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Visualization tool for paper citations
Does anyone know if there is a tool that takes a paper (pdf) and is able to produce a directed graph of the citations, and if possible take the papers that are cited and use the citations of those papers and include it in the graph. So it is easy to see what is an important paper, and what I've missed and so on.
An example I hardcoded:

Moderately related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20541/relational-reference-management-software

Related (old) question with some still relevant options: http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/5569/is-there-a-nice-tool-to-plot-graphs-of-paper-citations

https://www.connectedpapers.com/

I'm also on a saga to look for this tool, hopefully the answers in this thread can end all the search. Here is what I know.
There used to be a software called RefViz that does what you exactly want. It was released by Thomson at a price of about US$295. Unfortunately, the response wasn't too good and it seems the product has been discontinued for more than five years. I used to use this software quite often to generate some themes from the literature pool. Since it was discontinued I have moved away from this type of relational analysis.
Instem has another product OmniViz, which remains in the market. OmniViz is like RefViz on steroids, and is much more capable. The price is also higher, reaching about US$1000 for an educational copy. Apart from literature relation, it can also be applied to genomics and that perhaps explains the high price. Instem has also produced a text-specific version of Omniviz, Txtviz that is designed specifically to support people wading through large volumes of textual documents to find specific themes and areas of interest.
If you're tight on budget, try Google "citation map software" and you should be able to find other cheaper alternatives, like SciMAT, which is free.
Thomson has also hosted an online citation map, which does not hook up to your literature library, but if you click on any indexed article on Web of Science, you can get a network consisted of the cited and citing articles. If you'd like to see how much impact a certain article has, it's a good tool as well.
A more rudimentary way is to make the network yourself using mind mapping software. I have been using the brainstorming function in Qiqqa and it's not too shabby as a thought generator.
Last but not least, I'd also like to advocate for a large piece of A3 size paper, a good black or sepia felt tip pen, a box of color pencil, and some fun attitude to draw your own. I got the most out of this method, to be honest. When using the online tool or software I feel I am just producing a thing, but when I use my hands to make a network of articles that I feel important, I am also thinking. I guess person-to-person it's different.
Just remember whatever software we use, the relevance is based on algorithm. It's just like data mining, there will be false positives and negatives. Be mindful when analyzing the so-called literature gaps that the software found, sometimes it could be a gap, sometimes it could just be a void and does not deserve attention. Strong discretion along the process is necessary.

This is such a great reply. Can you please also explain a bit more on using each. like the use cases of each that you found bullet-proof and reliable. like Qiqqa for example. So that we actually know your experience rating from each. Thanks,

i also just saw http://www.vosviewer.com/

You can visualize second order citation trees using this tool : https://www.citationtree.org/
It uses data from CrossRef.

https://www.connectedpapers.com/


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Presenting data of complex tables
I finished some experiments on classification and I am now preparing for a presentation.
The experiment yields data which will then be manually verified to determine if the data is correct or incorrect. The experiment is run a total of 10 times and the output for each run is the amount of hits ("Yes") or misses ("No"). In the end, I have this complex table:

What is the best way to present this kind of complex tables?
If applicable (as in my example), should I present normalized data?
If applicable (as in my example), should I present average values?

Depends how much information you want to display. Boxplots can also be an option.

I believe visual representation is nearly always a much better way to present data-intensive information. However, it may depend on your audience, and the depth of analysis you go into with your results.
If you are repeating each experiment n times, it would be most useful, in the least, to present the average result (the mean), along with a standard deviation. There are many different ways to visually represent your data, but whatever method you use must be able to deliver the main points you need to convey clearly. To help you decide on the best form of presentation of data, here a couple of suggestions:

Ask yourself what the main message is that you need to deliver from this data, and focus on a delivery style (graph, table, list, whatever) that best delivers that main message (and not all the other stuff)
Reduce the number of variables you need to display to reduce distractions from that main message. So you wouldn't need to display results from 10 repeats of an experiment when you can just show the average result for that experiment.
Remember that in the majority of cases, a picture tells a thousand words.

As an aside, regarding your statement "The experiment yields data which will then be manually verified to determine if the data is correct or incorrect." Always believe your data. Your data is always correct. You just have to come up with the explanations for why the data is as it is.

If you are going to show frequency data as yours with more than 4x4 cells in a presentation, I would generally recommend to use graphs instead of tables. Either you spend much time explaining such a big table or you will leave your audience with the feeling that they just saw something they did not have time to really understand.
The LabWrite Guide by NC State and the paper "Using Graphs Instead of Tables in Political Science" by Jonathan Kastellec and    Eduardo Leoni provide some ideas for graphs substituting tables.
Note that there is a closely related question about Book recommendations for information visualization?.

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Should I give more work out to a student who is not behaving?
Today my student was not paying attention to my lesson. He just slacked off and gave a fit. I can't call the administration (It's a private College School). I have asked him nicely several times to comply with what we are doing. But he won't listen and/or do the work. Yet his parents bribe some of his Professors to give him an A. And some Professors actually agree. What should i Do? Give him more work to do? a signature from parents?

Are you teaching at high-school?

College Sorry @user2768

Why can you not call the administration? If it's a private school, are they not able to remove students from classes?
If the student is just not paying attention, I'd say you just let him be. It's college. It's his (parents') money. Let it go to waste. Teach the students who are there to learn. Your job as a college professor is not to wipe runny noses of students who do not want to be there. When we focus too much on the students who do not want to participate, we usually end up neglecting the students who do want to be there.
If the student is being disruptive, document and report. What is the administration there for if not to handle such administrative issues?

For your career health, three things I'd suggest:

Be compassionate
Develop a teaching philosophy
Figuratively, if you see someone insisting killing himself by jumping into a well, try to rescue; if he refuses, keep rescuing. And most importantly, don't throw rocks into the well even though you're pretty certain that he'd die anyway.

When it comes to students underperforming or misbehaving, never start with blaming. Try to be in their shoes and try to be their advocate, at least at the beginning. While it's true that he was unprofessional, there could be other reasons behind his lack of interest that you might actually find reasonable. If it's only today, it may also be an isolated incidence. So, keep communicating, keep caring, the worst you can say is "I tried."
A teaching philosophy is a 1-2 pager that lay out your directions, aspirations, overall method to become a teacher you want to be. Search online for ample amount of examples. From your question, I think you need one. First, compassion seems to be lacking as you quickly put yourself automatically in adversity with the student; second, you factored in the student's parents' immoral behaviors into the student's own account, unfairly judging him beyond what your course syllabus would have defined; third, faced by a student who is disinterested in learning, the corrective methods you could come up with is: give him more works. None of these made sense. I think if you have put good thought into the philosophy statement and established a general "professional protocol," you'll have a better idea on what's the most suitable action.
When making pedagogical decisions like this, think: basing on my philosophy and my syllabus, is what I am doing justifiable if shit hits the fan? If he decides not to put in the effort, and you decided to give him more works, what would you say to the Dean when he/she asks you to explain your action? I am not saying you probably can't, I am saying you should be prepared. If your student has made a decision to not study, accelerating his failing trajectory by giving more works, to me, is akin to throwing rock to a drowning person in the well. Not that you are the killer, but your action is not justifiable.
I hope these few points can help. Remember to build more bridges, fewer walls. Talk to him, help him, don't openly humiliate him, treat him like an adult.

Before resorting to Vladhagen's solution you might try to learn whether there is a reason for the misbehavior. The student may have a medical (physical or mental) condition that leads to this sort of behavior. The administration or counseling center may know something, though you may need permission to get any information from them. If the student is local you might want to talk to the parents if they are available. Former teachers might also be able to give you some insight into what is going on and especially into what triggers the behavior.
If you get get a reason for the behavior, you might be able to design a solution.
While you have a responsibility to try to teach every student, the student is free to reject your efforts and you may just have to let him fall by the wayside.
Some misbehaving students are just bored, of course. If that is the case here, then giving him something more interesting to do might help. I was that way in elementary school, but "woke up" by the end of high school and did well thereafter. But quite a few of my teachers weren't well pleased with me.

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Will similarity index in an unpublished yet accepted conference paper count after its journal version appeared online

I submitted my conference paper to IEEE ICC. It took nearly 4 months in decision.
During waiting time, I also submitted its 2 extended versions to 2 different journals.
The conference paper met acceptance and I uploaded camera ready version, but the conference is yet to be held and therefore the paper is still unpublished.
Meanwhile, my journal papers also met acceptance and appeared online. Now, when I check plagiarism of my unpublished conference paper, it is 37%, higher than allowed. Previously it was 8%.
My question is will IEEE be able to publish or reject my paper at this stage?

Did you tell the journals and conference about the different versions?

Many conferences and journals have policies for dual submission, which tells you whether you may submit a modification to other venues,  how different should the two submissions be, who to notify once the status of one of the submissions gets updated, etc. What does ICC and the journal say?

@Anonymous physicist: No, Actually during journal submission, the paper was under review in the conference. Moreover, there's significant difference in contribution in the journal and conference versions. It is because of paper language which causes similarity. Therefore, I couldn't notice I should alert journals editors or conference organizers about my other submissions.

Probably nothing will happen, but you should have told the editors when you submitted the papers.

I do not think this question can be answered without reading the journal's policies and the papers.

Similarity percentages do not mean much.

Have you properly cross-cited the work? Is it clear in each which came first and which is built on another? You may have a self-plagiarism problem here otherwise.

@Buffy 1. I haven't cited the conference paper in the journal papers because the former one is still unpublished.
2. It is clear that both journal papers are built on the conference paper but deviate in contributions.

That is going to be a problem. You should have cited them but noted "to appear" in the citation. It is now self plagiarism until you fix it.

While I think your intentions were good, you seem to have made a bit of a mess of it. I can't predict what a journal or conference would do about retracting acceptance, but if there is apparent self-plagiarism, they might decide to do that.
It is hard to say exactly what you should do now to protect yourself and also get everything published. What you should have done earlier, however, is to cite the earlier papers, even if not yet published, in any later ones. That citation makes any self plagiarism charge impossible.
I'll not again that the purpose of avoiding self plagiarism is to allow readers of your work to trace what they read back to the original source of the ideas, including the complete context of the earlier papers. To cite an unpublished work that has been submitted, just mark the citation as "to appear".
I don't know if it is possible to work with the various editors at this point to provide updated versions that correct the issue. If they allow that, then you should come out ok and also get the various papers published as usual. You should probably alert them immediately of the issue, providing an explanation (and maybe an apology for your misunderstanding), as well as corrected versions.
It would probably be good if you contact them before they make any decisions, but I can't say for sure. Their automated systems have already flagged your work.

For completeness, note that if you have no intention of publishing some work, then you don't need to cite it. Treat it as nothing more than an early draft of the later work.

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Reasons to publish in a "Letters" journal?
I am a researcher in computer science. I have seen few research papers in a journal called Information Processing Letters, which seems to cover a very broad subject area. I am not getting what distinguishes such a journal from other journals in the area of computer science. Why would somebody publish in such a letter journal?

I took the liberty to edit your question to make it more general and less about that specific journal, since we do not like to judge individual journals here. Please check whether everything still reflects your intentions and [edit] your question if necessary.

While the areas covered by this journal is very broad, the journal focusses on contributions that can be explained in a concise way. They have a strict page limit that is quite low, hence the "letters" in the name.
Other non-letter journals ask for contributions from a more narrow field of research and have a much higher page number limit (if they have one at all). These journals accept papers that provide a substantial benefit to the respective research area, regardless of their length. While the papers submitted to a journal do not officially compete for acceptance (as they would in a conference), all submitted papers need to be competitive in terms of how much they bring the community forward in order to be accepted. Small isolated results often do not fare well in this regard.
A letters journal is hence attractive for contributions that can be explained in a few pages, and for which it makes no sense to embed them in a larger paper (or the author does not want to).

And since the papers are shorter, the time to publication may be shorter for some such journals.

In various physics areas, one has situations like (Physical Review Letters, Physical Review A-B-C-D-...) and (Applied Physics Letters, Journal of Applied Physics). The letters are short and something new and novel, the longer format is for a deeper, broader look at the phenomena. It is not uncommon to follow up the letter with a journal article.

@JonCuster Wrzlprmft changed the topic of the original question from one concrete letter journal in CS to letter journals in the general after I wrote the answer. What you write would raise a good number of eyebrows in CS - once a result is published in a journal, it cannot be reused in an extended version of a paper. This possibility is normally reserved for conference papers (which in turn count as publications in CS).

Interesting. We use letters to announce that we've found something new, and show that it happens under certain conditions. The journal article is much more extensive covering many more conditions and nailing down the physical reason in detail. The letter is 'here is something curious', the journal is 'here is the full explanation' - I (and the community) don't think this is 'reuse' of the letter. But, different fields, different ethos...

The rationale is speed.  The tradeoff is shorter length.  Some prestigious journals (I think Science and Nature) will also promise speed.  While they are not "letters" per se, they end up being very similar because of space constraints for the in-demand pages.
Prestige can vary widely. Phys. Rev. Lett is a big deal.  Applied Physics Letters is not.
My advice would be to do medium length articles in medium tier journals (APS/ACS subspecialty journals for instance) except in very unusual circumstances: big discovery or something very niche and throwaway that you can't fit into your normal papers.

In my field Phys. Rev. Lett. is actually slower, on average, than the equivalent non-letters journal.

Interesting.  In chemistry, it is opposite.  Glad you commented to correct me.


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Can we buy licenses for e-books and lend them to students?
We are thinking about buying new textbooks for our students. Is there an established practice of buying digital copies of books for students? I expect that e-books should generally be cheaper and we might also be able to save money on delivery.
If the school were to purchase 10 copies of some particular title (e.g., this condensed matter physics book), would it be possible to loan these e-books to one set of students for some period of time (2 years), and later use the same licensed e-books for the next set of students?
Edit
I'm asking is it legal to give the same e-book file to multiple student generations, given that the particular licensed copy is only used by one student at a time.
If it is legal, I'm interesting in the established procedure for doing so. Are there any special considerations for different vendors or for different e-book formats?

This will depends on the country also.  Many of the questions here implicitly assume the USA.  It would be better to make that explicit.

@Szabolcs: I think it depends on the producer of the e-book: wither it allows you to some how share a file with students or not. I don't think country interfere with this.

Actually what is legal and what isn't depends on the laws of the country.  The fact that a publisher doesn't want you to do something does not directly imply that it is illegal.  There are many interesting examples in this article (which doesn't answer your question, just an interesting read).

One of the problems with how software is licensed, is it is not always clear when you are violating the EULA. After consultations with our library and IT department, we bought a large number of iPads that students can borrow from the school. We have loaded these iPads with a number of useful books, including our core textbooks. The IT and the library felt the issues with iPads were less than with lending the ebook directly or using laptops. The issue with laptops is that each user would generally have a separate and private account while for an iPad there is only one account. Your best bet is to talk to someone else and get them to sign off on it.

This is certainly an interesting way to be kept in mind.

Neither librarians nor IT professionals are qualified to provide legal council. You should ask a lawyer instead.

@Philipp while I am not a lawyer, while the university may be at risk, I am pretty sure the risk to an employee is limited to negligence. Having IT and the library sign off on the plan, makes whoever is responsible in the department (and I am not sure who that would be) not negligent.

Although I don't know about Apple's user agreement, this definitely not allowed under Amazon's (the ebook is owned by the buyer, not by the device, thus renting/distributing a kindle with the content would be the same as renting/distributing the ebook)

@DavidMulder there are a number of universities, big and small, doing this and I have never heard of one being sued.

@StrongBad Just because something isn't allowed doesn't mean that a company can risk the bad press of suing universities ;-) Especially if there is even a remote chance that their EULA would be found illegal (various countries have library related laws which right now do not cover electronical books, if however a judge would suddenly decide eletronical books are just normal books as well... that would open quite a storm)

@DavidMulder I'm not sure about your school but at mine the librarian is extremely well versed in the terms of the licensing for textbooks, including e-books. It never hurts to get a lawyer involved but I consider a librarian to be a professional (with formal education in the topic) who should be open enough to say when they are out of their depth.

@earthling Well, we have a 'couple' of ebooks as well, but those are purely scans of old books (a lot of which we own ourselves, but don't want students to touch) and some other resources we acquired though special partnerships (these ebooks are only accessible from workstations in the library and can not be used or accessed outside of the library in any way). And as far as librarians and their knowledge of copyrighting goes... I have so far been unimpressed (they were actually making invalid claims about public domain works for awhile)... but that might well be different at your institution.

@DavidMulder Might be different. We actually have a pretty full-featured e-library (books, journals, etc.).

@earthling Ah, yeah, I wasn't counting things we had access to through subscriptions, so yeah, we have access to a huge number of journals as well and some book-like publications can be found in that list as well, however that's quite a different thing from normal books to put it like that. I mean, finding the works by Locke or an introductory text on minowski spacetimes are for me the kind of things I would call normal books (and where the second category is hard to get legally licensed for lending), whereas papers and the like are 'just normal subscription matter'.

@DavidMulder Please take extended discussions to chat. Also see this related question that I just asked.

Generally speaking, when you purchase digital content, you are usually purchasing a license for said content. You will have to read the license to find out what the terms are. For example, here is the general license agreement for the Kindle store. It states that as a general rule:

Unless specifically indicated otherwise, you may not sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense, or otherwise assign any rights to the Kindle Content or any portion of it to any third party

which would prohibit the scheme you suggest in the general case ("unless specifically indicated otherwise").
Similarly, for books sold in the Google Play store, the license terms include the following:

You may not lend or co-own any of your Books on Google Play purchases with another person.

The specific license terms can vary by content distributor, publisher, and individual book.
In cases where lending is permitted (e.g. some Kindle books), it's usually very restricted - for ordinary customers. Libraries can purchase licenses for some books that are more permissive for lending purposes. You should consult with your university librarians about what options are available to them.
You may be able to find an appropriate book for your purposes with a permissive license that allows lending (maybe even some open educational resources, if you're really lucky), but this will probably take some work.

I see -- buying e-books is not an option. But StrongBad has a nice workaround: if one buys a 10 iPads or Kindles (cheaper!), and buys e-books for each device, one can lend a device to a student for a whole period of study.

But libraries (more or less routinely) acquire licenses for electronic content. AFAIK these are special licenses, not the same as the end user license (if you hand out the content, you're not an end user after all).

@Adobe Although I don't know about Apple's user agreement, this definitely not allowed under Amazon's (the ebook is owned by the buyer, not by the device, thus renting/distributing a kindle with the content would be the same as renting/distributing the ebook)

My guess is that your best chance is to do this via your library (not as institute).
Here's is a localized answer for ebooks and libraries for Germany:
Source: http://www.bibliotheksportal.de/themen/digitale-bibliothek/e-books-in-bibliotheken.html

The UrhG (German copyright law) has explicit rules for content on physical media. Besides printed books this also covers CDs and DVDs.
Roughly speaking the idea is that a library is allowed to lend out books on physical media. The loss of the publisher because of a larger number of readers for the book is compensated by a so-called "Bibliothekstantieme" ("library royalty").
The problem with ebooks is that they are not covered by those "physical" library rules. This means that libraries negotiate individual licensing contracts with the publishers.
The university library ebooks I've used so far were restricted to reading from university IPs, some even to computers at the library. Look&feel of the procedure were similar to electronic journal access.
Talk to your university library, I'm sure they know how to deal with that. They'll probably also be able to give rough guesstimates about the costs.
There exist public e-libraries, e.g. Onleihe is an network for ebooks of public libraries mainly in the German speaking countries. They know for sure how to deal with this, and something the like probably also exists in your country.
The mode of this is described (I haven't tried it personally) as very similar to traditional library use: there is a number of copies available, if they are all lent out you have to wait until one is "returned". You get access for a restricted time and then the reading license is returned and you cannot open the book any longer.

To know whether the device workaround is legal, you need to figure out if the ebook license is owned by the individual or the account.
If it is owned by the individual making the purchase, it should be able to be transferred to a different account. If losing access to an account (on Amazon or Kindle or whatever) also loses you access to a license that is purchased and owned, then it belongs to the account. Not you. Giving the account to someone else to use should not count as distribution as long as the written material isn't copied, emailed, printed, etc.)
However, you would need a lawyer regardless of what you do. Laws are just chess pieces businesses use to play for the most amount of money possible. You need your own chess player to protect your interests.

The situation may have changed in the last five or so years since the question was asked. But, currently, in the US, libraries are able to make agreements with some publishers for just this purpose. There are limits in the agreements, as you would expect. I don't know if the limits would make it hard to lend a title for a complete term. Most library lending is for a couple of weeks, but there are exceptions.
Have a local library explore this with publishers.

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Applying for Physics PhD program with strong application but weak test scores
I am a fourth-year physics B.S. student at the University of Virginia graduating this year. I'm planning to pursue a PhD program. I would like to get into the US top 50 schools. I don't really like to get into Harvard, for example, but Berkeley, MIT, Hopkins, etc.
I need to take the General and Physics GRE. English is not my first language, and so I'm pretty terrible when it comes to English-oriented standardized tests. As a result, I'm sure I'll do very poorly on the general GRE. As for the physics GRE, I will probably not do so well either---this one is because I am terrible under super stressful/timed situations. I cannot think right and I make stupid mistakes. I have taken a practice test and I did 50%. This part of my application is dark. On the bright side, I have a 4.0 GPA within my physics major, along with 3 years of research experience and 1 published conference paper. I also believe my professors will write me very strong letters. Because of the GRE portion, I have lost my confidence in being competitive and think I will not get into good schools. Is my fear justified? Is my application weak due to the GRE? In simple terms, am I hopeless when it comes to schools like Hopkins, MIT, and Berkeley?

Welcome to Academia.SE. Our format discourages multi-part questions; moreover, your second question is not really answerable -- we don't do "shopping" questions, or "personal opinion" questions. So, you may wish to edit your question to focus on #1. Also, make sure you search our site to see if this has already been answered -- you are certainly not the first person to have strong grades/research but weaker test scores. Finally, you may want to specify where you are and where you want to go to grad school. Good luck!

Considering the number of universities which are apparently dropping the GRE as an entrance requirement, I think it's probably the part of your application that matters the least, and your other grades will make up for it.

Is that 50% or 50th percentile?

50th percentile

@Ptheguy Then you might be just below the cutoff for a place like Berkeley, at least according to this, but there are plenty places in US top 50 that would consider you. Indeed, required minimum scores are pretty rare. Still, get that score as high as you can, and see what happens!

The site you linked, if there's no minimus GRE score recorded, does that mean data hasn't been recorded or that the university doesn't impose a minimum? It's a bit hard to believe places like Princeton and Stanford don't impose a minimum!!

@Ptheguy I imagine it's a mix of both - some places don't make their minimum public, some places genuinely place less importance on the GRE. For a place like Princeton I find it quite easy to imagine that they don't want to have to reject the next Onsager because he scored 30 points too low or something. Still, the people admitted there will obviously be skewed towards the high end of the spectrum.

First of all, congratulations on publishing and achieving that GPA! Together with strong letters that should make for a strong application, even with weaker GRE scores - maybe excepting places that use some kind of subject GRE score cutoff (if your score is too low). However, there's no such thing as guaranteed admissions for open applications like this. It'll depend on other applicants, your field, which research groups are looking for new students, etc.
The upshot here is that the GRE scores are easier to change than any other part of your application. Do all the practice tests, figure out tricks that work - dimensional analysis will take you far on the physics GRE, for example. You can also sit for the actual tests more than once, which might help with the stress levels.


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The review results for my journal paper submitted to the special issue of a reputed journal is 45 days overdue. Is it normal and what should I do?
I submitted a research paper to a special issue of a reputed computer science journal (SCI indexed) and the results were due on January 31st. However, the results have not been announced to date, and my email to the Guest Editor requesting for information on the delay has gone unanswered. I am really worried about this delay without notification, as the whole point of submitting to a special issue was to get reviews faster than regular issues. Is this big delay normal? Should I be worried that my paper is lost or worse? I can see the status "Reviewing" when I log into the journal's tracking service. Please advise on what I should do.
Thanks in advance.

Oftentimes, and that's valid esp. for academia, a call will be better than an email. It's really easy to oversee (deliberate or not) an email, but if you call, the editor (or a secretary) has to answer. And if you have someone on the line you can ask your questions directly and he has to answer or give you sme other sort of feedback.
It's annoying for a lot of us, since an email is easier, faster,  you can better oversee what you're writing and you don't have to call someone and speak to him personally. But from an efficency point of view, a call is in most of the cases the best approach.
Just ask polite, don't make some sort of accusation or preasure somthing, but that are the same rules that apply for emails.

Thank you so much for the answer. My adviser did suggest this today. But our worry is, if it is unethical to contact the editor directly over the telephone. An email is still impersonal, a call may be taken as too intrusive.

@Skarth: It's certainly not unethical.  If someone lists a phone number publicly, that is an invitation to call if you need to speak to them.  Yes, it is somewhat intrusive, which is why courtesy (not ethics) suggests that you try email first.  But you have already done that, without success.

if you call, the editor (or a secretary) has to answer: Well, there is such a thing as voice mail.

We will try that option tomorrow. Thank you for the advice.

@NateEldredge Yu are of course right, there is such a thing as voice mail. But I hate these machines and i hang up the phone every tme I get one. I would then just try again later.

@Skarth normally, if you are polite a call is the best thing you can do and normally not that intrusive. Also, I had the case, that I did exchange 10 mails with someone, without a conclusion while a short (<5 min) call cleared all points. Talking is most of the time more informative than writing.

@NateEldredge Could you please provide an email template or example email which is to be written in this situation.

@rudreshdwivedi: I'm not really interested in doing that, sorry.

I had a similar experience, although not with a special issue. In my case, the delay was due to the fact that a change of Editor-In-Chiefs happened. However, it came not even close to a delay of 45 days. That can be because a reviewer did not meet the deadline.

Yes, I agree it does happen. However, with regular issues we may not be given a fixed date for the review results. But in this case, we have submitted to a special issue with a supposedly "fixed" deadline for reviews, the delay seems to be too much.


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Level of difficulty of exams in math PhD and anxiety over being able to do well
I am a first year PhD student in math. I have a course right now that is pretty challenging as expected. I get high grades on all the homework. On our midterm the highest grade was a 35 percent. I was told this is how nearly all of the exams this professor gives turn out. Is this a common thing to happen? I suddenly feel inadequate to be a PhD student in math.

"I suddenly feel inadequate to be a phd student", I think this perfectly summarizes how it feels to be in the first year of grad school.

This depends very much on your university and your professor. There is a whole range of opportunities spanning a wide range of difficulties. This issue alone shouldn't be the reason to drop the idea of the PhD degree itself.
If you are really interested in the field and are willing to work for it, then by all means, continue; don't let a little test put you off. PhD is not about exam scores, it is about research quality and how much you could contribute to your field. If you are able to hold your ground on that, stay strong and move on.
My best wishes!

On our midterm the highest grade was a 35 percent. I was told this is how nearly all of the exams this professor gives turn out. Is this a common thing to happen? I suddenly feel inadequate to be a phd student in math.

Why?
As others have pointed out, most PhD students spend some of their time while doing a PhD worrying about whether they belong.  (And this is not a feeling that vanishes upon getting a PhD.)  There's nothing wrong or worrying about feeling that way.
But, to the extent that feelings are amenable to rational inquiry, this doesn't seem like a good reason to feel that way.  Raw percentages on exams are fundamentally arbitrary: they can be arbitrarily altered, independently of how much the students know, simply be asking easier or harder questions, or more or fewer questions.  The raw information "I got X% on the exam" tells you exactly nothing.
Undergrad classes tend to follow some conventions, in part because students react negatively to low percentages anyway.  This involves writing exams with some fluff that almost everyone gets, which brings the average up.  Grad classes do less of this, in part because there's a higher expectation that the students will be able to interpret the score with more maturity (though it sounds like your professor has taken this to an unusual extreme).
So, if you're worried about what the score means, by all means investigate what it means.  But the question you should be asking (possibly of your professor) is "what scores are promising/acceptable/worrying?"  And, even then, don't overreact to one score in one class, especially when you have other scores from the same class.

Since you get high homework grades, I guess that there is little reason to believe that you are entirely unfit for a PhD in math. To the contrary, doing a PhD is about learning to do research, and research is a process that takes place on time-scales of the order of weeks to years. So, getting low grades in an exam situation, where you are pressured into producing certain answers in a very short time span and unnatural setting, is hardly a tool that reliably assesses your ability to do research. Performance on homework, where you have more time, acccess to resources, and freedom to let your mind do its thing, is a much better metric.
The above is, I would claim, in almost all cases true. Given that the best student (and I assume there is more than just a couple) has achieved only 35 percent on the exam, I would worry even less about your performance on the exam. And given that it is said that this is a common occurrence with this professor, there is even less reason for you to worry. Some professors just give bad exams, i.e. ones that are not adapted to the course, reasonable expectations of ability of students, and the circumstances the exam is given in, time being an important example.
By the looks of it, this might well be one those professors. And since, I assume, he doesn't fail almost entire classes year after year, I would not worry that you would fail if you keep up your good work, and not worry about you being unable to pursue your PhD.

I guess that every PhD student goes to the phase of "am I good enough?". I do a PhD in mathematics too and this troubles me often but I am a scientist and there is a way to find out for sure: by doing my best possible and trying to make everything work out. I would rather fail because I am really not that good than to fail because I was afraid of failing. Don't you feel the same?
As about the exam: it may be that the professor generally overestimates students ability to solve the problems or that it is intended to be that way. The reason might be for example that you are expected to select the problems you solve out of several possibilities.
In Quantum mechanics 101 I took years ago we were given the best possible grade A just for scoring over 70% of the total amount of points. Normally this bound is set for 90% to get A but this professor just had a different idea, he wanted to make the homework/exams a bit harder but more forgiving so it would not be too easy for the best but others can still get a good grade as well.

It's possible that this professor designs all of his exam questions to be at the level of qualifying exams.  Eventually you will probably have to take several of these to become a "real" Ph.D. student and begin actual research in earnest.  They usually require studying above and beyond the course requirements—not only do you need more depth of mastery, but you will likely need to know things the class may not have gotten to.  Some professors prefer to throw you into the pool head first and see if you sink or swim.
Others just want you to know that there's a big difference between being good at undergraduate math and being good at graduate math.  I had a (non-math) professor that felt this way, and everyone in his freshman honors class got C's or worse (most got D's) on their first writing assignment.  We learned our lesson pretty quickly and started pursuing a higher standard, eventually earning the A's and B's we were accustomed to by the end of the course.
Consider that 35% as less of a "wow, we're all terrible" and more of a "wow, look how much more we're going to achieve in the next few months and years" and work towards that.

I think your question is, How do I maintain my belief in myself as a math grad student in these circumstances?
Here is a trick to reduce anxiety:
Do your best on an exam, but think of yourself as a guinea pig who is there to validate the exam and the quality of instruction.  Looked at this way, student performance on the exam does not necessarily reflect on what you have learned, or what you are capable of, but rather a way of evaluating the exam and the effectiveness of the teaching.
Try to find other ways of judging whether you are cutting the mustard, and of bolstering your self-esteem.  For example:

form a small study group; challenge each other in these sessions
select some professors that challenge you in a supportive way and visit their office hours
attend a student seminar (or found one if one doesn't exist yet) where you take turns presenting a paper you have read and studied

And don't forget to keep up with one or two hobbies that have a good effect on your self-esteem.


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How to find tools that are presented in the papers?
I just searched a couple of papers related to the subject that I'm trying to work on. And the thing is that they all presented a tool that helped them do the job.
Here some of them:
mapo,
mica,
any many more.
I am trying to get to know these tools to see what is it that they are good at or bad at, but I searched and I couldn't find them!
Is it all the tools that I can't find? Is it about all the papers that the tools that they make are not on the Internet?
If they are how am I suppose to find them?

It's not entirely clear what all you're asking in your final paragraph, but have you tried contacting the authors of the paper to find out how you might get access to the tools?

@Ian_Fin nope, but now i have a clue that i must contact the authors, tnq

The tools you state are prototypes developed by the authors. They may not always have enough rank to be easily Googled, so the best place to search for them would be the respective institution sites and author sites.
For instance,

MAPO can be found in the corresponding author Tao Xie's website (although you might need his consent to access it).
MICA is available in GitHub with copyright by Carnegie Mellon University.

If that doesn't work, the best thing to do would be to mail the corresponding author requesting the required access to the software.

This is a great help, tnq

Also, in a more general case, if those would not be personal tools of the authors, they should have cited relevant papers which give you information on where to get the tools.


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Is it typical for colleges to cancel a course well into the semester? What options does an instructor have in this case?
I'm teaching as an adjunct at a community college in the US. One of the courses I'm teaching has very low enrollment. Now, several weeks into the semester, the college is considering cancelling the course. I am not happy about this as it would significantly impact my income. The course is unusual (for reasons I won't go into in an attempt to preserve anonymity), and had I anticipated that low enrollment might lead to cancellation I might have chosen one of a couple other employment options this semester instead.
I can look into the legal aspects elsewhere, but I wonder whether this is a common scenario? Do instructors in this situation just accept the loss of income? I never encountered this before my previous teaching experience.

What sort of institution and program is this, community/junior (2-year) college, or 4-year university, or post-baccalaureate/graduate level?

It's a community college. Edited.

Never heard of such a thing at our (large) community college. Custom here is a (sometimes hard) decision is made always prior to the first day.

What constitutes low enrollment?  Is that 2 or 10 or what?  Have they complained to you about your performance?

6 students. I have received only positive feedback about my performance.

It can't hurt to ask what the minimum enrollment is in general (keeping in mind that exceptions can be made).  Next time, find this out in advance.

I have been in the regrettable position where I have had to cancel courses right up to the point where they are about to start.
Such decisions were based on whether the course stood to cover direct costs (tutor fees, out of pocket expenses, accommodation costs, consumables etc.) rather than on their contribution to the overall budget (which is out the window anyway).  In these cases, we would endeavor to ensure that the tutor, and in some instances the students, know of the risk of cancellation due to low recruitment and the deadline by which a decision would be made.
What puzzles me with your situation is that the course has already begun, therefore:

Costs have already been incurred (in your time)
Certain costs will already have been committed to (room bookings, catering etc.)
Students will have paid fees (or have had their fees paid for them in whatever form)

If the course would be cancelled, fees would be refunded or lost (government funders in the UK only give university's the student loan cash once a student has progressed through certain stages of their course, for example) and committed expenses would still need to be paid, at least in part.  So by cancelling it part way through they are likely to be left with a bigger deficit now than they would if they let it run its course, to illustrate:
Let it run it's course:
income - expenditure = deficit1
Cancel it now:
income - expenditure - refunds = deficit2
deficit2 > deficit1
And this is not to mention the reputational risk in cancelling a course with students already on it.
To answer your question, "What should I do?"  I'd find out exactly why the course is for the chop midway through (there might be a very good reason why!) and then argue:

that its financially more sensible to run with it at a loss rather than loose income to refunds (assuming this is true);
that the risk to department/institution reputation is real (again, assuming that it is)
for the ethics of disrupting students' learning partway through and potentially putting them behind in their educational pursuits by another academic year (this one is the key message!);
for the academic/strategic value in running the course (is it an investment, does it make the college look good etc.);
to outline strategies for improving recruitment network (collaboration with other programmes, better marketing, tweak the content), and
if you deem it appropriate, to outline your personal inconvenience as a result of the cancellation (I'd imagine they want to keep good staff - as you hinted that you are - happy).

Voices from students, and their representatives, might be persuasive here as well.
Another reason I would be reluctant to cancel a course midway through is that the tutor would be under contract - so I'd still have to pay them.  So, take a look at your contract and see what happens in the event of cancellation partway through.

+1 for overall great answer, but I want to highlight the last point. Please review your contract for potential language regarding such a scenario.

I have seen this happen at community colleges, although perhaps not past the two-week point.
I hope you have been actively trying to promote interest in your course!
At this point, your best bet, to try to keep the course alive, may be to gently try to get some of your students to lobby for keeping the course.  Be careful how you do this.  You don't want to give them the feeling they are on a sinking ship.  You can just mention that the enrollment is low, and it would be helpful for all concerned if the students were to let the department know that they feel the course is important for them, in their program of studies, and important for the department.


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How to cite class notes in a paper?
In a paper, I have used a very classic method, whose details I found in certain class notes, found googling the name of the method itself.
I would like to cite these class notes (something like "this method has been implemented as explained in [class notes]") , but I have no idea if this is common or if I should find a different (more official) source.
What should I do?

If you cannot find the material in a more "official" source, such as a peer-reviewed journal or conference paper, then you should check with the publisher on how to cite the lecture notes directly.
If allowed, the exact way to cite the lecture notes will depend on the citation guidelines where you are submitting. For example, in IEEE citation format, I am aware of a couple of acceptable citation formats for citing lecture content.

This IEEE citation example is taken from here:

S. Maw. Engg 251. Class Lecture, Topic: “Speed skating.” ICT 224, Faculty of Engineering, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Oct. 31, 2003.

This example is taken from here:

S. Bhanndahar. ECE 4321. Class Lecture, Topic: “Bluetooth can’t help you.”
  School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, Jan. 9, 2008.

It is interesting to note that a quick check of the official IEEE Citation Reference does not mention the correct format for citing class/lecture notes. So you may need to dig around a bit to find the correct format for wherever it is you are submitting.

A precise description indeed.


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Postdoc joining Appointment delay for few weeks
I got a particular postdoc position in the USA that has a start date of 1st DEC 2021. However, I would need to delay the start date for at least two weeks, it would not be possible for me join at Dec 1st. I want to join around 15-20 dec. Because i have very urgent priority work at the beginning of december (I was not aware of that before).
How common is it to delay the start of a postdoc position for a few weeks? Who is the right person to contact? And how can I convince them?

Deferral of postdoctoral position is very common. Two weeks in December is most probably harmless for the department because you most probably are not going to be assigned any teaching for that time. But you need to contact the Chair as soon as possible.

Thank you. Can I contact with them after getting Visa??? Because Untill now i got only Offer letter.

I think that you need to contact the Chair as soon as possible. A visa can take several months. But I do not know for sure, it depends on the department.

I am asking because My HR said , start date is December 1, 2021.  This does not have to be the actual arrival date, they can adjust it depends on my visa.


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Why are external PhDs considered to take "decades"?
I have just finished my master degree (TU Vienna) and I am working 20 hours per week. I have talked to several professors in my field of interest and they said that the earliest position for a PhD would be in December, because of funding.
However, I think I could take the route as external researcher and do my PhD by working 20 hours per week and devoting the other 20 hours to my research.
By browsing some posts here I have read that a lot of you consider an external PhD as inefficient (it takes a long time, etc.). Why? What are the reasons for that? Can't such a PhD be done within 3 years?

UPDATE

PS.: What are mostly the reason that it takes so long?

If a PhD usually takes 3 years and you only work half time on it, how could you expect to finish in 3 years?

Assume that a regular PhD student works 50 hours or more and takes 3-5 years. You will realistically work 20 hours or less, have more distractions, and your environment will be much worse. You can do the math.

@ChrisWhite Thankfully, this has not been the case in any of the groups where I worked so far.

@ChrisWhite I don't see how this should be field-dependent, and your link describes one old letter that doesn't prove anything. I'm an astronomer, but I'm also a human. No way will (or can) I work that hard for a sustained period of time.

@Moriarty is more university dependent. I know astronomers at Caltech do work insane amount of hours; in AU they have more normal ~8h shift.

While I've known people who were "on the job" 80+ hours a week in nuclear and particle physics (and I've had hell weeks up around 100 hours when things were coming to a head), I don't believe I've known anyone who could be steadily productive at that level. The people in my field I look at and say "I wish I was that good." seem to do 50-60 hours of good work every week plus show up to some meetings where they don't have to contribute much. It's not how long they work, it's how much they get done in each hour.

This advice is based on Computer Science mostly, and it may or may not apply directly to you. As far as I understand your area is only marginally related to Computer Science through the fact that you're interested in Algorithmic Trading.
Everything depends on two factors: your goals and the speed with which you are able to learn and create the things that you need to do in order to achieve your goals. If your goal is to be a professor at TU Vienna, then you will obviously at some point need to submit a PhD thesis and later a Habilitation thesis. The PhD thesis can have 3 to 6 papers in good conferences and one - two papers in some journals, and your habilitation thesis will consist of a minimum of 5 articles in good journals (A-level journals). You will also have to submit some grant proposals and after you manage to get those grants to finish them successfully (typically the requirement is to have EU grants or ERC grants). So you will have to produce at least 15 conference articles, 8-10 journal articles, 2 thesis, and 2 grants in order to get to an Assistant Professor or Professor in Vienna. If you manage to get every paper accepted first time when you submit it (something unheard of), you will still need 6 - 15 years to get to Assistant Professorship or Professorships (counting from the first year of your PhD). Keep in mind that at TU, Assistant or Junior Professorships appear only once at two years or so (and just one position). Most of the people I know from Vienna (TU Vienna, WU, IST Austria, etc) were able to finish PhD thesis in 4-5 years (full time) or 7-8 years (part-time), so there is no reason to consider that it might take a decade.
The system also makes you quit really fast (after 1-2 years) if you do not want (or you are not able for some reason) to put in the effort that is required in order to create at least a decent thesis. The professor will stop talking to you if you don't make any progress for a number of months, for example, or if your papers are not accepted at top conferences. What you need to understand is that your supervisor is your guide, but you will eventually make the journey alone. The supervisor will just help you polish your articles or thesis.
These being said, before applying for a PhD, I would check the CVs, thesis and articles written by TU Professors (Thomas Eiter, Georg Gottlob, Radu Grosu, Silvia Micksh, Stefan Woltran, etc). It helps a lot, as their expectations are that you will produce some work that is at least partially connected to their last articles (so that your work will also fit into their various research projects). Also try to talk with some of their students (you can easily detect them by looking through their CVs - they might have a PhD students entry - or through DBLP or Scholar by looking at their latest publications and identifying collaborators that only published few papers in the last 2-3 years). Try to understand what a PhD means, what are the expectations, and what is the amount of work you need to put in order to get to good results.
I would also recommend you to check these interesting slides from one of the professors I just mentioned: http://www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/~silvia/research-tips/.
The idea is to try to estimate the expectations, the amount of work needed and the time you think you will need in order to fulfill this work. The actual number of papers depends a lot on the domain in which you are working, but also on the quality of the outlets where you will publish (you might end up with a smaller number of papers if all of them are only in the top outlets for your field). Good luck!
Disclaimer: I do not directly work with any of the persons already mentioned, but I do work at a university from Vienna.

"If your goal is to be a professor at TU Vienna..." Where did this assumption come from?  The OP said only that he had a master's degree from that university and is interested in doing a PhD there (and, perhaps, elsewhere).  I didn't see that the OP said anything about her post-PhD plans.  The explanation that follows also contains many unstated assumptions about the academic field (which, so far as I can see, was not specified)....

....You give very specific information about numbers of papers and so forth.  In mathematics, for instance, these numbers are certainly inaccurate: I took the time to check that the Head of the Geometric Analysis Research Unit at TU Vienna has 16 publications now: when he was hired as an assistant professor, he had 7-9.  Why you list five out of presumably hundreds of faculty there is also confusing.  In summary: your answer is highly specific in a way which is not clearly pertinent for the OP.  Someone who does not know which information to discard for their situation could be misled.

A little more searching seems to indicate that the advice you are giving is concentrated on computer science, whereas the OP's master's degree is in quantitative finance.  It would be very helpful if you could explicitly indicate the range of applicability of your answer and address whether or not it applies to the OP.

@PeteL.Clark Thanks! That is true. My advice is related to Computer Science because that's my field. It is also true that the number of papers depends on the field, and also on the requests of your supervisors and of the guidelines of the faculty. I will modify my answer to clearly state that this is the situation from Computer Science.

@PeteL.Clark The head of Geometric Analysis Research Unit from TU Vienna has an ERC Grant on his CV. This is one of the conditions of being appointed a Professor at TU Vienna.

@paxRoman Thx for your great answer! Actually I do not know what I will do after my PhD degree. I want to do this mainly for me, because I love this field of research and, honestly, I am also doing this in my freetime for a long time ;p. Hence, I would appreciate it if you could also write about the other site, like not becoming a professor. How does it differ? I think this would be also for great use of others!

Dear @Kare - the PhD is great for learning things you will usually not learn at your current job, things that you think might happen in 10 or 20 years from now, provided that the niche in which you are doing your PhD comes to maturity. This being said, many companies do give you some extra-money, and you have a somewhat easier access to top positions (VP of Research, VP of Product, CTO, even CEO), provided you are also a good team player. In university is great because you have lots of vacation, conferences, sabbatical years; but in industry is also great because you earn more money.

Dear @Kare - here is the second part of the answer: You can also launch a company if you are a good researcher. There are grants for up to 2 million EUR for starting a lab, and an additional 200k for starting a company that sells the product of that lab. If you think about it, academia is just another type of business: one that is a bit more abstract, but ultimately our goals are money, vacations, less stress while doing what we love. These being said being successful in the industry will always get you more money, more rewards, but you will certainly be busier...

Being a PhD student is a full-time job.
True, "officially" you may be assigned to 20 hours of "study" and 20 hours of "work" by the university, but this is just a way to determine your salary, and does NOT reflect the amount of time you actually spend on research studies.
In the U.S., the nominal time for PhD is about five to six years average. This assumes the student is a full time student. While some people finish their PhD in three years or less, this is truly exceptional. The average is six. (This was the case at least in the school I attended, in the Computer Science department. Length may vary in other departments.) It also depends on what you aim for in your PhD: is graduating after publishing just one paper good enough for you?
Now let's do the math. If it takes about six years to finish a degree, assuming full time, then how much time would it take for a part-time student? Take into consideration also 20%-30% extension of time due to context-switching, but also reduce 15%-25% of the time due to being more efficient  (it's easier to waste time when working full-time, in my opinion).
You arrive at 10+ years.
Then again, I know people that worked part-time and studied part-time, and were able to complete their PhD studies in four to six years. I also know people that took five to six years to finish their MSc degree (which nominally takes two years), due to having another full-time job.. It depends mostly on your abilities and aims from PHD (but also quite a bit on your luck).

Thx for your answer! What do you mean by "luck"?

luck in choosing the right research question; luck in choosing the right advisor; luck in discovering new (awesome) things; luck in getting a work accepted to publish; etc.

@Kare and luck as in not having any monumental setbacks.

Luck is setting out ocean bottom seismometers and them having all their data when you pick them up 5 months later: research is a scary and fickle business.

luck = randomness. I just point this out because for some people, "luck" is a systematic bias in favor of a person -- a supernatural force. These people may think that you are crazy if you indicate that you believe in "luck". In the context of a PhD, randomness is a big factor because you are doing something that has never been done before, which makes your work inherently unpredictable. Furthermore, you are judged largely on your output -- there is not much credit for effort. Finally, the workplace is less organized than for other work -- therefore, more randomness.

This answer does not take into account that there are some rather big differences between an US PhD program (well most at least) and an European one. This discusses the differences, but the most important part is that you generally have ~2 years course work in the US PhD program which you don't need in Europe (since you already have your masters). 2-3 years for the actual research and thesis is more accurate timewise I'd say.

And to add to what Ran G said, if you work at half the speed, it will take you longer to produce scientific results, duplicating the chances that you get scooped.
This said, it is common for medical doctors and some nurses with a full time job to do a PhD, but that is a whole different beast (and does take many years).


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Comparing results if there have been no similar studies
I examined seven years of financial data for a given country. However, there have been no similar studies that have the same sample as mine and cover a seven-year period (most study just one year in my area in this country). Also, I used a new measurement of one of the variables, which makes the results difficult to compare.

How can I compare the results of my study with existing results in such circumstances?

Did you ask your supervisor first?

I assume Dmitry is asking because your supervisor is presumably familiar with the area you're working in, and how this sort of problem is typically dealt with in your field. So your supervisor is the best one to ask.

@user48932: Because your advisor should generally be your first point of contact to answer questions such as this.

This site is for Q&A from which other users can potentially benefit. As you said, your research situation is quite unique, and your supervisor is really the best person to consult with.

"I need to widen my gaze and listen different perspectives".  Sounds great.  Before you can listen to a different perspective though you need to listen to one perspective.  If you have an important methodological question about your thesis and your first instinct is to ask it in very general terms to a bunch of strangers on the internet....Well, we are trying to give you perspective.  Our perspective is that you should reflect on why you don't want to discuss this with your advisor.  Most other students in your situation certainly would.

@user48932 On StackExchange sites, people ask questions in comments so that they can get additional details about your situation in order to give you a better, more focused answer. That is how the site works. You are free to ignore any questions you don't want to answer (although this might not be productive), but you should be polite about it.

Only your advisor can give you advice on how to analyze your particular data set. In general, however, when looking at a new data set I start by asking the following questions:

What is known about X from past studies? Is the new data consistent with this? If not, can you find out why?
What is not known about X from past studies, that this new data can give insight into? (You must have some idea about what this data will offer, or you wouldn't have bothered with it, right?)

where X is whatever you're interested in studying.

what new data? people studied the same data but not for seven years ! please read the question before you answer. thank you

@user48932 The "new data" here is the set of seven years of data (vs. the smaller subsets of data that everyone else has studied, i.e. "past studies").


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Should I apply for a MA or a PHD(in mathematics) after undergraduate study?
I am entering my 4th year undergraduate BS math program next month. I am certain I will want to do a PhD program eventually but I am not sure if I should do a MA before it.
I have decent undergraduate non-math grades(8.8~) and pretty good math grades (9.8~). I also have done quite a few graduate courses(most of them self study) in various topics: Algebraic number theory, Algebraic topology(homotopy, homology, cohomology under a professor), Lie groups, Galois theory(introductory), Model theory(under a professor), Universal Algebra(under a prof), Set theory(under a professor) and Functional Analysis.
I also expect close to full on my gre subject test(from mock tests).
I am not sure how much value this adds and/or how to present it properly but this is all I have to show for my undergraduate years. Under these circumstances, what would the chances of acceptance into a very good PhD program be? I would like apply to an algebraic number theory/logic oriented program(like Berkley and UCLA). Also, what is the best way to make them aware of my self study? Do I mention it in my statement or should I ask my professors to mention it for me?
What are the benefits of doing a MA before PhD or vice versa?
Edit: In response to one of the comments, my career goals are to eventually get a research position in math(maybe academia, maybe elsewhere but definitely pure math oriented research).

What do you mean by self study? What do you mean by "under a professor"? Does your transcript show you have done self study under those professors?  Can you get recommendation letters from the professors stating that you have done self study under them? GRE mock test does not count. Only official scores count.

I have not taken the official yet and was only projecting scores. Under the professors is either a class under them or studying from materials supplied by them. I can get recommendation letters for this. Other self study is studying on my own from textbooks like Ireland(number theory), Stewart(Galois theory) etc and generally solving most of the exercises and going through the subject.

There are at least three questions here: What are my chances? (Depends more on how well your statement and letters sell your potential for research than your grades.) What is the best way to make admissions committees aware of my self-study? (Specific, credible, technical detail in bot your statement and your letters.) What are the benefits of an MA before a PhD? (Answered elsewhere.)

I think you need to clarify your career goals. Then the answers can be tailored appropriately.

@BrianP My career goals are to eventually get a research position in math(maybe academia, maybe elsewhere but definitely pure math oriented research).


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Is it correct to refer to a neurosurgeon with many scholarly publications as a "scientist"?
This may be off-topic here; if so, I'd appreciate suggestions for where else to post it.
I recently got into a disagreement with someone regarding Ben Carson, the  neurosurgeon who has recently become a prominent figure in American politics, and is said to be considering a run for the Presidency.  The other person in this disagreement referred to Carson as a "scientist".  I thought that label seemed wrong.  Without question he is an accomplished neurosurgeon, perhaps one of the greatest living, and he definitely has many, many publications.  But somehow the "scientist" label felt off-key to me, and those publications don't seem to me to be "research" as much as they are clinical reports.
I know the words "scientist" and "research" don't have hard-and-fast definitions, and I certainly don't want to cast aspersions on the applied sciences. Nor do I want this thread to fixate solely on the individual that inspired it.  I'm really interested in the more general issue that is in the title of the question:  Is it correct to refer to a neurosurgeon with many scholarly publications as a "scientist"?

Is the neurosurgeon an MD/PhD or just an MD?

In this particular case, Wikipedia lists only an MD.  But I am not sure that is a relevant criterion.  It seems to me that whether or not one is a scientist depends on what one does professionally, not on the degrees one has or has not earned.

All politics aside, I don't understand why you would deny the title "scientist" to an eminent figure with numerous scholarly publications in the scientific literature.

Because what he does doesn't feel like "research".  Honestly, this isn't about the politics.

This I think would be best put in the "English language and usage" SE. If I had sufficient privilege here, I would vote to close this, then migrate it over there.

Remember that a typical PhD knows a whole lot about almost nothing. Just because someone is an expert in their particular field does not mean their opinion on anything outside that field is any good.

Is it correct to refer to Bill Murray as a golfer?

@SE318 I considered "English language and usage" before posting it here. I wonder if the answers would be different over there?

And, maybe just ask Ben Carson what he thinks.

@briandfoy well, using google's dictionary as a source, a surgeon is a "medical practitioner qualified to practice surgery", and medicine is defined as "the science or practice of the diagnosis, treatment, or prevention of disease(in technical use often taken to exclude surgery)" and scientist is defined as "a person who is studying or has expert knowledge of one or more of the natural or physical sciences" so, minimally, non-technically they are a scientist. Technically, one could argue that a neurosurgeon would have to be an expert in neuroscience, making her a scientist by defintion.

I suppose the real question is whether he conducts scientific study. Many medical doctors do engage in scientific experimental work, or provide scientific tests of existing questions. If Ben Carson is using scientific methods in order to answer a scientific question, then I suppose he is a scientist. If, on the other hand, he is publishing interesting case-studies of his work that don't address a larger scientific puzzle, then I don't think he would qualify. The question is thus the content of his published work.

Perhaps if the question isn't about politics, evocative labels such as "right wing" should be left out?

@Wayne Thank you for the suggestion, I will edit accordingly.

At the research company where I work, there are three parallel career tracks: scientist, engineer, and manager.  Manager is obviously quite different than the other two, and eventually ends up with the person doing little or no technical work.  The only distinction between the scientists and the engineers, however, is determined post hoc by observing what the person tends to do: scientists are the people who tend to publish a lot and lead research projects, and engineers are the people who don't do those things much.
Science is not a tribe, nor is it a credential, nor an award.  Science is a behavior: performing investigations that contribute to human knowledge.  Any person who does this in a consistent and sustained manner, I would call a scientist, in addition to whatever other labels may be appropriate.
In the case of your example, Ben Carson, a quick Google Scholar search shows he's got a lot of publications, many well-cited (easily 2000+ citations, H-index of around 35).  Even without reading any of it to see if his work is ultimately borne out or refuted, it is clear that this is a person who has made a significant intellectual mark on the scientific discussion of their field.  This is not surprising: careful and well-presented clinical reports are an important contribution to knowledge!  Complementarily, a non-scientifically inclined doctor might simply treat their patients and not write the cases up for publication, merely keeping their private records in accordance with normal medical practice.
In short: definitely a scientist, no matter what else he may or may not be as well.

"well-presented clinical reports are an important contribution to knowledge" Indeed, but they're typically authored by clinicians which, ideology aside, seems to be the most appropriate label in this case.

@blmoore Why do you think the term "clinician" is exclusive of the term "scientist"?

Of course, I don't think that and they're not (my claim was most appropriate). Clearly while any one person could be described hundreds of different ways, some terms can be more appropriate than others without claiming them to be incompatiable.

@blmoore The original question was about whether it's correct to refer to a person as a scientist, thus, that's what I'm answering.  I also disagree with you asserting that clinician is more appropriate - I think that it strongly depends on context.  Clinician refers to a different aspect of the work, and so in some contexts it will be appropriate and in others not.

@jakebeal thank you for your response. I think you have helped me hone in on what it is about the word "scientist" that feels slightly off to me:  It is the distinction between "careful and well-presented clinical reports" and "performing investigations". To me, the latter has an aspect of intentionality and purposefulness to it that the former does not: i.e., in an "investigation" one has a research question, and one seeks to answer it. In a clinical report, one does something technical and complicated and subsequently writes about it.

Indeed and I'm not answering the original question that's why I made a comment rather than an answer: clinician is a more fitting description than scientist of this person's career (IMO), I guess we can agree to disagree.

Oh, and +1 for "Science is not a tribe, nor is it a credential, nor an award. Science is a behavior...."  That was precisely my reaction to the question (asked by @Brian Borchers under the OP) about whether he has an MD/PhD or just an MD.  That seems to me the wrong question.

@mweiss: The by far biggest discovery of my wife's PI (stem cell related) came to happen by utter chance: they investigated A, and were stunned to see that in the process, they had shown Omega (just to underline how distant the result was). He struggled with that quite a bit (he wrote about it), until his dad (a math professor himself) told him to stop being silly. Intention really is a poor measuring stick for what research is. This is a good answer, and I hope you manage to look at the case truly w/o political prejudice (I wasn't happy myself about what brought carson to the news recently).

Oh, I sincerely think my question isn't motivated by political prejudice.  I suppose it's possible at an unconscious level, but this really isn't about BC.  I am on friendly terms with a local neurosurgeon (who also has many publications) and I am pretty sure I have never heard him referred to as a scientist, or refer to himself that way.

@ChrisWhite My language was carefully chosen: "performing investigations that contribute to human knowledge ... in a consistent and sustained manner."  An engineer who publishes once may have made a contribution, but has not made a sustained practice.  Likewise, an author contributes to the sum of human experience, not to its knowledge (in the scientific, not colloquial sense).  A systematic scholar of literature, however, may well be conducting science: consider sociology, which while "softer" than white lab coats and bubbling beakers, is no less a science.

Methinks that the original question is reflective of an academic culture that has deified "science" and "scientist". Your approach cuts through that: do they have a scientific mindset and use the scientific method on problems with are amenable to such practices.

"Deified?"  I don't think my question indicated that I think "scientist" is a superior designation, just that it has a specific meaning and that it seemed to be misapplied.

I think there are two question at play in whether or not Mr. Carson can be considered a scientist.

Is the field in which Mr. Carson practiced a science?
Is the work that Mr. Carson performed in this field scientific?

The answer to the first question is not as definitive as some might believe. Even among physicians, some view medicine as more art than science (every patient is different, not all treatments can be universally applied, have to tailor care to the individual, etc, etc). It sounds to me like you believe it falls into the realm of applied science, and since it incorporates the application of  several branches of biological science, "applied science" is a logical and fitting tag.
The answer to the second question in my opinion should be handled with care, and not treated as a blanket answer for all medical physicians. So let's just take Mr. Carson's body of work and see if it fits the mold for "scientific." To me, the high level basic test of whether or not a study is scientific is whether or not it uses the scientific method. To remind everyone:

Ask a question
Do research
Form a hypothesis
Test the hypothesis with an experiment
Analyze the data and form a conclusion
Share your results

Just reading his Wikipedia article, the following jumped out at me:

I was talking to a friend of mine, who was a cardiothoracic surgeon, who was the chief of the division, and I said, "You guys operate on the heart in babies, how do you keep them from exsanguinating" and he says, "Well, we put them in hypothermic arrest." I said, "Is there any reason that -- if we were doing a set of Siamese twins that were joined at the head -- that we couldn't put them into hypothermic arrest, at the appropriate time, when we're likely to lose a lot of blood?" and he said, "No." I said, "Wow, this is great." Then I said, "Why am I putting my time into this? I'm not going to see any Siamese twins." So I kind of forgot about it, and lo and behold, two months later, along came these doctors from Germany, presenting this case of Siamese twins. And, I was asked for my opinion, and I then began to explain the techniques that should be used, and how we would incorporate hypothermic arrest, and everybody said "Wow! That sounds like it might work." And, my colleagues and I, a few of us went over to Germany. We looked at the twins. We actually put in scalp expanders, and five months later we brought them over and did the operation, and lo and behold, it worked.

Just from this blurb I can see that he formulates questions for a field of applied science, forms a hypothesis based on known science, and performs his experiments. Based on his published works, I think it's reasonably safe to assume that he analyzes results and shares the findings.
My opinion is that a doctor that does not simply read from a script of "How To Treat" is absolutely a scientist. The body is their Petri dish, so to speak. He shares his results, and I don't see anything about him being a kook, charlatan, or fraud, so I am assuming, given his prominence, that his results have been reproduced by others in the field. The human brain in particular is an area where medical science's understanding is pretty limited, so I think the tag is even more fitting for someone like Mr. Carson whose work didn't have a definitive How-To guide.  However, your views may differ based on how you would answer the questions above.

So in your opinion mathematicians are not scientists....

Mathematicians can work in a wide number of fields, many of which are science-based. A blanket statement on mathematicians is not appropriate. You have to look at the field in which they apply their craft and the work that they do.

Most of the pure mathematicians work in academia. Most prove lots of theorems, publish them but never run a single experiment. Does such a mathematician qualify as a scientist to you or not?

@NickS Mathematicians are not the topic of the question or the answer. Perhaps you might start your own question, or open a chat discussion? Marc defines what a scientist is, the gives us a concrete example of how the person being asked about fits the criteria. My only problem with this answer, is that it is mostly about the specific person, and does not fully incorporate all possible field-specific cases as much as might be possible..

I would not consider the person you describe to be a scientist, but you're welcome to tell my why that would be a mistake.

@MarcChiesa Because mathematicians ask questions,do a lot of research on them. These problems become hypothesis, and we "test" them by looking proofs proofs and counterexamples. But instead of running experiments, we find proofs, and once we find the proof we draw the conclusion. And we definitely share the results.

@CGCampbell The issue is that that is the wikipedia definition of a scientist, but Wikipedia is also full of mistakes. By asking this question, I am challenging this definition, and by my understanding this is "scientific"...Mathematicians do exactly what all scientists do, seek new knowledge. The only difference is they they use a  different way of testing the hypothesis (proof vs actual experiment).. But the methodology is the same: the seek evidence (on paper instead of in a lab) to sustain their hypothesis. Most funding agencies and universities do consider math as part of the science...

@CGCampbell This is true, and regretfully I agree that my answer is lacking with respect to the more general question. I found it difficult to apply my answer it to the broader field of neurosurgeons because I don't know generally how much they publish or go off-script for experimental treatments. My sense is that most don't, but I don't want to shortchange the individuals that do. If you have any specific suggestions for improving this answer, I would gladly take them.

@NickS I welcome your opposing view. I personally don't see mathematics as a subset of science, but rather a different field with a significant intersection. Perhaps we can agree to disagree.

I agree with @MarcChiesa 's original post. We can probably differentiate several definitions of 'science'; for example, science can be a field of study and practice (biology, sociology, physics), and science can be a method of inquiry (the scientific method). There are plenty of Biologists who don't regularly practice science, and there are some people who engage in the scientific method outside of the traditional fields of science. For me, the question of whether an individual is "a scientist" falls to whether they actively engage in scientific inquiry.

@Jacob But you see, and this is my point, when you differentiate between several definitions of science, you also change the meaning of "scientist"...

@NickS I think it is fair for a word to have multiple definitions. The definitions I used have been generally well accepted for some time (long before Wikipedia). If you want to change the perception of the word scientist, surely there are better platforms than the StackExchange comment system. I get that you take umbrage with mathematicians being excluded from the general label of "scientist" under these definitions, I guess I don't understand why it's such a big deal. It certainly isn't intended as a slight. I mean scientists, mathematicians... they're all just a bunch of nerds anyway ;)

@ChrisWhite Well I am a mathematician, and I consider it science. Gauss, a name even many non-mathematicians are familiar with, called mathematics "the Queen of the Sciences". Actually most mathematicians I know think of mathematics as being a precise science....

@ChrisWhite Hi there.  I am a mathematician, and I consider mathematics to be a science.

It sounds like whether you would consider mathematicians as scientists depends on whether you consider doing a proof as Test the Hypothesis with an Experiment. I personally do consider proofs to be a test of a Hypothesis (but maybe not an "experiment") - my own view is that I would prefer to call a mathematician a mathematician rather than a scientist because it is more specific and no less meaningful. That doesn't necessarily mean you aren't one, just that it isn't as important of a definition Also, you can be "Ruler of [Object]" without being that object. You could say I am King of my house.

@NickS: Actually, Gauss said "Die Mathematik ist die Königin der Wissenschaften," and although Wissenschaft is often (mis)translated into English as science, it really refers to any scholarly study.  For example, a long paper written for a history class may be referred to as a wissenschaftliche Arbeit.