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Advisor Withholding Publication of Meaningful Data
Some details will be omitted for anonymity's sake, but, hopefully, the information provided is adequate.
I am a graduate student that finished the collection of a complete dataset over 2.5 years ago. The dataset that was collected has been analyzed and is clearly publishable from the perspective of scientific merit (relevant narrative, statistical significance, etc). Throughout the 2.5 years since, my advisor has tasked me with various other main projects. During this period, I have occasionally inquired about writing the manuscript for the '2.5 year old data set' and have been...encouraged...to continue working on the other assigned tasks, instead.
Recently, after helping another professor with a review article in the area that I specialize in, I came across many papers citing information that, in light of my data set, is false...or, in the most charitable interpretation, insufficient. I emailed my advisor to ask again for the opportunity to write the manuscript and was rejected, commenting that my other projects had greater impact to the field.
To better contextualize this, I think it should be noted that the field I work in has a 'rival field'. In fact, the so-called 'rival field' is often claimed by people in my field to exhibit several shortcomings (agreeably so); my field quite literally emerged to address these shortcomings. However, one of the strongest criticisms coming from the rival field about my field is directly supported by the dataset that I collected 2.5 years ago. This particular criticism has been minimized by the false/insufficient claims that my field has made.
My concern is that my advisor is intentionally withholding the publication of this dataset because it is an inconvenient truth that diminishes the marketability of our field's purported 'edge' over the competition when it comes to grant funding. After several days of quite agitatedly asking for an in-person meeting, I have been granted one later this week.
I am writing this post to ask how best to proceed in this matter. I think I can be quite certain that my advisor will not admit to any of this and will most likely provide me with another excuse that indefinitely postpones the publication of this data set. If my speculations are true, then I wholeheartedly believe that this is unethical behavior, as my dataset will result in a potentially considerable reinterpretation of the results that my field generates.
Any advice is appreciated. Thank you.

This week just ended, maybe you mean next week? As for a publication, did you try to write your results down in a paper form? If you did, you can simply show the paper to your advisor during the meeting and ask if they have any suggestions/corrections and/our would like to be listed as a coauthor of the paper.

When do you expect to finish your PhD? This is important to consider. Once you're done, you will be free(er) to publish what you want. Until then, don't anger your advisor.

What's stopping you from writing it up if the data analysis is done?  Yes, maybe you have to do this outside your official work hours.  What is the status of your dissertation? Is this your dissertation work?

Who owns the data you collect as part of your research work? This can depend on your country, institute, statutory rights, contract obligations, etc. For example, in my jurisdiction, students own their own IP, unless they for example are being funded by a grant that specifies otherwise.

There are several different questions here...and any such answer will further reduce my anonymity so I would prefer not to specify. From the line of questioning, it seems like there are different prescriptions depending on the answers. E.g. am I at the beginning of my doctorate or near the end? Am I funded by a grant or am I not funded by a grant (this is probably further partitioned into 'is the grant from private or public funds')? My hope was that this was simply unethical conduct that could be reported, but, given the conditionals, it would seem not. Thank you for the responses.

@MoisheKohan the results and various paragraphs relating to methods and discussion were shown much earlier (during the 2.5 year period). I was told to not to continue working on it.

In OP you wrote "I emailed my advisor to ask again for the opportunity to write the manuscript and was rejected, commenting that my other projects had greater impact to the field." This still gives you an opportunity to write a paper in your spare time, while working on other projects. My suggestion is to do so and write a paper on your own. By now you probably know how to write research papers and you do not need your advisor's permission.

@MoisheKohan i do not have the necessary reputation to initiate a chat room, but, if you're willing, could you start one with me so that I might provide you with some private details? You seem to be knowledgeable on this matter, and I think the additional details might impact your outlook.

As someone who has ruffled some feathers with papers before, I can see several possible reasons your advisor may be avoiding this that does not require a negative attribution about their ethics.
It is possible they could be in a vulnerable position, and such a publication could be a great cost to them at this moment, so they need to wait until they are in a better place (...probably good for you too, unless you want to scramble for a new advisor). Alternatively, perhaps your advisor is concerned about the impact that burning disciplinary bridges might have on you. The sad truth is that academia is rife with pettiness, and your advisor might be thinking about your future.
Also, you said this has taken place over the past 2.5 years, i.e., since pandemic. Please consider that many people in academia are still depleted, burned out, or otherwise not mentally healthy enough to go charging down the disciplinary battlefield right now (even if we look fine). Some compassion may be in order. I know that's frustrating for students, but clearly your advisor is still making efforts to keep you productive.

Unless you have good reason, it is not a good idea to presume that your supervisor is trying to intentionally block your research.  At most, the information in your post shows that there may be some rivalry in academic fields.  That does not seem to me to be sufficient to infer that your supervisor has any view other than that you should prioritise different research right now (a view for which he could have many legitimate reasons).  Given that, the most you should do at your meeting is to explain to your supervisor why you think the research you are proposing would be useful, such that its prioritisation should be raised and you should start on it right away.  If your supervisor says something that causes you to believe that he is motivated by avoiding criticism of his own field, then it would be okay to raise the issue explicitly and discuss the "elephant in the room".  However, you should not presume that your supervisor is motivated by this concern unless he raises it.
As a strategic point, I will also note that this might be a situation where you are better off waiting until you graduate and then pursue this research when you are no longer under supervision.  To determine whether this is the case you also need to consider the access to the data --- e.g., what right of access do you have, is this contingent on your status as a student, etc.


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We appealed an editor's decision and sent a revised version, but he hasn't acknowledged it since 5 weeks
This is about a post-review rejection. This is one of the top journals in our field. The reviewers found our work interesting but sent a long list of controls and additional experiments to do. The editor rejected it, saying it would take a lot of time. However, most of the concerns were addressable and we appealed. The editor said he'd be happy to reconsider and we can submit, via email, a point-by-point response letter along with a new version of the manuscript incorporating all the changes.
We took the time to do so and sent everything he asked us for via email, but there's been no response in 5 weeks. There's been no acknowledgment that he received it. My advisor sent a follow-up a week ago just to make sure he received the email, but there's been no response to that either. The portal doesn't show any indication of a reconsideration. The editor doesn't have any automated response indicating he is on a vacation, and according to the journal website, he doesn't seem to have moved to another job.
I know that the situation is unusual (especially with the emailing part), but what are my options? Should I reach out to someone above him? Resubmit the manuscript on the portal? (Which is what we probably would have in the first place if he didn't explicitly instruct us to email him the files)
I have never had this long of a waiting period before we heard back from the editor about whether they are sending my submission to reviewers. (Usually takes 2-3 weeks for me). But this time I don't even have an acknowledgment of the submission in 5 weeks.

Email the editor in chief and ask for advice.

@MoisheKohan Thanks for your response. I am worried that the current Editor might consider this as going over his head and be rejected as a result. Do you have any advice regarding that?

It is impossible to predict, but given that the current editor did not respond to your emails for 5 weeks, going to the next level is appropriate. Make sure, you include the current editor in the correspondence and be polite and do not assign any blame.

Lastly: Are you writing a paper on your own, without an input from your advisor? Your advisor will likely know personalities involved and what to expect.

@MoisheKohan: sounds like an answer, please use the answer box.

@cag51: When I can use my computer not cell phone.

I'm reading the OP as you sent the revised manuscript to the editor via email. If so, this is not a good idea - papers should be submitted via the journal's editorial management system (EMS). If you send a manuscript via email, the editor would have to submit it to the EMS for you. It's not that hard to do, but it's still annoying, especially if one is not a full-time staff of the journal.
However, this doesn't explain why the editor has not answered you for five weeks.
The best thing to do would be to keep contacting the journal until someone responds. Personally, I'd prefer contacting the journal office. Full-time staff of the journal ought to know what to do, or who to contact.
You could also just resubmit the manuscript. A properly-configured EMS will flag your manuscript as a duplicate (since it has already been submitted before), and then whoever is looking at the manuscript will in all likelihood assign it to the editor who originally handled the paper. Still not ideal (since it might be viewed as rather impertinent), but if your communication with the editor was via the EMS, those messages will be logged and can probably be accessed by a third party, and they should know what to do.

Thanks for the response! We also found it unusual that the editor asked us to email the revised documents, but we thought submitting it through the portal might be going against what he explicitly said and thus emailed it.

Here is an answer based on my comments:

Contact journal's editor-in-chief, describe the situation (very politely, without assigning any blame) and ask for an advice on how to proceed. Make sure, you include the current editor in the correspondence.

Given your username, I assume that you are still a graduate student. Then, make sure that you involve your graduate advisor in the process, maybe make them co-sign the email to the editor-in-chief. Also, ask your advisor if they happen to personally know the current editor and editor-in-chief. The knowledge of their personalities might alter the cause of action.

Regarding your question "I am worried that the current Editor might consider this as going over his head and be rejected as a result." - I can only say that it is impossible to predict, but given that the current editor did not respond to your emails for 5 weeks, going to the next level is appropriate.

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How precisely should I implement algorithms from other papers?
When I write a paper comparing my algorithm to someone else's, how should I make sure that the results are not skewed because I implemented the other algorithm poorly? Is it acceptable to write that the other algorithm was implemented to my best knowledge?

If you implement theirs badly - how can you then say yours is good in comparison?

@Solar Mike This is exactly my question.

It is usually sufficient to say that you tried to optimize both your algorithm and the baseline(s) as much as you could (provided you actually did so).
Before writing your own implementations though, you should first check that the authors of the baseline(s) haven't published their source code. You may even write to them. I've heard all kinds of replies to such requests: from people sending me the code within minutes, to people telling me their code was lost in an old laptop long ago (the paper was 2 years old...). If they don't have the code, you can ask them how they would/did implement their algorithm.
It would be good practice and very beneficial for the community if you then publish both the code for your algorithm AND (if you implemented them) the code for the baselines.

You could compare the computational complexity of each algorithm, without considering any implementation. (Of course, comparisons between implementations are interesting, but there are many barriers to conducting such comparisons, e.g., comparisons aren't skewed because of coding issues.)

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Capitalising terms like “machine learning” and “natural language processing”
Currently I’m proofreading my master thesis in computer science.
I am not sure about terms machine learning or natural language processing.
Is it common to write them capitalized?

Not unless George and Martha Learning had a child and named it Machine.

This question is probably more apt for English Language & Usage SE.
But no, don't capitalize them. They are not proper nouns. Do capitalize "Machine Learning" if it's the name of a journal, or if it is otherwise part of the name of some entity (e.g. the International Conference on Machine Learning), but do not capitalize it when you refer to machine learning as a field.

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How does average profile of person that got accepted into top university look like?
I define top university as Harvard, Berkeley, MIT, Stanford, Oxford, Caltech, Yale and similar.
If relevant, I am talking about computer science field.
I am interested in all levels - bachelor, master, phd, post-doc.
Should anything beside: GPA, published papers, supervisor, commercial experience, teaching experience or alma mater ranking be relevant?
How does average profile of person that got accepted into top university look like? What does one need to have to feel reasonably secure about being accepted into top universities?

The situation for undergraduate admissions will be very different than for graduate, and the former is generally off topic here.  Postdoc is pretty different again, because that's an employee, not a student.

On the lighter side, your list of "top universities" reminded me of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKuHYO9TM5A

For grad school, submit an application that they would strongly consider for a faculty position. In other words, most of what you mentioned doesn't matter.

For PhD and postdoc, you can just go look up who is currently at these universities. They will often have their CVs online.

I think this is too broad.

What is "promotor"? Also, there are many fields where commercial experience doesn't exist.

How does average profile of person that got accepted into top university look like?

For reasons mentioned in the comments, I will just briefly address grad school: It's typical to have taken a number of advanced classes (possibly including graduate classes) in your discipline from a good school, and to have done well in them.  You should have strong letters of recommendation.  In some fields (not in math, and I don't think in CS) it's typical to have done some research.  It's pretty common to be international, and straight out of another (bachelors or master's) program.  But I don't know that an "average profile" is the right thing to look at.

What does one need to have to feel reasonably secure about being accepted into top universities?

You're not in a good position to judge yourself, so talk to your professors.  What kind of schools do they think you should apply to?  What kinds of schools do they think you can get into?  After all, they'll be writing letters for you, which are one of the primary factors in deciding your admissions.

You need recommendations that imply that you are the smartest person the recommender has ever known and sufficient outside evidence to make the recommenders' statements credible.  Generally speaking, unless your recommenders are in positions where they see lots of very smart people, this means you actually have to be very clearly the smartest person your recommenders have ever known.
(This answer isn't true for undergraduate admissions at Berkeley, because it admits so many undergraduates that it cannot actually read individual recommendations carefully.)

I disagree with your second paragraph. A quick Google shows that Berkeley's 2017 intake was ~15,000, compared to Oxford's measly 3000. Oxford also interviews every candidate they are considering for admission, often more than once.

@astronat - edited accordingly.

This is nonsense, based on my experience. Sure, you need a good reference, but being a good fit for the role is much more important than being the "smartest person the recommender has ever known". This answer drastically overstates the elitism of these institutions.


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How to politely reject co-authorship offer from a colleague?
I work in computer science. I wrote few simulation programs, designed the experiment for a chemistry work with my colleague. I have no idea about the principal aim of the research; I was only involved with simulations and computer experiments. Also, I know that this publication (paper) will not advance my career option.
Recently, I have been offered to become a co-author of the article about the analysis of the results of my experiments. I understand that quantum of my contribution is reasonable; I am wishing not to co-author the work.
How to say politely reject this co-authorship request?
Note: There was no discussion related to co-authorship before I started writing the computer experiments.
Related, but very different questions:

Is it common to claim co-authorship by helping writing a paper without doing any research
Should a colleague receive authorship for identifying a research gap and reviewing a manuscript?

It puzzles me slightly why you would reject this request. Are there further (time, money, ???) costs to coauthorship? The most polite ways to reject the request would mention these drawbacks.

I know that this publication (paper) will not advance my career option – Unless you have tenure or similar or you are convinced that the publication is bogus, I doubt that such a publication exists.

@Wrzlprmft - even if you have tenure, coauthoring a multidisciplinary paper very well could be a great thing, particularly if next year you come up with a great new idea involving that area.

If someone asks about the article in a viva, what would I say -- I wrote the computer programs in the research. I know that interdisciplinary research could be a great thing, but, just writing a set of codes is not enough, I feel. @JonCuster

@Coder - well, I saw the 'designed the experiment' and read that as more than writing a little code. If the work was useful to a chemist, it is likely that future work could be useful as well.

@Coder That's not necessarily true.  I know of several prominent researchers in my field whose main contribution to a joint paper was writing up code.  Sometimes the paper cannot exist without that code.  Or maybe it'd be impossible to come up with the examples that demonstrate why the rest of the paper is actually relevant.  Or maybe the only way to prove part of the paper is with the results of the code, so that without it they have a significantly weaker set of results.

I don’t think the question of how to “politely” decline the coauthorship is really worth fussing about. If you want to decline the coauthorship, that’s absolutely okay, just say so in plain words and explain that you don’t think your contribution was great enough to be a coauthor. I can’t imagine anyone ever being offended by this, as long as you don’t imply that you think the paper is worthless.
With that being said, I do think you are perhaps a bit misguided in where you are perceiving the bar for coauthorship to be compared to where it actually is. Everyone knows that being a coauthor can mean a variety of things, which can range anywhere between “I wrote the whole damn thing myself and my coauthors just answered a couple of questions I sent them over email” and “I just answered a couple of emails”. So, if someone asks about the paper in your viva, just tell the truth and say that your involvement was minimal - that is nothing to be ashamed of, but also doesn’t mean that it’s unreasonable for you to be a coauthor.
To summarize, as I said it’s absolutely fine if you wish to decline, but it’s best if that decision should be fully informed and based on an accurate understanding of what coauthorship is understood to imply.

To me, your draft e-mail seems very long and confusing, and your decision to reject authorship seems highly questionable. Passing over the second point, here is a suggested revision to the mail:

Dear Professor,
I appreciate the offer to co-author the [subject] paper. At this point, I would prefer not to be a co-author, but, I would be happy to be listed in the acknowledgments. I would also be happy to help you with the writing/revisions, especially in the simulation section.
Thanks again for the offer of authorship; I hope we can continue working together in the future. Best wishes,
Name

This is how I am planning to respond. I am posting this as an answer, because it might help future readers of the academia.SE.

Dear Professor X
I appreciate the offer to co-author the article titled 'Titled Paper' for which I did some computer experiments based on our past discussions. I am happy that my experiments are note-worthy and acceptable.
However, I am willing to be a part of acknowledgement in your manuscript. Also, I would like to proof read the manuscript to learn something new or point out any mistake in the Simulation section of your manuscript.
It has been a great collaboration with your group and I would be happy if I could contribute something more to your future works so that I could be considered a potential co-author of the work.
Wishes,
Coder

If you are volunteering to proof the manuscript and provided key simulations, you are already worthy of being a co-author. They already consider you as such, and I think it would be most polite to graciously accept.

The phrasing on this doesn't make a lot of sense.   If I were reading it as the primary author I would think I had not communicated clearly my invitation for you to be a co-author on the current paper .

I don't understand what the word however is doing in the second paragraph. You never indicate (before or after that) that you're unwilling to accept the co-authorship that they've offered. So if the second paragraph is saying "Instead, how about just an acknowledgement?", that's not clear.

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Can a scientific article (of an non-tested idea) in computer science be accepted in a high-ranked journal?
I'm doing a PhD in computer science. I've been working in my research question for a year and a half now and I still didn't publish any article yet. Lately, I found out an idea that can improve the current solutions. I believe my idea can provide better results than current tools. But, my question is as follows: Is it possible to submit my paper to a scientific journal and hopefully get it accepted without implementing my idea (i.e. without testing my idea)?

Hey, if it's computer science, it can be implemented. So, there is little excuse if you have not.

But how can I compare it to other existing tools? How can I convince the reviewers that my idea is better?

@Maria in what was is your tool better? Is it more computationally efficient? is it more accurate? Whatever it is, you measure it and demonstrate it.

@OlegLobachev That’s not totally fair. There are many examples (mostly in theory work, but not exclusively) of meaningful contributions to the field that are pragmatically impossible to implement, or which never got implemented by their creator.

I agree with your observation, but a theory work would have proofs instead, wouldn't it?

@OlegLobachev of course. As I say in my answer, you need some kind of argumentation that the approach is valuable.

How did you convince yourself that your idea is better? How did you convince your PhD advisor?

It doesn't seem to me wise to submit this to a "high-ranked journal". It might fly as a conference paper where submissions are often accepted on the basis that they are thought-provoking even if nothing is rigorously proved. It's your first paper; do some gentle hill-walking before you try to climb Everest.

Hint: Algorithms are published all the time without being compared to similar other algorithms. In fact, in cryptography it is common for algorithms to be published to encourage the community to test it. Don't make the claim that your work can improve on current solutions. Just present it as is and then make the suggestion that your work MAY improve current solutions

@OlegLobachev For an example of an 'unimplementable' algorithm that (due to its proof of correctness) is considered a meaningful contribution, see Chazelle's algorithm for linear time triangulation.

Everything can be accepted in any journal. The idea that papers in"good" journals present quality research is nothing else than an illusion.

1) This is a question best addressed to your adviser or someone else familiar with your work, because questions like these often depend on the details of what you're doing.
2) It depends on the subfield, the nature of the work, and what evidence you can provide that the methodology. You need to provide argumentative evidence that your approach is noteworthy and correct. This can be a mathematical proof of correctness, a diagram and five pages of discussion and commentary, or a statistical analysis comparing the algorithm to other similar ones. Which is most appropriate depends on the nature of your work. However, whatever you choose is going to be an involved endeavor, and you have little hope of getting something published if you insist on not doing a meaningful evaluation of its performance.
Assuming that you are willing to evaluate and validate your algorithm, but just not willing or able to implement it...
If you're doing theoretical work, the answer is likely "yes you can publish it". New algorithms for known problems or improvements to the theoretical run-times of established algorithms are often published with formal proofs of correctness rather than implementations. Pseudo-code would be encouraged but is not even always necessary.
If you're doing non-theoretical work, the answer is likely "no you cannot publish it". Non-theoretical CS work of this type is usually backed by numerical experimentation and quantitative comparison to known benchmarks and frequently-used algorithms. In an ideal world, you'd even leverage statistics to improve your analysis.

It should be emphasized that even theoretical publications require more than an “idea”, and the work required to flesh out an idea into a fully specified algorithm, prove it correct, rigorously analyze it, and compare it to previous solutions may require at least as much effort as implementing and experimentally evaluting it.

@JeffE You are undoubtedly correct. I have modified my answer to stress this.

Ideas are cheap. Most researchers have more ideas than they have time to develop them. It's the development which has value. Or to put it another way, in order to advance the field you need to convince other people that your idea is interesting, and the fact that you believe it will not be sufficient. Depending on your subfield the way to convince people may be a mathematical analysis, empirical measurement of an implementation, or a combination of the two, but you need something.

+1. Ideas are cheap. I often have many (contradictory) ideas before breakfast.

The reviewers will generally need some evidence that your idea works. That evidence can come in various forms, and doesn't necessarily have to be experimental (e.g. in certain fields you could formally prove something instead). That said, you generally won't be able to publish ideas without any evidence in good venues (unless the reviewers are asleep on the job) -- why would you want to, in any case?
To put it another way, you say that you "believe" your idea can provide better results than current tools. Aren't you curious whether or not that's actually the case? Either way, the reviewers are likely to be (assuming you have good reviewers).


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How to prepare for grad school applications?
I want to go to graduate school in mathematics, completed my undergraduate degree in mathematics with 3.6/4 gpa (11 graduate level courses in maths and related courses, only 3 were A- rest A, 25+ courses in mathematics). I took way too many courses every semester (about 6) and got bad grade in one or two classes usually, which resulted in my gpa. To compensate this I did my masters, got 3.97/4 gpa with 9 classes (only one A-). However, I was not given a thesis question, the only thing that I had was that my advisor told me a result he found in X, and I should try to expand that to Y and Z. The extensions were trivial, and then he told me to find application for it. Everything I could think of were completely trivial, so I ended with potentially a subpar thesis (everywhere that I applied in Europe rejected my application after giving a short presentation on this thesis so I'm almost surely positive that it is a really bad thesis).
I've spent majority of my research experience (about 3-4) years with one professor and nothing came out of it aside from the minor extensions that I've mentioned above. I think the letter of recommendation he gave to me early in my education was "strong" (one professor in Europe told me this) but after getting rejected from all the PhD programs that I've applied to I got emotional and to certain degree might've burned the bridge (does not seem to return to my emails anymore) unintentionally by "hurting" his feeling that the projects doesn't seem to get anywhere and overstudied. So I'm not sure if I can get a good recommendation letter from him anymore, and I don't think there are others that can give me a letter of recommendation that will amount to anything, as I did not do research with anyone else.
I still want to go to graduate school in mathematics, but I think my chances are even worse now. What are the routes that I can take at this point? If any.

I wonder if your doctoral applications were to too narrow a set of places. If you only apply to "top ten" institutions and get rejected by one, you are just about as likely to get rejected by the others. Is this the case? If so, I can give a bit of advice.

@Buffy Hi, first of all thank you for your response. My research are was close to financial mathematics (stochastic analysis), so I've applied to Operations Research programs as well as Mathematics programs. I've actually tried to apply last year, but those were the schools in between top10-20 rather than 10, as I did not think I had chance at top 10s due to my undergrad performance + lack of publication. This year  I applied to some safeties and also applied to somewhat "lower" ranked programs.  Only a program below 100 gave me "shortlist" (i'm not in first round offers, might not get one).

And where are you? A US answer would be very different from one for Germany/Austria. From a US standpoint I'd think your grades are fine.

Turkey. Most instutions in UK counts my 3.6 in undergraduate as equivalent to 70/100 (first class) in UK for instance. ( For the record i've applied to US and European schools)

I don't know anything about the system in Turkey and the following is only addressing the situation for US applications. US institutions are pretty good at evaluating GPA between systems, so I'll leave that, but a 3.6 undergrad in the US is within the bounds for doctoral applications, though maybe not in top 20 schools where there will be lots of folks (well) above 3.8.
But two things.
In the US, GPA isn't the main driver for admissions (and a masters isn't usually required). Letters of recommendation are very important, especially when the writer knows your capabilities and can confidently and honestly express a prediction of success.
See our canonical question about doctoral admissions for some details.
Second, any of the top 100 or so schools in the US (we have a lot of institutions) should be fine. My degree was from somewhere around 50 and the faculty was pretty fantastic with many of them known internationally. It was also a pretty big place with lots of options for advisors in most fields. Lots of different seminars for specialists.
So, for the US and probably elsewhere, cast a broad net. In the US get three great letters of recommendation, even if some are from undergrad days.

In parts of Europe it is very different and you need to appeal to an individual PI to get accepted. Nothing like that in US, though, where admissions is by committee. But the "broad net" idea is probably valid even in Europe. Good luck.


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Is it possible to apply for another PhD program after resignation from my previous PhD program during the probation period?
I want to describe my situation first. I was employed in a German institute as a PhD researcher with a contract. I had to go through a six-month probation period. However, since the first day in this group, I’ve been experiencing overwhelming pressure and anxiety from high load of work without proper supervision from the supervisor (he is just ‘too busy’ to teach me except for asking me to do this and that).
I’m not complaining about the group and the professor here as I attribute this to a mismatch between myself and the group. Thanks to the probation period, I can opt to quit the group after five months of working here to prevent further harm to both sides.
But still, I have a strong will to pursue a PhD to do further research. I’m just wondering if my experience in this group would affect my further application. I don’t want to be dishonest, so could I properly describe this experience in my CV and to my potential future supervisor?

Edit: it seems inevitable to expand some of my experience in my previous group. First of all, I'm not against independent studying and thinking, but I spent a lot of time solving most problems all by myself, and the supervisor only said something like "try your best" without even a single word hint!
What is more, I got almost no feedback from him and I only needed to do whatever I was asked to do. I seldom have a chance to talk about my idea, and my opinions are worth nothing. If the supervisor thought I was wrong then that was it, there was no room for discussion.

Are you asking only about application to another German institution or more broadly? How broad?

Sorry I didn't make it very clear. I'm open to positions in Europe or north America.

Most of a PhD is teaching yourself how to do things. Consider that first.

Thanks @JonCuster! I'll certainly make my own decision, but I think gathering information is also important.

@shinotakatoshi I think what Jon is getting at is that all PhDs will have a level of independent learning to them; if you don't like this, you shouldn't do a PhD. That said, there is a lot of variation in how much hands on assistance there is between mentor and student.

@BryanKrause Yes I agree with it. I certainly learned a lot through solving almost every problem I met. But my problem is that I got almost no feedback from my supervisor about what I think and do. Anyway, thank you for your (and Jon's) advice, and I'll keep them in mind whether I'll continue doing PhD or not.

There shouldn't be any particular issue in the US, provided that you meet the criteria for acceptance. It seems likely that you will, but note the importance of letters of recommendation here.
You will need to mention this educational experience and provide any transcripts and such in the US, but having left voluntarily and on good terms shouldn't raise any particular issues.
See the answer for the US (and elsewhere) to this question for more on applications. Note that in the US, acceptance is by a committee of faculty, not by individual PIs. And, admissions can be quite competitive.

The answer to the title question is quite certainly "yes". I'm not aware of any regulation anywhere that would prevent you from doing that (although of course I don't know all places).
It's hard to say whether stating in a straight way that you have left your earlier program in the probation period will harm your chances. Of course you can say in one or two sentences that the specific work environment in that group didn't seem to be a good fit for you, but don't expand it too much. I suspect that in Italy where I am it won't be a problem, as applications are rated by a points system and as far as I'm aware such a thing is covered in hardly any point scheme (these have to be decided before applications come in) if at all. I suspect that wherever formal criteria have to be fixed before receiving applications this kind of thing won't feature in the criteria, which is good for you.
There will always be a subjective component in assessing applications, in some places more, namely where there are relatively lenient minimum formal criteria and beyond these potential supervisors make personal decisions, in other places less (any formal system can be "played" to some extent, for example to favour a subjectively preferred candidate). It is hard to say how much of a problem your issue is in this respect. I'd expect that occasionally somebody may want to shy away from such a candidate but more often than not it won't matter much (although it can make a difference if there is competition that is otherwise equally qualified), but that's just speculation.


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When asked about my topic of interest, I don't have a story to tell. How do I make my answer sound interesting and convincing for the position?
I am currently doing master's in mathematics and am applying for summer research projects in various institutes where they ask a particular question: What is your topic of interest and why? I asked a few people( professors, mostly) and Google, and they suggested I should tell my story. How and when I became interested in a topic? What caused me to choose it over others?
I don't have such a story. I never had a fancy dream about my career. (I can't say that without people judging that I am not a serious candidate.)
I am devoted to pursue a career in research. My field of interest is Topology, Cosmology and Geometry. Also, I read Algebra for fun. I want to study about the universe from a mathematical point of view, see what it looks like and if possible explore why it looks like that. If there is a possibility of multi universe, do all of them have the same structure and components? Is our knowledge of mathematics vast enough to be able to formulate or model the topology of the universe? I know the answer to that one is no, but then what sort of advancements are required to achieve that goal and how do we go about that? Finding answers to such questions is why I want to study cosmic topology.
Unfortunately, I keep getting rejected due to "lack of passion" in my statement of purpose. And also because I come from a mathematics background and I don't have sufficient theoretical knowledge about cosmology (I am doing my self study for that).
How do I convince the institutes that I am thoroughly interested in working in such projects?
If asked directly, my answer is that it is an interesting and challenging field where I will be able to work with two of my favourite fields, astronomy and pure mathematics, but that isn't sufficient anymore.
What more could I add to my answer that would make me a suitable candid ate?

That second paragraph is about as good a story as one typically hears on graduate applications.

"Lack of passion" can be difficult to interpret when it's the feedback you receive. Still, your question is a bit difficult to answer without reading your actual statement of purpose - especially since I think you do write down elements that could be the ingredients for conveying that "passion", which apparently is somehow missing from the materials you send in when you apply. As a reader (and perhaps host lab?) you want to see a bit of genuine excitement and intrinsic motivation shine through in the applicant's writing.
Are you certain that it is not the second reason (i.e. your lack of cosmology background) that is the main reason you are getting rejected?
In either case, I would go over your statement again and ask for feedback from someone who knows you and the field you're interested in: Are you telling the reader WHY you are devoted to a career in research? WHY you want to apply your mathematics skills and background in this new area?
Good luck!

I agree that I don't have expert level knowledge of cosmology but I have done physics courses in undergraduate and a lot of researchers I know have taken up astronomy and astrophysics after doing their master's in mathematics. This is my primary source of inspiration.  I also agree that I am not very clear about how to proceed for research in cosmology after studying mathematics. This is why I want to take up a research project. I believed it would be my starting point. It  will help me develop a better understanding of the subject. That was my plan. Now, it seems like its failing.

If you don't have such a story -- develop it.
Along with reading top-notch research on the chosen topics,
dedicate some of your time to reading books on the history of mathematics and physics. This investment will pay off, not only at the interview.
Speaking of the history of math, this masterpiece is the first that comes to my mind: "Prime Obsession. Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics" by Derbishire.
Speaking of cosmology and relativity, one good book out of many is "Seven Brief Lessons on Physics" by Carlo Rovelli. Professional cosmologist, Rovelli is also a prolific writer, and his other books may be of interest to you.
Also the popular (and not so popular) books by Roger Penrose.
While this sort of reading is only a supplement to working with serious texts and papers, it helps one to develop a broader vision of things.

Might it be better to read some things closer to current research in the area? This isn't my area of research, but I'd worry about an application that looks like an interested lay person rather than a serious researcher.

@BryanKrause I feel I wasn't clear enough. I just recommended several good reads as an example. Surely, the questioner will easly find historical books on topics closer to his area. There are many on the market, especially on cosmology.

No I think you were clear, but you're recommending what seems to me to be very light reading: books targeted to a general audience that don't have much to do with what it means to do research in those fields (not having actually read those specific books, though I'm familiar with similar books in other areas). It's probably okay to refer to them as something that first sparked interest, but that's not where OP is, it seems like they need to show they know something about what current research is like and what work is done towards the available problems.

@BryanKrause If you feel that my advise is misleading, I shall remove it.

You can keep it or not but it might be helpful to explain where the advice is coming from or clarify if you're recommending just this or something in addition.

@BryanKrause Bettwr now?


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If undergraduate Honor's Thesis printed/shelved in Alma-metar's library & checked out a number of times -- does it count as "published" on a CV?
As an undergraduate, I joined the Honor's Program, and completed the program by conducting original research and writing an Honor's Thesis. That Honor's Thesis has since been printed and shelved in the library. I never included it as "published" in my CV because I didn't think that it legitimately counted as a published document. However, I have been informed that professors and students and the local public have been checking out my Honor's Thesis over the last several years. In fact, I checked the university's library database and someone does indeed have it checked out for six months. But this work is still not considered officially published? Or is it? How do I list it on my CV?

I don't list my PhD thesis on my CV, much less my undergraduate thesis.

There isn't really a universal "official" definition of  the word "published", so I would just avoid using that word on your CV.  You can certainly list it on your CV, but keep it separate from work that has been peer-reviewed.  The fact that people have checked it out has no bearing on this question one way or the other.

What stage are you at now? It isn't peer reviewed exactly, which is the main distinction of interest. Whether it is still important enough to include somewhere would depend on what the CV is for.

Any work that has been made publicly accessible in an archival manner can safely be considered published (along with some that are a bit more tenuous).  That includes all manner of theses, whether or not anybody is actually reading or citing them.  Thus, you should definitely list it in your CV as part of your publications.
In a typical academic CV, however, publications are separated into different categories.  How many categories depends on the particulars of one's field and record, but it typically at least divides into peer-reviewed (e.g., journal articles) and non-peer-reviewed (e.g., your thesis).  I would further recommend having a specific category for large non-peer-reviewed works like your thesis (on my own CV, it's "Book Chapters and Theses"), to distinguish them from smaller tech reports, abstracts, and the like.

A thesis is typically reviewed by the committee. In spite of the fact that this process is not blind, it makes me wonder whether it is correct to state that a thesis is not peer reviewed.

@DannyRuijters While the committee does review the thesis, their role (particularly the advisor) is more like that of co-authors than independent peer reviewers.  They have a clear conflict of interest and are thus not considered effectively independent.

I agree about the advisor, but wonder whether the same can be said about the rest of the committee. I understand that there is a narrow definition of peer review as applied to journals and conferences, but doubt whether the statement that theses are not peer reviewed is true in the strict sense.

@DannyRuijters I don't think the strictest sense is relevant: I think that what is relevant is that people typically expect theses to be in a different part of the CV than journal articles because the review processes are so different.

@DannyRuijters there's no requirement for peer review to be blinded - many journals operate open peer review.


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journal paper or conference paper
Some conference papers have misleading names, for example, 'journal of physics conference series' with both journal and conference in the name. 'journal of physics conference series' is almost like a journal because it publishes full manuscripts on their website but it also has conference in its name because it collects submissions from a conference that really takes place somewhere. PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY A is just a journal rather than a conference. In such cases how to tell if a publication is really a journal or a conference?
To tell if something is a conference or a journal doesn't really matter that much but there is a follow up question. If it's considered a conference with a full manuscript, it is possible to publish roughly the same contents on another normal journal. If it's considered a journal then of course there's no reason to publish it on another journal once again.

Once a paper appears it is unlikely that another reputable publisher will consider republishing it. There are several reasons, including (lack of) novelty and copyright restrictions.
If it isn't clear whether a paper appeared at a conference (which really shouldn't happen), then you need to ask the publisher. But the difference may be immaterial in some fields.
Note that some conferences publish papers in a "proceedings" and then publish a (perhaps edited) version in a journal that is somehow connected to the conference. Others just treat the proceedings as the final word and consider those proceedings to be the equivalent of a journal. This is common in computing when a conference is sponsored by one of the large membership organizations. The ACM, for example, has a worldwide spread of conferences.

thanks! PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY A has a misleading name but it's just a journal I think

Proceedings of the IEEE is also a journal.

Actually, a membership organization (a society) may well have a "proceedings" unrelated to any conference. It is pretty typical, actually.

Papers published in Journal of Physics: Conference Series are usually quite easy to identify as conference papers from the PDFs. On the website, the volume of the "journal" sometimes directly names the conference, but sometimes you only find out by clicking through to the volume.
One way to tell if a publication venue is a conference proceeding or a journal is to look it up on Scopus. Here is the page for Journal of Physics: Conference Series, which is identified as a proceeding. Compare with the case of Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical, which is identified as a journal. I'm not sure if this would identify cases where a journal would publish proceedings of some specific conference as a special issue, but again, special issues/volumes are usually clearly labeled.


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how to search for past conferences in academia
It's necessary to know what conferences happened in the past to know a field or a city. I don't mean proceedings but just where the conferences were held etc. I need this for metadata and statistics as well as for telling if a conference organizer is authentic or reputatable etc. Where can one search past conferences? Most sites show upcoming ones only.

What do you mean by past conferences? Do you mean "proceedings"? then use Google Scholar, the publisher search engine or any publication index. Do you mean "where the conference was held, which hotel, etc.? Then why? Do you mean metadata and statistics? You might find them in the Preface of the respective proceedings

The wording here is very unclear, particularly that first sentence. Can you reword that?

I don't understand why it is "necessary". Can you elaborate?

I read the question to be "Where can one search [for] past conferences?", but the first sentence understandably confuses people. OP, can you please clarify - I will edit my answer in case I misunderstood your question.

i'm sorry for the confusion and just reedited

There is, in general, not one site where it's possible to search for past conferences.
Nevertheless, you have a number of options to collect information about past conferences. However, none of them will provide you with an exhaustive list.

Conference series in which iterations happen regularly (e.g., yearly) often have links to previous editions on the webpage of the upcoming edition.
The webpages of professional societies may contain a calendar that lists past events.
Some researchers publish talk slides on their personal webpages. If a sufficient number of researchers in a field do so, this gives a fairly comprehensive overview.
Talk to your peers and ask which conferences they attended in the past.
If your field is based around conference proceedings, have a look where relevant papers were published in.

I concur; looking for unpublished abstracts from past meetings is just labor intensive detective work; there's no quick fix

i wish i knew how to look for unpublished abstracts from past meetings


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pros and cons of one's own papers covered by media
One published a paper on a journal. The communications team of their school want to publicize that paper in media. Is there any substantial pros and cons for the paper writer?

Advice to others.  Wait until the paper is published in a peer-reviewed journal. (Note that feyman has done that.)  We see a lot of public-relations for papers where the paper turns out to be faulty, but the follow-up about the problems is rarely picked up by that same communications team...

The main effect of media coverage is increased visibility. In case of very controversial research that might be considered a con, as it might invite harassment or people running with unsubstantiated and possibly dangerous claims. In most cases, however, I'd see it as a pro. You get to communicate about your research to groups that would otherwise not have seen it, effectively doing a form of outreach and educating the public on cutting-edge research.
Other pros:

It can be fun - especially if well-received.
It can be good practice in communicating to non-experts.
It improves your professional visibility as well as the visibility of the specific research project, and the visibility of your institution. It's hard to measure this effect I suppose, but it might produce new opportunities to e.g. give an invited talk somewhere, or lead to students being interested in working with you.
Your employer or funding agency might also like seeing this kind of non-citation impact.
At least some US institutions would consider media coverage of your research as evidence of service (along with committee service, traditional outreach and so on) for tenure evaluations. One big reason to have this factor in to the decision is that such activities help promote public awareness of the work that takes place there.
Some members of the audience might find the research an appealing answer to "why are we funding these people with our taxes again?" in a way that wouldn't happen if we only ever communicate with other experts through pay-walled journals.

Other cons:

It does take some time. (It's almost always a negligible amount compared to the time you spent on the research in the first place, but busy people are busy.)
Misleading reporting could be hard to deal with in some cases. If you work with a university or journal press office on a press release you can usually make sure that the release itself is accurate, but then a game of telephone may ensue as different outlets pick it up. The risk seems to be higher the more impactful the result, as the media coverage after the press conference about the OPERA neutrino anomaly clearly showed, or if the research is politically controversial - e.g. climate change.
Attempting to maximize coverage could lead to overhyping the research, which eventually erodes trust in academics as a whole.

So overall, I think the only real con for most regular-stakes research is that it could use up a single digit number of hours. Hence, I'd suggest trying it at least once. For
 research that's potentially more controversial it would make sense to first discuss the likelihood of adverse consequences with a more experienced colleague in your field.


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solution to questions of lab equipments and funding search during faculty interview
In a faculty interview, when asked about how to prepare for lab equipments and how to search for funding, how to answer, esp for postdocs having no experience in these things? This is spoken in a context of an engineering deparmtent whereas I do theory work only.

Sounds like it is well past time for you to have some nice long talks with your PhD and post-doc advisors about how they think you could approach those.

@xLeitix Your comment is inappropriate.  The asker is an English language learner.  As the "Be Nice" policy says, belittling is not okay.

@AnonymousPhysicist Ok, I deleted it, and I apologise. It was in fact not meant to belittle, but I fully agree that it is much more likely that the OP used the wrong word than that they assumed that there is a "correct" answer to this question.

@xLeitix what was ur deleted comment, i wont b unhappy

Fortunately, as a post-doc you should have access to two people to discuss this with. The first would be your PhD advisor, and the second your post-doc advisor. In most cases (yes, this SE gets many bad stories, but there are many more good endings), these people will want to help you continue in your career.
You PhD advisor is a professor, so went through this exact kind of interview at some point, and has likely seen it from the hiring side as well. If your post-doc is at a university, well, you get a second view of that process. If your post-doc is in industry or a national lab, it is highly likely that they either applied for tenure track positions at some point, have friends who did so, or have had other post-docs do so. Further, to get their positions they went through a slightly different interview process, but that still sheds light on how to approach an interview in general.
I have always been interested in helping anyone who worked for me to fulfill their goals. Perhaps they don't work for me anymore, but they are 'my' people forever.

Look...these people are hiring you to do these things.  As a natural scientist PI, you will be the leader of a group of people and have significant responsibilities (getting $$$ funding, using it, managing people, etc.)  It isn't quite as bad as running a company since you have a lot of systems to rely on (e.g. department's accountant).  But it is a real position of leadership.
The department is aware you are not a served PI.  But they are expecting you to get it done.  Go research it.  Have some interviews (make a list of questions, make a list of people to talk to*), develop a set of insights from the interview work stream, form a plan.  Obviously as you execute the plan, you will learn more (no battle plan survives contact with the enemy), but the act of planning will make you more likely to succeed and learn while executing.
The interview question is completely reasonable.  If you want to be the next Sean McVay, you need to show that you have put some effort into thinking about how you will run things as head coach.  They know it is a step up.  But they want to see that you WILL step up.  You're not a student any more.
Personally, that you haven't researched already or that you have to have an Internet Q&A tell you the obvious "go figure it out" is a ding for me.  Now if you HAD researched it and made some targeted questions that would be good.
Edit:  Oh and the "lab equipment".  Ai yi yi!  You ABSOLUTELY need to have a plan for what equipment you need/want, how much it costs and how to get it.  Heck, at a good R1 school, they compete for you (as a top candidate) based on how many hundreds of thousands of dollars your startup package is.  If you don't know what equipment you need, how the heck are you going to have a working lab set up?  Figure out what area of research you will do and what is needed to do it.  I wouldn't exactly hand them a bill (wait until you get two offers to play some negotiation upwards games), but realistically, you need to make a plan for how to set up your lab.  What do you need and what will it cost?  This includes things like fume hoods or special utilities (gases, 3phase power, etc.) that may need to be installed for you, not just benchtop equipment.
*Advisor, department chair, department accountant, and recent person who got hired.  Can look at both current place and where you did your grad degree.  But before you talk to them (a) make a list of questions (modify and change it as you run the interviews--you will find some new questions and not need to ask other ones--this is information gathering, not a marketing survey); (b) have already done the personal work (as best you can) to develop a research plan (what area of work; what types of experiments; what are the needs in equipment, manpower, $$; what is the time phasing (e.g. building apparatus).

In addition to user Jon Custer's suggestion, I advise that you be honest about your abilities. Faking it will possibly be noticed and will possibly come back to bite you later. You are better to say that "I have a lot to learn about those" than to try to sound like you have a skill that you don't.
If the application is to a large department then there will likely be opportunity to learn from other colleagues and this will be noted. It may be more critical for very small departments where the skills of individuals are more critical, not being shared.
You can also speak about a "plan for learning" how to do the things that will be expected of you but that you don't yet have the experience for.

Acknowledging one's own deficiencies is the minimum I would expect a candidate for a job in academia to be able to do (although I have seen otherwise). My general approach to answer a question I don't know the answer to is to state: "I do not know, but..." followed by an attempt at a solution.

You need to complete the plan for learning before the job interview, unless you are working in the rare disciplines where applicants are scarce.

@AnonymousPhysicist, yes, in an ideal world. But you can't roll back the past. If you are living in the now you have to deal with the situation as best you can given the facts.


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Are physics conference abstracts ever screened?
Do conferences ever reject low quality abstracts? I've never heard of anybody wanting to attend conferences and being rejected.
If they do screen abstracts, will they reject abstracts that are not of low quality but are too broad in theme? Will organizers give applicants a chance to revise abstracts?

Could you clarify more? The conferences I know may accept or reject papers, and the abstract is part of the paper, so it is evaluated together with it.

In my field, few people submit conference papers, which are of negligible imporance compared to journal papers. Abstracts are enough to attend conferences.

Can you link to one such conference. What you describe seems very foreign to many of us in other fields. A description that gives a hint about what happens. More than a "meet and greet" I suspect, but less than what happens at a CS conference, I think.

Most of the rejection are in reality acceptance as poster. This is how it works in practice in fields like physics, chemistry, material science etc. Not sure about other fields in which a poster is hard to conceive (for me at least).

Major physics conferences do not screen abstracts.  Abstracts that are nonsensical are routinely accepted at certain very big conferences.
Small conferences may vary.
Physics conferences do not permit revision of abstracts.

Some major physics conferences do screen abstracts. It depends a lot on the conference.

@mmeent Like what conferences? APS March?

Depends on the conference. Small conferences often accept most of things, at least to the poster stage.
In some fields, a conference is a place for researchers to meet, so conference papers have little significance.
In others, conference papers are almost as important as journal papers and its really hard to get an abstract in. Check ICCV acceptance rates.. ICCV2019 accepted 25% of the papers only.
In any case, I doubt any conference would accept an abstract without checking it first. One thing is having low acceptance threshold and another is not checking the abstracts.
In short: it highly depends on the conference.

In physics, conference papers do not have "little significance" because they don't exist.

I see the question changed.


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Accepting 2 postgraduate university offers
I have received a conditional offer from the University of Birmingham and an unconditional offer from the University of Leeds for a masters degree in marketing, both programs are great but I have a deadline to accept Birmingham's offer so I was wondering if I could accept both offers and then decline one of them.

Did you apply through UCAS? If so, it is probably impossible to accept multiple offers.

If the programs you are interested in have a limitation regarding how many new students they take in each term, you should probably not accept both offers. It could mean that someone else interested in a slot would potentially not be accepted into a program. There might be the possibility of extending the deadline, and it won't hurt to ask them.
I understand it's hard to decide on a program, but you should save others' time and effort by first deciding, then accepting. There is no hard requirement that I know of, however, that explicitely prohibits you from doing otherwise.
Make sure to make an informed decision, e.g. check the curriculum for both programs.

Call AND email Birmingham and tell them that you have a firm offer from Leeds and conditional from Birmingham.
See if you can convert Birmingham to a firm offer or at least to extending the deadline.  Hey...you're a marketing person.  Negotiate. ;-)  [Remember the scene in breaking bad where Walt tells Jesse "you're a drug dealer, negotiate".]  Seriously, give it a shot and see how you do.  Nothing changes when you are looking at job offers.
If they hold firm, I would just not respond (rather than decline) the Birmingham offer.  I have learned in both academia and business that sometimes these deadlines get waived when they want the candidate and he doesn't answer.  But you should be ready to let the conditional (i.e. not very good) offer from Birmingham expire if they are firm.


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Is it appropriate to share the distribution of grades for a small class?
It is common practice to share a histogram of grades with a class after a quiz or exam. However, my institute has very small classes. This year I have 6 students in my class, and in previous years I have had 3. It seems like showing the breakdown of grades (e.g. how many A's, B's, C's there were) in such a small class may be inappropriate, since students may easily be able to guess who got which grade. On the other hand, it seems only fair to tell students how they did relative to the rest of the class.
update: I noticed this question was still a little bit active, so I will add the location information. The institute in question is NYU-Shanghai. It is located in China, but follows US privacy policies (i.e. we are subject to FERPA).

Why is it important that "it seems only fair to tell students how they did relative to the rest of the class"? How does this help anyone?

I wonder if there is a standard "rule of thumb" number among statisticians for a minimum bin size that preserves individuals' privacy.  Maybe a good question for Stats.SE.

I don't know if it is relevant, because is not answering the question directly, but often grades distribution is usefull in order to know as a student how do you compare to others. To adress that in your situation you still can give them a mean and the standard deviation.

@ElizabethHenning And on the other hand, in Queensland, Australia, sharing this sort of information was legally mandatory for the final year of high school, since it was used for the calculation of the students' OP scores, which were used for calculating undergraduate university admissions.

Please add a country tag, as the question is not even answerable without it. As is, all current answers are just speculation. I'm in Eastern Europe, and all grades are public and exam results are published on both the university website and physical bulletin boards.

At my university lecturers regularly release complete grade data with student id numbers and grades. The id numbers aren't exactly anonymous. Another reason why this question needs a location tag.

@RomainL.: Fun algebra exercise: in a class of size 3, given the mean, the standard deviation, and your own score, determine the scores of the other two students.  You can!

Discussion about FERPA has been moved to chat. Please read this FAQ before posting another comment.

I'm teaching at NYU Shanghai. It is in China but because of our connection to NYU we are covered by FERPA.

I remember that in a class of around 8-11, the instructor said 2 students got 100% on the midterm.  I was the last student to arrive the next day, and students told me that they knew what score I got on the midterm because they checked with each other, every other students, and figured out my score by process of elimination.  (Of course, my score wasn't one that I was too terribly embarrassed about.)

No, for exactly the reason you give. If just a couple students share their grades with each other, it becomes trivial for others to be discovered by process of elimination.

+1. Sometimes the short and obvious answer is the correct one. OP shouldn’t overthink this, in a class of 3-6 students grade ranking information would be statistically meaningless in any case.

How are you answering with this kind of confidence without even knowing the region? This is absurd.

My multivariable calculus professor showed the grade distribution for a midterm exam where I got the lowest score. I don't understand what the point of that was. But now that I myself have taught multivariable calculus, I can tell my own students that I got the lowest grade in the class on a math test and I ended up OK. But I also don't show grade distributions for how my own students do because I don't see the point. Students generally do want to know the class average, though, so I do share that if they request it.

@Gradstudent How large was the class you were in?  And how large are the classes you are teaching?

@MichaelRichardson The class I was in had 15 or fewer students. The class I taught had about 20 students enrolled.

@GradStudent Given how meaningless an average is for these kind of statistics, that seems rather pointless. Back in the day, grades were published on a piece of paper and hung up in the department. Personally I don't understand why I should care if other people knew my grades - it's university, not kindergarden after all. It was interesting to see how I did compared to the rest of the class to get an idea how hard the class was and if more effort was in order.

@Davor: agreed this answer is somewhat location-specific, and would be better if it acknowledged that — but at the same time, it’s clear from the question that the OP is in a place where individual students’ grades are not suposed to be made public, and so this answer is appropriate for the OP.

Check if the university has a policy on this. This varies wildly across locations: in some places grades are still published with the students' names next to them; in others there are stated policies that this is not allowed. At my university, histograms are automatically published by the system no matter the number of students (even if 2), and there is no way to prevent this.
If there is no policy on this, it is your choice how much you want to weigh transparency vs data protection. There are also intermediate options, such as only publishing the mean, maximum and minimum grade, or the mean amd variance.

Indeed, at my university, the average grade, the average number of attempts necessary to pass, the number of passes and the number of signed-up can be read by anyone with the university login. Even if there was just one student.

I take issue with your premise:

It seems only fair to tell students how they did relative to the rest of the class

In a large class, this seems reasonable: if I know that I'm in the top 5%, I know that I am likely to get an A, regardless of my actual score. Even professors who "don't curve" usually adjust difficulty levels to achieve the desired outcome.
In a class with three students, this is not really the case -- giving three As or three Cs could be appropriate. Saying "you got the top score" doesn't really provide any information about my performance. So, I would argue that it provides no upside. Others have already covered the downside - namely, privacy violations.
I would suggest a better option would be to say: "Scores above 80 are A-range, 65 is B-range, 50 is C-range." This is both more useful to the student and sidesteps any privacy issue.

Indeed, what I would say is "it seems only fair to tell the students how they should interpret their grade as a measure of how well they are meeting the learning objectives of the course". That's the information that is important to education (not relative placement). Telling students how they are doing relative to the rest of a large class was always a proxy for this anyway.

Your point is valid, but students do want to know how they did relative to the rest of the class. Especially in a small class, if students feel they were the best student and got a B+ they may be satisfied knowing the class average was a C, but dismayed if the average was an A.

I'm not sure how "common" it is to share a histogram, but I question the value of it. I also worry that it implies in some way that grading is competitive. The worst case, of course, is a zero-sum grading system in which to give person A a point, person B must be denied a point. That is evil. In fact, grading "on the curve" has this characteristic built in. Students are individuals and should be treated as individuals, not as statistics.
But, I wonder why you think it is desirable to post relative scores. What does that add to the educational process? Who does it benefit? Who does it discourage? If education is about "bragging rights" or "one-upmanship"  then fine. But telling a student that they were worse than most of their peers is not, IMO, a way to encourage them to learn. Rather, it can lead to depression.
I suggest, instead, that grading be individual and that the philosophy is that everyone can earn top marks, as well as that everyone can fail.
Students need feedback, of course, but the feedback should be related to their own performance, not the performance of others. Education isn't a sporting event.
A histogram may be useful to the instructor, I think, but making it public, even in a large class, can be counterproductive.

One argument to defend histograms is transparency: students can know (and maybe complain) if an exam was "too hard" and no one got a good grade. More transparency incentivizes the instructor to design adequate exams.

@wimi, but it doesn't take student complaints to do such things. New instructors can/should be shepherded by more experienced colleagues to get it right. As I said, the histogram can be instructive for the instructor, as can guidelines from the institution. But the student "complaint" should be centered on their own mismatch between performance and grade. Not the grades of others.

On the flip side, a student who feels their score is low may be reassured by knowing that many other students performed similarly.

In my experience there is always some level of grading to the curve, if only implicitly.  If a professor sets work that far too many students fail, the grades will be scaled up.

@Buffy of course, instructors and their "superiors" should strive to do things right. Transparency is there to make it harder for people who do not want to do things right... Anyway, I see from the answers/votes here that most people consider privacy more important, and maybe they are right. I just wanted to throw in a possible reply to all the questions you pose in your second paragraph ;)

Wait, you think grading is not competitive? :D

As much as the other answers are correct, there is an alternative solution if you indeed want to release the grade distributions without compromising on anonymity. You can use differential privacy (ε-differential privacy with a random response in this case seems applicable) to guarantee that no information can be gained regarding individuals grades, even if there is only one person in the class, while still ensuring statistical measures performed on the grades remain the same.
Differential privacy uses statistics to guarantee that anonymity is retained, by affording plausible deniability, while also ensuring statistical accuracy, and is widely used these days by companies wanting to make data releases (such as Google or Apple). The drawback of this is the grades you are releasing are only statistically accurate (to within a controlled threshold), but the individual grades themselves may or may not be correct.
I'd say in this case where the data has been thoroughly anonymized using these methods (as opposed to k-anonymity or l-diversity which have their drawbacks in small group sizes), then releasing this information poses no risk to individuals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_privacy
You can then take this one step further and release a distribution based on these anonymized grades, while still retaining the guarantee that individual grades cannot be obtained by any party.
It'd still be good to check academic policy, but in any case, this is a good measure to take if you want to protect your students.

I give each student their grade individually - and don’t publish any “list” of any sort.
If the student then wants to “publish” their own grade then that is their prerogative.
This seems to satisfy the students and I don’t get any issues.

Depending on the region, publishing grades may even be mandatory. Anecdotes aren't that valuable.

@Davor so which region? Because what fits one won’t fit another.

That's a question for OP. Any answer given before OP specifies a region is useless.

If you don't want to disclose to the students the results of others, but you want to let the students know how they did compared to others, you could individually disclose their percentile.

This still allows students to deduce something about their classmates' scores, especially in a small class.  Take 3 students as in OP's example.  If Student A gets a score of 85 and is told they are at the 100th percentile, they know both of their classmates got less than 85.  If Student B gets a score of 70 and is told they are at the 66th percentile, they know one of their classmates scored above 70 and the other scored below, and they can probably guess which is which.

Yeah, that is fair point, in class of 3 this is not going to work that well.

The 'transaction' you and your students are engaged in is between you [the university] and themselves [the student].  If you are secure that your assessment was adequate and fair, there is nothing to be gained in comparing students against each other, especially publicly.  If you are not secure in your testing methodology, you might consider grading on a curve, which by definition compares individuals against each other, but again, this need not be a public exercise.

authors: Vladimir F Героям слава


text:
How to respond to a reviewer request for "pictures of a real experiment" when my paper doesn't have experiments?
One of my reviewers put a comment to my paper as "Show pictures of a real experimental test.". However, my paper describes a machine learning technique in electrical engineering.  I don't have any real experiments and I don't claim anything in the paper about that. I can not provide any result regarding the real experiment. The other comments are good and I worry about this comment. Could you help me to provide a response for that?

The comment reminds me of a story of mine.  First, my work is theoretical in nature.   In one of my papers, reviewers requested for an actual experiment.   I provided many arguments to justify that said such experiments will not change my conclusions.  My paper got rejected. :(   Good news is that the paper ended up in a higher impact journal.

If you don't intend to do any real experiments any time soon, the best response is for you to be honest in your reply. Explain again that your work consists of a theoretical technique and that (if it's the case) it will be validated experimentally in future works. Maybe support it with a new graph (as Anonymous Physicist suggested), maybe change some paragraphs/sentences to make your point clearer.
Sometimes, reviewers don't really pay attention to details. It has happened to me to be questioned by reviewers about points that I had specifically explained in the text, as if the reviewer hadn't read that part of the article. So maybe he didn't understand your work is theoretical, or maybe there's a sentence that created some confusion.
By being honest, you'll either have your paper accepted (since you mentioned that the other comments are good) or rejected if the editor considers that experiments are necessary.  If it is rejected, it is not necessarily a bad thing: most of the times, a rejection is useful for you to improve your paper and resubmit, and you can even get accepted in a better journal/conference with the same work!

Thank you @Pseg

There are two obvious possibilities here.

The review says only irrelevant things.  In that case, simply respond to the editor: "I was unable to determine the relationship between the comments of Reviewer 1 and the submitted manuscript.  Clarification would be appreciated."  The editor will conclude the referee did not read the paper and the review will be ignored.

The review is unclear due to sloppy writing or limited English skills.  In that case, I would interpret the comment as "Add a graph displaying evidence that the paper is correct."  The response would be "We have added a graph displaying y as a function of x, which supports our conclusion that ..."

Also, when you are a peer reviewer, try not to give vague feedback.

I'm assuming here that your paper is not about pictures.

I really like this comment: I was unable to determine the relationship between the comments of Reviewer 1 and the submitted manuscript. Clarification would be appreciated.

Something has generated this reviewer's request, and you need to try to figure out what that is.
Often, when people ask for an example, it is because something is less than clear when no example was provided.
I suggest coming up with an illustrative simulation to try to satisfy this reviewer.


text:
Choosing between two good reference letters providers
I am in the process of applying to tenure-track assistant-professorships positions in my home country.
Some institutions request no more then 3 reference letters.
Two letters I will have from my former PhD supervisor and my current post-doc supervisor in my current institute (I am doing my post-doc at a different institute, way more prestigious then my PhD inst. and in a different country).
I have all the reasons to believe these will be very good letters.
In the past I had a third letter from a professor who knows me well from the time I did my PhD (same dept. in my home country, close topics, some collaborations over several years and very good personal relationship).
However, It was 3 years ago. He wrote me very good letters before (so I've been told and believe, I also eventually got few fellowships and had one tenure-track job interview when providing his letters).
I also have the option to ask a current collaborator from my current dept. who knows me for about a year. He is very senior and respected scientist, published hundreds of papers and was the dept. chair for many years.
My work for his groups is very valuable (no one in his groups knows anything about the methods and analytical tools I use for this project of him), and we have a good personal connection.
My question is: From which one of these 2 prof. should I ask a reference letter ?
In more general terms: is it better to ask someone who knows you longer and from your home country (where I also apply), or a more current collaborator from my post-doc institute who is also a "bigger name" and knows what you are working on these days?
I will be mostly happy to read answers from ones who had been in selection committees or the like, but also much value answers from others as well.
Thanks
Edit: I can't simply ask from both and use alternatively, the recommendation letter should be submitted directly from them to the committee, so only one of them can be asked to submit.

You should ask for them both, and then send them selectively based on the characteristics of the job. For instance, you could send the one from your home country to job postings in the country. It does sound from your description that the newer reference would have a better sense of what you are working on now as well as better name recognition. This would probably be better for most applications. But the point remains that getting them both and sending selectively is the strategy I have used in the past; it has served me well.


text:
What does happen to accepted posters if no author attend to present?
One of our posters has been accepted with "Strong merit" at ACM DEV 2016. We have finalized the draft and sent the camera ready version to the authority. But this year's venue is Nairobi and a 5 days trip to there will cost about a lot of money. And as a student if I cannot afford to attend the conference, what will they do with my poster? Will they include in their library? If not will it be considered unpublished?
PS: All the co-authors of the paper are undergraduate students and none can afford to attend.

Different conferences have different policies.  Maybe someone here knows about the policy of this specific conference, but you'll get a more certain answer by reading the written policies of the conference or contacting the organizers.

You might get an answer "Please direct any questions to acmdev16posters@gmail.com."

Why submit a paper or poster to a conference you don't plan to attend, even if the paper or poster is accepted?

@PatriciaShanahan, Hard to know if you will have travel funds sometimes.

@scrappedcola We thought that there might be some general answer.

@PatriciaShanahan We had an overview of plane fare from the internet which I could afford. But those economic plans are not available during conference days that exceeded the amount I am willing to spend.

As someone commented, different conferences have different policies. For those I'm accustomed to, conference papers are usually not published in the proceedings if none of the authors show up at the conference.
If I understand correctly your situation, I would proceed as follows:

First, contact the conference secretary and explain your critical situation of undergraduate students with no university funding, asking whether they would be able to provide student support (e.g., fee waiving, cheap lodging in student's dormitory etc.) for one of the authors.
If the previous point is unsuccessful, try at least to find someone from your university who is going to attend and that could bring your poster to the conference, attaching it during the poster session on your behalf. Explain this solution to the organizers and hope for the best.

Actually I tried the first point. About the second option, one of my professors has two papers and five posters accepted in that conference. But as the rule of the conference says none can present more than two, he won't be even able to present all of the posters done under his supervision. Hence can we just send a hard copy of our poster with him. Will that suffice?

@Dipto_Das It's really up to the organizers; the only way to know is to inquire with them. The answer can also depend on the number of attendees that are expected. If I were in the organizers, I'd be willing to give an opportunity to publish to a group of undergraduate student without funding, but others might have different ideas.

@Dipto_Das - Contact the organizers and ask them to make an exception to the maximum of 2 rule.

Different conferences will have different policies. You should discuss this with the conference itself. I have been to venues where this is largely met with a shrug and a blank board, and some where not showing up to present can be penalized with a multi-year ban on submitting.