text:
Options for someone who didn't take Math Subject GRE
I was to take the math subject GRE for the first time today, for my application to math Phd programs this December.
I receive accomodations because of my disability and ETS did not get back to me in time, though I did submit my paperwork well in advance of the exam.  Because of this I could not take the GRE with my accomodations so I did not take it.  I was doing very well on practice tests with my accomodations.
I have done research at top rated REU's, have taken nearly all graduate courses, since I was in high school, and I have good letters of recommendation, and I am interested in Homotopy theory.
I want to ask the stackexchange community if you know of any options that I have right now.  Do foreign universities require GRE scores?  I am open to learning Japanese for instance to study in the RIMS, or learning French to study in Paris-Sud.
I am not sure that waiting for a year is a good idea for me because a lot of my application is based off of having accomplished a lot at a relatively young age, and I want to do everything I can at this point to avoid it.

Unfortunately in the US most math PhD programs require GRE subject test in math. You could try contacting individual programs and explain your situation, or you could try countries that do not require GRE tests.

Also, you are asking a very specific question, which is not well-suited for this site. Please consider removing information about your particular circumstances to make the question more general. Questions asking a list of program recommendations are also off topic here, unfortunately.

Based on my limited knowledge, I would say that most programs outside the US do not care about GRE. So it might be useful to visit their program websites to get some basic info first. You can certainly ask about admission practice in different countries here. Quora seems to be a good choice but I have no experience with it.

@Drecate: while most math PhD programs in the U.S. ask for the GRE subject test in math, if you're good enough you can still get accepted to many of them without it. Email the admissions people, explain your circumstances, and ask what the real rules are.

I'd recommend applying anyway, with an explanation of why you didn't take the exam.  Not having a math GRE score could hurt your application, but at many schools it won't conclusively rule it out.  (You can always ask the school in advance whether they will consider your application under these circumstances.  I'd bet they say yes.)  Assuming the self-assessment in your question is accurate, you should be a strong candidate for graduate school, and I don't think a missing GRE score would derail everything given that you have a compelling excuse.

I agree with @Anonymous Mathematician that you should consider applying to American programs anyway.  You should write to each one, explaining your situation, and ask if your application can still be considered anyway.
Perhaps I should say that as the Graduate Coordinator of my PhD program in mathematics, I am now getting emails from students saying they didn't take the math subject exam and asking whether can they apply anyway.  What I tell these students is that their application can still be considered but will be regarded as incomplete without this exam, so that they should expect to be at a competitive disadvantage.  I imagine that this is somewhere in the interior of a continuum of responses that one might receive: some places really might not consider your application and others might not downgrade applicants at all.
In your particular case you have a bit more to say for yourself, namely the part about the accommodations.  I don't know what special accommodations you were seeking and it is not my place to ask about it here, but I think that does figure in how sympathetic the committee will be.  For instance, if you have severely impaired vision and were asking for larger print and a very well-lighted room, then it sounds bad that the ETS was not able to accommodate that in a timely way.  If you were asking for extra time because of text anxiety, the response may be different.
I also want to say that if the special accommodations were in the vein of giving you extra time, then it might have been in your best interests to take the exam anyway.  I don't want to get into the issue of how extra time on exams for various conditions is viewed by graduate admissions...so I won't.  But you would have given yourself more options by doing so: for instance, perhaps you would have done well anyway.
As others have said, you can certainly apply to math PhD programs in most countries in the world without GRE scores.  In fact, I don't know any country outside the US in which most programs require the GRE, although I just checked that a top Canadian program "strongly encourages" it, which is not so far off.  (Indeed, in more than half of the academic world, the response to such an inquiry would be "What's a GRE?")
Because advising current and prospective graduate students really is my job now, I am a bit more conscious not to answer too much more than the question was asked.  But briefly, I think you should talk to a mentor about your overall grad school strategy and career plans.  Learning Japanese and going to graduate school in Japan is a huge undertaking compared to waiting another year to get your application fully in order, especially if your application is otherwise strong.  You write:

I am not sure that waiting for a year is a good idea for me because a lot of my application is based off of having accomplished a lot at a relatively young age, and I want to do everything I can at this point to avoid it.

With respect, that doesn't make a lot of sense to me.  Programs, even the top programs, are not selecting for precocity; we're selecting for the likelihood and degree of future success.  We most certainly do not "normalize" the application by the age of the applicant.  I would encourage you to focus on mastery and success in absolute terms, not on getting as far ahead of your age cohort as you can.  As I have written elsewhere, in my experience math PhD students who are slightly older than average -- say, starting the program around 24-26 instead of 21-23 -- actually tend to do a bit better, on average.  People who get their PhDs in their late 20s need not be "slower" in any way than those who get their PhDs in their mid 20s: rather, they may be more fully using the time and resources they have been allotted.

In Germany, and probably in most other countries, most people do not know what GRE means and certainly nobody will care about it when it comes to an application for a Ph.D. The GRE results show that you can answer simple questions with high accuracy and speed. This is somewhat correlated to solving difficult problems, but computational skills are more a sign of good short-term memory then of mathematical abilities. So at least in Europe you would have no problems at all.

It is certainly worth a try to apply without the GRE.  (I don't know what your chances will be.)  Here are two other options you may want to consider:

start out in a relatively less competitive program, with a plan to transfer later
start out taking classes as a non-matriculated student.  That means the classes would not initially be part of a degree program.  However, they can count after the fact.


text:
Would I be considered a Masters degree holder right after my course completion?
I am currently a MS student looking forward to complete all of my courses by December 2016.
Will I be recognized as a Masters degree holder right after December 2016 so that my employers can file for H1B as soon as possible after April 1st of 2017?
Or do I have to wait till my Graduate Commencement Ceremony to be recognized as a degree holder, which is not till May of 2017?

Have you asked your graduate office about whether they can write a letter of certification once you are finished in December, stating that you have completed all degree requirements and that your degree will be conferred in May?

No , I have not. But I will do so as you indicated . Thank you.

The date on which you finish courses is not necessarily the date when you earn the degree, nor is the date of the commencement ceremony.
What matters is the date on which the degree is conferred by the university. If you're not sure what that date is, ask the registrar's office.
In some cases if the degree conferral date for students completing their coursework in December/January is after the H1B deadline, the registrar may have some kind of special arrangement (see this example from Stanford), which they'll tell you about if you ask.

I will right away ask my registrar's office. Thank you for the direction.

My universities have always offered a letter confirming the right to graduate, stating basically that everything is finished and we're just waiting for the actual ceremony, for exactly this type of situation. Check what your graduation office also offers.

My university used to confer degrees at the end of the fall, spring, and summer terms.  Years ago, degrees were only conferered only at the end of the spring term.  In the past students could request a letter from the college confirming that they'd met requirements for the degree although the degree had not yet been confered, but some employers wouldn't accept this.  We now confer degrees at the end of each month, so that graduate students who complete their thesis defense can graduate almost immediately.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Net salary for PhD in German university
I have an offer of a Mathematics PhD position at the rate of €28000 gross in a German university. The position is itself great, a really interesting topic, but obviously I need to compare the financial aspect of it to my other offers.
I believe €28000 is 66% TV-L E13. What does this come to after tax, i.e. what would the net pay be for this position?
(I am 35 years old with no dependents if that makes a difference).

The specifics depend on the state (in particular, whether it's in former East or West Germany), but 66% TV-L E13 roughly corresponds to a net salary of €1450 per month (with social security and in particular health insurance already taken care of), see http://oeffentlicher-dienst.info/c/t/rechner/tv-l/west?id=tv-l&g=E_13&s=1&zv=VBL&z=66&zulage=&stj=2015&stkl=1&r=&zkf=&kk=15.5%25

@ChristianClason Can you please turn your comment into an answer so that I can vote for it?

Don't forget to consider other aspects besides the pay, in your decision making process.  In addition to all the usual considerations, Germany has a special situation -- German academia is extremely hierarchical.  So think about your long term prospects, and how you react to hierarchy.

@aparente001: Can you give me some on info on the hierarchical situation in German and academia and what it would mean for me?

@sonicboom - That very much depends on the specific place, and shouldn't be generalized. The only way to get some reliable information about the working conditions is to contact some PhD students in the department (and preferably, the research group) you are considering to join.

@sonicboom, the hierarchy I was talking about is a very pyramidal structure, with a big name at the top.  However, Christian is right, every group is unique.  His suggestion is excellent.  How about if you ask what the prospects for tenure and advancement would be?  (However, if you just want to treat this as a one to three year quasi postdoc, then I guess it doesn't really matter.)

Expanding a bit on my comment: To find out the net (and gross) salary for any position at a German university (from administrative assistants up to and including the base salary of a full professor), you can use the online calculator at Öffentlicher Dienst.
It's in German only, but not that difficult to navigate. You need to know the following information (I'm not going down every branch, just the one you asked about):

For temporary positions (PhD, postdoc etc.), select TV-L ("Tarifvertrag-Länder", wage agreement of the states);  for permanent positions (lecturers, full professors), select Beamte (civil servant).
The state the university is located in (since every state has full independence in matters of science and education; this mostly affects civil servant positions). In particular, you need to select whether it's a former West or East German state.
The year you are interested in (the wage agreement is renegotiated somewhat frequently, so it might change even within a year).
The pay scale (Entgeltgruppe); PhD and postdoc positions are usually paid according to E13; senior postdocs with more responsibility such as lab management can be paid according to E14. Civil servant positions can be either A13 to A16 for lecturers (depending on administrative responsibilities) or W1 to W3 for (junior to full) professors.
The pay grade (Stufe): For some scales, you move up a grade after several years (used to be by age, now it's by time on the job). This is something you have to negotiate based on previous experience; for a starting PhD student usually only Stufe 1 makes sense. (For TV-L 13, you get bumped up to Stufe 2 in your second year and to Stufe 3 in your fourth year; if you continue on to do a postdoc, you can get up to Stufe 5; see http://oeffentlicher-dienst.info/tv-l/west/stufen.html.)
The additional pension scheme (Zusatzversorgung). This is basically the organization that keeps the money deducted from your gross salary to put into a pension fund. If you're in one of the western states, choose VBL, otherwise VBL-Ost.
The working time (Arbeitszeit) in percentage of a full (forty-odd hour) working week -- this is the important one for TV-L. PhD positions can be announced as everything from 50% to 100%; postdocs usually as 75% or 100%.  Your 66% is about par for the course (depending on the discipline); positions announced as 100% usually include teaching duties beside research.
The additional salary (monatliche Zulagen) is important for W2 and up, but very unusual for TV-L. In your case, leave it empty.
The tax class (Steuerklasse) makes the biggest difference in your net salary. If you're single and don't have another job, choose class I. If not, things can get messy -- I'll just refer you to the German wikipedia entry and wish you luck.
The church tax (Kirchensteuer) or tithe again depends on the state; if you're not registered with one of the officially recognized churches, select keine. (Otherwise it's slightly less than a tenth of the income tax, which comes out as slightly less than 1% of the gross salary).
The health insurance (Krankenkasse) depends on the scheme you're in -- it's either one of the public insurance companies ("gesetzliche Krankenversicherung"), in which case you pay a fixed percentage of your salary (which varies slightly with the company; currently it's around 15.5%) or a private insurance company ("private Krankenversicherung"), in which case you negotiate a personal contract with a certain monthly fee. If in doubt, leave the default (public insurance, current average percentage).

Putting in the information you listed (66% TV-L E13, single, no kids) and guessing the rest (western university, current wage agreement, no church affiliation, default insurance), I get an average monthly net salary of €1497.36 (according to the current -- at the time of this edit -- collective agreement for 2016).

If you belong to a church, does your wage go up or down?'   Ps. Great answer

@RoboKaren: Down -- it's a form of tithe (roughly 1% of gross salary). I'll edit the answer to make it clearer.

Actually, for PhD students at my university, they move up from Stufe N to N + 1 after N years of service. So they start at level 1, then move to level 2 in their second year, level 3 in their fourth year (two years in level 2), and so on.

@aeismail: That's right; my point was about the starting salary, which by default is Stufe 1.

Note that this is about 200EUR a month more than a German Biology PhD will get (and it stays the same for all of the 4+ years) so it sounds perfectly reasonable estimate.

do you have any idea about a physics PhD in the Netherlands?especially Utrecht University? could help me with that?

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


text:
What visa is required for a TV-L PhD position in Germany
I am a citizen of a non EU country with an offer for a PhD position in a research training group with a TV-L E13 (65%) salary. I was told getting a student visa would be problematic. Which visa would I require to work under TV-L salary.

Have you tried asking the university administration? They usually know this because they get this question several times a year. Another option is to ask the German embassy in your country.

A student visa is definitely wrong (and something you can't fix afterwards!) You need a visa for a long-term stay that allows you to earn money; this is usually called a "national visa type D". This will allow multiple entries. Be aware that it will usually only be issued for three or six months (I've seen both), and you need to get the "real" visa for the full duration of the contract ("Aufenthaltserlaubnis") at the foreign office ("Ausländerbehörde") once you have arrived in Germany.
To get the visa, you need to provide some documentation about your employment in Germany; specifically,

date and place where the contract will be signed,
duration of the contract,
exact description of your position,
income.

The university should know about this and provide you a letter of confirmation
In your case, something like

$NAME, born $BIRTHDAY, is supposed to be employed from $STARTING_DATE
  to $ENDING_DATE as a wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter (TV-L E13) with
  65% of full working time at the $DEPARTMENT of $UNIVERSITY.

would suffice, since it's a standard position the embassy will be familiar with. You also need to present your Masters diploma to verify that you are qualified for the position.

An "Aufenthaltserlaubnis" is not a Visa. From my experience, the whole ordeal was a major pain, even when I was in Germany. What helps a lot is to get your "Sachbearbeterin" in contact with the "Personalabteilung" from the University. Seriously, do this as soon as possible.


text:
How can I get a postdoctoral position in neuroscience after completing my PhD in Mechanical Engineering?
I recently completed my PhD in mechanical engineering and have been applying for postdocs in neuroscience for the past 5 months.
My field is dynamical systems theory and statistics, so I look up professors working in neuroscience who use those techniques and send them emails.  I have sent 3 dozen emails since February but I barely get any responses.
I got two interview requests in February. One of them rejected me. The other professor stopped replying to my emails after the first interview and he did not pay my interview travelling expenses either.
Sometimes it feels very hopeless. Please, please any recommendations, help or advice is very appreciated; especially from people who have changed their research area post-PhD.
This is my Cover letter.

Hi Dr. F,
I am writing apply for the postdoctoral position in your lab at Columbia. My training is in the domain of dynamical and nonlinear systems theory (primarily in mechanical systems) and I am interested in bridging to Neuroscience for my postdoctoral research.
My interest in the brain goes back almost a decade to my undergraduate
years when I took up a regular meditation practice. I am very
interested in the broad and mechanistic aspects of neural computation.
I am fascinated by the application of concepts such as dynamical
systems, stochastic modelling and network theory to the study of the
brain.
I completed my PhD in Mechanical Engineering at the Some University
under the advisement of Dr. Advisor (June 2018
Conferral). I have worked on a wide variety of problems so far -
powering micro-implants in brain using arterial blood pressure,
stochastic analysis of nonlinear vibration energy harvesters, the
spontaneous spinning of a rattleback on a vibrating surface, sound
wave manipulation in fluids, tunable mechanical metamaterials and
nonlinear metamaterials. I currently have 3 published manuscripts, 2
journal papers in peer review and 1 manuscript in preparation. I have
published 9  peer-reviewed conference papers. During my PhD, I have
worked on collaborative research projects with senior faculty and also
as a mentor to several undergraduate students. I previously earned a
Bachelors and Masters in Aerospace Engineering from Indian Institute
of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur (Class of 2013).
I am fascinated by > your recent research contributions. I really liked the paper titled "  Abstract Context Representations in Primate Amygdala and Prefrontal >Cortex" that used neural population decoders to show that
representations of task contexts appeared in the Amygdala in addition
to the PFC. Also intriguing was the preferential weakening of the
signal in the Amygdala when an error was committed.  I also liked you
paper titled "Energy efficient Neuromorphic classifiers" that
implemented a basic image classifier on a novel neuromorphic processor
and demonstrated significantly lesser energy and computational cost.
During my postdoc, I intend to apply for fellowships and possible
avenues of funding. I am interested in using my training in dynamical
systems and stochastic analysis to current research problems in
neuroscience and hone my technical skill-set to succeed in my future
independent research. My CV is attached. Please do not hesitate to
reach out to me for further inquiries.

Are you emailing specifically people in neuroscience doing dynamic systems theory? Do you read enough neuroscience in the area to be conversant? Are you sending professionally formatted emails (note: your question here is not professionally formatted by StackExchange's conventions)? Do you have any evidence that the professors you are emailing might be looking for a post doc?

@BryanKrause, Yes more or less, I email people working more in the Physics or engineering side of things.
And yes, not all my emails are to people who advertise directly on their labs but atleast 50% of my emails are to people who do advertise.

@BryanKrause, I have added my Cover letter.  Any advice/ comments?

I know someone, who did a postdoc in anatomy and cell biology after a PhD in physics after a MSc in biology. Nothing is impossible!

This is just my personal preference, but I'd open with a much shorter email testing the waters first. Sometimes institutions require jobs to be posted when there isn't really a job opening because they already have someone in mind. I'd also warn you that because neuroscience is sort of a 'sexy' field these days, we get a lot of interested folks coming from adjacent areas, and sometimes they think they know too much and can be quite a chore. See https://xkcd.com/793/ - it doesn't just apply to physicists.

I'd also add that your comments about their research are good enough to indicate that you've spent some time looking at their abstracts, but there's nothing there that indicates you can do more than that. I think it's going to be a real uphill battle looking for a position without previous biological experience, unless you find a group that is particularly in need of your skills or already had substantial overlap with the work you've already done.

I have the same issue, I recently completed my Ph.D. in computer science. Accordingly, I have applied several times for post-doc positions around the world and I was able to get only three interviews. Unfortunately, none of them was willing to give me the post-doc position.
Based on my short experience, it will be better to submit your application for a Fellowship with peer review process such as Marie Skłodowska-Curie programme. Open up to the world (China!).
Best wishes.

You'd get a much better reception applying for positions with biomed engineers who do neuroscience.  It's not all the way to your goal, but it is about three quarters of the way there - a big step in the right direction.

A different approach seeks to demonstrate your interest and comprehension of the material first: read his/her most recent papers thoroughly and email with great questions and comments. PI’s love to talk about their research. If you can engage them a bit that way first, a later appeal asking if they’re accepting students will be given more consideration. Keep the emails short and to the point - an unexpected long email like yours may just get sent to trash.

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


text:
Using fragments of online images in a paper
I am preparing a paper and want to include some images from historical maps. There are several online examples and I want to snip a fragment (no more than 10% of the total image area), maybe clean it up a little, and use it in my paper. The fact that I'm only using a small part of the image and it's undergoing some transformative process seem like very reasonable grounds for claiming this is covered by 'fair use' but IANAL. However, suitable journals where I'd send my paper (of course) want all image rights/copyrights cleared in advance with my submission.
The online digital images almost invariably come from vendor sites who would like to sell me a print of the map for £££ and they are not going to give permission, even for non-commercial use. Although I could buy copies of the prints and scan them myself I'd prefer any more cost-effective suggestions.
This is different from How to use copyrighted images in an article? (they wanted to use the whole images) and Academic fair use and using publication images in your thesis (the images had already been published in books/papers and there was a publisher to approach)

If they are old historical maps from before 1900, then they should be public domain in any case, since copyright is not forever (despite the desire of Disney to the contrary).

The originals are out of copyright but the digital images online are not.

IANAL = I am not a lawyer (for those who didn't know what it means, like me)

It seems to me that since it's the journal who might get sued, it's ultimately their decision.  It doesn't really matter whether you think it's fair use or not - if they need explicit permission to make them comfortable, then that's what you need. Might it be possible to make your own images?  Maybe a nearby library or museum has the kind of maps you need - it might be possible to get permission to photograph them.

As @jakebeal stated in his comment, the copyright for old maps from before 1900 should be expired. I can only comment on base of German Copyright Law:

70 years after the death of the creator, the copyright has expired.
A picture of a 2D object (for example a photograph of the Mona Lisa, a facsimile print of an original Luther's bible, a photocopy of an old map) is not protected by copyright since the threshold of originality is not reached. The aim is to reproduce the original as exactly as possible, hence there is no novelty and no input of ones own creativity. It seems, US law is similar here.

Conclusion: if your map is older than 100 years and copyright has expired, you would not have to ask the company for permission.
In case the map is not as old and copyright still applies, you would not be allowed to modify (also not to crop parts of it) the original without the consent of  the copyright owner.
Any way, you have to cite the source (the original creator of the map, not the company providing the copy).


text:
Can I cite second hand information from series of sentences
I would like to cite a series of concept. For example, in this paper, the authors wrote:

The identification of prospective geothermal systems in the aseismic
geologic setting is very challenging and costly using conventional
techniques. The applicability of remote sensing imagery to detect
spatial patterns of hydrothermal alteration minerals and thermal
anomaly provides a cost-effective and useful technique for mapping
geothermal features in underdeveloped countries (Kratt et al., 2010,
van der Meer et al., 2014, Calvin et al., 2015, Calvin and Pace, 2016,
Abubakar et al., 2017a, Abubakar et al., 2017b, Abubakar et al.,
2017c, Abubakar et al., 2017a, Abubakar et al., 2017b, Abubakar et
al., 2017c). Spectral remote sensing imagery produces digital images
that can be used for interpretation of surface compositional features
such as hydrothermally altered mineral assemblages. These minerals
manifest unique spectral signatures that can be detected using remote
sensing sensors (Iqbal et al., 2018, Pour et al., 2017a, Pour et al.,
2017b, Pour et al., 2017a, Pour et al., 2017b, Testa et al., 2018,
Ahmadirouhani et al., 2018). Iron oxide/hydroxides and
hydroxyl-bearing mineral groups are by-products of metasomatism in
hydrothermal systems, which serve as one of the most important
indicators for mapping geothermal sites (Carranza et al., 2008, Renaut
et al., 2017, van der Meer et al., 2018).

I'd like to cite the series of concept like this:

Identifying prospective geothermal sites poses significant challenges
and costs when using conventional techniques (Abubakar et al., 2019).
Remote sensing offers cost-effective and valuable method for
identifying spatial patterns of altered minerals. It can be used to
detect hydrothermally altered mineral assemblages which manifest
unique spectral signatures and are important indicators for mapping
geothermal sites.

Is there something wrong of directly citing them for the series of ideas instead of going through their original sources?

It is better to cite some original research or at least a review paper. There are several questions on this site where people explain why this is. See below for links.
One problem is that when you don't read the original source but just cite something that cites something else, it sometimes happens that the claim is wrong and never appeared in the original source. See Academic urban legends.
In this case I don't think you need to read all the original sources that are cited, but just a few of them.

Similar questions:
Referencing the reference? (this is the most relevant one)
Citation policies: original papers or recent monographs?
Who to cite if the original source of a citation does not contain the content that was cited?

Wow. Thanks for referring me to that article. I am excited to read it.

This is a judgement call. As a reader or reviewer I would probably be happy enough with "(Abubakar et al., 2019)" alone, but you could hedge your bets with "(see Abubakar et al., 2019 for discussion and references)" to indicate that the reference only supports the statement indirectly.
On second thought, though, reading the paragraph you quote, the only part that supports your statement is the first sentence ("The identification of prospective geothermal systems in the aseismic geologic setting is very challenging and costly using conventional techniques"), which seems to be asserted without support or further discussion. The rest of the paragraph seems to be about unconventional techniques, as far as I can tell without much context.  Do you have a better reference you can cite for the significant costs and challenges of conventional methods?

I am just following APA. Only place reference on the first sentence. https://askus.baker.edu/faq/218059#:~:text=According%20to%20APA%2C%20if%20multiple,and%20topic%20do%20not%20change.

OK, that seems reasonable.

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


text:
Reject a paper based on relevant but pointless research direction
Disclaimer: this is a hypothetical question, not (immediately) related to any concrete past, present or future reviewed paper.
My context is the no-fly zone between Computer Science and Applied Mathematics. In my opinion, there are some research directions within this field that are pointless. Roughly speaking, papers can be either theoretical or applicative. The former provide insight on formal concepts, model interesting physical phenomena, analyze significant properties of an algorithm, and so on. The latter build algorithms to solve real-world applications, or at least provide preliminary results on contrived problems that promise future performance enhancements. In summary, I am very tolerant as to which is my field of research, and I find interesting results almost everywhere.
However, I observe that there appear more and more papers that suffer from the syndrome of the "parameter change": a model—typically an algorithm—is built that can solve toy problems, but no large-scale application is proved or foreseen; there are no fundamental theoretical problems in either Mathematics or Computer Science (or Physics, Biology, or other fields) involved; then, a second paper changes a minor parameter or adds a light generalization, but still no real applicability is shown; then a third paper. Note that I am not talking about marginal papers, I estimate that half the papers of a top journal (ISI indexed, impact factor, serious publisher...) fall within this description.
Now, my particular problem: I am assigned a paper for review. I am a bit prejudiced by the title and the abstract, but nonetheless I bite the bullet and go through pages and pages of equations, crowned by some computer simulations that allegedly prove the superiority of the algorithm (marginal superiority in an uninteresting toy problem). I am unable to point out any particular error, which is hardly surprising, since what is proved is rather obvious, usually some disguised version of the Stone-Weierstrass theorem or the Lyapunov Stability criterion.
What do you think should be my stance? Some possibilities:

Next time, think better and decline the review because you are prejudiced and unable to produce a fair review.

Well, the paper is correct, isn't it? Judge exclusively by the content.

The editor has asked for your opinion and you think that the paper should not be published. Say so: "It is correct but this line of research is pointless. Yes, I know that there are hundreds of papers within this line, but those are not my business and I am currently reviewing this paper".

What about consequences of the somewhat quixotic answer 3? It looks like my opinion is minority and probably not shared with editors themselves. Could I be berated or blacklisted by the editor?

Re: #3 "true but useless" is a phrasing I personally sometimes use. Re: Last line, "blacklisted" may be the word you want.

#3 is my preferred option.  If they did not want your opinion they should not have asked for it.  If they blacklist you for expressing your solicited opinion, then you are better off without them.

You might be interested in a similar problem from the metaheuristic community, well documented in this paper.

It sounds like you are describing the trend towards researchers producing "least publishable units" in reaction to the publish-or-perish, or a quantity-published as a proxy for quality metric, mentality of some academic circles.

The type of judgment you are making about the paper can probably be made based on the information contained in the introduction. The editor has read the introduction and could have desk rejected the paper. Therefore, you are actually trying to convince the editor that he should have a different policy on what papers make it past the desk. If you frame it as such, you can write what you want in your report.

In such cases I have often written that the paper's results are 'incremental' but 'not substantial' contributions to the field. The editors usually get the message.

Generally, as a reviewer, you are being asked for your opinion of the paper's correctness and its significance (importance, level of interest, etc).  Evidently in this case you think the results are not significant or interesting enough to publish in this journal, so you should say so in your review.  If possible, you should explain why you think so: the authors don't give any compelling applications, the results are only a marginal improvement on what's known, etc.
This isn't reason to decline the review.  Thinking the paper is uninteresting isn't "prejudice".
If the editors don't agree with your assessment, they are free to disregard it and publish the paper anyway.  But you do have a responsibility to give your honest opinion.
In fact, I would suggest that you evaluate the paper's interest before you start to carefully check its correctness.  If you believe it's not significant enough to publish, even if correct, then you can so inform the editors and save yourself the time.
There are some exceptions, where the editors may only be interested in whether you believe the paper is correct.  Perhaps they are already convinced it is sufficiently important (from their own opinions or other reviewers), or perhaps "importance" isn't a criterion for publication in this journal (e.g. PLOS One).  If that's the case, then the review invitation should make this clear; otherwise, do consider the paper's importance as part of your review.

+1 for "save yourself the time". The expectation of this advice was a more or less conscious reason for posting.

"Evidently in this case you think the results are not significant or interesting enough to publish in this journal" When the asker claims to think that about 50% of what the journal publishes, I'd say that they aren't a very good judge of what is important or interesting enough for this particular journal.

@DavidRicherby Or maybe the community in general is all too interested in working on problems it finds interesting, not necessary problems that are important or interesting to other people. Case in point: String Theory.

@101010111100 When a community is large enough, they are the “other people”. I don’t try to make my computer science papers interesting to string theorists (or earth scientists, or economists, or historians or...) and it would be unreasonable to demand that they make their papers interesting to me.

@DavidRicherby: The reviewer has a professional opinion of what's important, which apparently differs from the mainstream.  I wouldn't say that this ipso facto makes them a "bad judge"; reasonable experts can disagree.  There's perhaps a separate question here: should one judge the importance of a paper by one's own professional opinion, or by one's impression of the community consensus?  I would argue the former, because otherwise how will dissenting views ever be heard?

tl;dr: Let the paper try and convince you it's not pointless; if it hasn't, you may judge it harshly.
Referring to your three options:

Decline the review because you are prejudiced and unable to produce a fair review.

You're not prejudiced against the specific paper or specific author, you have an opinion regarding the significance of such papers. But - do make sure you're not pre-judging a specific paper because you've disliked existing ones which are somewhere between theory and practice.

Well, the paper is correct, isn't it? Judge exclusively by the content.

You're "spoiling" this answer by adding an irrelevant rhetorical question. We're talking about relevance and significance, not correctness. Always judge by the content; but - the content must include an argument for significance and relevance if those are not immediately apparent. For that, context is significant.

The editor has asked for your opinion and you think that the paper should not be published. Say so: "It is correct but this line of research is pointless. Yes, I know that there are hundreds of papers within this line, but those are not my business and I am currently reviewing this paper".

Don't say that until you've read the paper and have not been otherwise convinced. Also, again, the "correctness" is not the issue.
The bottom line is summarized in the tl;dr above.
PS - A paper may have a very interesting method to prove a not-very-useful result, and that may be an independent reason to accept.

Let the paper try and convince you is a great suggestion. It is incredibly good advice especially in order to avoid other potential biases (lack of seniority, gender, race). Having an arsenal of one-shot rejection reasons makes you imo more likely to bias your reports as you may refrain from using them on your favored groups.

@HRSE: Thanks for the compliment; but - I'm not sure what you mean by "one-shot rejection reasons".

In my experience, referees are likely to emphasize singular issues in order to reject papers. You may receive reports or see the comments of other referees along the lines of: "Great paper, but I dislike X". The easiest one of those is "not important". The problem is of course that the less mental effort you have to spend on an argument, the more likely you are to use this argument in a discriminatory way.

@HRSE: "Great paper but I dislike X" sounds like "weak accept" to me... More generally, I feel that rejections require long explanations and justification, which considers potential counter-arguments (while acceptance not so much).

You're in a subject area with great referees then ;-)

@HRSE: I was talking about my ethic, not necessarily what I've encountered. Although frankly I've never gotten one-liner rejections - it's always at least a couple of paragraphs. They might be clueless BS, but still. As for me, I've never written a review which was less than, oh, 500 words long.

You estimate that around half of the papers in one of the top journals fall into this class of "pointless" papers. Honestly, to me that says that your view of what is "pointless" is so far out of line with what the community as a whole thinks, that you shouldn't be making recommendations about papers on that topic.

Yeah, I thought about that. But science is not democratic and, after all, it is them who have asked for my opinion.

Do you think they'd have asked your opinion if they knew you dismiss the whole area as pointless?

Maybe. A minority opinion is an opinion. If everyone had the same opinion, there would be no need to review.

If you want to tell a journal that half the papers they publish are pointless, do that by writing a letter to the editorial board, not by penalizing the unlucky people whose paper was sent to you to review  rather than somebody else.

@DavidRicherby I strongly disagree. The editor asked OP for his honest professional opinion of the paper. The only proper response is for OP to give his honest professional opinion of the paper.

Just to clarify, you're saying that if I find half of the models too skinny, I shouldn't bother watching the catwalk?

@PatrickT I don't think that changing the subject from academic papers to catwalk models clarifies anything.

This is the correct answer. If you are somewhat categorically opposed to a large fraction of papers in your community, don't accept to review these papers. This reminds me a bit of a qualitatively-minded prof. I know who joined the PC of a well-known quantitative conference only to recommend rejection of every submission because he did not like the approach. Don't be that person.

The referee assignment is offered in the context that you know what is acceptable and appropriate for that journal.  If one believes that half of what's published in that journal is not appropriate because of the area the work is in, then such person not an appropriate referee for that area for that journal.  The OP should decline to review such papers.

I would, and have, chosen option 3. However, I phrase it differently. Make your point using neutral terms, so the focus is on your argument rather than your evaluation. That is useful to the editor, regardless of whether (s)he agrees with your points or not. A professional disagreement is no reason to be blacklisted.

Perhaps "unmotivated" can serve as a neutral-sounding substitute for "pointless".

In addition to being useful to the editor, giving arguments to explain why the article is pointless (and maybe adding ideas on interesting generalizations/concrete possible applications) may help the author.

As an editor, option 3 is exactly what I'd like you to express. As an editor, and as a member of the community, I agree that we publish a lot of papers that are indeed either (i) pointless, or at least (ii) do a rather poor job motivating why anyone should care.
So to ask the question "Why should anyone care?" is really one of the more important jobs of a reviewer. If you think we should care, then you can check technical correctness, but I entirely agree that a pointless paper, technically correct or not, should not be published. It's the editor's job to ask reviewers about this issue as well.
(I will add that I have trouble seeing what the point is about many papers I find as well. But I've also learned that not all papers do a particularly good job explaining what the point is, and that that is not equivalent to there not being a point. That's particularly true for many pure math papers that contain essentially no introduction that puts the result into context. That doesn't mean that there is no context in which the result is not relevant -- it just means that you have to be an expert in the field to see it. I suspect that many papers in applied maths and other areas fall in the same category: You will understand the point when you know enough about the problem, which most of us don't. Of course, this does not refute the fact that there are many papers that truly are pointless.)

I have asked a very similar question here:
What good is engineering research with no practical relevance?
However, the majority of the answerers chastised me for failing to see the usefulness of "pointless research" (in your own words). If only these answerers had seen the papers I have seen!! I am too polite to post those research paper on here, but when you are using genetic algorithm to allocate fertilizers (in 2017, when there are extremely robust optimization methods), you might be doing something wrong. When you are rediscovering Markov decision process, you are doing something wrong. When you are modeling the purchasing behavior of actual human beings as dynamical system (with zero stochasticity involved), and proposing a Lyapunov function to "show convergence", you are doing something wrong. It is not about the math, but about the assumptions and practical relevance.
For the sake of producing good research, while being guarded against our own biases, the best we can do is to highlight and question (and question repeatedly) the practical relevance of those "pointless research".
We should not be afraid to ask things like: "How can you extend your results? How can it be implemented? what advantage does it bring as compared to seemingly better and more widely used alternatives? Why is the application of your paper so limited? Is there anyway to use your proposed algorithm for a non-toy problem"
or
"why should anyone care?"
This is the only way we can compete against research in industry and safeguard the prestige of the title of an "academic", if not the quality of research in a particular University or even an entire country.
Some countries are known to output enormous amount of pointless research, and I think it has harmed the reputations of researchers from those countries very deeply.
To your question, if you find that the application is too specific, or that the algorithm is too limited, I would recommend you not hold back when deciding whether or not to push the reject button. But definitely discuss this with several peers first, a consensus should quickly be reached if the paper in question is, indeed, pointless.
This is the only way that academia can innovate. I have seen people doing the same thing that they have done 20 years ago, just with minor tweaks in the setup, so that an algorithm appears slightly different than when it was first proposed some 20+ years ago. It is time for a serious change.

It is correct but this line of research is pointless.

Number theory. I agree that the way you described it sounds like really minor results. But on the other hand, I believe minor results were almost always the stepping stones in mathematics. And if you think the "line of research" itself is pointless, I can't help but think of number theory. Was thought of as pointless with toy problems until cryptography.
So, I'm saying you can't really judge if a line of research will always stay pointless or if the toy problems become interesting problems in the future because we can't know the future.

No, no, no... no way I am going to be dragged into a pure vs applied math war :)  I do not dismiss a whole field, but a particular "assembly line" produced sequence of papers.

@Miguel Be assured, I'm not trying any of the like. Just thinking what other answers may have missed. I understand the "assembly line" problem, though.

It's also a false equivalence. Just because some number theoretic results have been found very useful in cryptography does not imply that all number theory papers from 30 or 50 years ago are now relevant. It's also not true that for some of these irrelevant papers a good reviewer could not have predicted the lack of relevance. (Note that I'm not trying pick on number theory here: the same observation can be made about many fields -- including my own, numerical analysis.)

@WolfgangBangerth I'm not stating an equivalence. I'm simply adding a point of view. Of course not all are relevant today. But that holds for a lot of papers which results have been generalized since. "It's also not true that for some of these irrelevant papers a good reviewer could not have predicted the lack of relevance." I want to emphasize that this may be your belief, but cannot be proven. Any paper you could name as an example could potentially become interesting in the future, unless it has been generalized since and not used extraordinary proof techniques. We simply cannot tell.

When I read your question and came to the passage "pages and pages of equations, crowned ... or the Lyapunov Stability criterion", my reaction was that, if this is an accurate description of the paper, then you should tell the editor exactly that.

It is not a shame to point out that you did not understand the point of the paper.
Many scientist have this feeling about papers outside of their domain.

I will admit my bias here: I once had a paper dismissed as "a solution in search of a problem" by a reviewer (essentially the same as 'this is pointless') when:

That paper was an integral component of a larger project
That paper has been cited 33 times, and is well above my personal h-index.

So I'm a little skeptical of people's ability to evaluate what is useful.
Personally, I tend to review papers based on their technical merits - for me to reject something, it has to be badly done, outright wrong, "This does not say what you think it says", etc. rather than just "I don't like it." I may however leave the authors a comment that the results need firmer linking to some practical outcome (I'm in a field where practical outcomes matter, and 'Is interesting for its own sake' is rarely accepted).
In the comments to the editor section I would note that I don't think the paper will have much of an impact, and is one of a number of examples of the field going down a useless rabbit hole. But I'd leave it to their editorial judgement to determine if they think that's grounds to not accept something.

"So I'm a little skeptical of people's ability to evaluate what is useful." There's a reason papers tend to have more than one reviewer, after all.

@JAB unfortunately, more and more editors use an aggregation rule by which each reviewer has to agree to publication. a dismissive review plus a glowing review does not equal two unenthusiastic but not outright dismissive reviews.

Lots of great works were famously rejected from journals because reviewers are rarely able to properly estimate significance.
Founding paper of bioinformatics on Smith-Waterman algorithm is such an example.
That is why some journals refuse to judge relevance, just ask if the topic is in scope of the journal.

I would like to offer a slightly contrarian answer, possibly controversial, but do give it a thought.
You are perfectly entitled to your evaluation of the manuscript; after all you would not be contacted if you don't have the appropriate credentials. You are also right to say that this paper is your business and not other similar papers. I urge you to go one step beyond, and consider the impact of your decision.
As a responsible academician, it may be good to think if a 'reject' decision is likely to change the number of "parameter change" papers being published. Unlikely- the editor is more likely to treat it as an isolated case. It certainly raises one voice, but if as you say, 50% of papers published are similar, that voice will be drowned out.
Now consider the effect on the author(s)- they have seen many similar papers getting published in the same journal. It may even be the case that they chose this journal for that very reason. To them, this would appear an unfair and biased decision. This does not help their morale, and for a young researcher, could be demotivating. It is a bit unfair for them to be singled out. (Yes, the review process is probabilistic and inequalities are inevitable, but perhaps we could do our bit to reduce those, when we can.) When the researcher is demotivated, (s)he is less likely to understand nuanced arguments (eg. relevant but pointless) and take them in the right spirit. The paper will probably be subjected to minor modifications and sent to a similar journal, where it may well get published. You, as a reviewer, have little chance of changing the author's research tendencies in isolation. In the end, you will have the satisfaction of having stated your point (very important in science!), but beyond that, whom or what did it serve?
To my mind, an alternative would be to either review this paper (rigorously) based on its relevance and correctness (leaving relevance aside), or to decline the review. Certainly how interesting a paper is should factor in a regular review- but given your strong feelings about this journal/type of paper, this is not really a regular review. I reiterate- I don't believe this is how every review should be done, this is a special case.
If you are serious in your objection to the type of papers being published, you should instead use you academic standing to write to the editorial board, bring up this issue in conferences, or take a stand in public fora. At the very least, the conversation will move beyond you, one editor and one author. You might find that many others agree with you, and that could be a step towards making a really meaningful contribution. Even if that doesn't happen immediately/visibly, you will know you attacked the root cause, not the symptom.

I understand that I alone am not going to change the trend, but when in doubt I always apply the Categorical imperative: if every reviewer acted the same, then the trend would change towards more meaningful papers. Otherwise I would not be responsible, just taking the easy way.

@Miguel- I appreciate the amount of thought you have given this issue, and thank you for introducing me to the Categorical imperative. Taking the easy way out is not right- hence my last paragraph about raising the issue more publicly. In fact, it may be much more difficult, but probably more 'right'. If I may offer a different Talisman, think of the effect of your action on the last person in the line, irrespective of anyone else. That way you take more ownership of the situation.

The referee assignment is offered in the context that you know what is acceptable and appropriate for that journal. If one believes that half of what's published in that journal is not appropriate because of the area the work is in, then such person is not an appropriate referee for that area for that journal. The OP should decline to review such papers.

This is a great question. I've been on the "other end" of the situation - I've submitted my paper which "could" solve a real-world problem, but the paper only did a simulation on a toy/contrived problem.
Problem statement: Running all regression tests can be really time-consuming for a team/organization/company. If we could schedule the tests from the lens of game theory by looking at testability as a competition between testers and developers, we could get superior scheduling as opposed to "any" kind of prioritization scheme one could come up with.
This is really really hard to do on a real system with real people with real tests. In fact, we don't even have data on the "success" of tests even if we use open source software (i.e., which tests were the most successful at identifying problems/bugs).
The best we could do in this situation, is abstract out everything about the "real world" and only focus on the algorithm at hand. We tried to model all known prioritization algorithms similarly so that a simulation could give us some idea into its effectiveness.
We got comments on the lines you suggest:
...I (reviewer) am okay with any direction of research, but this is so far-fetched that the authors are imagining this problem in their head when none exists. There is no evidence of any competition between testers and developers in reality and this is not even applicable in the wild.
This caught us off guard - apparently, the reviewer(s) focused more on the "formulation" of the problem than what we were proposing. Our paper's premise was to put forth a better way of prioritizing and scheduling regression tests so as to optimize the chance of finding bugs by randomizing the tests w.r.t. game theoretic models. That is if we can only run 10% of the tests, which to run (randomly) that would maximize our chances of finding bugs at some X% level of confidence.
What I'm trying to say is, it'd have been really nice if some of the reviewers would have just taken a step back and evaluated the paper from the problem's POV vs. everything else. Some reviewers thought it was pointless - we thought it was a great new POV that never existed before and hence we wrote a paper to put the idea out there. Few got quite a few folks who liked the idea but many just didn't get it (or were swayed by their prejudice).
Hence I strongly urge you to see the actual problem being solved - is that an interesting problem? Can it be solved any other way? What's better about "their" way? Can you, the reviewer, even imagine a possible application? Does the paper call it out? What are the merits of that approach?
If the paper holds up to the question above, then it may be a candidate for acceptance vs. being a pointless research direction. Note, the folks writing the paper are more deeply set into the problem and have some idea of its applicability (or not at all, and the reviewer should help with that).


text:
How to transition: leaving an EdD before completing to pursue a masters in another area
I finished half of my comps for an EdD program that I really have no interest in finishing. I would actually like to pursue a second masters in a different area, but I have no idea how to do so, and it's a sticky situation to ask these questions of the university advisor. Basically, I want to move in a different direction with my career, and a second masters will bolster that rather than completing the EdD track I'm currently on. I basically have 12 more comps before I can even write dissertation anyway. Rather than pay tuition another semester for a degree I will not finish, I'm interested in how to transition and if I will run into any issues because I leave this current program with admission to another.

What is an EdP?

Not clear what you mean by "how to transition" - what kind of information are you looking for?

Finish it off.  Do it as fast and easy as possible.  The doctorate is more impressive than a second masters.  You are half way through.
Note I am extremely skeptical of academia and grad degrees and often tell people to do an MBA instead or just work.  But once you are in it, finish, finish, finish.
And remember, it is pass fail.  Just get through it with the minimum.  ASAP.

If you are really interested in a different career, one that an EdD won't help you with, just make a clean break. However, make sure that you investigate the consequences thoroughly so that you don't wind up in a couple of years in a similar situation.
People change their minds all the time. As they learn more about a career they may discover that there as aspects of it that no longer interest them. There is nothing wrong, or even unusual, about that. Take care of yourself first.
You may need to change universities to do this, but I see no particular reason you shouldn't discuss it with a trusted professor. Your advisor is supposed to provide you with good advice, of course.


text:
Publishing paper after graduation without advisor's name
I recently submitted a paper derived from my masters thesis to a journal. Before submission, I sent an email to my masters adviser but did not get any reply. I guess he might have forgotten my name or my email was put in the trash (it happens sometime as I cannot use my school email anymore). I went ahead with the submission as the sole author. The paper was accepted, and when the paper entered the proofreading stage, I sent him another email. This time he replied to me that he would look at it.
Is it ok to publish this paper without my master adviser's name? I have graduated for more than 5 years and did not touch base with him for a while. I used my own money to pay for the journal publication fee and wrote acknowledgment to his effort during my master study.

This would depend entirely on whether he contributed to the work and, if so, how much. A minor contribution might require an acknowledgement, but if you worked together to develop the ideas in the paper he might well need to be co-author. You can probably judge this.
However, there is another possible angle to consider. If you are planning to go on in academia and your old advisor can help you with that, then even a minor contribution leading to co-authorship might be good for you in the long run. That would be especially true if your advisor is a major figure in your field.
But you have a delicate situation since the paper has already been accepted. Depending on what your advisor says you may want to delay, or you may want to use the acceptance to convince him that sole-authorship is fine.

See this question to get information on predatory journals also: With Beall's List gone, how can I tell if a journal is spam?

thank you for this information. A follow-up question is that if it is OK to ask for adding one author on the proofreading stage?

probably ok, but it is up to the journal. They are very likely to say yes, I think.

even a minor contribution leading to co-authorship might be good for you in the long run — I have to disagree on this point. In my experience, papers without faculty coauthors are much better for student authors in the long run, because nobody thinks the student was just riding the advisor’s coat-tails.


text:
What are the different roles between a program committee member and reviewer?
Does someone know what are the different roles between a Program Committee (PC) member and Reviewer for conferences (e.g., in the field of machine learning)?

Do you mean "what is the difference between a PC member and a reviewer" or "are there any reviewing roles that lie between PC member and reviewer"

@Suresh, it would be the best if you can comment on both. Thank you!

PC = reviewer + administrative work. I believe they are responsible for 1) assigning papers to reviewers (marriage problem). 2) nominate papers for best paper award/journal track. 3) set up a program for the conference. Usually different PCs are monitoring different subareas. These are my observations though never been PC myself.

@seteropere: That could be the makings of a good answer for this question!

I'm assuming PC = programming committee. If not, please correct this. But PC isn't defined anywhere, and it really ought to be.

@aeismail programming committee or program committee ?

The responsibilities of a programme committee member and a mere reviewer could easily be the same, or differ. All depends on the particular conference/workshop setup. E.g., in computer science/AI there the difference is mainly a result of the venue size. Large first-tier conferences, such as e.g., IJCAI have a four layer programme committee structure. Here PC chairs, the top layer, govern the whole process from recruiting the various types of PC members, through conflict-of-interest handling, bidding on submissions, to notification and proceedings composition and publication. For such conferences the PC chairs recruit Senior PC members who are responsible for larger batches of submissions, or small sub-areas and report to PC chairs. For some conferences, the SPCs recruit regular PC members who in turn report to them and are responsible for the reviews. Regular PC members normally do the reviews themselves, but it's relatively common that they sometimes "subcontract" the job to other reviewers they recruit. These lowest level reviewers would do the review and get credit too, but the actual PC member is ultimately responsible for the review and the discussions among the PC members. Upon completing the review and discussion phases, SPCs give final recommendation for acceptance/rejection and possibly write meta-review summarizing discussion to each submission. The PC chairs would distribute the notifications and handle the proceedings and programme schedule composition.
Now, for mid-size conferences, or workshops the senior PC members layer is usually missing and regular PC members report directly to PC chairs and take over the tasks of SPCs for large conferences. The mechanics of sub-reviewing stays the same.
For small-size conferences and workshops, there are virtually no administrative tasks left for the PC members, so they do just the reviewing (possibly recruit sub-reviewers) and the PC chairs finally decide about acceptance and rejection of the individual submissions on the basis of the received recommendations.
What I describe above is regular scheme of things in "applied computer science".

Very informative answer. would love to hear from you about whether the submission crisis exist also in IJCAI/AAAI and other top-tier conferences in AI.

@seteropere: interesting. Regarding the submission crisis in conferences I observe: the number of submissions for IJCAI and AAMAS seem to be stable over the past years 5+ in the range of 1300 and 600 respectively. Hence, the explosion does not seem to happen. The PCs are large indeed, but the global consistency seems to be well maintained by the SPC layer. IMHO, the quality of reviews is consistently very high for IJCAI, for AAMAS only slightly lower - PC discusses submissions extensively in discussion rounds. I do not observe re-submissions, rejections tend to end up at collocated workshops.

@seteropere: since the community is generally very compact, IMHO the comment straightforwardly extends to AAAI too.

@walkmanyi, thanks for the informative answer. For some large-size conferences (e.g., CVPR, ICCV, etc.), there are also area chairs. The number of area chairs is much fewer than the SPCs of other conferences (e.g., IJCAI), noting that those conferences are of similar size.

@walkmanyi, as mentioned in your answer, in some conferences, PCs are equivalent to reviewers. It makes me confused and wonder if I should differentiate PC and reviewer in my CV or not..

@Giantron PC looks much stronger in the CV than only reviewer. In particular PC means you are a recognized researcher in your area.

@Giantron: I would differentiate that. The categories I use for that follow how Springer lists these reviewers in the LNCS series used for workshop proceedings: "PC members" and "auxiliary reviewers", which are those "subcontractors".

PC = reviewer + administrative work.
They are responsible for:

Assigning papers to reviewers (marriage problem).
Nominate papers for best paper award/journal track.
Set up a program for the conference.
Usually different PCs monitor different subareas. Also, I believe they contribute on solving conflict of interest issues - if there is any. These are my observations, never been PC myself


text:
Do US universities use GPA according to transcript evaluation services or internal evaluation?
I would like to know, if given both options, which of the options, would officials at the american universities follow?
By internal evaluation, my GPA at some of the universities is translated/scored as 2.87/4.00. Disbarring me from all of their programs.
By WES evaluation, my GPA is translated/scored as 3.25/4.00. This option allows me to run/apply for all the programs at the said universities.
Which of these evaluations would the university use?
Does WES's evaluation hold any weight?
Wouldn't this be a problem for those who are not aware of such services?

Every school does admissions in a different way, so it's hard to say, but I've never heard of anyone using any external services to evaluate transcripts. I'd say send in your application, and let the chips fall where they may.
Although quantities like GPA, GRE scores, etc. might be used as a filter to narrow the applicant pool, what will really get you accepted are 1) strong letters, 2) successful undergrad research projects, and 3) direct contact with a potential advisor at the university. If a professor knows about you and your work and wants you as a student, that will go an incredible way towards getting you admitted no matter what your GPA.

As far as I know, American universities do not rely on "transcript evaluation services"; they ask you to convert your GPA to whatever system they happen to use, since there are so many of them out there (5-point versus 4-point systems, A+/A/A- versus A/B/C, and so on).
You could of course provide the results of such an evaluation service, but I would not expect it to carry any weight with admissions committees, who can accept or ignore it as they please.

I don't know whether how or even whether my American university asks for GPAs, but by the time they reach me (in the admissions committee), they are reported using the system from the applicant's home university.  In other words, don't convert them at all.  Even numerically equal GPAs using the same system are not equivalent if they come from different universities.

My experience differs from the others. Although I am American, my wife is Polish and she applied to a slew (by which I mean 9) of grad schools for computational linguistics. Of them, three wanted the external transcript evaluation, and they even recommended which service to use.
But they also asked for a copy of the original transcript.
I don't know what impact it had, but she ended up going to a school that didn't require such an evaluation. But there is funny story here: no where on her transcript did it say that she actually finished her degree program. So when her chosen graduate school requested her "final transcript" (even though my wife graduated a year and a half ago, so they already had her final transcript), she ended up sending them an extra copy of the evaluation along with her explanation that she had, in fact, graduated.
From my point of view, the whole external evaluation process seemed overly expensive and annoying. I would advise that you just ask whatever graduate program that you're interested in whether they want applicants to have them (they don't bite, really), and hope that they don't.

Many smaller (and even some larger) academic institutions may not have resources dedicated to being familiar with all the various methods of grading and evaluation used by foreign schools. In these cases they will require the applying student to incur the added effort and expense of having an expert in such matters review the transcripts and then translate the material into a report that the institute can comprehend. They probably have a criteria for what kind of expert they will consider acceptable -- perhaps some kind of certification ? -- but it is always in the student's best interest to carefully select an expert that not only meets the criteria but who really understands the way that the foreign school did business (including any common cultural practices such as defacto lower grades for female students).


text:
In a class with both graduate and undergraduate students, is it normal for a single grading curve to be applied for both groups?
I took a class with graduate students as an undergraduate student. The grading was on a curve and combined (as in graduate students were graded along with undergraduate students).
Is this normal in US universities as well? Won't the undergraduate students have a disadvantage competing against graduate students (pursuing 2nd year of Masters/PhD) for a good grade.
What ended up was:
1 A Grade
12 B Grades (7 of which went to graduate Students and 5 to undergraduate students)
20 C Grades
10 D Grades
3 E Grades
For a class of 25 graduate students and 21 undergraduate students.

I was graded in a common pool that included both graduate and undergraduate students several times including some cases where I was on both side of the line. It happens.

Won't the undergraduate students have a disadvantage competing against graduate students — Given the grade distribution you describe, apparently not!

I do know one thing: the one guy with the A grade is a jerk. Would it have killed him to get a couple wrong for the good of everyone else's GPA?

On a more serious note, what year were the undergrads? Most fourth year students I knew when I was in my fourth year were significantly more able than the masters students. Not to stereotype, but many of the masters students simply weren't able to get a job upon graduation, so continued schooling to avoid paying student loans. The difference between 4 and 6 years of schooling is significantly less than the difference between, say, 0 and 2 or 1 and 3. 2 years is not just 2 years.

The undergrads were in their fourth year first semester. The Masters students were in their 2nd year first semester. The masters students were coming from industry sponsored programs for further education. They had absolutely no problems going back to their jobs. Their industrial experience in my perspective gave them a significant advantage because they had applied all the concepts in that course except adaptive filtering even before they entered their masters program.

The course was equivalent to http://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-6-008-digital-signal-processing-spring-2011/readings/ + adaptive filtering + DSP Architecture. I'd say it was probably equivalent to an advanced Masters course where some undergraduate students were allowed with prior instructor consent.

@Naresh if they are sponsored by their employer, then they have jobs.  Of course, they are going to spend more time on their work assignments than on their course assignments.

Our assignments form little to no part in our grades. Its just that we have 4-7 Tests spread throughout the semester.

There is the famous case of Wharton, where the graduate students are not allowed to disclose their grades to prospective employers. This is ostensibly to encourage cooperation and learning for it's own sake, but is widely acknowledge to be a response to the superior performance of undergraduates in course work.

@ZachH, hilarious! But sometimes good things do happen for the wrong reasons. I'd not been aware of comparable things (in math, my biz), though I can imagine situations in which worries in this direction could get people "stirred up". :)

In the past, I've graded the pool together, and have also graded grads and undergrads separately. Ultimately this is a decision made by the instructor, who probably spelt this out in their syllabus before the class started.

Professor: Why would you grade undergraduate students with obviously 'lesser' background with graduate students? Won't this be skewing their grades negatively?
Hope this does not come off as offensive...

why "lesser" ? advanced undergraduates and entering grads are closer than you think, and it's not uncommon for the UGs to be better.

I don't quite know about the US scenario, however, in India, most Masters students who enter university come with a year or two of Industrial experience in a relevant field. At least, that was the case in my class.

That really depends on the department.  There are departments where advanced undergrad classes are harder than grad classes, because the advanced undergraduates are stronger than the graduate students.  Also, depending on the class in question, "a year or two of industrial experience" may be a serious disadvantage.

@Naresh The flip side of your question is: why would undergrads be taking (what appears to be a) primarily graduate course if they were not at the level of grad students?

Sometimes they take it because there aren't that many undergrad-only electives.

There is no uniform set of regulations; every college (and perhaps even every department within a college, or even every instructor) might have its own regulations.
However, the existence of classes open to both undergraduates and graduate students is in fact quite common, and I know I certainly took several graduate classes as an undergraduate.
In general, the difference comes in when the class is really a graduate-level class that is also open to advanced undergraduates, or when the course is truly designed to be open to both undergraduates and graduates. When the class is really a graduate-level class, undergraduates are generally not treated with "kid gloves," and are expected to compete head-to-head with the graduate students. For a truly mixed class, the options are more varied.
With respect to the specific distribution of grades, I can't really comment on that, as those choices are specific to your course.

In math graduate programs in the U.S., it is typical (although not universal) to be quite lenient about grading. The philosophy, for better or worse, is that it should be the student's privilege to decide how important the class is.
I have never seen such a strict distribution of grades in any class with math graduate students in it.

As an undergradute I took a computer architecture class in the spring of my junior year though it is recommended to be taken during spring of senior year. It is listed as an "upper-level" course. The class had 22 students, of which, 8 were grad students. The grad students got B's and C's and the majority of the undergrads got A's.
What the teacher told me after the class when I was talking with him (I had made some off handed comment about the undergrads beating the grad students) was that most of the grad students were doing research or working in industry. As long as they kept a C and understood the foundation of what he was lecturing on they would be fine.
It was more important for the grad students to work on their research. They did not need to Ace the classes.
In your case the class specifically required instructor consent for you to enter. They were allowing you the privilege of being able to take a class that is normally denied to you. If you feel the instructor erred and you were not proficient enough to be able to undertake the class then it is the instructors fault. If you did not study hard enough or go into it knowing that this class was on another level then it yours.

In the US there tend to be to models by which undergraduates take graduate level classes. The first are jointly listed classes where the undergraduate class might be 401 and the graduate class would then be 501. In these cases the graduate level class usually includes extra assignments or different examinations and the students are graded separately. For the undergraduate student the undergraduate class is listed on the transcript.
The second way is a single class (e.g., 502) with the same work and same grading for everyone. In this system the graduate level class is listed on the transcript. Sure, the undergraduate might be at a disadvantage, but it comes with the advantage of having a graduate level class on your transcript. It would be very misleading to see a graduate level class on a transcript for a class that was tailored and graded to undergraduate standards. If you don't want to compete with the "big boys" stick with the little kid classes.

Actually, you'll have an advantage in your grades if you are taking course with graduate students(assuming that you are someone who puts a moderate effort on your courses). Most graduate students measure their success by their published papers rather than by grades. To this end, they don't give much attention to course work and they study it for a day or two before the exam. This was the case with many of the grad students in my school and the undergraduates put every effort to be part of the courses as they spent most of their time in course work and chasing the "A" letter.
The only exception is that when the course is related to the research area of the graduate students. In that case, the grad students might  know better than you. But graduate class professors  mostly have labs and are busy advisors. Which means that they repeat the same exam questions year after year and you only need to solve these problems to get A+ (at least at my university). The drawback of this is, you won't learn much out of the course as the grades come easily. That is one of the reasons I don't understand why courses are given in the first place at graduate level.

In the US, unless a class is strictly made as a undergrad/graduate mix class, graduate classes are made mostly for graduate students. Some universities require the instructors consent to enroll and you won't be able to enroll independently online, other will only let you enroll if there are seats left after graduate enrollment. Since in these cases it is up to the instructor or student discretion to take a course, then there is really no special treatment.
In my opinion seniors are more or less on the same level as master's students when starting a class, as usually both wouldn't not have any advanced knowledge of graduate level content. So the gap is not as wide as it might seem.
As far as the grading, that is highly subjective, and can change a lot. I know some instructors even have separate assignments.

seniors are more or less on the same level as master's students — Again, this really depends on the department.

@JeffE Agreed. In my field, that's likely not at all true, and seniors, even promising seniors, would be at a staggering disadvantage.

What is the difference between a senior at his last semester and a first year master student?

The Masters student might have worked on and finished a Bachelor's thesis in a relevant subject. Or could have formally worked in an industrial job in that field. It all depends on how the Masters student utilized the time between his senior year and entering a Masters Program.

@user4050 Most undergrads are neither interested in nor qualified for graduate school, and so do not become first year master's students.  The undergrads that do become first year master's students tend to be more interested in the material, academically stronger, more intellectually mature, etc.  At least, I think that's true in general; the distinction varies significantly among departments.

Jess, I agree with your statement only if the undergraduate that are taking a graduate class as a requirement. On the other side, if an undergrad takes a grad class as an elective it is usually a high performing student.

@user4050 Depends on the field, and how much coursework is involved in a masters. But in my field/school, if you're talking about a Spring Semester class? 4 classes worth of intensive work, some of which aren't offered at the undergrad level at all. Those make a world of difference.

In brief, to supplement other answers and remarks: first, I do try to think of "grades" as giving information to students, primarily, so that the "running grade" during the term provides some feedback on my perception of peoples' success. Significantly, I do not imagine, nor position, my courses as "filters" or "challenges", but as informational, provocative, invitations to mathematics that is within my professional scope (after all these years). So I do not want to express (directly or indirectly) "skepticism" that people could (if they wanted, and were interested) follow and assimilate what's going on. That is, "it's not that hard". Sure, nearly anything, even senseless, pointless activities, can be turned into filters or challenges, but... why?
Srsly, if courses are meant to primarily test natural ability (as some of my colleagues have adamantly insisted) then we shouldn't charge tuition, pretending that we're teaching something. That is, if a thing works well, and is do-able, it should be teachable to interested parties.
Then, to the question at hand: if the issue is communication and explanation, probably I'm not grading harshly anyway, and take into consideration everyone's context, not just the undergrads. Duh! That is, my aim is not to declare winners and losers, but to give useful feedback to the people who self-selected to hear what I was talking about. The situation does not demand a competition among them "for limited resources". Certain resources, such as my approval, are not "limited" in any sense that should/could function for external entities who'd wish I'd declare winners and losers.
It does start to be uglier when people are in the room against their will/interests. "Required courses"? Well, ideally, things are required (brush and floss...) because they're "good for you". The imputed virtues are not always easy to see, and are sometimes hijacked for various ideological purposes. Nevertheless, I do try to sway/convert people who're grudgingly present, that the "burden" is actually a "help/opportunity", despite sadly-all-too-common presentations that make everything lugubrious and awful.
To reiterate: sure, I do grade people in different contexts differently, because the grade is an item of communication. Not the only one, in my classes. The central administration does seem to collapse to wanting a single number... but I try to ignore that, and not harm the students who have some curiosity about what I offer to discuss with them.
(So, indeed, as in other answers and comments, the various mechanisms of self-selection present people with a great variety of motivations and interests. Responding to them individually, say with a class of 15-25, is not so terrible at all, and quite interesting, and, I fancy, a good deed. To "rank them" seems on most occasions to be not sane... Or maybe that's just a special case of the insanity of the bureacratic-school pressure to do this. True, many students pre-emptively operate in that context, but I do not take that as a mandate to sink to the same sad level. I.e., it's not that we "don't leave any child behind" by not moving forward, but that we gather them up and do move, etc, blah-blah-blah).
Or, sure, cold mountain-slopes for babies, ... single combat ... :)
Srsly, I do think that in upper-division, much less grad-level, people should not be beat-up grade-wise. They volunteered to be there! Even if they're not so very good at what they'd like to do, "giving a bad grade" is not helping them. The far-subtler issue is how to help a person who wants to do something that they're currently not-so-good-at. Various misunderstandings create fake incompetencies!


text:
Is it common for supervisors to approach their student and ask to work on publishing the student's masters thesis?
My supervisor emailed me asking if he can work on trying to publish my masters thesis, with me being the first author. I have said yes, is it common for supervisors to approach students asking to publish students research?

I have to say it is refreshing to see a question about an advisor reaching out to a former advisee prior to publishing thesis results rather than not at all (e.g., as highlighted in this question).

There are in all likelihood differences between fields of study. In mine, it is uncommon, but if it happend it would be a good sign: You have produced something that is worth publishing, which is rare for a Master thesis in my field. Turning that research in an article that can be published is an art, which I would not expect a master student to master. So having the supervisor help you in that would be necessary in my field. It is right, that your supervisor immediately cleared who would be first author, and also right that you are the first author. That to me is a sign, that (s)he has the best intentions.
When I make such offers, I consider this as offering those students an opportunity to get an advantage very early in their (potential) academic career, or at least to get some inside experience of what working in academia is really like.

Good answer. I would add that in some field, it is expected to publish master thesis and the burden of it falls on the student.

I would say depend on the personality and interests from the adviser. I have worked with adviser that loves to push a certain idea and anything that you worked on would help lead to a published paper that enhance this certain idea, he'll jump right on it and gives me plenty of journal contacts and help me publish it. I also have some that are not very helpful, and half-hearted but wants his name added to the paper without doing any work or helping in any way.
In your case, it looks like your adviser wants to help you and appreciate the quality of your work.


text:
Are the words "I, we, us, his, her, he, she" all prohibited in thesis writing?
I am writing my masters thesis.  My instructor told me not to use "I, we, us, his, her, he, she" in the thesis anywhere.  Are all these words prohibited in thesis writing?
I am writing my thesis in cloud security (computer science), specifically homomorphic encryption in the cloud.

Related questions: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11659/using-first-person-or-third-person-in-papers/18333 and http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/48/is-there-a-correct-gender-neutral-singular-pronoun-his-versus-her-versus

It is indeed a common view in academic writing. There is a significant minority opposed to it. I personally prefer to write in whatever way happens to be the easiest to understand.

@Superbest In certain fields, presumably. Try writing philosophy without using any personal pronouns!

Has your instructor seriously told you to avoid not only first-person pronouns (‘I/me’, ‘we/us’), but also third-person pronouns (‘he/him’, ‘she/her’, etc.)? That is absolutely insane, ludicrous, bonkers, ridiculous, and utterly useless advice. It is completely impossible to write any kind of even reasonably grammatical, readable, or normal English without using third-person pronouns. Such a requirement (if that is indeed what your advisor requires) ought to be enough to file a complaint against the advisor, or at least to consider switching advisors if possible/feasible.

You don't need standard guidelines for every field. Just look at the papers in your field. Indeed, how are you going to write a thesis without looking at papers?

David I mean that for every field there should be international standard, so that it help in research publications and avoid any ambiguity.

@BenCrowell Not quite a duplicate, I think, because the advisor here is also saying not to use third person.

Don't edit a question to change it to a completely different question - that's really not fair to the people who have already put in effort to write an answer! If you have a new question, ask it in a brand new post.

ff524 I have edited it so that its not get closed over duplicate issue

@vivek It's good to edit closed questions to fix them, but not if your edits invalidate existing answers. So please don't edit it to substantially change the question. Write a new question instead. P.S. also see How do comment @replies work? and learn how to use @ so that people will see your comment replies.

If the instructor mentioned in the question is your thesis supervisor, then these words are prohibited in your thesis.  As @JanusBahsJacquet said, at least the third-person pronouns would be permitted if you had a more reasonable supervisor. If I were your supervisor, I wouldn't worry about which pronouns you use, even first-person pronouns (as long as you use them correctly).

@ff524 Thanks for righting me and telling significance of @

These words are not necessarily prohibited, but there is an old norm in academic writing to avoid personal pronouns (the pronouns you listed). The reasoning behind the norm is that it makes for more objective writing, but it can also lead to the use of quite awkward passive voice phrasing. Because avoiding these pronouns does not necessarily make writing better, there is a counter-trend today which emphasizes writing clearly, even if that means you occasionally use "I" or "we".
Your supervisor will ultimately be one of the people evaluating your thesis, so it is important to take their preferences into account, but if you feel that writing without pronouns leads to too many awkward phrasings or otherwise makes your writing less clear, then I think it is worth pointing that out to your professor.
Note that this also tends to vary by discipline. In some fields, for example, the use of "we" to refer to the author (and collaborators or the readers) is entirely normal. In other fields, though, I have heard that it sounds pretentious. Try asking your colleagues and other mentors what they think the norms are in your field as well.

"In some fields, for example, the use of we' ... is entirely normal." Indeed. It's ubiquitous in theoretical computer science and pure mathematics, to the extent that not using it would look like bizarre circumlocution. To paraphrase somebody who may have been Churchill, the passive voice is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which ... er, I can't even work out how to write that sentence in the passive voice.

In Literature, too, one had better be able to refer to characters with "he", "she", "his" and "hers"... ;-P

@DavidRicherby: Presumably "nonsense up with which should not be put". (Cf. the standard "nonsense that should not be put up with".)

@ruakh Something like that, yeah. I kept trying to insert a "that" that wasn't ever going to work.

@DavidRicherby I am the sort of person up with this sort of nonsense will not be put by.

The particulars vary incredibly by field and by journal.  It's a fairly old practice to try and use passive form instead of active form, which appears to be what your instructor is suggesting.  There is no "list" so much as the idea is to talk from the standpoint of what was being done (The experiment was conducted vs. I conducted the experiment).  It has been suggested that the former passive form is harder to understand and the latter active form is preferred for clarity, but many academics (typically older professors, set in their ways) like the "traditional" passive style.

Thanks Mekki for answering.  As in your answer, you say that it depends on field.  My field is cloud security, now can I use these pronoun specially 'we' as my sentences become awkward and more difficult to understand without 'we' . My instructor

My instructor badly wants me to avoid these pronoun

In my opinion,  there is no reason to avoid those words in your field.  However,  as @dmh said,  you should do what your instructor asks even if it doesn't make sense.  Later,  when you get to journal submission,  the journal authorship guidelines will help you improve clarity and may encourage active voice.

In mathematics publications 'we' is used all the time.  I recently read a new paper with 5 uses in the abstract, and 78 uses overall.

@vivek I suggest you look at some journal publications in your area. If they often use "we", there's no reason you shouldn't. I'd suggest that you discuss it with your professor, though -- don't just hand him your finished thesis with a note saying, "The passive voice was used throughout."

I read research paper fully homomorphic encryption over integers with shorter public keys in which author use ' we' often.

This 'passive form' business derives ultimately from Strunk & White. Unfortunately it isn't what they actually said.

David I talked with my instructor and she said that this university has these rules and you have to follow this as every university has its own rules.

This is my great concern as everyone gping create their own rules. Then what is the use of these thesis which are mere a large book with no clear explanation and no useful to others and mankind.

There are two potential problems in using we.

It can be ambiguous.
It can place undue emphasis on the researcher.

A sensible rule for we in science is that you can use it if and only if you mean "we, the author and the reader".
So you can't say "we did experiment X" in chemistry but you can say "we differentiate this function to obtain fact A" in a mathematical proof. The latter use does not suffer from the ambiguity and egotism of the first.
From the same rule it follows that you can never use I. Unless you really have to. This would be very rare in computer science.
Some people have lists banning the use of words like we. These people should be ignored unless they are your professor.