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How to teach first-years?
First, some context: I'm a PhD student, and this term, I'm running a bunch of seminar groups for first years (I believe these are what would be called "discussion sections" in the US - essentially, each group is 20-ish students out of a much larger course, and I'm doing stuff to support the lectures. I'm marking, but not setting, the assignments). My previous teaching experience has all been with what I believe would be "upper division" courses in the US, and thus far I've tried to approach this in essentially the same way, but there are some pretty significant differences that lead me to think that I'm not using the time well. Specifically:

In previous teaching, I've been able to rely on students (at least after a little prior prompting) turning up with questions that we can discuss, being able to tell me which parts of the course they're struggling with, etc. and dealing with these issues has taken up a large part of the available time (essentially, because dealing with the things that they're definitely struggling with seems more reliable than me trying to guess what they're struggling with). This doesn't seem to be the case with these students.
Previous students have been able and willing to get involved in discussions, either in small groups or all together, and have even started such discussions. The default expectation from these students seems to be that they can sit there and do very little and I'll somehow pour mathematics into their brains.
Previous courses have all been heavily proof-based, and I've spent a good part of the available time helping with details of proofs that students have not been comfortable with, providing alternate proofs, and trying to drill down to the underlying concepts. This course, thus far, consists entirely of matrix algebra, and the expectation seems to be something far more computational.

As far as what I've done so far, besides the usual start-of-course administrative stuff, is briefly summarise the content of the course thus far, provide a couple of worked examples, and get them to work on some practice questions (theoretically in groups, but I haven't managed to overcome their unwillingness to talk to each other very successfully yet), while I walk around and provide support. I also experimented with asking a question involving slightly more thought ("so we've seen that it is not always the case that AB = BA, but we've also seen that this does hold when either A or B is the identity or zero matrix. Can we say any more about when AB = BA does or doesn't hold?"), which they found significantly more difficult than I had anticipated, and needed a lot of help to even start.
In general, this doesn't seem like that effective a use of the available time: in particular, there's very little that I've done that couldn't have been done by handing them a textbook with plenty of practice questions. I also haven't gained much information about concepts that they struggle with - most of the errors that I've found, both in their assignments and in the class, are purely failures of mental arithmetic, rather than any conceptual issues.
Essentially, I'm looking for ideas of how I can adjust my teaching to make it more productive. Ideas for encouraging more active participation would also be much appreciated.

This might be a better fit at matheducators.stackexchange.com

@Johanna, actually, the question also applies to many other fields, not just math.

@BenCrowell Yes, first year undergraduates. That's just what they're called in parts of the world that are not the US. "Majors" aren't a thing here: they're all maths students.

If you were the professor for the course, I'd give a different answer, but consider the following.
I'll assume that you have the same group for each meeting, rather than a random selection of students that changes randomly over time. This lets you set expectations and a general flow.
One problem you may be encountering is that the students haven't yet learned how to learn. They haven't learned how to take notes and study properly. It is a lesson that needs to be taught, actually. Many students at this level have had an easy time of their earlier education. For some, at least, this is now changing and they need better procedures to capture and retain learning.
If you aren't getting questions, then ask a lot of questions yourself. They can be simple or complex. One of the simplest is to ask the class for volunteers to answer "What was the most important point in the professor's previous lecture?". Ask if anyone has anything to add to that. Evaluate and supplement any answers.
Use metaphor and examples to explain/illustrate things rather than being pedantic. Try to give them insight. While precision is good, it sometimes masks what is really at the heart of things. Why do some mathematical systems obey the commutative law and others not?
It takes some experience, but you can turn some things into games. Even competitive games. I once created a Jeopardy like game for teaching key ideas. It was a computer program that automated the questions. "Square Matrices for 10, Professor Buffy". Teams were formed and the students had fun trying to outdo other teams. This might solve your "working together" issue to some extent.
But just repeating what the professor said isn't likely to be effective. If they don't know what the professor did say then they need some instruction on effective note taking. Also on lecture summarizing, etc. Show them what tricks you used to learn hard stuff.
In fact, if you want an "ice breaker" question, ask what it was that the professor didn't make clear enough in the previous lecture.

One tiny suggestion that works wonders: Instead of asking "Any questions?" ask "What questions do you have for me?" This is an invitation for questions. I tried this out this semester and have been amazed at how many more questions I get because they feel that it is okay to ask questions.
Another suggestion is help them get to know each other. I put people in random pairs in exercise sessions either with a bunch of lengths of string that I hold in my hand. Everyone grabs one side and works with the person on the other end of the string. Or we use Memory cards, or pairs of playing cards to choose partners. By the end of the semester they know about a dozen others and feel much more at home in class and ready to learn.


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Losing hope in securing a decent postdoctoral position
This is my first post in this community, which stems from desperation and what I could only refer to as a state of hopelessness.
I completed my PhD in August and have been looking for postdoctoral positions in my field of research ever since. I have obtained my PhD from a top UK university (not quite Oxbridge, ICL or LSE, rather one tier lower than the said universities) and my supervisor is very well known in the field. Unfortunately, there are currently very few postdocs on the job market in my field and I had to resort to applying for projects that only loosely overlap with my field of research.
It may also be worth noting that in my field, it generally takes time to publish. Most people, including my PhD supervisor, as well as some renowned scholars in the said field, have published their thesis chapters sometimes as long as 2-3 years after graduation, after heavy editing and polishing.
My intent is to secure a decent postdoc at a respectable institution, but that dream seems dead. I have had 4 interviews so far and was offered a position at a random institution, which did not particularly publish well; so I declined that offer with the hope of securing a better one. One of the said interviews was with a very reputable Italian university, which I have yet to hear the outcome of, but I have little hope in securing that postdoc. The competition was fierce, with one candidate already having 4 years of postdoc experience under his belt and numerous publications in top journals, whereas I have none! Additionally, I have been invited for my 5th interview next week at a yet another reputable university, but having looked at the list of the applicants and their CVs for that position, the situation is not much different: for some of the candidates, this would be their 2nd postdocs and most have publications under their belt. Additionally, there is a Columbia University graduate in the list of applicants whose work is more related to the advertised position than mine - these are the people I will be competing against.
To say that I am feeling low is an understatement. If this is the sort of competition that I will be facing at interviews at each relatively respectable institution, I do not stand a chance in securing a decent position. I am incredibly motivated and was looking forward to get on board a project, publish, and also polish my thesis chapters in the process. But at this rate, it doesn't seem that I will be given the opportunity.
I was hoping to get the views and the experiences of more senior members. Is the situation as dire as I think, or am I blowing it out of proportion?
Thank you in advance.

I don’t know about your field, but making the interview stage at quite a few universities is encouraging. You are on the market in what probably is the worst (academic) year in recent history. For the next stage (assistant professorships), the field I am most familiar with has less than 1/2 the openings than last year - which was already affected by Covid. I assume it is the same for postdocs.If you’re really committed, maybe you can stay for a little longer at your current university and hope next year is closer to back to normal (additional backlog from people waiting it out notwithstanding)

Agreed without reservation. Forget the other candidates. Do the best for yourself and do not prejudge the outcome. You are not competent to judge what the interviewers are really looking for so do not burden yourself with imagined disadvantages. Be enthusiastic for what you do, not for the prestige (as you imagine it) of doing it, do not bullshit, and be honest.

@TheoreticalMinimum There is nothing wrong with declining a job offer if you receive new information which indicates the job is not desirable.  "You rather work at a shitty university than at no university at all." is wrong and harmful advice.

I don't see an answerable question here.

How strong/weak is your track record compared to other recent PhD graduates in your field?

You are worried about someone who "already has 4 years of experience". In the meantime, that person probably worries that s/he is too old. In some countries, they don't even consider people for faculty jobs after they pass the 5 yr mark.

I spent a year unemployed after my PhD, in 2008, when the market was also very bad, and by the end felt very similar to how it sounds you feel now. I didn't have any publications as I came out of my PhD. But after a year living on government support (and I'm aware that I was lucky to be young enough, and unencumbered enough that living in a single bedroom and eating lentils for a year was something I was able to do), and finally a paper under my belt, I did finally get a position, and a very good one at that. I now have a permeant appointment, and things are going well. So don't get too downhearted.

Thank you! Most responses were very helpful, but it's good to be able to relate to someone! I do apologize for the stalking, but it was very easy to find your profile and background, and it is indeed very impressive.  This has helped a lot!

People on their second postdoc don't automatically look better than first postdocs just because they have more publications. Second postdocs are seen more as known quantities, but many institutes like gambling on the promise of new PhD grads, so you won't be compared to them in terms of straight publications. Your letter of rec will carry more weight, while their track record of publications will be considered more. The Columbia grad would give me more pause, but there are still many factors to be considered beyond exact research match.
Still, I think overall you have hope as your search has generated a lot of interest from nice places. Talk to your advisor about whether you can get a paycheck somehow at your current institute to tide you over through the job search, and about whether you should be expanding your search to include less prestigious places. If you're coming to the end of the line, your advisor will hopefully tell you that too (though ask around with other senior people for a more well-rounded view).
In some fields, no job by graduation basically weeds you out. Others have qualitatively similar deadlines that fall on different dates (for example a year gap from the PhD with no new position). Some fields are more flexible. Talk to people in your field about whether you're continuing a fruitless search past the point you would be expected to have been placed. From what you wrote you don't sound like you're there yet.

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How to look past the fact that I probably have chosen the wrong research area?
I am a computational materials science researcher. I model additive manufacturing process using continuum modeling methods. Almost everyone who works in my field are part experimentalists and partly into computational modeling. Though with an experimental master's background, my PhD research was completely computational and not theoretically intensive (it was very straightforward if one knows the computational modeling tools and a bit of coding beforehand, more like clicking the right button and developing scripts to do some analysis).
I feel that I would have gotten better job prospects if I had an experimentalist and computational profile. Almost at the end of my PhD (about to defend), I have a postdoc offer with my current PhD advisor, which I will take because I don't want to move to a different place with covid-19 in other locations. But I dread job prospects in my limited experience and expertise. How to address the fact that I might have chosen wrong research area?

"It was very straightforward if one knew (the bibliography/tools/framework) beforehand" describes every PhD ever. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome

Don't think of yourself as stuck in a research area. You are starting to gain some independence and can also start to morph your research into any area you choose. Over your career you might do this multiple times, actually.
Use the post doc to start to explore the areas you'd rather work in as much as you can.
Staying with your doctoral advisor might not be your best move, though with coronavirus it may be necessary in the short term as you note.
Your PI for the post doc might be able to give you some freedom here. But even if not, increasing your reputation in one area can lead to more freedom to move and change your direction.
Your career needn't be an arrow.

First off, congratulations on your upcoming defense! Relax and enjoy this time, and take a deep breath before you start your postdoc. You may be experiencing the anxiety that comes with a significant life-shift, and it’s normal to be questioning your choices.
Use the experience of being a postdoc to the fullest. If you are not happy or are dreading what prospects await you after you’ve finished, try to plan ahead where exactly it is that you want to end up. Making connections and learning new skills as a postdoc is important, and it may be even surprise you how useful this upcoming experience becomes in a different area.

In short, decide where it is that you want to end up, and use the opportunities and experiences you’ve been given to grow into that area. You are never “stuck” where you are. Don’t think of it as correcting a mistake, but rather as tackling the next challenge.

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Problem in citation link in Google scholar
I have uploaded a paper in eprint site. In my Google scholar, the citation  of my paper is addressed by the semanticscholar.org site.
My problem is that, I have revised my paper in eprint site, but in Google scholar, researchers can not access to this revision of paper, since semanticscholar.org did not update my paper to the new revision of paper. I contacted with the support system of semanticscholar.org, but after one month no change is happen. Moreover, when I search the title of paper in my Google scholar,   Google just present the semanticscholar link of my paper and dose not show its eprint link.
My Question: Is there a way to add the paper in my Google scholar with the its eprint link.
Thanks for any suggestions.

Google scholar indexes what it can crawl.  If it it already crawls and links to papers on that eprint site, it should eventually include yours.

@Kimball Although based on logic your comment is correct, it does not work in practice. In other words, as I mentioned in the question when I search the title of paper in my Google scholar, Google just present the semanticscholar link of my paper and dose not show its eprint link.

What I mean is it takes time, and the should is in italics because it is not 100% accurate.  Does Google Scholar have links to other papers on that eprint site?

@Kimball For example this paper is linked by Google Scholar  from eprint site.

Google Scholar recommends to make publications available on a personal university webpage:

If you're an individual author, it works best to simply upload your paper to your website, e.g., www.example.edu/~professor/jpdr2009.pdf; and add a link to it on your publications page, such as www.example.edu/~professor/publications.html.

Afaik, there is no way to request a particular repository or paper to be added/updated/deleted, the whole system is automatic.

Thanks for your answer, but it dose not related with my question.

Sorry, I misunderstood. So now I'm confused, your goal is not to update the version of your paper in Google Scholar database?

My goal is that I want to change the destination of the paper in my Google Scholar from semanticscholar.org to eprint site such as this paper. Thanks

Ok so maybe my answer wasn't clear, but it looks like I wasn't that far off: to the best of my knowledge what you are asking is impossible, I'm afraid. If Scholar doesn't collect the paper itself from eprint, you can only indirectly influence it by putting the new version somewhere else, and for that your best bet is probably to follow their advice. Maybe having a simple link to the eprints version on your webpage would also do the trick, I don't know. I'm guessing that If eprint was regularly crawled by the Google bot it's likely that it would have already found the new version.

I appreciate you taking the time to help me.


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Using the word propose in the abstract
I wrote a paper. In the last sentence of its abstract, I wrote: Finally, we propose....
Now, one of the reviewer's said that
"Last sentence of abstract: « we propose » without saying for what use makes the sentence weird."
I can not understand what is the problem of using the phrase  « we propose ».
Thanks for any suggestions

It's very likely that the problem is not "we propose", it's whatever follows. Apparently you said "we propose X" and the reviewer thinks that you should explain why you propose X.


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Undergrad research in Computational biology
I am a freshman and been doing Computational data analysis(using R) and map(kallisto,bowtie,.....)  the data a grad student gets from sequencing. I feel like my other lab mates who are doing wet lab like actual experiments are getting more experience. I take lots of time to understand the data just to output or make a conclusion.
 How can i get the most out of computational aspect of the research. I enjoy what i am doing, and it is nice to come up with conclusion and professor agrees(or disagree), but i feel like i am not contributing as much as my lab mates.
I am planning to apply to grad school(computational biology, genomics). Is there any advice on how to get the most out of my undergrad experience ?

You have 3 more years to do a wider range of stuff. 2. If you want to do computational biology, doing data analysis would seem to be an ideal gig.

wet lab like actual experiments are getting more experience

It is a common misconception that biology almost always happens in a wet lab. Indeed, some things can only be done in a wet lab, but computational biology is actually one of the greatest examples that counters this misconception, due to its flexibility.
If you want to spend more time behind a pipette instead of a keyboard, you should be able to ask your research advisor for projects or classes that get you more involved in that direction, for example PCR and gene sequencing. However, if you believe that computational biology is "less experience" than wet lab biology, it is important to understand the benefits that dry computational biology brings to general biological sciences.
Take Mendel's cross-pollinating peas exercise. If done in the real world, it would take several weeks to generate a single generation of peas (and hope that nothing bad happens that causes them to die). With the power of computational biology and some programming, you can perform dozens or even hundreds of generations' worth of experiments in a single day.
The power of computational biology comes from the fact that it can be done either cooperatively or independently of a wet lab. If you only want to do data analysis, you can do that. If you want to apply some real-world wet lab culturing with image-based analysis of PCR scans, you can do that.
As a computational biology student, you should be able to determine as much or as little wet biology or computer science that you want to do. My thesis was entirely done without ever seeing a biological organism, as I only used neural networks to simulate generational development.

what skills  do you think someone need  as an undergrad for phD in comp bio ?

@testing321abc It will likely be the same core courses that a MS in Computational Biology requires. Genetics/Dev Bio from the Bio Side, Statistics/Math from the Math Side, and Algorithms/Neural Networking from the CS side. Your graduation requirements should closely mirror what you'll need.

Do you think double majoring in CS (focus on compution theory and algorithms) and compuitional biology (focus on genomics) would be a good combination and worth the effort ? Or can I take computer science with minor in computional biology ?  I feel like double majoring might be too much

That's a choice you'll likely need to discuss with your undergraduate advisor. There are very little benefits from having a second Bachelor's in CS when your primary is a hybrid Bio/CS. It won't make you stand out in future applications AFAIK because the coursework overlaps very much.

Only 3 courses overlap. You can't double major if more than 3 overlaps, so there is a lot of courses and areas covered in one not covered in another

Well then that's a huge course load and you'll also have to take that into consideration.


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My master’s thesis’ results will be published without my consent. What should I do?
Last year I finished my master’s. I spent the whole year working on experiments for my master's thesis. Part of the results I obtained were published in my master’s thesis, which was submited via an online tool to my university; so there is proof that that work is mine, I guess.
Then I was offered to stay in that research group and do a PhD, but I refused. They went as far as to threaten me with publishing my data without crediting me. I still refused.
Now it has come to my attention that my data has been used to write a paper that will soon be sent for publishing. Besides that threat from months ago, no one has asked for my consent or permission to use my data, and I don’t even know if my name will be among the authors. Even if it does, I won’t be first author, because they will be assigning that to the person who wrote it.
(I’m not sure how much they have written themselves, as I already had written nearly everything myself for when I had to hand it in for it to be graded for my master.)
My questions are: if I am actually asked for permission before they send it to a journal for publishing and they say they will include my name but not as first author, is it worth accepting or should I refuse? In the case they don’t ask me for permission, what should I do? Mail the journal once the paper is published along with my master's thesis and the raw data (all I have are excel files) to prove the data is stolen?

I understand the confusion in some answers, as my case is very chaotic.
As far as I'm concerned, my thesis is not available to the public. Only my advisor and the director of the master have access to it (maybe more people at the university, but it's definitely not available to the public).
I also know from a case of a person who did his master's thesis in this same research group and then left, and he was asked for permission before the paper using his data was written. He was also credited as an author.
Sadly, the fact that the boss holds a grudge against me for not wanting to stay and her having a favorite (the one who will be credited as first author) also plays a major role in this.
In my field, being a first (or last) author means you are who worked the most in that paper. It's usually the boss/advisor and the person who obtained most of the data by working in the lab.

Could you clarify if your data are being used for another paper (as question text), or is part of your master thesis being published (as title)?

Is your thesis available to the general academic public? Or is it only available to academics at your old university?

I'm not sure if this is what you are asking, but let's say I obtained results A, B and C. Due to the thesis having a max length, only A and B were included in it. Now they want to publish the results in a journal, and C has also been included. I'm not sure if they just took my thesis and expanded it or have rewritten the whole thing using my thesis as a basis (pretty sure it's the latter). I think my thesis is only available for people at my university.

Do you know what you signed when you first signed up for the Masters course?  There may have been a bunch of legalese in that regarding ownership and rights on the completed thesis.

Needs further information.  What country are you in?  In the US, at least in my experience, a thesis is automatically "published" (even if not as a journal article) once it is accepted.  Were you funded to do your research?  Then as I understand US law, the results belong to your employer.

If they use content from your thesis without citing you it's basically plagiarism. If it is your research group/adviser it is borderline as they might already have rights on it. It would not be good research ethic anyway. After all, citing you is not a problem. If they "only" use your gathered data, which they may have rights on, it is IMHO not yet plagiarism but you should be at least cited or acknowledged. Usually being on the authors list is common practice and not doing that might be very rude depending on the amount of your input on the paper.

What you can do, if you find out to which journal they sent to, is to contact this journal and tell them that this paper contains your data for which you are not credited. I know of one case where the journal pulled the already accepted paper after such a complaint in a very similar case (adviser published paper on PhD graduates data without crediting her at all). You could also complain to the science board of your university, which might be a good first step before contacting the journal. Note that both will NOT make you any new friends on your previous university!

Professor Mike Bailie tried to prevent Queen's University, Belfast releasing "his" data on tree-rings but he lost the case in 2010. No scientist should ever be against the publishing of experimental data in any case.

what are you trying to achieve?

The issue seems real enough to me.  I have never been on a research project where there was NOT behind the scenes ownership of gathered data.  Spoken and unspoken agreements on who can publish research based on parts of data collected, questions asked and results analyzed.  I know many in my field who feel rightly or wrongly that they own certain datasets, even those based on public funding.  At least in my field the notion that someone could simply lift your data and publish whatever they wanted based on it is absurd.  If they did so without credit, they would be dismissed for plagiarism.

Part of the results I obtained were published in my master’s thesis, which was submited via an online tool to my university; so there is proof that that work is mine, I guess.

Let me first say a meta comment - once you publish a set of results, they are no longer 'yours'. They belong, in part, to the institution that funded you, to your advisor who helped you write your thesis, and to other coauthors/colleagues who helped you along the way. Research is a collaborative act.
To your specific case, I strongly doubt that you have proprietary rights to the data. You got the results as part of a Master's thesis supported by an academic institution that has rights to the data. What's more, once you published your thesis, anything in it can be used in future publications if it is properly credited (for example, if the dataset was published as an addendum to your thesis, it's fair to use it). That's basically the essence of academic progress.
Just like any other idea that appears in your thesis, the moment that you decided to publish it (as opposed to, say, patenting it and starting a company to commercialize it), others can cite it and potentially use parts of it in their work (doesn't even have to be the advisor, literally anyone can).
If the data is not published, I still argue that you could possibly be in the wrong in this case as well. From a proprietary perspective, you did not work alone. Your advisor and academic institution supported you, offered you tools (free access to software to develop your tools, access to your advisor, an office, classes you took, perhaps a laptop and computing services etc.). It is unethical (and a bit selfish) on your part to ignore all of the effort put into your thesis by others, and withhold the work from being published.
See a similar discussion here.

On the other hand, he may have paid a substantial fee for all that (supported you, offered you tools (free access to software to develop your tools, access to your advisor, an office, classes you took, perhaps a laptop and computing services etc.)) In the UK this is £9250 p.a.

This is true, but his research still belongs (in part) to the university/coauthors. For example, he can't go and patent ideas in his thesis without going through his university.

More concretely, he most likely signed some kind of waiver/acknowledgement of this when he got into the program

I agree that the data is not "only" mine. As you say, I didn't work alone. However, I don't think that not crediting me as an author is correct from their part either. On another note, my thesis wasn't published and it's not available to the public.

Once you submitted your thesis to your institution then it is usually in the public domain. You should most certainly be credited for your work as I mention!
Here's MIT's repository as an example https://libguides.mit.edu/diss

@Spark Public domain != publicly available. The OP still has full copyright rights to their thesis and they probably granted a license to their university to host their work as a condition for enrolling/graduating. But I doubt that anyone can just copy&paste it and make money out of it legally without the OP permission.

Depending on the intellectual contribution of OP, without citing the thesis, the other authors may become guilty of plagiarism. They must at the very least cite the thesis.

Of course, see my remark in bold within the question. Is it not clear from my answer?

"supported by an academic institution" This appears to be an assumption.  It's entirely possible that the OP supported the university by paying to attend.  If you pay to access/use particular facilities while doing your work (or even if you don't pay and just use them for free with the owner's permission), the owner of those facilities doesn't get to claim (full or part) ownership of your work.  At least not automatically; that would have to be explicitly set out in whatever agreement exists between the person doing the work and the person/organization providing the facilities.

@GiacomoAlzetta Note that data is usually not copyrightable. Related discussion in law.se.

In point of fact, some university policies state their copyright policy publicly.  Harvard for example states outright that public access is a huge consideration for their IP policy:
https://otd.harvard.edu/faculty-inventors/resources/policies-and-procedures/statement-of-policy-in-regard-to-intellectual-property/
These policies are written such that if you undertake research at the institution, the policy applies.  It doesn't matter if you are paid or not; pay tuition or not. The value of the intellectual community cannot be calculated.  If you could have done this alone, why didn't you?

@aroth students pay for the right to go to the university and obtain services from it. This says nothing about owning the products of their work.

@user71659 A thesis is a text. As all text it is protected by copyright. Copy&pasting partially or in full a copyrighted work is copyright infringment. It may or may not be plagiarism depending on the circumstance. So they cannot copy&paste the thesis in partial or in full and claim as their result. Obviously they could take the data and rewrite everything. I just wanted to clarify the fact that academic texts are not in the public domain. Public domain is a copyright concept. They are often publicly available.

@Giacomo Alzetta you’re right of course, no one is saying that this case calls for a revocation of authorship!

@GiacomoAlzetta Wrong! The fact that it's text does not mean it's all protected by copyright. For example, if a thesis includes the work of Shakespeare, that text is not copyrighted anymore, and I can freely copy and paste that. Likewise, there were court cases of the copyrightablility of telephone directories, which are not: that is non-creative data and uncopyrightable, so I can copy and paste that all I want. Again, just because it's text does not mean it's copyrightable.

@user71659 Are you claiming that including any citation anywhere in a text makes the whole text not under copyright? You are very mistaken. What you are saying is obvious: public quotes and other parts of text obtained via a license from the original copyright holder maintain their status but everything you write is under your copyright. A thesis should definitely be mostly written by yourself.

@GiacomoAlzetta Read the original question carefully! Direct quote: "Now it has come to my attention that my data has been used to write a paper that will soon be sent for publishing". It says "data" not "explanatory prose". Data can be text too, for example survey responses. Again, data is generally not copyrightable and the OP has a belief not fitting with actual law.

As I understand it, they are not republishing your results. They are publishing new results based on data you gathered.
If that's the case, the best you can do to get credit is to make a data publication of your own. This is a relatively new idea, but it exists, and it is gaining traction in recent years due to increased political pressure for data reuse. What you do is to find either a journal or a data repository in your area which supports publishing data of the type you gathered. Your data set gets a DOI, and is citable in the same way that other academic artefacts (methods papers, monographs, etc.) are.
If you don't wish to do that, you probably have no other options. Institutions generally see data generated by people working for them as their institutional property, and frequently make sure that this is reflected in e.g. work contracts. Frequently PIs think that the data belongs to them and not to their employer, but I won't go into disputes around that, since you are not the PI, you were in the lowest position of the academic food chain. Your desire to prevent your group's publication is not supported by widely accepted moral/customary rules of how this works, and certainly not by legal ones.
In the end, you can get credit or nothing, but if you try stopping them from publishing, you are likely to get nothing but a reputation for a misinformed querulant. But as this is a highly interesting area where new rules are crystalizing by the day, I can only urge you to be part of the one solution which is, in the long term, in the best interest of society and academia as a whole: do the data publication.
Update: If you don't know how go about making a data publication, the first thing you can do is to see if your institution has a core facility offering the internal service of research data management. If not, ask a librarian. If everything else fails, maybe a new question on SE is in order, "how do I find a journal that takes data publications from my discipline".

The OP states that the thesis is not public but only available to his advisor and a small set of selected people. This makes it sound like there is an agreement of non-disclosure (or restricted/limited access) for the results of this work between certain parties, e.g. the sponsor of this research work and the university. This agreement might likely include the primary data and would be violated if the OP publishes the data without written consent of the PI or the university.

@Ghanima The question doesn't make it clear if the thesis is not available because there is an NDA, or because nobody ever bothered to make it public. If there is an NDA, then there is the question, what does it cover? If the advisor can publish a paper based on the data, then maybe the data itself is publishable too, the OP should consult somebody for such details. If the data itself is indeed not publisheable, then the OP could still ask for the advisor to cite the thesis as a proxy for the data citation. Even if it is not available, it is citeable.

To decide how to proceed, there are several aspects to consider here:

if they use the data without crediting you, they "stole" the results. They definitely can't do that without repercussions (and they shouldn't have threatened you!); on the other hand:
if they use the date and credit you, but you refuse to be an author for personal reasons (i.e. not for reasons that you do not believe in the results or publication), this gives you the power to block the publication.

An author has the right and probably duty to refuse being a coauthor if he does not believe in the integrity or quality of the paper and its results. Is this the case?
Just blocking it (by refusing to be a coauthor) for other than such objective reasons is - as badly as you may have been treated - a disservice to the scientific community, to the values of science and, ultimately, also to yourself.
These are the criteria that I would consider foremost in such a situation.
Disclaimer: I cannot judge the importance of being first author in your field, so I won't comment on that. In my field, it is not that important.

About first author - sometimes when looking at paper, if the first author has loads of titles, then I assume that the last two authors listed did the real work...

(2) This is not necessarily true. If the data was published as part of the thesis, it's in public domain, and can be used depending on the specific license that was used.

If OP refuses to be a co-author the authors could still credit them in an acknowledgement ("User102823 gathered the data.") or a citation ("User102823, private communication).

They didn't "steal" anything.  The results are owned by the institution, not the OP.  The OP can refuse to publish, but he cannot control what happens to any data or results from the work he did, because that is entirely owned by the institution.  (Which is the same reason he can't take those results and start his own company using them, of course.)  They are also within their rights not to credit him as an author.  They may credit him with gathering experimental data, but this does not necessarily make you an author of a paper.

@Graham It depends on the intellectual contribution required to gather the data. If it is a substantial amount of work, unless it is purely a technician's job (which I do not think it should be, given that OP gets a Masters degree for it), it should warrant co-authorship. If it is minor (probably not: a year's worth of work), it might be an acknowledgement.

@CaptainEmacs Under normal circumstances, of course he's due co-authorship.  But if he's refused to publish already, he's intentionally removed himself from the system.  If they're decent people then they should still credit him, but he can't very well complain if they don't.  They can't leave that research path blocked by one dog-in-the-manger ex-researcher.

@Graham, by my reading they didn't refuse to publish. They refused to stay in that group to do PhD. Based on the group's threat to publish without credit if they didn't stay being the last communication received regarding this, it doesn't sound like they were offered the option of being involved in publication without staying in the group. It seems to me that leaving the group should not void their claim to their intellectual contributions while part of the group.

If they publish OP's authorship worthy intellectual contribution claiming it as their own, that would be academic misconduct i.e. "stealing". What parts of the research should count as authorship worthy differs from scenario to scenario. Was the data collection just following instructions provided by others and the authorship worthy contribution analysis of that data?, or did the data collection itself depend on methodology developed by the OP?

Even if they do actually refuse to be an author, there are numerous other questions here about how to publish given a reluctant or unavailable contributor, I can't recall ever seeing an answer that said "use their work anyway, it is OK not to give them credit." Not using OP's results doesn't mean that research path is completely blocked. There is always the option of reproducing the results on their own.

From what you say it's not clear whether your master thesis has been published, i.e. whether the data/results you obtained and included in the thesis are available to the general academic public. If that is the case the answer by Spark applies.
However, I suspect that your thesis is only available to academics at your old university, perhaps only your former supervisor(s). In this case (and if you continue to take academic interest in the field), you should seek to publish the publishable data/results from your master project. The natural way is to do so in collaboration with your former supervisor. If that is not possible (as it appears in your case) you should still publish your thesis data/results yourself. A simple way is to just publish the master thesis directly on arXiv (but check first whether that is legally possibly with the university).

Many institutions (like mine) require theses to be published. In my case this meant having a copy bound and deposited in the university library. These are "available to the general public" in the sense that anybody can walk into the library and read them there. (I believe it's are also available from an online thesis repository for a fee).

This type of "publication" is very limited. If there is no free (no fee) searchable online publication, this is useless. Instead you should really publish the thesis on the arXiv.

When I did my thesis, arXiv existed, but it was still called the LANL archive, and it's usage was very limited (maybe the particle physics community only?). I never even heard of it under the arXiv name until 10 years later.

@ThePhoton Wikipedia has a nice entry on the history of the arXiv.

I very much doubt whether the OP has much of a claim in this matter.
The OP submitted his thesis to gain a Master's degree.  It has in effect been handed over to the university and to all intents and purposes has become the possession of the university.
On the other hand, the OP, unless he has signed a non-disclosure agreement, would probably be able to make use of the knowledge gained in researching his thesis to publish further material based on that knowledge and thus pre-empt anyone else claiming credit for the OP's work.
There's no point in getting too up-tight about such matters, though. Many of us have had work we've done published by others unaltered and without any attribution or credit.


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Getting proper credit for a paper: author order
I am a PhD student and I submitted a paper formally co-authored with my advisor months ago. The core idea of the paper is mine. During the first (major) revision, among other much needed, yet very time-consuming, improvements I had to implement, I had to take the methodological section over in order to develop a more compact, precise, and overall stronger argumentation. A further revision request, while appreciating my effort, now requires to hugely revise the (relatively small) part he developed and wrote. In spite of my great effort, the author order is established by my advisor as alphabetical and I feel I am not getting enough credit for my work. My advisor does not seem open to other options, such as specifying contribution in the appendix of the paper while keeping the alphabetic order of the authors.
An author listing convention is not defined in my field: alphabetical ordering is not uncommon, although first authorship undoubtedly has a relevance.
Overall, I think I have contributed from 80% to 90% of the paper. I do not know what to do in order to get my effort more properly acknowledged (I strongly desire so), nor I know if anything can be done at all. I do not even know if this matter is worth the struggle, or maybe it is better (as for our student-advisor relationship) to let it go.
EDIT: thank you for your detailed answers. I appreciated both of them. I accepted @Buffy's answer for the slightly more practical approach - which I needed most - to the problem. I also felt the sympathy in @Titus' answer, and I appreciated it very much.

Also consider the related question Advisor wants first author. Do I have any leverage?, especially @6005's excellent answer.

Thank you for your input. I already tried to very carefully and kindly approach my advisor on the matter, yet to no avail. I think the approach suggested by @Buffy is the best (in the long run) for this situation, unfortunately for my authorship of this paper. At least, in the future, I will be very careful in the selection of co-authors for my publications.

The good will of your advisor is more important, I think, that fighting for a minor issue over one paper. Hopefully this isn't your last or best paper. If alphabetical is acceptable in your field then let it go.
You could fight it to the death, of course, but it would be you that is more wounded than your professor if you don't get a good letter to boost you to your next career level.
If you do the right thing and reach that next level, then you will have more control over things. But you have to get there first.


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Took too long to complete thesis - confidence buried six feet under. How to explain this to employers?
Question:

How to explain to potential employers why it took so long to complete my master's degree without partially blaming my thesis supervisor?

I just completed my master's degree in North America. It usually takes the average grad student in my department 8 months to 1 year to finish their thesis. It took me two years to finish mine.
Supervisor and procrastination:
After the first four months of my thesis registration (when I was still searching for the right topic), my supervisor took a study leave and went to a different country for a full time job with the private sector. He was still supervising me officially, but in reality this was a formality. He had no intentions of coming back to academia any time in the next 3 years. Over the year, I lost interest and got lazy. And then I had some personal issues. I was unmotivated, and I did not know what to do. At that point, I had been away from my family, my girlfriend, and my best friends for 2.5 years. I was alone here in this foreign country and I had no friends. I joined a martial arts gym and started boxing. I was coming home all beaten up and didn't have the energy to work on my thesis. I didn't feel like doing anything, except for fighting.
My supervisor did not really care about my progress since he wasn't really getting paid from the university. I tried communicating with him when I got stuck somewhere, but he never seemed to understand my concerns, and his feedback raised more problems. He is a great researcher and a very, very talented scholar. The problem was that he was too busy with his work. And it is hard to ask technical questions over email, because he can't really accurately answer them without looking at the full journal article. I reached out to my department advisor for tips on how to move forward with my work. They suggested that if I dumped my supervisor, it would be my responsibility to find another one. And no one in the department was an expert in that field. One other professor who was an expert had his plate full. So I was stuck with my supervisor. We emailed once every 3-4 months, and I had to remind him what we had talked about before and what I was actually doing in my research.
In the end, it was a member of my supervisory committee (who my supervisor selected in the last 6 months) who actually got me up to speed, showed interest, gave me directions, read my paper, and gave me incredible feedback. Without her I would not have been able to finish my thesis. My relationship with my supervisor is professional, and I would say he was helpful at the end during my defense and with all the paper work. He did look at my paper for the final revision. But he was an awful supervisor most of the time. It was my fault for choosing him.
Some of my other professors (who I have very good relationship with, and who I have talked to about my case), think that my supervisor did something unfair, particularly because something like this hasn't happened before in the department. He could have dumped me as a student and arranged for a different supervisor for me. Or told me at the very beginning to find someone else. I don't blame him for all of it, it is partly my fault. But some of the time I wasted is due to him not helping me out.

How do I explain this to my potential employers during job interviews? Two of my professors I am close with told me that I need to prepare for "Why did it take you 3 years and 8 months to finish your master's degree?" (3 years 8 months = 8 months or two terms of courses, 1 year of co-op work terms, and 2 years thesis) And that no matter what happened, I should not blame it on my supervisor during the job interviews.

Background:
I was always very competitive. I finished my bachelor's (in my country) in 3.5 years where the average completion time was 4.5 - 5 years. I finished in the top 1% of my entire graduating batch and not just my program. I had a 98.75% CGPA over all, and no I was not a nerd. In the final year of my college, I was the president of the Finance club, and I was also the captain of the university's basketball team for the last 1.5 years of my study. I was also actively involved in the university's art club. I worked hard, really hard. Those are the only things I did back then. No TV, no wasting time here and there, no sleeping around, no drugs, nothing.
In grad school, I finished all 8 courses in the first two terms. I took five difficult graduate level courses in the second term just to prove a point to my classmates (in short, they underestimated me). No one had ever taken 5 graduate level courses in my department before; my graduate advisor and one of my professors had called me stupid for this. And they were right. Anyways, I made the point, I finished with excellent grades. Then I went on to do co-op work terms for a full year with the provincial government. After my co-ops, all I had to do was to finish my master's thesis. It usually takes an average student 8 months to finish the thesis. But for reasons mentioned above, it took me two years.

Can the downvoter tell me how I can improve this question? I tried giving as much detail as possible. I don't know where else to ask this question. I apologize if this is off-topic, it didn't seem that way to me.

Too long, I started reading and stopped. Could you condense the message? [I didn't downvote]

What is coop work? Volunteering?

@user111388 No, it's paid full-time work. Cooperative education

First: Hey! You finished! Congratulations! There are a lot of people who would have given up for various reasons along such a bumpy road. No need to beat yourself up about it. Maybe you would like to have gotten finished "faster" but all that means is you would have to have been working at a job for an extra 2 years, maybe in 10 years you'll look back fondly on your time spent boxing ;)
Second: Regarding what to tell employers, you don't need to lay everything at the feet of your advisor, but the fact that they were on sabbatical was clearly a contributing factor. Once you had someone "in your corner" to help you on your project you made progress and finished! You can talk to employers honestly about that without having to necessarily give the gory details you mention above. A script might be something like: "Well, my advisor was on leave for large parts of my thesis work. Being alone on the project was difficult for me at first. I had a bit of a hard time adjusting to work without grades, a boss, or hard deadlines motivating me. However, I eventually learned how to overcome those issues and make progress on my own. Even if it took a bit longer, I feel that I learned a lot about myself and how to work independently."
Others may have different opinions, and I'm sure each hiring manager would similarly be different in how they judge things, but in my personal opinion there's not going to be any "glossing over" the fact that you took 2 years where others take 8 months. So best to just address it as directly and honestly as you can, while still putting the positives forward as much as possible.

Thanks! I really like how you suggest addressing the issue while keeping it positive and focusing on what I learnt. I can't upvote your answer as I don't have enough rep points.


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Applied to PhD position but no reply
Recently I saw a professor advertising an open PhD position in his group. He asked students to submit CV and motivation letter. I sent an email but received no reply. Two weeks after that I sent a follow up email, but still no reply. How much time would be reasonable to wait? Should I give up already? I know the professor doesn't owe me a reply, but since the position was advertised I thought he would sent an acknowledgement that the application was received. Am I wrong? Is that the common thing to do?

Does this answer your question? Prospective PhD contacts potential supervisor but receives no answer after 2-3 emails, what to do?

Some people are spectacularly slow. I got a phone call inviting me to an interview for a PhD at one university four months after I'd given up, applied elsewhere, had the interview, received the offer, and accepted that offer. Wait as little or as much time as you feel like waiting, frankly. I'd certainly be looking for other PhD opportunities, regardless.

I often had experiences with professors not replying to emails (in case they just need to send simple acknowledgements, like your situation). This behaviour is pretty common in my opinion.

Professors will often ignore emails that are not important to them.
Many professors get a flood of emails everyday, and are willing to spend only so much time replying to them.
While a response indicating they received your CV would be nice, I wouldn't expect it.
One tactic that occasionally works is to contact one of the professor's Ph.D students.
Every now and then someone will be nice enough to let you know what's going on if they know, or ask around for you.
I wouldn't hold my breath, though.
Just do you what you have to do to advance your academic career, even if it means applying and accepting a position somewhere else.
You can always say sorry to choice number 2 if choice number 1 gets back to you later with a positive response.


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Elsevier journal finder
I am looking for proper journals to publish my paper. I took a look at journals of references I used in my paper. Since the scope of my paper is the same as those references, I thought I should also send my paper to those journals.
I tried Elsevier journal finder. However, when I sorted according to match relevance, none of the journals that reference papers published in showed up in search results. In fact, my search results and that for references are the same.
Its normal that even though a journal is very related to scope of author's paper, the author could still prefer to publish in different lower impact factor journal to save review time and get acceptance quickly. But one of the references I am talking about published in high impact factor journal although that journal does not show up in search results when I input title and abstract.
Does this show that journal finder is not on point yet or that some authors somehow can break scope of journals?

Keep in mind that Elsevier's journal finder indexes only Elsevier journals. This means that if the articles you referenced are from other publishers like SAGE, Taylor & Francis, EmeraldInsight, Mary Ann Liebert, etc. then these journals will not show up regardless of how high impact they are.
You can try to look at different journal finders that are publisher specific like Springer:
https://journalsuggester.springer.com/
Or the more general ones that indexes from various publishers like
JANE Biosemantics (this one only indexes Pubmed I believe, so the vast majority of journals will be health or medicine oriented):
http://jane.biosemantics.org/
Or JournalGuide (this is my go-to):
https://www.journalguide.com/
But even general finders like JournalGuide will often miss a few journals that are highly relevant to your article because of various reasons like: 1) the journal isn't indexed for the engine or 2) the key words didn't get picked up.
That being said, it's normal for many researchers to not go for the top of the top journals because it's fairly obvious that the articles will not be accepted. For instance, it can just be a waste of time and (dare I say) foolish to try to publish a small-scale study at top journals like Nature, Science, or Lancet that often seek out cutting-edge research at the forefront of their fields. It's good to aim high, but sometimes it's advantageous to be realistic about where your manuscript is most likely to find a home (in both content fit and level of originality/rigor/etc.).


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Contradiction on indexing between the journal and MJL
Parallel Computing journal, according to their website, indexed in SCI. However, master journal list (MJL) indicates that the journal is indexed in SCI expanded. Is it possible that the journal moved from SCI expanded to SCI but MJL has not update the information?

Clarivate decides what to index in the Science Citation Index, so their "Master Journal List" is going to be authoritative.  Elsevier's list is likely to be less accurate.

Why would Elsevier index the journal in SCI if it is really not. Aren't they lying to authors who intend to publish in that journal?

Mistaken is more likely, but lying is a possibility.

Per the answers on this question, there's not much difference between SCI and SCI Expanded in the first place---in fact, I had never even heard of the distinction before your question.  Instead, I've generally just heard people using "SCI" to refer to being indexed by the company at all, not bothering to distinguish between the two classes.
Thus, as @AnonymousPhysicist notes, Clarivate's list will be the definitive one.  Elsevier, however, is probably embracing the more generic usage, as it avoids needing to draw the (potentially unfavorable) distinction.

In my university, papers published in SCI worth more academic points than SCIE. So Elsevier's generic usage doesn't make sense for academia.

@Shibli For your department, perhaps: there is a great diversity in how universities rank and rate and how well SCI covers fields.  For example, top AI journals like JMLR are in SCIE and not SCI and the major conferences aren't listed at all.


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How should I deal with feeling dumb?
I am a graduate student in mathematics at a top school. Most of other students achieved gold medal in International mathematics olympiad for high school and/or other similar competitions. Most did their undergraduate in the very best school.
I came from a very modest educational background but worked really hard. I did not participate in IMO or other math competitions and if I did, I do not think I would have done well. I attended a not well-known small university in Australia.
Now that I am surrounded by all these gold medalists, I just feel that they are way beyond me and I am so dumb when I compare myself to them. How should I deal with this feeling?

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11765/ive-somehow-convinced-everyone-that-im-actually-good-at-this-how-to-effect?r=SearchResults

To quote from Tom Church's answer in the question I linked, "The admissions committee isn't running a charity: if they thought you weren't prepared to excel, they would have admitted another student from MIT instead of you." That applies in your case as well. Have some confidence!

"Feeling dumb" is a choice. "Being dumb" or having a low IQ is not the same thing. It seems likely that you are "Mensa level" in IQ - probably in the top few percent of the population. For almost everyone, there will always be people with a higher IQ - so what?

The fact that you are in the graduate program at all is a testament to the admissions committee believing that you are, at the least, just as good as those other students. It's normal to have the imposter-syndrome and you'd be surprised at how many of the supposed perfect students feel the same way, but are simply putting on a facade. I have never encountered any professor, graduate student, or colleague whom I had always regarded as natural geniuses mention that they had never experienced the imposter-syndrome. In fact, the ones who brag about how they believe they deserve to be in the program or department are usually the ones packing their bags the next year because they lost motivation to push through (from my experience, at least).
The key thing to keep in mind here is that, just like how you're idolizing one part of other students' accomplishments (e.g., gold medals), those same students may be idolizing some achievement of yours but are doing so without your knowledge for the very same reason of having imposter syndrome.
That being said, I personally do not think that having an imposter syndrome is necessarily a bad thing. This is what I always tell my undergraduate mentees who express similar feelings: The imposter syndrome is only as demotivating and negative as you let it be. Having those feelings can also be an indication that you're growing in a competitive environment and are able to see and acknowledge the areas where you lack compared to others. This just makes it easier for you to know what areas to improve on next. In other words, if you're smarter than everyone in your program, what room is there to improve? If you constantly think that you're doing an amazing job in life and don't need to pay attention to anyone else, are you actually improving at a competitive rate? Or are you already stagnant? Certainly this may be adaptive for self-protection in certain situations but I'd be surprised if anyone is able to keep up with the competitiveness of academia if they're only attentive of themselves.
I would say it's all about framing--feeling like an imposter certainly doesn't bring about positive emotions, but it can be a motivator for striving to produce positive outcomes. I am, however, a relatively cynical person who strives on negative emotions, so I would say that my personal take on the matter shouldn't override any kind of cognitive perspective on the matter that you find more useful...just as a late disclaimer.

First of all, let me assure you that a lot of people feel this way when they first join graduate studies. For some of them, this is the first time that they are truly challenged. Not all students go for IMO. I have a bachelor's and PhD in math and never attended one.
I felt small and insignificant in comparison to my peers, but then I started working on my problem. It took a lot of effort and reading and reasoning, and eventually I got a result! It takes all kinds of smarts to do math, and I think that once you get to know your peers you'll realize that you have a lot of worthwhile things to contribute!
Ask yourself this - why did you get into a top school? Those schools are pretty selective, and at least two people looked at your application carefully, in addition to your undergraduate lecturers who gave you sufficiently good grades to get in, your referees who wrote good things about you and so on. All of these people thought you're good enough.
Could all of these people be wrong about you?
Why do you think that you are in a better position to assess your quality than all of those experts who looked at your application and decided that you are good enough?
Good luck!

I have a slightly different take on this than the other answers:
It is a common experience for academics that, at school (as opposed to University), they were usually the brightest person in the room.  At some point in their academic career, they will end up in a situation where they are no longer the brightest person in the room.  This can be a profound shock to a person's self-image (you've always been "the clever one", "the swot").
It happened to me when I started at Cambridge University.  It will have happened to all those people who went to "the very best schools".  A big advantage of going to a place like that, is that essentially everyone is going through the same process at the same time.
The thing to remember is, that although you are now probably working in an environment where there are brighter people in the room than you, that doesn't mean you aren't entitled to be in the room.

TL;DR: You can't control feelings. Shift the focus to what you can control which is your attention.

Treat feelings as signals, not drivers. You are better off just accepting them. They will not go away for good unless you find and fix the source. My guess is that you dwell on comparing yourself to others.
Think of it this way: if you changed your environment and surrounded yourself with, say, data analysts - would you feel more empowered to pursue your goals? At least now you have the opportunity to learn from people you consider smarter than you what might prove more beneficial for you in the future.
The point is: comparing yourself to others provides no value. It's a counter-productive mechanism that distracts rather than motivates. There will always be a person out there somewhere that's a few steps ahead of you.
What does not help is the fact that many of the academic systems are designed to be competitive. There is also a lot of people simply driven by competition - and it is clear to me that you are not. Remember that you do not have to be.
I am not convinced that competitiveness is generally useful to science anyway.
Achievements vary from perspective. I couldn't care less about math medalists, to be honest. And it is a good thing actually: if you adjust your perspective to focus on making you achieve the goal, you won't care about other peoples' achievements - unless you are happy for them, which would be a healthier counter-mechanism. All you need to do is to keep the daily grind going and do what you need to do regardless of emotions. Motivation will probably appear sooner than you expect.
As a side-note, a good practice is to list all the achievements of the last year (not generally area-specific, it might be even something like going on a holiday) and remind them to yourself when you start overthinking the things you haven't done. It has a better chance of putting you in a good mood than letting yourself down.

You got your position.  You performed well in university.  You are going to be held to a higher standard but all you can do is remember what you have done and that you have shown you are ready for the next level.
I had the same thing going into undergrad.  The main thing that helped me through was solving problems with others showing (to myself) that I could contribute.  I gained confidence from that.  As a postgrad I attended conferences with people from top ranked universities.  Again I was worried I was not as good and only through talking to them about problems did I regain my confidence (thankfully they were nice).  I have never met a grad student who wasn't worried about their ability to succeed, no matter what their past accomplishments.
You are doing maths.  The main way you can get confidence imo is by solving what you have to learn.  You don't mention how you are getting on with the work/any courses.  How are you handling them?  If you handle them (with plenty of work and study) then it does not matter how many gold medals someone has, you are matching up (indeed most graduate students I have met have been terrified about how they are getting on so it would be a great sign).
Maths olympiads are fun and it tends to show mathematical ability but it is not directly related to research.  It is a different way of thinking and I wouldn't worry about them.


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Is my method of learning new mathematics efficient?
I am a graduate student in mathematics and from time to time when I need to learn new concepts either in a research paper or just courses, I feel that just reading the words (and just writing the mathematics) does not help me to understand the new concepts properly. So to really understand the concepts, I usually take notes with a pen and paper and this method really helps me to understand the concepts. By this, I mean that I both write down words and mathematics. I feel that this is not efficient as I have to write a lot and it is slow and also my fingers hurt after a lot of writing.
I wonder if I am doing it completely wrong or if there is a more efficient and easier way to learn new material.
On a related note, what kind of pen is suitable for long handwriting? I use a Staedtler triplus fineliner pen and was wondering if my choice of pen is ok for long hand-writing?

If you feel that the physical writing is an issue, you can try combining it with things: typing (slower for most people), taking notes more selectively (mathematical paraphrasing), working out examples (in your head or with writing), using a black/white/glass board sometimes, alternating your writing hand, ...

(1) A pen with a thicker barrel and ergonomic grip might help a lot with fatigue. (2) Typing mathematics notes for yourself is often more efficient using Unicode symbols rather than LaTeX.

Don't confuse efficient with effective. The method you have chosen is well known to be effective. But I don't know of any particularly efficient method of learning other than to do it.
There is research, actually, that shows that taking notes by hand engages the brain in a way that other things does not. This means writing by hand, not typing on a keyboard. See this answer to a possibly related question.
But mathematics is special. You not only want to learn existing mathematics, you want to learn, as a doctoral student, to be able to actually do it. This involves the creation of new mathematics. For that, you need to go a bit deeper, though it won't be especially efficient. As with most mental things, you need to practice the art so that you change the neural connections, the mental pathways. One way is to get some practice by trying to reconstruct proofs of theorems. Find a theorem new to you. You trust that the statement is true since someone proved it (though mistakes occur, of course). Try to prove it without reference to an existing proof. If that is too big of a step, initially, try, when reading an existing proof, to figure out the next steps that would lead to the final result.
Mathematics is more, of course. It is knowing what is likely to be worth exploring - what might be true, so that you can then try to develop a proof of it. But you have to start with smaller steps.
But back to note taking. If you want to remember things you have learned you can/should also summarize your previous notes after a period of leaving them untouched. Also do this with hand writing. The summarizations may actually be enough for you to save for later.
One additional advantage of writing notes is that they will have a long lifetime if you use decent materials (pen, paper). Notes taken on computers will almost certainly disappear with technological change unless you take periodic steps to update the media. Don't depend on the cloud to preserve your notes. Companies can change their business models and simply wipe out what you have saved. Only fire and flood will destroy your paper notes. We can still read things written by ancient Egyptians, since they used materials with a long life.


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The limits of self-plagiarism
I'm currently writing my second paper.
Although the focus is completely different of my first paper, some aspects of the context are similar.
I am perfectly aware that self-plagiarism needs to be carefully avoided but what is the limit?
Indeed, a couple of sentences of my abstract or introduction are very hard to reformulate without making the sentence significantly harder to understand or really longer.
In this context, is it tolerable to reuse a single sentence in the abstract and/or in the introduction?
Edit: I forgot to mention that the submission is anonymous. This is why I'm so picky about self-plagiarism.

Of course it is tolerable, don't be silly. If it was a whole paragraph, you would have to think about presenting it as a quote, though.

You have a misconception. Plagiarism isn't about the actual words. It is about ideas. Copyright can cover the expression of the ideas (the words). In other words, you can plagiarize even with a complete rephrasing of the original. But it is easy to avoid.
To avoid self plagiarism all you need to do is cite the original work. I'm assuming that the words you use are expressing the same idea though in a different context. And if you cite and you hold copyright then there are no issues at all. If you don't hold copyright then you either need to get permission from the holder or depend on one of the exceptions to copyright law (which varies from place to place). You may well be able to claim fair use. You might also be able to claim that your reuse of the sentence doesn't reduce the value of the original. Those are valid in some places. And some ideas can only be effectively expressed in one way.
The reason to avoid self plagiarism is a bit different from that to avoid ordinary plagiarism. A reader of a new work may need to find the complete context of the ideas. This includes other words and references, etc. If you don't cite, then that chain is broken for a researcher. This also applies to ordinary plagiarism, but the need to not claim the work of others as your own is typically thought to be the more important part there.

Very insightful answer. I should have mentionned that this submission is anonymous though. Does it changes anything?

Copyright really doesn't enter into plagiarism.  You can plagiarize without violating copyright, and you can violate copyright without plagiarizing, whether the work is your own or someone else's.

@ScottSeidman, yes, but newcomers to the game often get the issues confused so I try to show the essential elements of each in such answers.

And no, an anonymous submission changes nothing. It would only be different if the early paper weren't published (and won't be).

Copyright is a bit misleading here. There is a good chance, that you basically sold the copyright or an exclusive license to the publisher, but you are probably still fine copying a few sentences (with the mentioned limitations), because you are the author (which is more about plagiarism than copyright).

I think you should differentiate between reusing single sentences that are just a normal way of conveying certain information, and reusing ideas/concepts.
For example, most of my papers deal with the same disease. I always describe this disease with the exact same sentence in the Introduction section (i.e. it's characterized by these and these symptoms, median survival is 5 years). I see no need to formulate that kind of information differently in each paper. I do not cite my own papers for this and do not make it a quote. This kind of thing is totally ok and not considered (self) plagiarism.
On the other hand, I also have a paper describing a certain method and then follow-up papers that use that method somewhere. In these sections I also sometimes repeat exact sentences, but I do cite the previous paper. Here it is an original idea that I'm reusing and I shouldn't give the impression I came up with it anew in each paper.
The submission being anonymous does not change anything; if the reuse is significant enough to warrant a citation, you need to cite, regardless whether the original work was written by you or someone else.
In short, repeating exact sentences is in many cases acceptable; whether a citation is needed depends on what kind of information in conveyed in that sentence. You are in the best position to judge in which category your reuse falls.

I think some of your usage falls under the heading of "only one effective way to state an idea".

Yes, true. But since you stated that in a paragraph that starts with "To avoid self plagiarism all you need to do is cite the original work." , I got the impression this was more about formulating an original idea the same way each time. With my answer I just wanted to clarify that not every reused sentence warrants a citation.

I would argue there are no limits here, simply because the idea is nonsensical. I think citing the original work is helpful, but calling your own ideas, repeated, "plagiarism", is bizarre.
Just cite the work for others to know it has appeared elsewhere.
Also, articles should not really overlap much if at all possible. Easy to cite and save time.

Sorry, but this is lazy practice. I won't even call it "scholarship".

It is not plagiarism to write you’re own points twice. But still, cite it. It just confuses phd students.

Who gets to decide these things? And what are the consequences for failure? That’s why you should rename it “overlap” or “repetition”.

It is fine if you are writing an op ed or letter to the editor of your local newspaper. But not for scholarship. The consequences are academic community condemnation.

Only the academic community know the meaning of “self-plagiarism”, and even that is apparently debatable. What would the outsiders think? Can anyone give an example of this going wrong? Any act of self-plagiarism at all? Plagiarism on the other hand is widely understood and disrespected.

The editor of a journal, or reviews, should just reject a paper which uses old results, or old text. But plagiarism is a poor choice of word, I think.


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What are the benefits of an MBA to someone with a Computer Science degree?
I know this is relative to a person's unique situation or career objectives, but generally speaking, what can a Master's in Business administration do for a computer scientist?
The reason I ask is because I have a bachelor's in CS and I jumped right into a semester of my MBA, having it a third of the way finished. But now I am retracted because I'm not exactly sure what will come of this degree.
Will it propel me in my career (opportunity and/or salary) or will it just be a complete waste?
I guess my initial thinking was that an MBA would allow me to be able to manage some software/IT projects being well versed in development as well as the business side of things that stimulate ideas. But now I am wondering if this would even be the best way to achieve that. I'm stuck at a crossroad and would appreciate some feedback, preferably from someone who has experience in these career fields.

There certainly are opportunities for an MBA with a computer science background, perhaps starting in project management. What do you want to do? What do other MBAs do?

Perhaps project management, thats sorta where I was going with this. But I'm not exactly sure what other MBA's do. Or how it would compliment my CS degree. I was hoping someone could help me be more aware of the opportunities before I discontinue studies

Suggested title change: What are the benefits of an MBA to someone with a Computer Science degree? / because "Should I..." questions are inviting opinions.

great idea, thank you

I remember asking this question 5 months ago. Fast forward 5 months later and I've accepted a position as an entry level developer! The sweet thing: I got a salary increase because of my MBA! I start in June, which is a month after I'm supposed to graduate. The other nice thing is that the MBA program only cost me about 16k in total, which isn't too bad if you ask me.
In terms of the education itself, I don't regret it one bit because it steered me in the direction of finding financial literacy, which is huge in these times. I was taught all sorts of CS topics, but never the importance of financial literacy. I believe my CS degree taught me how to make money, but my MBA taught me how to manage and KEEP money.
I thank everyone who shared their responses because I remember back then how stressed I was. Everything is pretty smooth sailing now

Awesome. What MBA program/school did you attend?

An MBA may do 4 positive things for you, especially if it is a prestigious one:

It will teach you various established frameworks and methodologies for dealing with business management issues, introducing topics like business strategy, managerial accounting and financial planning, applied micro- and macro-economics, and applied psychology and business organization. People will argue that you could learn all this on your own from books, but would you take the time? And there is value to someone having designed a standardized curriculum about it.

It will train you up in the "case method", i.e. exercises by group work where you are given background on a business problem and work through some very concrete and some very open-ended questions about it, and present orally and in writing in class about it. There's nothing magical about it, but it teaches you ways of structuring your time, communicating your results, and working in groups (including dealing with minor interpersonal friction) which all have important differences versus sciences and/or engineering.

You will network with your MBA peers, who will form a cohort of mutual support through upcoming decades of your career as you switch from technical to business/management. Many MBAs feel this is the most important of the benefits.

You gain a credential as well as create a breakpoint in your career. There is lots of recruiting on MBA campuses, so you will have lots of opportunities to explore career alternatives; much easier to access than if you were rising from technical to managerial ranks at your current employer only. Even if you return to your current employer, you now have a demonstrable credential and a jolt of external knowledge and validation that is quite likely to earn you at least some respect, and "mark" you as being suitable for a technical->business transition.

It will however:

Cost oodles of money, likely putting you in debt for several years (unless your current employer pays for it), and carries the opportunity cost [that's an example of MBA-speak for you] of 1-2 years of your life you're not getting back.

As to salary, it depends. Pretty clearly the starting salary of an MBA > undergrad CS degree only. By and large, it will probably pay off long term (even after the debt + delay in point 5), but there are definitely niches in computer science where the right expertise is scarce and the sky is the limit for $, and arguably the lifestyle-adjusted $ is higher. But as to whether this will persist over the duration of a career is anyone's guess.
[My germane background: precocious young software developer decades ago, then math Ph.D., then several years in business/consulting/management in roles where my peers had MBAs but I didn't. Now freelance consultant and part-time academic/teacher, including in business schools.]

what can a Master's in Business administration do for a computer scientist?

An MBA would allow a computer scientist to complement their technical skills with business skills.

Will it propel me in my career (opportunity and/or salary) or will it just be a complete waste?

A business-technical skillset is surely a competitive advantage.

Do you know more specifically the potential opportunities that could arise from attaining both?

@aj0320 there are a host of positions in private companies that can make use of both a CSci background and an MBA. The most obvious is product manager. When developing a new product it can be extremely useful to have someone who can understand what is technically feasible and what will sell well and potentially make a lot of money. Note though that as the title suggests these are management positions. Soft skills and political acumen may be more important than technical skills.


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Referencing references that reference references? How deep do you need to check for "accuracy"?
This is a problem that I figured lately. Say that you reference a text that references other texts.
How far must a new reference check that the earlier references are "accurate in information"? Is it possible that "lousy referencing" leads to "webs" of referencing that "blurs" some of the more original results there due to ambiguous referencing?
When does one know that one can rely on a reference?

Do you mean "do the references point to the correct places?" or "do the referenced materials contain accurate results?"?

Does this answer your question? Referencing the reference?

@Buffy How deep does one need to check for the accuracy of results. Because if one e.g. checks only the one that one references, and it turns out to be erroneous, due to earlier references, then one simply adds up to "erroneous papers". Yet, one should be able to trust sources at some level, because "checking everything" would be tedious.

Not checking everything leads to erroneous results.

@SolarMike But one should be able to trust past authors that they have checked what they use? Ideally. Also, checking the reference that one uses feels reasonable, but checking references of references starts to seem like overkill, unless one's idea is to know everything about some topic. For the needs of a paper, this might not be necessary, since anyone wishing to know more would then read down the "reference tree".

If a paper has 50 refrerences, even just checking the first order citations becomes difficult. If you were to check the references of those references, you'd have 2500 references to check.

If you do a thorough literature search you need to establish the state of affairs and not leave out stuff - possibly ignoring one paper that is the most relevant / important.

This may help you: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/47832/72855

While the system isn't perfect, the purpose of the reviews done by publishers prior to publication is to assure readers that what is said in a paper can be trusted. Some reviews take a long time and some papers require several iterations to reach this point.
So, in general, you should be able to trust what you read in reputable journals. Other journals, not so much.
But, mistakes happen and sometimes group think can interfere. If you have a reason to doubt something, then investigate it further. Perhaps that is by following references, and perhaps it is by looking at orthogonal sources. But the judgement is yours to make.
For a student, getting in to the game, however, the judgement can be in favor of deeper study rather than trust. If you don't understand something in a paper it is probably a bad idea to quote it in another. If you misunderstand something, you may also misunderstand its implications. So you look deeper until you begin to get the insight(s) that the chain of authors had earlier developed.
Trust, but verify.


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Is there an easy way to check for the "expert appeal" of some reference?
Is there an easy way to check for the "popularity" (or more particularly, "appealing to experts") or citations of some reference?
That is, when I find some reference and want to check how "good" it is w/o having to read the thing.
Some confusions:

There can be quality papers with low citation counts. E.g. if the
paper considers an unpopular subfield/subtopic. Or if the topic is not an active research topic at the moment.

A highly citated paper can be false if it's popular due to biases, rather than accurate paper. E.g. some psychological paper that studies something which feeds people's "subjective validation". That is, people believe a paper is good, because if fits their intentions.

Professional tools, such as Web of Science, include citation counts.

Popular need not be the same as good. A highly cited paper may be cited so much because newer papers use it as an example of something bad, for instance.

@GoodDeeds In that case give me another metric.

Citations should be a good approximation in many cases. The previous comment was a caveat: no all "good" papers are highly cited, and vice versa.

See: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/37021/19607

@mavavilj Why do you need a metric for the popularity or "goodness" of a source? What should matter to you is the relevance of a source, and that's entirely dependent on what you are using it for. Why is it such a problem to read a paper (or at least its abstract) to develop a personal opinion on that paper's value to your own work?

@RobertBahensky Well that's true, since popularity can also be an "ad populum". But if one wants to measure e.g. how many other "experts" have used that paper or read it or so. I.e. one wants to know how "well" professionals of the field accept that paper.

Even if popularity was a measure of general paper quality (which it is not), it is irrelevant to the quality of the one particular argument or data that you want to reuse, which may not have been considered closely by previous citing papers.

when I find some reference and want to check how "good" it is w/o
having to read the thing.

No. There isn't. You can not check how good a reference is without reading it. Or at least, any method of doing so is some balance of effort vs accuracy, and any method that gave you a sufficiently reliable measure is as much, or more work than reading the thing.
e.g. you could read literature reviews in the field and see what they say about the paper. But you'd have to read several, and thats going to be more work than reading the original paper, and it would still not be as good as reading the paper (as long as you were qualified to judge the quality of the original paper).

The easiest way is to type the title of the reference into Google Scholar and to look at its citation counts.
There are other databases which calculate the number of citations a document receives, such as Web of Science, Scopus, or Dimensions.

I would think including the link given in the comments on the original post to the question about why a high citation count may not be a reliable indicator of how good or bad a publication is in this answer would be sensible (https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37021/why-is-it-bad-to-judge-a-paper-by-citation-count?noredirect=1&lq=1)


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Physics Courses in Undergrad to Apply for Physics Grad Program
I am a sophomore physics student with an interest in studying applied physics or engineering in graduate school. I will take as many applied physics courses as I can in undergrad (and CS courses), but was curious as to what opinions most physics grad programs have toward Chemistry courses in undergrad. I have a strong feeling that Chemistry (2 semesters of it) would look great, but it would be hard for me to squeeze them in to my schedule. I know that it will vary by grad school, so I am wondering if anyone has a general rule of thumb when it comes to this?

It might depend a bit on what parts of Physics you want to focus on. It is a pretty broad field.  Any of your current physics professors could offer advice, of course.

Is this in the US?

Yes. In the US.

It's definitely good to make long term plans and think about what you want to do in the future. But your question strikes me as premature optimizing. As a second year student you should focus on learning rather than what a graduate application committee thinks. Take courses in which you think you'll learn something useful! That'll pay off handsomely on the long run..

In addition, if given a choice grad school admissions actually strongly prefer students who took courses because they were interested in the material rather than trying to optimize their grad school chances. In reality, that's difficult to tell apart but just to illustrate the point: sometimes one can e.g. see that a student's research projects were simply done for the purpose of CV padding. That's a huge red flag and often disqualifying. I guess what I'm trying to say is taking courses you're interested in doesn't actually lower your grad school chances. Go ahead and "follow your heart" ;-)

Taking chemistry courses is good, but there is no need to remove physics courses from your schedule to add chemistry courses.


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Getting into an engineering or physics graduate program with a C in Calculus 1 and 2
I am a physics major in my second year. I do well in Physics, but math is my weak point. I struggle through it, I understand it, but my grades are poor. I am interested in studying specifically aerospace in grad school if I can (that's a separate matter). Would graduate admissions turn me down if they see poor Calc 1 and 2 grades?

You may want to try taking those classes over again, so you can get a better grade.  The most important thing is that your understanding of calculus will increase, which is more important than the actual grade itself.  If you want to study aerospace, then you will probably want to be able to do calculus in your sleep.

Calc 1-and-2 are early classes.  Might just be best to focus on taking more math (as you'll probably need to do anyway; Engineering undergrads typically require Calc 3, Differential Equations, and Linear Algebra as core classes, I think).  If you want to do Aerospace Engineering, probably want to do a course-or-two on numerical algorithms, too.

Your grades in calculus 1 and 2, which are first year classes, have very little importance to graduate admissions in physics.  Admissions will put more emphasis on your most recent grades.  However, you simply cannot succeed in as an undergraduate physics major without mastering the calculation of integrals and derivatives.  These are essential, core skills used in nearly everything a physics major studies.
So, my advice is to make sure you master those skills.  This will enable you to get good grades in later coursework.  I would also suggest that you take a proof-based analysis course.  A good grade in that would demonstrate that you really understand calculus.

Graduate admissions are generally based on a complete record, and depend less on the details of specific courses than they do on an evaluation of your potential for success. You need to build that complete record and a few C's are a negative factor that you need to overcome. There are various ways to do that. One is to just move on and do better, perhaps learning more about calculus on your own, perhaps just taking more advanced courses and doing well there.
If you continue to get C's in math it will be a problem. If you get good grades, especially in those subjects that use calculus it is less likely to matter.
But even more important is to impress your professors with your hard work and potential.
Short answer - the C's won't slam the door, but you need effective ways to open it wider.

Thank you. I appreciate the thoughtfulness.


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Part time MPH degree while doing full time PhD
I will be joining a full-time PhD program in North America in August (physical and biological sciences). While my PhD topic is my principal interest, I'm also interested in public health and health policy related challenges, and this will help me in my planned future career. I have observed that there are a number of online (part-time) MSc / MPH degrees in public health being offered by well-respected universities.
My question is:
a) Is it generally speaking permissible to enrol in another part-time program while you are pursuing a full time PhD?
b) Based on my own previous research experience, chat with my future supervisor and the members of the research group, my schedule is likely to be anywhere between 7-9 hours a day (weekends free). In principle, 20 hours of work (per week) on a part-time degree is something I should be able to do, however is this practical?
If it helps, PhD will be in experimental science (laboratory work)
Look forward to perspectives

"practical"? - enjoyable/rewarding/meaningful...you wanna look for a job with your MPH or PhD degree after everything finished, this would be my question. Some ppl only work and like a robot (and still don't get tenure) and some have a life... technically the biggest problem I see is doing your master thesis work over months during 7-9 hours for your PhD, hard to shift to the weekend...

Any chance your school offers such a dual-degree program? Mine does, though you have to apply for it specifically. It would be unusual but probably not impossible to add the masters after you've already been accepted for PhD (and with the blessing of an advisor).

Unfortunately, the school does not offer such a dual degree program. Even if it did, I would much rather go for a flexible, part-time, online program than an offline one with real lectures to attend. Some of the online programs can be completed in even 3-4 years.