effective. I asked for the letter pretty early on in the semester and reminded him three weeks ago so I don't think time was the issue.
What should I do? Would it be rude to ask him to rewrite the letter with details and supporting examples? I am almost tempted to seek out a different professor to avoid asking him. Any advice would be useful.

@PatrickN. A short letter doesn't necessarily mean that you are short on qualifications.  Charles Batchelor wrote this letter to Thomas Edison recommending Nikola Tesla:  "My Dear Edison: I know two great men and you are one of them. The other is this young man!"  http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_america.html

In response to both of the above comments: although it is tempting to give classic and famous examples (they make good stories and are certainly educational in a certain way), when it comes to asking about contemporary academic practice, examples that are almost 70 years old are not very useful.  Duffin's letter sent to Princeton in the year 2016 would not have the same effect.

From my understanding, this is the post in a nutshell:  I asked for a recommendation letter, and I got one.  But it does not meet my expectation of length, so I want the offending author to make it longer and include specific incidents of my academic fortitude and work ethic...Is this more or less on point?   Personally, I would think it would come across as not just rude, but possibly even have an air of entitlement.

@NZKshatriya - But then why did the professor share the draft with the OP?

@aparente001  I know in my case, I have asked for letters for employment or scholarship/grant applications, and my last name can be a bit of an issue(people can look at it typed out, and still type it out incorrectly).  My take on being shared a draft, is usually to browse for errors with your name, or factual errors that may have been included.

@PeteL.Clark I once saw a letter of recommendation from Paul Erdös, that was only two or three lines long, and it was effective.  And this happened considerably less than 70 years ago. (I'm old, but I'm not that old.)

@NZKshatriya - Sometimes a reference will ask the student to send an outline to make sure the letter covers everything.  I'm not saying the student should write to the reference, "The letter is great and would be even stronger if you added 'J always took responsibility for keeping the lab clean and tidy'. "  But the student could write, "The letter is great.  I was wondering if you'd be comfortable adding something about my role as lab manager?"

@aparente001  Yes, I agree, but this is not the arena for chat.  I'll just leave it at OP should suggest minor edits, but not request an APA report :P

@NZKshatriya - "not request an APA report" - agreed!  Just compare the outline of what the letter should cover with what the letter does cover, and ask the reference if s/he is comfortable addressing any missing topics or points.  My point is that an analysis of the content of the letter is more important than a word count.

That's coming from someone who never had to write nor weigh recommendation letters, but the following seems relevant to me: how young/experienced is the professor? Do you have a sense he might very well know how things work by now (if so, trust his judgement), or rather that he is a young faculty and might misjudge what is expected from his letter, even in good faith?

Almost all letters of recommendation for graduate program applications are short -- at my previous university, for example, there was a field that letter writers could fill in that essentially only held the equivalent of a single paragraph. Fundamentally, for current undergraduates, it is rare that a professor has spent more than a couple of hours one-on-one with you, and so it's hard to really say much of any specificity -- as would be the case if one were writing for one's own graduate student or postdocs, for example.
In other words, since almost all letters are that short, you're not suffering any harm. Go on doing what you're doing well, and don't worry about the letter too much.

I don't quite agree with this.  Yes, many grad school applications have a place where you can just type in what you want to say, but (i) it can be as long as you want and (ii) you can also upload a pdf file of the letter.  In my experience, more than half the time faculty upload a letter, which is more than a paragraph long.  To me the single paragraph letters read as coming from people who do not themselves have much experience with American-style graduate admissions, and thus they are liable to be weighted less strongly than the other letters.

@PeteL.Clark: There is truth to this. I didn't mean to say that a letter should be that short. All I wanted to give is a frame of reference for how long letters of recommendation for undergraduate typically are -- namely on average not very much longer than 2-3 paragraphs.

Pete Clark is right about uploading pdf files. When I write a recommendation for grad school admission, I expect that it will go to several universities, so I write it (in TeX) and save the pdf file to upload whenever needed. On the other hand, this doesn't necessarily mean very long letters. I just checked the last couple of letters I wrote for undergrads, and, although they certainly had more than 2 or 3 paragraphs (one had 5 and the other 7), they were both slightly less than one page long.

Succinct isn't necessarily bad.
Rather than judging the letter by the number of paragraphs, analyze the content.  Actually, before you do that, sit down and outline what you think a strong letter about you should touch on.  Compare your outline and the professor's draft.  If there are important aspects of you that didn't make it into the draft, let your professor know.

If the admission committee of the program you are applying to has heard of this guy, and respect his opinion, then even a letter with one line would be enough.

You think so?  It would be very hard for me to read a one line letter as "This is not really worth any of my time."  If the faculty member is really known and respected and also known for writing such short letters, then I guess the next one-line letter will go down the same as the previous ones.  But I don't know anyone who writes such short letters (even for grad school).  I think the minimum length of a letter that doesn't seem to be short-changing the student is two paragraphs (or one very long paragraph).

@PeteL.Clark if both the letter writer and the admissions committee have a history, I think short letters happen.  I've heard secondhand of (but not written or read any such) letters that read along the lines of "This is the one this year; let them in." But I otherwise agree with your larger point—a letter can be too short to be effective.

It is quite normal for undergraduate student to get a short recommendation letter. The reason is obvious, because your relationship with professor is bound to the courses you take with him. The spectrum of knowing you is only your behavior and attitude during lectures and your grades. Unless if you have chance to collaborate with professor on a research project, there is a good chance to get more comprehensive recommendation letter. In addition the effectiveness of recommendation letter also depends on the profile of the professor as well.

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In case I upload an unpublished conference paper or technical report of mine to Academia.edu is it protected from plagiarism?
I would like to know if an uploaded unpublished paper of mine it is safe from plagiarism, including just parts of it (e.g. title).
I meant that if somebody copies part or the entire unpublished, but already online, document and publishes it, is he/she then liable of plagiarism?

What do you mean? Nothing is "safe from plagiarism". If I can read it, I can copy and paste it or retype it, change the name and republish it as my own. The only way to be safe is not publishing anything...

Did you mean can you upload an unfinished paper and hold a copyright on it?

I meant that if somebody copies part or the entire unpublished, but already online, document and publishes it, is he/she then liable of plagiarism?

Liability for plagiarism does not depend on whether the plagiarized work was published or not.
If somebody uses your work and passes it off as their own work, it's plagiarism.


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How many credit hours of mathematics does an average successful student take before applying to graduate school?
I'm a senior in mathematics at the University of Illinois (Urbana). I will be graduating sometimes in 2017, and I would like to go to grad school straight after graduation.
How many credit hours of mathematics does an average successful student take before applying to graduate school?

This question is probably too specific to stay open, but let me add a little perspective on it.  The number of credit hours is quite variable, but "several honors and graduate courses" sounds pretty good.  Math schools will not care very much about your grades in other subjects.  Really abysmal grades in other subjects might make you worry about someone's "soft skills" but a few B's shouldn't be a problem.  I would guess that this transcript will get you about as far as coursework can.

For many reasonable programs (ours at UVA included) this should be enough if there isn't something worrisome in your letters or test scores.  Whether you can get into a really top program will probably depend a lot more on your letters and other "extras" like research, rather than the details of your coursework.

I hesitate to ask the obvious (I suppose I will nonetheless), but the University of Illinois has a fairly large graduate program, and if you took several graduate classes then you probably know several of the graduate students, not to mention those you would have otherwise already met at various departmental functions, the mathematics reading room (if there is one), the departmental library (if there is one), etc. This was certainly the case for me when I was an undergraduate, at a university with a smaller graduate program than Illinois.

And I hope you realize that the deadlines for grad school apps are right now, or in some cases already past...

I removed the secondary question about GPA because one question per post, and because that's already been addressed in other Q&As on this site. See e.g. Do graduate schools care more about my grades in math courses or my general GPA?

This would be a fantastic question for Rick Laugesen, the director of graduate programs in your department. Nice guy.

This tends to vary a lot, but here's what I'd consider reasonably good preparation for pure math graduate school in the United States:

Three semesters of calculus (possibly less if you've had calculus in high school)
A semester of linear algebra
Two semesters of abstract algebra
Two semesters of real analysis
One semester of complex analysis
One semester of topology
At least 2-3 more semesters of advanced electives.  These can vary a lot, but it helps to have some expertise in a few different subfields of math before attending graduate school.

So it seems that I'm recommending at least 12-13 semesters of mathematics.  Assuming 4 credit hours for a one semester course, this is 48-52 credit hours of college mathematics.

I can't say what the average is, but I'll provide some suggestions that should enable you to answer what I think is your underlying question:

How can I figure out how many more I should take?

Pick a couple of programs you're interested in applying to. Read the program of studies carefully, then check the courses you would be signing up for in your first year, to see what the prerequisites are. This will guide you in your course selection, and give you a fair view of how well prepared you are. Make sure to look at the textbooks used, to gauge the level of difficulty.
Something to keep in mind: if you can get a TAship, unless you have a fantastic scholarship for your undergrad, it would be financially advantageous to make the move to grad school earlier rather than later.  (If you aren't accepted on the first try, you can always try again when you have more feathers in your cap.)

Answer is off topic.

-1: This  may be a good answer for physics, but I don't think it's a good answer for math. In physics, undergraduate students take most of the same courses in more or less the same order. In math, you need abstract algebra and real analysis to get into graduate school, but many graduate schools typically only accept students who have taken some more advanced courses. However, they won't have taken the same advanced courses, so the prerequisites for first-year graduate courses are basically real analysis and abstract algebra.

Looking at UC Berkeley (an excellent math graduate school), the intro graduate courses only have prerequisites of one year of real analysis, one year of abstract algebra, and one semester of complex analysis. I suspect most entering UCB math grad students have had much more mathematics than that.


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Is paying participants below min. wage ethical?
I am currently doing my PhD, finished all my modules and doing research right now.
My supervisor and I had a good idea for a research paper and I conducted a survey through a crowdsourcing website (e.g. Mturk). The decision was made to pay every participants 0.50 $ and the survey took about 9 minutes.
Our results are pretty good and I am currently writing the "Sample Collection" section of the paper. However, I am worried: should I include the compensation? Right now it came to my mind that we did pay way below the minimum wage. Was this unethical? Should I include the amount of payment in my paper or just state that we bought some data?

Minimum wage laws apply to employees, which your survey participants are not.

No, you didn't buy the data. You performed a survey and compensated participants for their time. I've seen studies where compensation is entry into a raffle, and since participants have to give consent to be enrolled in the study, they know full well what they're getting into.

As stated above.  A survey is a voluntary activity, therefore minimum wage does not apply.  But, if you feel as if this is unethical, you are perfectly free to give whatever compensation you feel is adequate out of your own pocket :P

@NZKshatriya: The question is whether this is ethical not whether it is legal. Given that minimum wages exist due to ethical considerations, this is a reasonable question.

@NZKshatriya Flipping burgers at McDonalds is also a voluntary activity, but minimum wage applies.

@emory Flipping burgers at McDonald's is an employment activity, you may have voluntarily sought employment at McDonald's but that is where the similarity ends.  Taking a survey does not count as employment, therefore minimum wage does not apply, as was stated by others.

I should add the following.  I sometimes do online surveys conducted by corporations through sites like e-Rewards, etc.  These surveys can have rewards ranging from 12 dollars, to 50 cents.  Some even have no reward offered.  I think what is ethical is that you are offering something for someones time.  But it is also ethical to offer nothing in return for someones time.  There are people who prefer to do surveys that "pay out" and those who do them regardless as they are compelled to share their opinions.

Heck, SE can be considered a giant survey

I don't understand why ethics belongs here.  You pay what you need to pay to get the data, no more.  How fast would you drain your funding by paying out minimum wage (rhetorical)?

0.50 $?! If you ask me to participate to a survey I'm interested in, I'll do it for free; for all the others, honestly, take your 0.50 $.

I've had this conversation with various researchers in the crowd-work community, and it is actually a bit of ongoing controversy. Right now crowd-work can be terrible for many workers - way below minimum wage, many tasks are a waste of time and just broken (cannot be completed), tasks take way longer than the poster estimates and ends up wasting workers time, there are few controls from being denied pay for completed task for spurious reasons...and on and on.
So there are communities of people who are trying to improve the situation for crowd workers, and this includes things like trying to improve pay standards, less time-waste, better designed tasks, catering to crowd-worker communities and "guilds" (people often cooperate to find and complete 'good' tasks), etc. Some propose voluntary guidelines for researchers to try to pay at least something vaguely like minimum wage, even for micro-tasks.
With that said, the current state of professional ethics and norms (and applicable laws) - as of the beginning of the year 2017 - is in flux. However, paying crowd-workers to complete online tasks is still regularly paid below anything comparable to minimum wage. So while you weren't on the vanguard of people advancing the standards for crowd-work, you weren't conducting torturous experiments on prisoners and orphans, either.
Therefore, you should be fine to just follow the norms of your field and state compensation (not all fields explicitly mention the amount of pay). Nothing to hide, and I definitely don't think you should try to skirt the issue and claim you paid for data.
That said, for future readers working in crowd-work, you should be aware of a few things:
- There is controversy on how crowd-workers (or "gig workers" more generally) should be classified, protected, and treated.
- The current state of things is to consider crowd-workers as "not employees of anyone", and so minimum wage does not apply.
 - Researchers are treating crowd-workers as human research participants in some aspects (not subject to minimum wage and typically compensated very little monetarily when possible).
- At the same time crowd-workers are usually not recruited, given informed consent, and debriefed in ways entirely comparable to regular research participants.
- Minimal consideration is given to guiding ethical principals like "Beneficence" when it comes to crowd-workers (or even "Justice" and "Respect for Persons" for that matter). Most IRBs require that you at least pretend to make the participant better off then they were before in some way, such as learning about how science is conducted, but it really strains belief how this can apply to micro-tasks (like image tagging) performed on most crowd-work platforms.
- Some researchers seem to give no real thought to the idea that there are humans working on their research tasks, who are often putting in many hours of labor for them, and often subject crowd-workers to poorly designed, frustrating, time-wasting tasks.
- Some crowd-workers are in fact trying to make a living through crowd-work, and most are not even living in countries with wages so low that the pay is vaguely decent.
This is all very much a part of social advocacy, especially as many believe that crowd-work and gig work are major parts of the future of work in our civilization. Laws have (and will) trail behind these changes in the workforce, and so everything from labor laws to taxation is often a mess and does not apply with great consistency, and these things are highly likely to change in the next decade or two.
Finally, the state of ethics today is still that it is quite typical and normal, and only occasionally "frowned upon", to pay crowd-workers well below anything approximating a minimum wage. It is the norm of today, and you should be honest and forthright about it regardless of how you feel things should have been or should become in the future.

While the considerations in this answer are certainly worthwhile, I am not convinced survey participation is entirely comparable to purely menial tasks such as image tagging.


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How to become well-known in the research community while being a PhD student
This question is mainly about building useful contacts during the course of the doctorate. How does one keep the relevant community in other universities informed about his/her research work? One way is obviously to publish the work in reputable journals, but the volume of work that people do these days means there is every chance that others miss out on your work.
So consider giving talks in other university departments about your work. What is the best way to approach this task? Who will take care of the travel and other expenses? This especially applies to departments which focus mainly on journal publications and do not spend time on conferences.
What are the other ways to popularise or create recognition for oneself in the relevant academic community (read prospective employers)?

be active on the internet

The best way is to be highly active in your field. (Note: this will take work.) Here are my suggestions for accomplishing this, and I hope others will post more in the comments or other answers:

Do awesome work. It all starts here. As a PhD student, this typically requires being in an awesome lab under an awesome professor, but it is possible to achieve awesome work without that.
Publish in respected journals in your field.
Network within your field. This includes attending field-specific conferences, talking to other PhD students and professors in other labs, and forming collaborations.

Note that I was never successful in attaining this sort of stature. In particular, I never figured out how to do (3) correctly; I hope someone else can post a better "how-to" for that point.

Thanks eykanal. I specifically intend to know about (3). Especially consider mailing about your work to a prof whom you idolise, it just is a bit tricky, isn't it?

I am not sure mailing your work to a prof you idolize makes sense. Rather, mail your work to a colleague whose work is deeply connected to what you did.

@Bravo: when I was a PhD student I emailed my icon prof, to no avail. Then I met the person at a conference, whom full of tremors I approached and started to talk to, illustrating how we could collaborate further. To which conversation the prof raised an eyebrow and told me "so what?" and left. After that glitch, speaking to the big guns at conferences has become easier and easier!

One minor point to add to eykanal's awesome answer:  One of your advisor's jobs is to help you publicize your work.  Take every possible advantage of their existing research network.  Ask them to introduce you to people at conferences, workshops, and other meetings; ask them for help arranging invitations at other departments/labs.  (Ideally, you shouldn't have to ask, but ask anyway.)  Until you're comfortable walking up to or emailing random people and introducing yourself, name-drop your advisor liberally; their names will (or should) open doors that yours won't.

The PhD students I remember the most are the ones who came up to me and made meaningful comments or suggestions regarding my work. They get extra bonus points if in the middle of the night the next week they offer more meaningful comments or suggestions. This can happen in the context of a faculty visit, a conference, or even online. The most powerful setting is at a poster session.
The habit is to camp near your own poster until important people come and ask you questions. Much more effective for becoming a "well-known" scholar is when you find someone else, have a good conversation, and then follow up on the conversation.
There are also effective and meaningful ways to make a name online. As @Artem suggested, an online presence does a lot. Being an constant contributor to scientific wikis, a curator of archives, and a resource on places like Academia SE builds your profile. (It also helps if you don't have a psuedoname like bobthejoe.)

In addition to ekaynal's answer, you can also run a conference or workshop. But be careful that this doesn't detract from the quality of your research!   Running department seminars can help too because you will get to invite & host speakers who will therefore learn your name.

that's a good point - it can be (if done right) a major networking plus.

Note that you don't need to be a superstar professor to do this right - a colleague of mine recently organized and ran a small workshop for the stated purpose of "polish[ing] my teaching skills and review[ing] the material for my own sake". The workshop, currently ongoing, has been very well received, and the experience has been excellent for him.

there is some discussion on this direction right here

The single most useful reference I've read on networking in academia is "Networking on the Network" (by Phil Agre):
http://vlsicad.ucsd.edu/Research/Advice/network.html
Let me mention a few examples of advice that Phil gives.

First, the Internet does not fundamentally change the way that networking works.  You basically walk through the same five or six stages of networking whether you use email and the web or not (and he outlines how each stage works).  The exact form may differ, but the substance is more or less the same.
Second, networking takes time.  Phil recommends budgeting one day per week for maintaining your network.
Third, work to ensure that each person in your network benefits from knowing you, not just you from knowing them.  If you see an article or opportunity that you think may interest them, pass it along.

This essay is long (about 100 pages), but it has much valuable information.  I suggest that you return to it every year or two as you progress in your career.
Phil is a great writer, and you may find some of this other thoughts helpful as well.  You can read lots of them here:
http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/

It will be great if you could provide a gist or highlight a couple or more valuable thoughts from the essay in your answer.

@Bravo Good idea.  I've edited my answer to reflect your suggestion.

Short answers: Get cited.  Present.  Show yourself to be a peer.
Long answer:
I have the opposite view about networking: you should not waste any day on it unless it directly helps your research (e.g., potential collaborations, working on grants).  While admittedly you need to network and get yourself known, that won't help at all unless you're known for great work.  You're not going to be known for great work without having great publications.  They don't need to be in the best journals (though it helps), but you need to be pushing out work that answers questions that other scholars have.  In my opinion, there is no better way to get your name out there than to be cited.
The single most important thing that I learned from transitioning out of my PhD program is this: Publishing is networking.  Publishing is talking with your peers.  (Particularly if you publish in conferences, you are literally talking to your peers.)  No level of pavement-beating will get you more attention than to win a best paper award or to present on a topic that big people have been looking for a good citation on for years.  I know a few relatively young scholars in my field who have just about universal name recognition.  Their MO?  1. They answered questions that researchers were interested in knowing the answers to. or 2. They answered questions that people didn't even realize needed asking, but were so important everyone needs to talk about them now.
In the long run, being known doesn't help you much if you're known as "another one of those people who works on topic X."  You want to be known as "An expert in topic Y" or "The first person I would go to with a question about Y."  If you don't have this, any major researcher will say: "Why would I bother collaborating or recommending this guy?"  Obviously, this takes years, but so does a doctorate.  Nothing is more important to being well-known than asking the right question at the right time (and then answering it).
Additionally, one secondary route of networking not noted by others from what I have seen: acting as a point of contact who interacts with sponsoring organizations.  You know what another great way to get face-time with experts is?  Being one member of a small workshop or meeting for people all sponsored by the same funding agency.  Usually this responsibility would be taken by your lab head or similar PI.  To get this responsibility, you need to basically be the best grad student working with the PI and the PI needs to be unavailable or need a second pair of hands.  However, by being there, it says two things: 1. You are the best student in the PI's lab/project and 2. Your PI trusts you enough to act as their proxy.  I think this only works with an established (full prof) PI, as non-tenured PI's may need the networking as much or more than you.  Networking with program officers is also a good habit to be in.  Ultimately, these are the people who control what kinds of work can get funded.  This is one of the ways a good advisor can plug you into their network (along with making sure to introduce you to their big-shot friends/rivals).

+1, the 4th paragraph is a gem and a reality check

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


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Business School professors - how different are they?
I recently saw a listing of professor salaries at various departments in Stanford. I found that the folks at GSB earn significantly more than what other Dept. people do. This is the motivation for my question:

How different are B-school professors? Many of them work on areas that lie on the intersection of Operations/CS/Economics/Applied Math. But why do they enjoy a greater pay (if at all they do)?
Are industry contacts available easier for B-school faculty when compared with engineering or science department professors? What sort of projects do B-school professors work on in collaboration with the industry? How is the pay-sharing deal between the industry, the prof and the university worked out?
How different is teaching MBA students from engg. or science undergrad students? Does teaching MBA eat up more time or is more demanding than usual?

Thanks Nunoxic. I think the answer to your question is No, from what I currently see in top American univs at least. Most of the professors in a particular top 5 institute are PhDs from the corresponding department of the other four. There are rare exceptions though, but not with respect to the Department. Finance could be an exception to this, but.

@user107 From what I see that is relatively common in US R1 business schools (compared to in other academic fields), as long as the researcher's work is relevant to the business area and publishes in top business journals. Of course, most faculty have their PhD from the same discipline, since business PhD programs are designed to teach students to publish in business journals.

I can address questions 1 and 2 (although for 3, all I know is that my friends say it is very different).

When you are negotiating over salary, your leverage is determined by the best alternative you have.  To keep from losing you to another employer, your job must offer a better combination of pay and benefits than anyone else (including benefits like job security, having interesting colleagues and students, having flexible hours and the ability to choose your own projects, etc.).
People in the humanities have very little leverage except from other academic jobs.  Mathematicans have more, because there are applications in industry or government, so they get paid somewhat more, but this leverage is limited by the fact that many mathematicians don't want non-academic jobs.  Computer scientists have a lot of leverage, and business school faculty have even more.
So basically it comes down to this.  Business school faculty often have expertise that is in high demand outside academia and could earn them a lot of money, and there's at least a stereotype that they care more about monetary compensation than some professors do (which makes sense, given their interest in business).  This means that to attract excellent faculty, business schools have to pay enough that job applicants would rather work there than in the business world.
In principle, this is no different from other departments: literature faculty also have to be paid enough that they don't leave for the business world.  It's just a question of how much that is.
This really depends on the subfield.  Business school faculty are certainly more likely to do outside consulting than scientists are, but there are no universal rules (some business school professors do none at all, and some scientists run their own companies).  Occasionally, a company will sponsor a university program according to some negotiated agreement, but consulting generally does not involve a pay-sharing deal.  Instead, the faculty member simply consults part-time for the company, without using university resources, and is paid directly by the company.  In the US, universities typically allow a certain amount of time to be spent on outside consulting, for example one day per week, with no special approval needed.

Short answer: Business school professors tend to have higher level contacts in industry and government than professors in other fields. So if they are 1) consulting, they are likely reporting to higher level executives who will pay them better, even for similar work.
2) For the same reason, a business school professor who leaves Academia for a full time position in industry is likely to leave for a higher level, higher paying job outside. Some of my finance professors took jobs on Wall St. Some of these jobs are available to mathematics people also, but "finance" and "business" gives one that extra edge. And a large part of this stems from:
3) Teaching MBA students isn't necessarily more demanding that teaching other students. But these graduates tend to rise to positions in corporations with more authority (and often more pay) than non-business engineering and science graduates. If one of your students from twenty years ago becomes CEO of his/her company (and this is more likely with business school than technical students), well, you get the idea.
Some of my own business school professors were either former or future "C" level executives (Chief Operating Officer, Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Financial Officer, even a CEO or two). The ones that left industry became professors because they grew tired of the "grind" and took a pay cut for a quieter life. But if it were too much of a cut, they wouldn't do this. The ones that left Academia and went to industry did so because their pay was a lot (not just a little) higher than that of say, a department head in a university with comparable authority and/or prestige.
In this connection, it is noteworthy that Arjay Miller was one of the "Whiz Kids" who took over Ford Motor Company (he briefly served as President) before he became Dean of Stanford Business School.


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When does a PhD end?
When does a PhD end? I know this is a very general question on this forum, but let us consider a CS-engineering group. What is the usual and primary consideration for letting the student finish officially?
Is it the number of years spent, when the professor feels nothing more useful will come out of working on the problem (or of the student!)?
Is it the logical conclusion of the problem and the thesis? A student works to complete a problem in 3 years and publishes a couple of journal papers, and finds there is no more to the problem. Will he be allowed to finish or forced to work on some tangential problem simply to prolong his PhD?

What do you mean by "end". Without that it is a vague question...

@PiotrMigdal: Please read the entire question; I've explained it.

I am a dumb parser and once I meet more than one ? in a SE question I throw an exception. But more seriously, by "end" you mean "be allowed submit one's PhD thesis", or get diploma, or match some criteria (whether scientific or related to teaching)?

@PiotrMigdal I want to know how the consensus on if work on a thesis is complete is reached. IOW, when does one reckon if a thesis is mature enough for submission?

A professor told me, he had a student that kept on asking, "Am I done?" "Am I done?" And the professor would keep saying, "No." One day the student went to the professor and said, "I'm done." And the professor said, "I know!" Basically, the story is an indication that you've achieved a strong level of maturity and familiarity with your research when you know when you've made your contributions to the area.

As a general rule, my PhD students need to do two things to get a PhD:

Publish 3-4 papers on a coherent topic, mostly in top-tier theoretical computer science conferences, including at least one paper without me as a co-author (and preferably at least one paper that was previously rejected).
Jump a bunch of administrative hurdles: don't screw up classes, don't screw up TAing, pass quals, gather a committee, propose a thesis, write a thesis, defend a thesis.

That's it.  In my experience, most PhD students do way more than this.
A couple of comments on the original question:

Very few students "finish" their thesis topic.  Equivalently: If a research question can be closed in just one or two papers, it's probably not a good thesis topic.  Good research opens as many new problems as it solves.
Reaching the point where further collaboration with a student is unproductive means the student-advisor relationship has failed.  Sometimes students really do exhaust their research potential, despite their advisors' efforts; in my experience, those students usually don't get PhDs.  (Most successful students reach "critical mass" long before they finish.)  More often, this happens because the advisor isn't giving the student enough appropriate guidance.

Thanks Jeffe. If I may ask, don't you ask for journal requirements? Or is it a given that a couple of those conference papers will automatically transform into a journal? Anyway, good answer, thanks!

Reputation and impact in computer science are based primarily on conference publications.  Journal papers can help cement a computer scientist's reputation, and they're absolutely necessary for tenure, but most of the time they're a second-order goal.  (Whether they should be a primary goal is another question.)

@Bravo - Do note that some programs do not have journal requirements... case in point, I earned my PhD without a single refereed publication under my belt. I think the majority have at least a requirement that a journal article be submitted, though.

@Bravo Agreeing with eykanal - journal requirements aren't often a thing. After all, imagine what happens when a student submits his work, and then it takes a journal 6 or 8 months to get around to reviewing it, even if they accept it. My program requires at least one be submitted, for a field that doesn't care much about conferences.

two things would be easy, but that is much more than two things, it is two categories of things.

Potayto potahto.  The first thing is "Establish an independent research record"; the second thing is "Don't forget the paperwork."  (On the other hand, each of the things in those categories is also a category of smaller subthings, and so on, ad infinitum.)

"including at least one paper without me as a co-author" -- why would this make any difference ? shouldn't the supervisor has his name on all his students papers even if he does'nt contribute to the paper ? -- Also: does that mean that you actually solve some research problems with your students ! [wow, if this is true !]

@AJed- As I've mentioned elsewhere, adding my name on a paper to which I have not made a substantial intellectual contribution is considered fraud in my subfield.  So no, I don't put my name on all my students' papers, and my advisor didn't put his name on mine.  And yes, that means I work on research problems with my students; that's part of every advisor's job. (If your advisor doesn't do this, you deserve a new advisor!)

Generally speaking, there are well established "mile stones" for the completion of a PhD. This typically comes in the form of writing a dissertation - either in book form or a series of papers - and the presentation (and defense) of those results to a committee of professors (and sometimes a general audience).
It is usually not "years spent" or exhausting a project's potential (or the students).
There are however often some established timelines to prevent students from defending their dissertation too fast - required coursework, certain timing restrictions etc. This is usually intended to keep a student from rushing their studies and meeting the letter of the graduation requirements, but not the spirit - that they be well trained in their field and capable of doing independent work. But if they meet that, and defend their dissertation, no one is going to make them "run out the clock" or the like.


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Conference that accepted my paper does not yet have a Digital Library link
My paper got accepted for a conference in July 2019 and I even presented my work there. The main page of the conference says they will post the Digital Library link for the 2019 proceedings as soon as it becomes available.In this post, the answerer has said that publishing the proceedings online can even take up to 6 months. More than 6 months have passed and nothing from that conference is on IEEE Xplore yet. Is it normal for this to happen?
EDIT:
In this post, one answerer has said it is not unusual for conferences to take 6 months to publish their proceedings.

I'd email or tweet someone from the conference to ask if you haven't already. If you want the link for something particular I'd mention that too - "I was hoping to include a link to the paper in XYZ"

@Rup I emailed them some months ago and a short while back but I have not received a response from them.


text:
Is there any way to post my code on Code Review Stack Exchange and not be worried about plagiarism?
I am doing my thesis-based master’s in computer engineering and am required to program a tool in C++ as a part of my research. I am quite impressed by the help offered on the Code Review website and am considering posting a big chunk of my code for suggestions and improvement. However, I am also worried that someone may plagiarize the idea contained in my posted code. This, in turn, might affect the credibility of my work.
I believe one solution is to post a minimal, verifiable and complete example for the code I want suggestions for. However, I am interested in knowing if it is possible to post my code as is and not be worried about it getting copied.

What exactly are you concerned about - what do you think will happen, and how do you think you will be affected, if someone copies your code chunk without attribution (and does what with it?)?

The idea of my research will be apparent in my code. Someone (who may be working in the same domain as me) might use my idea in his/her own work. This, I fear, will diminish the novelty of my work.

Code Review is the place to go if you're willing to submit a specific piece of code you're worried about. An MCVE defeats the purpose of a Code Review as in Code Review defines such. Have you taken a look at their help center? Examplified code is explicitly off-topic for that site.

In principle, getting help from the online community is no different than getting help in any other way while working on a master thesis or any other assignment, which is supposed to be solely your work. So, I'd also refer you to useful answers to a similar question (although you are concerned with a different aspect of the problem): https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/84299/i-used-external-help-for-my-masters-thesis-coding-work

Make sure that you post to Code Review with a registered account, not as a guest. In the event that you are accused of plagiarism of the posted code, you will want to be able to prove (e.g., by logging in) that you posted the code yourself.

Can we assume you know that user contributions licensed under cc by-sa 3.0 with attribution required. rev 2017.10.31.27598 (see the site footer) - People can and will use your code for whatever purposes they want, but they have to attribute credits.

Would the result of the code review change the outcome of your paper, or do you just want to make the code nicer before publishing it? If the latter, consider posting a preliminary version of your paper to ArXiv or similar, then doing the code review.

Actually, you'd be lucky if you got any attention on Code Review at all. Research-level code tends to be too complicated for random Internet contributors to help you for fun. Usually, one would have to read the paper just to acquire the background necessary to understand the code. If you aren't willing to open up completely, I doubt that anyone would take the time. I've just put a +400 bounty on this question — we'll see if that even does anything for you.

@Mindwin, Which they won't.

Most code posted to CR.se is garbage, IMHO. Someone would have to be really desperate to go looking for your wheat among all that chaff.

@greenb If the academic part of the thesis has nothing to do with the actual structure and design of the code but just "we use this code to generate the following results" this shouldn't be a problem, although it certainly is a good idea to speak with your adviser about it anyhow.

@casey I know CC is a bad licence for code. But it is what we use.

@casey also, MIT is bad for copyleft. One can bury the attribution in several ways down the code, and never again see the light of day.

In my case, pretty much every one of my StackOverflow questions made between August 2014 and August 2016 was made for my master's thesis or one of my classes. Nobody scooped me, and I was never worried about it.

I dont know the rules of master theses, but is it possible for you to have a peer or advisor code-review for you? If you're concerned about releasing parts of it, this would keep it out of the public domain while still buying you some feedback

Please also check that you give proper attribution to the people helping you.

In code reviews, you kind of need to know what the goal of the program is, otherwise the people looking at your code are essentially just 'human linters'. So depending on the type of feedback you want, you might have to explain a bit what your code is doing.
So the core issue would be that you are explaining your idea, and someone else can run with it. Well, it's the internet, if you make it public there is no way of knowing what people are going to do with it. You could indeed just ask for simple code verification (syntax, naming, obvious errors) but without context they can't verify if your code does what you think it does (helpful part of a code review).
If your degree isn't purely in software engineering, they might not really care if your tool is written in an 'optimal way' though. Best bet would be to keep it offline then, or ask some friends whom you trust to review your code (through private github gists for example).
One other solution would be to read up on some material regarding code quality. Code Complete2 is a good start. Other than that, check out C++ code on github from larger projects (Unreal Engine for example). If you find it valuable to write good code, this will help you more in the long run ;-)

All the answers and comments are quite helpful. I chose your answer because it suggested avenues for learning good C++ coding practices.

In addition to all the good answers you received so far, I should also point out that in general people's fear of being unethically scooped is vastly exaggerated. I would imagine that there really isn't a community of people scouring the Web for master's thesis level research that they can find and then, with considerable time disadvantage to the original author, copy. I say "with considerable time disadvantage" because even if somebody finds your work, they still need to reverse engineer a lot of what you already have and know to get to a publishable thesis or paper from your code alone. Unless you consider letting your work sit for half a year it seems unlikely that a copycat will end up publishing quicker than you, the original author.
Yes, being scooped sucks, but it usually does not happen because somebody stole your code, or even your idea. Scooping happens because there are multiple independent teams working worldwide on almost any mainstream research topic, and there usually only are a finite number of ways to attack any given problem given the current state of literature. Situations where two teams are working with similar approaches on similar problems are bound to come up.

Posting code on the Internet is somewhat like posting a preprint¹. Everybody can see it, use it, and be inspired by it, and that’s fine if they reference you as the source of this, but of course somebody can also come along and claim that they had the same idea independently and rush a publication before you (which would constitute plagiarism if they hadn’t). Even if the latter happens, you can still refer to your time-stamped post/publication to establish priority and to get at least a piece of the credit cake.
There is one major difference though: In fields where preprint servers such as the Arxiv are properly established, plagiarisers may not be very credible when they claim that they were did not know of your prior publication. Being oblivious to something posted on Code Review, on the other hand is always a plausible claim – unless the plagiariser left a trail interacting with your post.
Some other factors to consider:

How much of your result is contained in your code? At least for my work, any piece of code reasonably fitting into a Code Review question at most gives you a hint of the bigger picture. If the same applies to you, it is extremely unlikely that somebody sees your code, recognises its relevance, and rebuilds the rest of your work around it.
How easy is it to rebuild your work from your code? For example, if you spend a considerable time figuring out the value of some parameter (and do not give it in your example or modify it), somebody else would have to reiterate everything leading to your parameter. Also consider that if a considerable amount of creativity, research skill, and subject knowledge are required to rebuild your work, somebody able to do this can also produce original research with less effort and risk.
How narrow is your field? If only a small community can appreciate and plausibly reproduce your work, it also needs somebody from this community to recognise and plagiarise your work from your code.
How relevant is your result? Given that we are talking about a master’s thesis, it is unlikely to be very big. Of course, it’s not impossible, but you can judge yourself from the feedback you should have received from your supervisor. The less attractive your result, the less likely it is for somebody to take efforts and risks in plagiarising it. Again, most researchers probably have better things to do, e.g., performing their own research.

¹ Also see this question of mine regarding the plagiarism of pre-prints.

The moment you post something on the internet, you should be willing to live with the consequences of people running away with it. Code Review is no different in this regard.
Yes, there are rules in academia against plagiarism. Yes, Stack Exchange has a Copyright Policy (here, paragraph 15). But there'll always be people around breaking the rules, so none of those will guarantee people won't run with your idea.
Whether or not it will impact the novelty of your idea, I'd suppose that depends on who gets his piece published faster. As long as yours is published before that of any rogue plagiarists, I don't see a problem.

Imho this is only right for StackExchange content. On the bottom right you can find "user contributions licensed under cc by-sa 3.0 with attribution required. rev 2017.11.1.27612"

@FabianBlechschmidt Well, that's what the question is about, isn't it?

I think we have a misunderstanding SE content as in "the content and stuff the company SE creates" ... user contributions are CC and therefore it isn't even plagiarism but everyone is allowed to use it as long as they state with the license :-)

Ah, I see what you mean. Yes, that paragraph only covers content on the SE network infringing other copyrights, not the other way around. That part is covered by the cc by-sa like you stated.

Take into account that it will take time to re-do your work even if someone does run with your idea (unless you are posting the source code of the complete application). I would suggest waiting until you are close to submitting or have submitted a paper - at that point any copycat would have no chance of catching up with you.

If you want a think-tank in a private room, where the discussion and knowledge is closed to the members and all of them accept a confidential agreement, this is not the place.
I don´t know if any site like that exists, but it could be very interesting as a research grid platform.
In any case, if someone fix a mistake in your code, or include any minimal improvement, you have to accept that you are not the exclusive owner of the work due to the contributors.

An issue which I don't believe has been mentioned yet is plagiarism detction software systems.  Those are generally pretty blunt tools and it's not uncommon for them to flag earlier drafts of a student's own work if posted online somwhere they know to look.
If your work will be passed through such software you should have been told, and you should read the policies applied to you carefully.  Most institutions will carry out a manual review after the software flags your work as copied, and if that review is done properly you will have the chance to point out that the work online is yours.  But you may still need to be able to prove that, especially if you post under a pseudonym.

If your concern is credibility, then posting your code to the internet in a forum such as Stack Exchange can be used to prove ownership. There is a complete edit history including timestamps. So it is third-party verifiable, untamperable, with an independent and transparent chain-of-custody and publicly accessible. That is rock solid proof of possession as of the timestamp.
Also, you own the copyright to your code the moment you write it.
So the internet post could help prove it's yours if there is ever a dispute.

First of all : Does your university requires you to license the program for you masters under the university's ownership or some specific license?
If not, (that is you are the owner of your work), why not publish it on Github under the desired license of your choice.#
This way you can prove the credibility/first authorship of the program prima facie and subsequently seek the improvements/contributions from the community.
If the program turns out to be quite useful and gains significant traction , then this might prove to be a shining badge on your resume.
# Since you are doing masters, I assume you will be making foray into industry  at some point sooner or later and for your program to gain traction in industry(read:a shining resume) it must have a permissive license, so if you want a simple license choices instead of researching yourself(or much better consulting a lawyer) you can choose between LGPL vs Apache vs zLib .

Simply put, there is no way to prevent someone from grabbing your code and using it in any way they care to, including claiming it as their own. Licenses and legalese are only important to people who care about licenses and legalese. You can put all the copyright notices and license terms into your code that you wish, and it will do nothing to stop someone from copying your code and using it if it's publicly available. You would have to

Find that someone has used your code,
Bring a legal action in court seeking that this person be enjoined from using your code,
Wait until your case finally gets a place on the court's probably-very-crowded docket,
Prevail in your legal action,
Get the court to issue an injunction instructing the party who has used your code to stop using your code, and
If the party does not stop using your code, go through steps 1 through 5 again, and again, and again, until a court finally gets pissed off enough about their orders being ignored (the court won't give a dang about your code - they will care very much, though, if their orders are ignored) that they finally do something like toss the enjoined party into jail for contempt of court or something similar.

If you decide to go this route, make sure you have a large pile of money with which to pay your lawyers.
The alternative is to keep your code under wraps, do your best job with it, and don't let anyone see it until your thesis is published - after which you still won't be able to stop people from using it.
Best of luck.


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How do popular scientific news & Google get DOI links leading to zombie pages on first release, but later link to the intended scientific paper?
Looking through google news feed just now I see an item that links directly to Science with the url https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abo5095 which combines science.org with a DOI. At the moment the page is empty - it contains a header and footer of the usual Science links but no article in the middle - a zombie page.
Other popular scientific news websites link to the same empty page when announcing what at least PubMed summarizes as An extremely energetic cosmic ray observed by a surface detector array, gives the abstract and links to a DOI that then goes to the zombie page.
What's so exciting is that a single 240 exa-electron volt (240E+18 eV) charged particle (possibly a proton or light nucleus, until it hit our atmosphere) had the kinetic energy of a tennis ball!
In the past (often in phys.org news items) I've clicked on links in popular scientific news articles that go directly to doi.org's "appology page" indicating that the number has not yet been assigned or linked.
In a half-day or so, these same links start working, so I need to save them and check them later.
Question: How do popular scientific news outlets and google news get DOI and DOI-like links that lead to zombie pages upon first release, but only later actually link to the intended scientific paper?
I'm interested in both:

the mechanism by which a DOI is issued that doesn't work but will work in the future
why this still happens in 2023

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abo5095
Screen Shot 2023-11-25 at 9.02.52 AM.png (UTC+08):

in meta: We have no press, press-release, popular-press, public-relations, publicity tags even though these are regularly leveraged by universities

This happens when a DOI or DOI-like link is prepared ahead of time, but either isn't activated or the article it points to is under some kind of embargo. The most common public-facing variant would be when such a link is included in a press release, that then gets reported on by some news outlet before the embargo is lifted. (Indeed, such news-worthy research is the most likely to be under strict embargo in the first place.) Authors can also encounter it in proofs of articles, for example.
Crossref sought input on how to handle this already back in 2016, but not much came of it. The initial report describes the mechanisms quite well

The Problem
Crossref currently recommends that publishers register DOIs at the time, or shortly after, content is made available online. This has worked pretty well over the years but changes in scholarly communications means that the current process for registering content with Crossref is increasingly causing problems both before and after publication and doesn’t meet the needs of researchers, funders, institutions and publishers.
There are a number of reasons for content to be registered prior to online availability:

Publishers provide authors with proofs of articles during the editorial and production process and the manuscripts have “DOI-like strings” on them. The “DOI-like strings” will become DOIs when the content is registered with Crossref but this happens after online publication. Authors sometimes try to use the unregistered DOIs from the proofs but they
don’t work so this undermines trust in using DOIs as persistent links.

The problem described above is exacerbated when the publisher is trying to control publicity for the publication and the press (or others) are given advanced [sic] copies of the content. To those who have advanced [sic] copies, the DOI will appear to be broken and therefore the recipients are understandably reluctant to use the DOI when referring to the content in articles, reviews, press releases, etc. that are designed to be released simultaneously with the content being made available. In addition, the DOI is included on
proofs and review copies sent to authors and if they try to use the DOI as a link it won’t work and they will be reluctant to use the DOI as a persistent link to the content.

Accepted Manuscripts in journal publishing - in journal publishing there is a lag - sometimes lengthy - between manuscript acceptance and online availability of the article (whether it be the version of record or an early publication of the manuscript “ahead of print” or being assigned to an issue). Waiting until online availability of the article or manuscript to register the content with Crossref means that a central source for an advance record of accepted manuscripts - i.e. upcoming publications - isn’t possible. Currently, there is no formal mechanism to provide metadata for manuscripts accepted for publication before they are made available online.

The proposal in that report resulted in a "Pending Publications" option, where publishers can register DOIs before the content is available. That rolled out in 2018.   There hasn't been a huge uptake yet (publishing workflows tend to change slowly, it seems), but some publishers are using it.

At least this one has a nice, clear message! https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stad3761 (displayed at the bottom of phys.org's New images reveal what Neptune and Uranus really look like) currently results in this nice explanation https://i.sstatic.net/GaAq0.png "This article has been accepted for publication by Oxford University Press and a DOI has been pre-registered. This persistent identifier can be shared by authors and readers, and will redirect to the published article when available"


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Is it normal in the UK that postdoc contract mentions I will have to work extra hours (if asked) without further remuneration?
I got a job at a university in the UK. When I got the offer, the working hours were 38h per week. When they sent the contract to sign, it says, minimum of 38h and the university will from time to time ask to work extra hours without further remuneration. Is this normal in the UK? Should I discuss this with my supervisor to remove this clause?
In the salary it said 36000/ year prorata; what is prorata? As I understand it is based on hours, so should the salary increase if I worked extra hours? Is this correct?

Imho there are two sources of pressure about working hours as a postdoc; (1) one depends on the PI for future recommendations, so depending on the relationship with them it can be risky career-wise to refuse to work extra hours. (2) in my experience the strongest pressure doesn't come from the PI but from oneself: it's hard not to work too much when the potential future job depends on the outcome of the current job. So at the end of the day the contract is not very relevant.

I guess it's hard to answer this without seeing the detail of the contract. However, in general I think this is fairly normal language in contracts for jobs that pay a salary  rather than an hourly wage. Basically the idea is that you are paid to complete assigned duties, and you are expected to manage your time accordingly. If you end up having to work late one night to finish preparing your lecture for the next day, you can't ask to be paid overtime.
Generally in UK academia nobody will track your working hours.
The phrase 'pro rata' generally implies that a job can be taken part-time. If you agree that you will only ever work 3 days a week, you would be paid 3/5 x £36000 = £21600. Unfortunately it does not imply you can work more than 100% and get more money.
By all means ask your supervisor to clarify what that part of the contract means. You could also ask if they will change it, but I suspect they will be unwilling to do so.

@DanielHatton Surely all postdocs are subject to the Working Time Regulations, whether or not anyone else tracks the hours. But as universities very rarely track working times centrally, this means that junior staff who are being exploited will have to raise a complaint themselves against their own supervisor, thus risking their recommendation letters and thus their own future career. See
What researchers think about the culture they work in - but that's a different (and depressing issue).

IANAL - I've only ever looked at human readable versions such as those from ACAS - but I'm struggling to believe those exceptions would apply in this context, e.g. "duration of his working time is not measured ... or can be determined..." It's not in principle hard for postdocs to keep timesheets if they want to. Not doing so in practice shouldn't change their employment rights. (This is getting off-topic; I'm sure UCU or Prospect will have guidance available.)

This is absolutely standard language, not just in UK academia, but most salaried jobs in the UK. Your chances of having this removed are next to zero.
The biggest decider for how much and when you work will be your supervisor, rather than any contractual terms, so it is important to glean what the working culture is from others that work with the same supervisor.
Uk academics are just starting a period of work to  rule, and this stuff makes it very difficult. Another term you will probably see is when your duties are listed, it will end with "and any other reasonable request".

Note though that - as far as I know - there is still a legal upper limit of 48 hours a week in place in the UK (I've never seen/heard of the required opt-out being requested from a postdoc; though of course I've heard of supervisors pushing their staff to violate it... :( ).

Actually, ive never heard of the opt out NOT being requested, although its generally buried in the small print of the small print. I was always told "if you don't opt out we'll make you keep a very detailed time sheet, including every lunch, coffee and toilet break you take. But, you know, your choice"

Well, that demonstrates how different things can be, even within academia in the same country... My last lot never even provided me with a time-sheet facility, though they were specifically supposed to!

I think the assumption is no one goes for the timesheet option. Im not sure anyone would know how to organise a timesheet if you went that way.

I'm not sure anyone would know how to organise a timesheet... - well, it was their requirement I keep a timesheet for that role! [Oh, and if you don't opt out and are thus available fewer hours than they want, why specifically target you with extra bureaucracy? I call that out as bullying/victimisation, par for the course in the sector :( ]


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Yet another google scholar preprint bug question
I published a paper two months ago in JPR (publisher is ACS). Before the submission, I put the paper on biorvix with the same title. Now I am stuck with the preprint on google scholar and even searching by DOI returns the preprint instead of the published paper. Is this the infamous preprint bug in action? I was under the impression that was not crawling the correct source but in my case the DOI of the published paper returns the preprint?

bioRxiv has a "Now published in" field that you can put the publication data in. There is no guarantee that it will make google scholar accept the published version as the "main" one (this still hasn't happened with a paper of mine from 2016 posted on the arXiv), but at least everyone clicking the link will see that your preprint has been published.

I wouldn't waste much time or worry on this problem. Do the things that are easy (keep your own CV up to date; add publication data to your bioRxiv preprints) and let the world figure out the rest. Everyone in academia by now understands that google is all heuristics and search results are not meant to be a point of truth.

@darijgrinberg Well said. That's the best answer to most questions on this site about Google Scholar.

Yep, and this is an annoying bug! (which I have been affected by as well)
A possible workaround that I applied is to create a manual entry for your published paper and then merge it with the preprinted entry. GS will then ask you to choose which entry you want to be displayed on the page, go with the published one of course.
The link will then direct you to the bioaRxiv page, and there hopefully you already have the link to the published paper. It's not ideal, but better than nothing...


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Acknowledging the referee in arXiv preprint
I am about to submit a paper on arXiv which is accepted but yet to be published. In the accepted version, we have thanked the referee, as their comments helped us in many ways. Should I add this acknowledgement to the arXiv version? Or post without it?

I assume you don't name them. Why would you omit it?

Thankyou@Buffy. Actually, I even do not know the reviewer name as it was a single blind review. I just thought it is a common practice or not, Since arxive is not a journal.

I doubt that it matters to anyone, but I don't see any reason to omit it. Readers understand it is a preprint. But be sure that your publisher permits you to upload a preprint. Some do. Some don't. Some do it themselves.

My rule: no one ever thinks the worse of someone for including thanks; omitting it, maybe.

If the preprint is the revised version that incorporates the changes engendered by the referee comments then I think it would be appropriate to have the acknowledgement.  Contrarily, if the preprint is the original version of the paper prior to the revisions then it would not make sense to acknowledge the referee, since they made no contribution to that version of the paper.  (As a more general rule, we add acknowledgements into a paper at the point at which the recipient of the acknowledgement did something to warrant that acknowledgement, so changing revisions of papers may accumulate acknowledgements as people give help.)

Generally, people who read the arXiv version understand that it is a preprint they are reading that may or may not match the published version. So, it matters little whether you include it or exclude it. My preference would be to leave the paper as it is, rather than providing a "different" version explicitly.
But be sure that your publisher permits you to upload a preprint. Some do. Some don't. Some do it themselves.

Oh I see! do I have to take permission for that? It is a Springer Birkhauser Journal! Please guide me in this regard.

The policies are probably on their website (the specific journal, not just Springer). Or ask your editor. Even for Springer it may differ by journal.

@Buffy, agree with you

Normally, don't bother asking your editors. I wouldn't even bother checking the website, TBH. Updating preprints is such a normal and everyday thing, you don't need to defend yourself from all directions. (When people started posting preprints on the internet in the early 90s, they didn't wait for permissions either.)

"So, it matters little whether you include it or exclude it." I wouldn't say so. Version confusion is real; many papers are available in 5 different stages of completion on the internet. Any hints about the stage at which a preprint is in are useful.

@darijgrinberg, for your first comment, note that trouble might arise for a journal that forbids prior publication. Unlikely in your field, I think, but not everywhere.

@Buffy: This kind of trouble is rare in any field covered by the arXiv. I think there is one Springer journal in my wider field (combinatorics) that forbids AMs on the arXiv, but I've seen my fair share of AMs from that journal on the arXiv, so I wouldn't take that policy too seriously either. Generally, I think the strength of academia.SE is that we can answer questions based on our real-world experience as academics, rather than just quoting the same rules that the OP can find himself.