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How does one with a B.S. in Mathematical Sciences become a software developer?
I will graduate in 1 semester and I have realized towards the end of my B.S. in mathematical sciences that I would like to develop software. I know there's no degree requirement to do this.
I have taken 20 math classes, bu have only taken 4 official computer science classes (2 in Java, 1 in C++, 1 in discrete math) and will have the opportunity to take up to 2 more before I graduate such as "data structures and algorithms" (a java class). I have also taken graph theory through the math department.
I have brainstormed. I could apply to masters degree programs in computer science (or PhD programs, then leave with a masters) or I could try to self teach myself the programming languages and gaps in my knowledge. Or I could take the additional couple of years to finish a double undergraduate major in computer science at my school. I could also try for an internship for Summer 2014, regardless.
So I could:

Self study and try for an entry level position. No explicit or implicit cost if I succeed. But if I fail to get a job, there's the time wasted that I could have been in school.
Finish a double major in CS (would take an additional 2 years). This would have an opportunity cost as well as an explicit cost.
Apply to graduate school in CS. This would have an opportunity cost and most likely an explicit cost.

Want to be a runner?  Run.  Want to be a writer?  Write.  Want to be a software developer?  Develop software.

That doesn't tell me anything that I did not already know.

So, then, I don't understand the question.  What does becoming a software developer have to do with college?  Now, if you were asking about learning some computer science...

Building on Jeff's answer: Want to be a chemist? Get some vials and mix stuff. Chances are, though, you won't get far in that profession. Unless you actually study chemistry... The question should be: Do you want to be a good software developer? If so, you're going to have to study Computer Science.

"or PhD programs, then leave with a masters" don't do that!!!

This is in no way an answer to the question, and not even directly relevant, but if you have a mathematical background I recommend learning Common Lisp. You might enjoy it. Of course, I'd recommend Common Lisp even if you don't have a mathematical background, but I think someone with a mathematical background has a higher chance of liking it.

@Pedro: not at all, some of the absolutely best software developers I've worked with didn't go to college. Computer science, on the other hand, is a different issue.

I am a little troubled by classifying "data structures and algorithms" as a Java class. A good data structures and algorithms class should teach far more important, durable skills than any one programming language. Yes, the class will use some language, and you need basic skills in that language, but the choice of language is not the point.

My answer is coming from the experience of graduating with a B.S. in Mathematics (with a Physics minor) and then work as a programmer.
I had comparable programming experience before graduating and had actually planned on taking a second major in CS before dropping in in favor of Physics. I quickly realized that I would only find work in a programming position. It was quite a shock to work on a enterprise class application with hundreds of classes and a complicated architecture. I was incredibly lucky to find a position that was willing to train me up to speed.
I have found that sometimes I will use my math background to come up with an algorithm easily that other programmers will be stunned by. Other times I will feel critically behind the curve, especially when asked to design/architecture a new project.
I have filled in some of these gaps by supplementing my education through MOOCs, reading tons of books and forums (although I have only now started contributing), and picking my coworkers brains. I have had a goal of improving my skills with software patterns, and adding a new language/technology every year. However, keeping up with my mathematical skills (especially linear algebra and statistics) has opened many doors.
Also, improving "soft skills" like communication, networking, and organization is very important. In a lot of positions the goal in training is for you to generate business for the company.
Getting the lingo right away is critical. Once you know what can be done it is simply a matter of finding out how.
After three years as a junior programmer I am starting to look at Masters programs and I feel much more prepared and my job will be partially reimbursing me for classes. In addition I have a much better sense of what programs will benefit my career and how. For the type of work I am interested in I am looking into CS programs but also Systems Engineering, Computer Engineering, and Statistics.
That being said, I was incredibly fortunate to find a position that nurtured my abilities. To be clear, my supervisors were expecting a year before I contributed in a meaningful way, a lot of places will not take that bet on anyone. In order to get where I am I worked hard, usually 50 hrs at work and an additional 10 hrs of outside research.

+1 for I will use my math background to come up with an algorithm easily that other programmers will be stunned by. I had the exactly the same experience.

What do understand by 'software developer'?
If you want to write the source code for casual games on smart phones, you don't need any knowledge from university at all. I am pretty sure that many software developers do not care at all about your university degree if you can provide practical prove of ability.
The more complex and "professional" the project gets, the more a university degree (in sciences or engineering) is expected or even required. But then your desired level operation is more "bird view" than anything you could learn in university classes. Whether you are an excellent computer scientist, mathematician or physicist does not matter, as long as you are excellent. In particular, mathematical skills are all but mandatory and essential for large-scale and high-performance computation.
So, what kind of mathematician are you? It makes a difference whether you are an algebraic topologist, or into combinatorial or numerical algorithms. Furthermore, there are universities where CS programs are extremely mathematical, or, conversely, math programs contain a lot of theoretical computer science.
At least if you are a computational mathematician, it does not matter at all whether your master is CS, math or physics. These theory stuff on software engineering (development models) is more humanities rather than science. Spend some bucks for SE books if you feel like missing these topics.
PS:
"2 in Java, 1 in C++" - nobody gives a ... cares what languages you encountered in these classes. University won't help you to become a Java or C++ pro, you will have to do that by yourself, as will you have to do with a lot of other languages in professional software development. What have these classes really been about?


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Any pointers for reading articles digitally (on screen)?
First of all let me apologize for the title, as it is perhaps very vague. The issue is as follows; I have stopped printing my articles and instead starting reading them on screen via my library manager software (Papers2).
The problem is that I find it's MUCH harder to focus when I am reading on screen and thus takes much longer for me to read articles on a screen. It's almost like I get some sort of digital dyslexia... As possible reasons, I figure small things like new mail notifications, screen brightness, sitting/standing posture etc all weigh in somehow. But I suspect that the subliminal association of "how I normally read stuff on a screen" might have a larger effect. In other words since I am normally skimming through stuff when I am in front of the screen, my brain might try to take in information the same way when I am trying to read an article, which of course is a recipe for failure...
I wonder if it's just me or if this is a common phenomenon? Additionally I would appreciate if I could get some tips on how to tackle this problem. Obviously printing all papers is an option but it's neither elegant (creates a mess on/around my desk) nor is it environment-friendly.

I think this is really just practice. It'll get better over time, and the environment will thank you. I'm also considering buying Nexus 10, it's wonderful, had it in my hands just today.

somehow a related question with great answers http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5786/how-to-avoid-procrastination-during-the-research-phase-of-my-phd/5788#5788

I think the answer will depend critically on if what you are planning on reading includes math, plots, tables, or photographs.

@DanielE.Shub mostly text; long paragraphs full of explaining gene/protein interactions etc. So not formulas, some plots and tables. I have to ask, however, in what sense does that matter?

@posdef if there are lots of color photos you might want to worry about color calibration. Plain text means longer lines and denser text. Math means shorter lines with more "scrolling". Figures mean you might want to flip back and forth between different "pages".

I have terrible eyes and this is a very real problem for me. Although I'm not an eye care specialist I can say anecdotally that there are a few things that have really made all the difference for me.
First: if you wear glasses, get the computer lenses. Usually they are some kind of an off yellow to cut glare. These really help to reduce eye strain.
Second: look away from the screen every few minutes. Try to focus on objects away from the screen that let you change your focal distance. I find that doing this for just a few moments at the end of every paragraph really helps.
EDIT: Use natural light if you can. I've found that turning my desk so that the ambient light from the window illuminates my screen has also helped me a lot. You have to be careful of glare but when I finally got everything situated it made a notable difference.
Third: media counts a lot. If you're going to use a tablet or eReader look for something that has front/side lighting. Many people like the new Kindle paperwhite but I prefer the Kobo glo. If you're looking for a more stationary solution then I highly recommend a good projector. Prices have come down quite a bit and you can now get an 'OK' projector for just a couple of hundred dollars. It will take a little bit to acclimate yourself to the new reading format but once you do I think you'll find that you like it.  I know that I do.

Another comment from a person wearing glasses (not worth a full answer). I used to wear lenses before, and it became almost impossible to work behind a screen for >1h. My doctor said that the brain tends to slow down the blinking rate when looking at a screen, to "make sure we miss as little as possible". Eyedrops should be used regularly (every 2-4hrs) if you're wearing lenses -- but in the end I also found eyeglasses with protective computer lenses more a comfortable option (and more healthy as confirmed by my doctor). I'd guess that's why looking away/focusing other things helps so much.

@penelope interesting point. I wonder why the brain and the eyes are not as strained when reading from a hard-copy. I mean the information is the same, so the level of attention your sub-conscience dedicates to reading should in theory be the same.

this is a combination of what I think I remember from my doctor and what I probably concluded since on my own (so not guaranteed correct): looking at a (highly illuminated) screen with changing content makes you brain expect a dynamical content (e.g. movie; if you scroll, the content of the screen is changing + any notifications showing up), while looking at a paper, the content is known to be static (if you turn pages, that's just a new object with static content)

@penelope sounds reasonable :)

Even I had similar problem, I asked few people I know & I came to know about this software called F.Lux. It provides a different lighting according to the time. And you can set it as per your convenience. I suggest you to give it a try :
http://stereopsis.com/flux/
It's a freeware, available for Windows/Mac & even for iOS (jailbroken) & Android.
My second suggestion is to look away from screen for ever few mins. Currently I use a timer to remind me (sometimes I even forget this lol) & I make sure to look away from screen for every 30-45 mins. For this I use Time Out app in my Mac. Similar app should be available for your OS too.

I suggest a number of things to consider.
1) If you're suffering from glare issues or similar, try to reposition yourself so that the light comes from behind your monitor and reduces glare.
2) As has been suggested in comments, try a tablet. I personally use an iPad for much of my paper reading and it works well. Some advocate the smaller tablets because of their lighter weight (the iPad does feel a little heavy over time, and it's hard to hold in one hand for long amounts of time).
The benefit of an iPad or another tablet is that it feels much more like reading paper than sitting at a computer does. You can sit down at a couch or in a chair and lounge back. In addition, the iPad has a high-quality screen. You can also easily make annotations with good software. I personally use iAnnotate, but there are many options.
3) Many computer monitors, and especially laptop screens, are poor quality. If you want to do a lot of reading on the computer but do not want to try a tablet, consider getting a good-quality external monitor.
Most monitors are TN monitors, which have good response times, but have poor contrast ratios, poor viewing angles, and poor color accuracy, as well as limited refresh rates. IPS panels, in contrast, have much higher everything, but are more expensive. The vast majority of laptop displays, for example, are TN panels, as are the vast majority of computer monitors under $350 (at the 24" size). It may be worth looking at a higher-quality monitor if you believe that it will help your reading and you want to persist reading on the computer.
If you're trying to read on a television-as-a-monitor, don't. Television screens aren't good for text reading.
A benefit with getting a monitor is that larger monitors generally make people more productive, so even if you buy a monitor and still decide not to read from the screen, you're probably going to still benefit from it work-wise.
--
Basically, your mileage will vary. I've heard of people who have no problems with reading on screens (I'm one of them, though I did get some strain after a while and ended up switching to iPad for much of my reading). I've also heard of people who see flicker and get eye strain viewing certain monitors, with varying severity - some had severe pain after minutes of ANY monitor.
Personally, I feel that if you're still struggling to be productive after a week or two with new hardware (and, hardware is NOT cheap) then I'd consider just going back to paper. While the amount of paper that you have to archive and throw out can be sometimes rather depressing, it's actually a rather cheap alternative compared to purchasing a $500 tablet or monitor which has toxic waste, metal, and unrecyclable materials.

Sadly we have tiny offices -> I don't have the liberty to move things around as I would have liked to. Likewise I cannot demand a new screen when I already have two 24" monitors. Otherwise interesting points...

Oh and I should add, I have an iPad but I never came around reading papers on that, mostly because it's still not the same thing, bright LCD screen, heavier to hold in hand etc. At lest when I tried reading books on it I got tired VERY fast. I will make an attempt to read papers on it again, can report back when I have something more to report :)

I find that for reading books on the iPad it helps to turn the brightness quite far down and the font size up a bit.  I also find the sepia mode quite comfortable.

+1 for the Ipad (or some other tablet). I bought a $2 pointer and can highlight PDFs on my Ipad screen which is just like using a highlighter. Very convenient to have hundreds (even thousands) of PDFs handy that you can write notes, hightlight text, etc. using natural writing movement. The regular Ipad (or any big tablet) is a little heavy and I think next time I'll go for a Nexus 7 or similar.

You might try to trade in the iPad for an iPad Mini or another 7" tablet. The lighter weight seems to make people who feel that the 10" iPad heavy happier.

I think one big reason I dislike reading on screens is the fact that I am basically shining a flashlight in my eyes for hours.
With software, this is less of a problem for two reasons: First off, the visual scheme is designed for a monitor (and not designed for paper but shown on a monitor like with books or articles). Second, the image is very dynamic, so paper isn't an alternative anyhow.
The first thing to try is to turn down the brightness of your monitor. This may seem to make it very dark at first, but backlight is different from contrast. I find that I easily get used to the lowest brightness setting on my monitors after an hour or so. If the wall or desk space behind your computer is dark, you may also want to put a weak desk lamp so that it shines behind your monitor and reduces the contrast of the wall vs. your screen.
If you do a lot of reading, you should consider rotating your monitor (most newer mounts support this) to have it oriented in portrait instead of landscape.
F.lux was already mentioned, and it can be very helpful, but I think it's more to do with effects of using a computer at late hours at home. At noon, a f.lux filtered screen will look about the same as without a filter anyway. If you are lucky enough to have a fancy monitor, you might even find sophisticated software to control contrast and brightness.
I have had a much better experience reading books on a Kindle. Because the screen is not backlighted, but instead gets illuminated by ambient lighting, it is much less irritating. Unfortunately the PDF support of Kindles isn't very good, you must scroll through each page as if it was a picture, and for papers which have small type, multiple columns and frequently refer to figures on other pages, the Kindle's interface will dirve you crazy. Kindle DX has a larger screen, about 8", though still not as big as a paper.
An alternative is, if you can find an HTML version of your article, to read that in your Kindle using the Web Browser.
Since you are stuck on a computer, I would recommend reading in a software such as Foxit Reader, which have very nice tools for highlighting and annotating. You could even invest in a drawing tablet such as Wacom to help you draw on figures and so on.
IMO this is a lost cause and you should print articles. You have read books and papers from actual paper for decades of your life, including in childhood. Your brain and your eyes are probably accustomed to it much better, and there might be psychological cues which help you focus (not to mention distraction on the computer like email, software popups and so on).
The paper consumption can be quite big, but honestly, how many "more important" uses for paper are there besides scientific research? In any case;

You can use low-grade, recycled paper
You can print on both sides, or reuse single-side paper as scratch paper
You can recycle your own papers after you read them
Only print papers that you actually want to read, instead of skim for 5 minutes (this should consume a very small amount of paper compared to your other daily activities)

Like you say, it's easy to end up with a huge mess. But that's a question of being organized. If you are a little proactive and develop a reasonable filing system (even a few manilla folders with labeled tabs can do wonders), you can keep the vast majority of the clutter under control very easily.

I have a similar issue with reading on screen. There doesn't seem to be a commercial A4-sized e-ink reader, which is what I'd ideally read digital copies on.
So, when I'm onlu skimming a paper, I'll do it on-screen.
But whenever I'm serious about digesting a paper, I've switched back to printing it out.

If you have a Nook/Kindle I've found it surprisingly easier to read on those devices. Kindle allows you to email files to that device and it appears in just a few min. There are glitches of course, but I find it a good middle ground.

Really?  I heard Kindles were terrible for reading PDFs, but maybe they have improved.  The ebook reader I had (Sony PRS-T1) was supposed to be one of the best for PDFs at the time I bought it, and it was still pretty terrible.  I definitely wouldn't have tried to read a paper on it.

@Tara B - reading PDFs in their native form is pretty terrible on a Kindle.  You can send PDFs to Amazon.com (through your kindle email address) with "convert" in the subject, and you'll get a decent rendering of the text, but not any vector graphics.  For text-heavy articles, it works great.

@Chris- Agree. You have to send it through the conversion to get it to read clearly.

Lisa has a good point but I'll just go into a little more depth with my experience (perhaps a little too much for a comment).
I use a Kindle DX (e-ink, big) and while it's not perfect it is so much better than a tablet. I find that reading on a tablet or monitor my eyes become quite tired quite quickly, but not with e-ink displays. The problem is that the Kindle (at least mine) does not zoom well into PDFs. However, the Nook (e-ink) did (sister has one) and even for my Kindle I can use Calibre (free) to convert PDFs to the native Kindle format. Calibre does work well for text-heavy articles (if there are not too many columns - the simpler the better) but if you have a lot of creative formatting, it's not quite so great.
The nice thing about the Kindle DX is that you can hold it on the side and you can read PDF articles well by jumping back and forth (read top 1/2 of first column in one view, then next page to view the bottom 1/2, then previous page to read the top 1/2 of the other column, etc.).

I write long policy documents and instead of printing them, I tend to proof-read them on the screen.
I use perhaps the most inexpensive way: the 'text to speech' program. This is inbuilt in the Mac computer. I aware there are better programs available but they are not free.
I basically highlight the text and press the key combination and the computer reads the text back to me. All I do is follow the document on the screen without too much effort. No eye strain etc.
This is quite relaxing as you can hear the words and in the case of proofreading you can gauge the quality of the pros etc.
It works with all types of documents (pdfs and even webpages).

I really doubt that the computer would be able to read a common article in bio-medical research seeing that it's barely English; with all those acronyms and jargon

Even with an ideal speech engine, I doubt it would be appropriate for papers in most research areas. One tends to read them more slowly than a newspaper or a novel: reading a sentence over and over until it makes sense, backtracking to a reference 3 pages before, etc. And that's not related to on-screen reading, the same problems arise with printed articles.

In addition to the above suggestions, I find problems with text that stretches too far across the page. In that case, I do a copy and paste to a Word document, then put the text into columns.

Get a large (22" or 24") display with 16:9 aspect ratio that has a mount that will allow you to put the display in portrait mode.  You'll also need a video card that can support portrait mode display (most do this nowadays).  This is ideal for reading PDF journal articles formatted for print because you can see a whole page at a time without wasting screen real estate or squinting to read tiny fonts.

There are several relatively new 13.3' e ink devices on the market now that could give you what you are looking for — good experience of reading articles digitally, making notes on the margins and highlighting parts of the text: Two Boox Max; Fujitsu Quaderno A4; Sony Digital Paper 13.3; QuirkLogic Papyr; Ratta Supernote.

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Should I leave my PhD in year 6 or just take a bit of a leave and try to regroup?/ What is an "appropriate" level of angst to go through with a PhD?
So, to start with my question... PhDs/research are undoubtedly hard/stressful, but how much is too much? Should I leave my PhD in my 6th year or just take a bit of a leave to try and regroup? (I'm 31 if that makes any difference.)
As with most, my path through grad school has not been straightforward and I apologize in advance for the lengthy background/question.
I received my MS and was planning to continue for a PhD at University A (contingent upon me getting funding + suitable project). Got both of those figured out, but my advisor was told my project would not help her tenure case and had an awkward advisor switch. Got fed up with politics at A then transferred to University B (in year 4) where I have a fantastic and super supportive advisor.
I just started my 6th year, but have not yet taken my qualifying exam. Many reasons for this, but mostly the program at Univ A was more interdisciplinary (better matched to my research) while the program at Univ B is much more traditional/focused on fundamentals. I  need to relearn a lot of material which is not really relevant to my research and have been at a complete loss of motivation for months now. Being daunted by oral exams certainly plays a role, but also feel that a PhD is no longer required as my career goals have also shifted.
All of this, switching schools, etc. etc. has taken its toll on my emotionally/mentally to the point where my research progress is practically non-existent. This has all triggered pretty severe anxiety/depression (yes, I am getting help elsewhere too), but even so, I am seriously questioning whether it is really worth putting myself through this any more.
I love my research topic (on good days), but at what point is the stress of a PhD not worth it anymore?

What I'm going to say may be very stupid but... can't you just relax and consider it as a bad paid shitty job that will award you a piece of paper? That is what I did, I hollowed and I'm dead on the inside (and I haven't finished yet), but I'm still standing. I never had a better plan, though, all jobs around here are shitty and bad paid. I think (I may be wrong) that moving to a different country is easier with that piece of paper.

This sounds like a bad situation. I'm sorry. Can you elaborate on what your PhD is about? Also, you say your career goals have shifted? Can you say what they were and what they are now? I recommend editing your answer to add more information along those lines.

a PhD is no longer required as my career goals have also shifted — So why are you doing it?  What keeps you from just walking away?

I was in a similar situation where I had to transfer from Univ A to Univ B which is in a different country! Making that decision took a toll on me for months since my adviser was pressurizing me too. Finally I decided to move with him, but after a year and half at my univ I realized he was a total jerk and ignorant who did nothing for me but help destroy my career for 5 years. I understand you like your adviser and subject which is a plus.
My suggestion to you is that to take matters in to your hands! Work on subjects you like, avoid the negative comments and people (very important), forget about the number of years you spend, send papers out  and you will be fine. I have done much much better in the last 6 months of PhD than the rest. From the point where I thought had no research at all, now I feel somewhat confident that I will pass the defense next month! Try to read inspirational books to get yourself going. This website helped me a lot http://www.marcandangel.com/ or find some other self-help books and get your inspiration back because it is very vital.
Good luck

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How to condense a full journal paper to a two-page conference abstract?
I am in the field of biomedical engineering and have some results for a full paper, trying to submit as a two-page abstract. I figured I could reuse the text I prepared from the full paper, but not sure how to organize the two pager. Would the following plan work?
Abstract - A very brief summary of the question, the methods and main results.
Introduction - Not a full literature review, but only enough to point out the gap for the question I am trying to answer.
Results - I try to briefly summarize the methods in the results section, and highlight the qualitative findings.
Conclusions - I would skip the Discussion section, and put the take-home message here.
I'd probably put one figure to help the readers, if there is a good one.
What do you think of this plan?
PS: I was intending to present a "finding" paper, not a "methods" paper that developed a new technique. In that case, I cannot skip the methods section for sure.

The usual advice for this type of question is:

Do not shorten, but rewrite.

This will not only produce a smoother text, but also will be quicker. Squeezing eight pages to two is a tremendous headache and time consuming. Usually it also results in an awkward text. Writing two pages for something that you understand thoroughly is quicker. Make a good plan what you want to tell in two pages and write the two pages from scratch.
Edit: I just saw, that this advice is the same as the most upvoted comment for this question. In essence, this question is a duplicate…


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Should I say "few literature" or "little literature"?
I am currently writing an introduction section, which says "this is an important question but currently there is few (or little?) literature available".
Which one should I use, few or little?
Thank you!

my personal favorite: "... but not yet fully explored in the literature"

"Few" is literally (!) incorrect, "little" is literally correct, but does sound awkward due to the accidental strong alliteration (!). As @AliJamali suggested, "limited" is literally correct. Or "not much" or "scant".

This seems like a question for ELL.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because this is about proper use of mass nouns in English, not about academia as defined in the help center.

Little literature is common. You could also say "there is a paucity of literature on this problem"; "the literature on this problem is
scarce,
sparse, or
still in its infancy!"; or as @AliJamali and @paulgarret suggested, limited or scant literature.

They both sound strange. I would personally say "limited literature" instead.

It depends on your context, I have heard all three, "Few", "little" and "limited". For your case as suggested by somebody "limited" would be more appropriate. Now, where to use 'few', suppose if you are talking in context of large sample size and out of that few has what you want then use few. E.g. "There are few journals which provides free access."
Now, 'little' If you do not want to consider sample size or considering sample size is not appropriate. E.g. "There is very little information available on that topic." Here number of sources of that information is not that much significant as information itself is very little in all available sources combined.
So, use 'few' when you want to express Number/Counting and use 'little' when you want to express Amount.
little and limited has somewhat similarity, so you can use either one.

"Research" and "literature" are a mass nouns (i.e., it's like water; it's not countable). "Studies", "Papers", "Publications", and "Researchers" are all countable nouns.  The choice of adjective depends on whether it precedes a mass or a countable noun.

"few": this is suitable for countable nouns but not for mass nouns
"little": to my ear, this is not quite the right adjective to describe the amount of "literature";

Examples of acceptable phrases

Few studies have ...
Few researchers have ...
There is limited literature on ...
There is limited research on ...


text:
Does a tutorial type conference submission differ significantly from a regular submission?
I work mainly with in silico method development and data analysis within biomedical research. For an upcoming conference I intend to go with a tutorial-type of submission instead of a "regular" conference submission, which in our field would be a teaser of upcoming papers or application of something that is already published.
Based on what I read here on Academia.SE, in other fields (e.g. CS) conference papers are more prestigious (and thus more desirable) than conventional journal papers, but in our field it's the other way around, people prefer getting a "real" publication rather than a "conference paper" and thus typically don't want to give away much at a conference. This is simply because a) the same set of results would not be novel if submitted later to a journal, and b) if the results are still preliminary there is always the risk of being scooped.
At any rate, given the background, I consider preparing a tutorial type contribution where I present the practical _do_s and _dont_s of this one particular type of data analysis. I have noticed that many scientists in the field are not very comfortable with this type of analysis and it would also be a nice way to promote my methods. I am mostly considering this as a poster presentation, but of course an oral presentation would work as well.
So my question is:
Does a tutorial type submission differ significantly than a regular submission (for instance with respect to how the abstract should look like)? Is there anything in particular I should be careful about?

I think it depends strongly not only on the area, but on the venue. Tutorials (and tutorial submissions) mean different things in different venues, even within the same area.

@badroit interesting, i am not sure I follow 100% could you explain it a bit further?

In CS, for example, tutorial submissions refer (as Bill says) to half-day or full-day sessions on a topic. But even agreeing on that definition of a tutorial (which sounds different to that mentioned in your question), within CS, in terms of tutorial submissions/applications, some conferences require a medium-length paper (that will be published in the proceedings); some require an email to chairs; some require a full-blown application complete with topics, tutor CVs, links to a homepage with learning materials; some are invite-only and don't even accept submissions ... and so on.

If this is an uncommon thing to do, it may be worth emailing the organisers and discuss the details. If they like the idea, they may even use it to advertise the conference more!

Tutorials at conferences in my field (supercomputing/HPC) are half-day or full-day sessions where you and your co-authors get up and teach lectures on your proposed and (maybe) have hands-on sessions where the students can try what they learn. These sessions are usually on a special day either right before or right after the regular paper talks and cost extra for attendees. There are often honoraria for the presenters due to the level of work required to organize the sessions. The submissions tend to be much shorter than the papers, but they also include CVs for the teachers and sample lecture slides from related or prior tutorials or lectures. A tutorial would never be given as a poster.
Given that, perhaps you mean to present a paper or poster that would be more of a  "How To" guide. Which is to say that you don't intend to give a half-day or full-day lecture on your topic. Perhaps you don't intend to give any new results, but simply show how certain methods are applied to you field. This might be acceptable to your conference's program committee depending on what is asked for in the call for papers/participation, but I suspect some sort of novel result will be required.

I should have clarified, yes I meant the latter (2nd paragraph)

I'd emphasize alignment with the call for participation for the conference. You will probably need to couch your discussion in terms of how your approach can be used in your area to create new results.


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What is the role of research in liberal arts college faculty evaluation?
Lately, I've been wondering why institutions with a primary emphasis on undergraduate education (e.g. liberal arts colleges) value research output amongst their faculty. This is not intended to dismiss the research of LAC faculty, but rather to delineate what value the institution/department gains by hiring candidates with superior research output, perhaps at the expense of someone with a stronger teaching record. Here are several reasons I have heard, arranged in reverse order (approximately) of direct student benefit:

Current faculty wish to promote research in the discipline for its own sake, without regard educational benefits for the students
Tradition, or emulation of more prestigious institutions.
Faculty need a strong enough research output to get tenure (a somewhat circular reason)
Reputation within the research community enhances departmental and institutional prestige, with incumbent benefits for students.
The faculty can extend their academic network to their students. Examples of this might include increased regard for letters of recommendation and awareness of (non-)academic opportunities.
Research output is a proxy for breadth of knowledge within the discipline, hence for value of content in instruction, both formal (course syllabi) and informal (answering that random question during office hours).
Research output corresponds to the baseline knowledge needed to supervise undergraduate research and teach best practices.
Research activity is the best way to keep faculty aware of changing trends in the field, which in turn gets incorporated into educational practices. After all, academic careers last a long time.

I'm sure there are many valid reasons missing from this list, including some of the most important. I would like to know from a institutional/hiring perspective:
a) What reasons for valuing research activity are missing from this list?
b) What benefits are weighted most heavily? Which are given little or no thought?
c) To what extent are these benefits distinct from the ways that research profiles are evaluated by hiring committees?

My institution's document talk about "scholarly activity" rather than "research"

Is this question about why some LACs expect research from their faculty or about using research track records to make hiring decisions for incoming faculty?

I am interested in why they value research performed by faculty members, in particular with respect to the hiring process. Presumably their expectations of research are governed by these values.

I believe your list implicitly says this, but I'll include an answer anyhow, because I think this is an excellent question and I am interested in hearing answers that supplement what I write below.
Teaching, divorced from serious engagement with the subject matter taught, is arguably a very suspicious activity. In principle, if someone is paying a large sum of money to be taught a subject, the teacher should not only be able to convey his subject clearly, but also should be a practitioner of that subject. The living content of a subject is found in the minds of its practitioners, and so attempts to teach even the ideas which are archaic without the living insight driving honest contemporary investigation of the topic is very much in danger of becoming stilted, sterile or, perhaps worst of all, too packaged or neat.
One might oppose this view by pointing out that most undergraduate students do not need to know what is going on at the front lines of any subject, and the historical efforts and ideas, presented clearly in an engaged way, are enough. For cultural purposes, this may be so. However, a passion for teaching at the highest level morally ought to be accompanied by a passion for learning at that level, which is what research or serious scholarly engagement is at its heart.
Another strong argument against requiring research is the following: students at an average primarily undergraduate institution are generally not going to be prepared for graduate study in certain fields, so why should time and energy of faculty be sunk into research in such fields. (Many good institutions with PhD programs also need to remediate entering PhD students, suggesting that this problem stretches beyond undergrad-only institutions.) Again, though, I answer that learning and teaching should, ideally, not be decoupled.
A third argument is that it is possible for an engaged teaching faculty member to learn for his own enrichment and that this does not need to happen at the level required for research or peer review. I can only answer this, unfortunately, by my personal experience and opinion. It bothers me that when a student enters university in order to learn a subject, he cannot tell the quality of knowledge he will receive (whether the community of peers of a student's professor regards the professor's ideas and approaches as relevant). It is our responsibility to ensure that students are exposed, to the best of our ability, to ideas that have impact. I cannot see how to do this without being able to point to peer-reviewed faculty contributions.

I had teachers who were amazingly well versed in their area of expertise, who had basically no skill at teaching. They were the worst. Completely useless. Years later, i still can't believe that colleges hire such terrible teachers based on their scientific credentials.

@Davor: Indeed, the pendulum swings the other way! One could argue that a person spending a lot of money on his or her education has a right to an excellent teacher! If either teaching or learning comes up short, then the student is ripped off. This is the point I am trying to make, really, that a solid education consists of a faculty that supplies both solid teaching and solid scholarship. Otherwise the students are being fleeced!

@JonBannon Is research a necessary (or sufficient) part of commitment to scholarship? Many students in my graduate program felt that their best educational experiences were in class with a faculty member who performed substantially less research relative to others. He had clearly devoted himself to studying other people's work.

@Zach: I think there needs to be flexibility. Some will be more into teaching and others scholarship. Engaged scholarly activity in the form of some peer contribution is the only reasonable metric I can think of across the board, though! Even work that reflects on the work of others can be peer-reviewed.

Also, peer review can mean many things!

One should note that mediocre teaching perhaps should be expected at, say, a state research university — [citation needed]

@JeffE: I hope I didn't write this before (the post is old) but if I did, I hope a citation is never found anywhere...for obvious reasons! I do remember a somewhat dismissive attitude towards undergrads...mostly due to a lack of commitment on the part of the average undergrad...at my state school alma-mater, but this was probably just typical faculty letting off steam and would not rise to the level of an explicit expectation. If I did write such a thing, it calls for an apology, and I'm sorry to have done so!

@JonBannon No worries.  Sadly, mediocre teaching is expected at some state research universities.  My objection was to the word "should"!

a) What reasons for valuing research activity are missing from this list?

One reason that's somewhat mentioned in your list, but not fully explored, is the benefit to students of a faculty member doing research. There are almost certainly students at LACs that are interested in careers in research, considering graduate school, etc. who benefit from research experience, the opportunity to publish and present, etc.
Having faculty who have ongoing research agendas, even if they are somewhat "modest", is an extremely valuable way for their students to get this experience.

Getting undergraduate students involved in research is a key requirement for many faculty at liberal arts colleges and this is something that candidates are often expected to address during the hiring process.

Just like research universities, liberal arts colleges like getting grant money to perform research.  Otherwise, prestige is a major reason, as you mentioned in the question.


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What leads to contentious tenure cases and can they be avoided?
After hearing about an incredibly contentious tenure case at my alma mater and several other contentious ones, I'm curious to hear how such issues come to be. Some issues that seem to be at play: personal animosity between faculty, dispute about the merits of the candidate's research, scarcity of resources and discrimination based on gender, sexuality, religion and other aspects of identity. Some of these are legitimate, while others are clearly not. For those curious as to how nasty things can get, I recommend reading here. The account is both appalling and fascinating.
Do faculty see these issues coming? Are there tell-tale signs they might miss? One person I talked to was quite surprised both by the animosity one fellow faculty member had towards him and by the degree of influence this brought to bare on his tenure case.
Once such issues have been identified, how can the candidate defend against them? At what point should he/she be prepared to defend against them? From the other side, what processes exist to prevent such biases from influencing the process? Are they functional, and to what degree? Are there better practices that could be implemented to avoid such discontent?

Note that the case you cite (of Caltech professor Jenijoy La Belle) is nearly forty years old.

While this is an excellent question overall, it's so broad that it encompasses many subquestions that themselves could have multiple answers. I wonder if maybe this needs to be broken up into separate questions. At the very least, it might be useful to separate questions about issues and questions about processes ?

Oops, I was going to read through your link, but it's 165 pages ):

Could you define what do you mean by "contentious tenure" in this case? (Is it about giving tenure, or about a tenure going bad or something else?) Being explicit, rather than implicit, may help this question.

Piotr -- my focus is on the process of awarding or denying tenure, not what happens after.

One source of problems is a lack of communication over what are the expectations for the tenure candidate to meet before becoming "eligible" to receive tenure. But a substantial amount of the issues can lie with either someone in the decision-making chain, or the candidate himself or herself. In the latter case, this makes a tendentious situation inevitable.
For instance, there is the rather notorious case of James Sherley at MIT, who alleged multiple issues, including racism, and claimed that he believed his papers from his previous institution would "count" toward his tenure case. (Meanwhile, at MIT, his publication list in five years amounted to a total of six publications, three of which I believe were editorials.) He went on to hold a hunger strike to protest.
So I think that there really isn't a way to prevent things from becoming contentious unless everything is made "open": criteria are specified in advance, and everybody participating can follow along the entire process. (That is, the candidate can attend the meetings where the tenure case is being discussed.) However, I suspect this is unlikely to occur.


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How do I refer to my PhD studies in my CV; under education or experience?
I am currently updating my CV before applying for postdoc positions (and grants) and got a bit puzzled about a small but possibly important detail.
The chapters I have on my CV are Education, Experience, Extracurricular/Voluntary Work and Publications. While I am not forced to keep this structure, I find it very logical and rather neat, so unless there is a good reason to do so I will probably keep the structure.
Now, to the question, I am not sure if I should include my PhD years under education or under experience. Not sure if it's the same elsewhere but over here in Sweden, the years as PhD student counts as both education and full-time employment. I think there are points to both sides of the coin.
The work I have done as a PhD student is quite relevant for the type of stuff I will be applying to hence an argument for listing under work experience. Besides I am not too happy about the last entry in my "Experience" section to be from 4 years ago, as it stands looks a bit like I am "fresh off the school".
Is there a generally accepted way to tackle that?

@ChrisWhite right now yes, that's the order, but the idea is to change the order depending on the type of place i apply

I put it in both places. Under Education I list my time as a graduate student, and under Experience (as "Appointments"), I list my time as a Graduate Research Assistant. I've seen this on lots of CVs in the US. Both are true, and both convey the right meaning.

I disagree with putting into both places - takes away space and confuses the reader.

@Elchin I don't think I have ever seen one that doesn't do this. They are conveying two different things. Not every PhD student works as a RA and not every PhD student works as a TA and some students work as both at different times.

@Elchin During my PhD I was a RA. I have a contract. Both thing are distinct, related but distinct, and true. In my CV, I put my phd on education and my time as RA as experience as well..

Makes sense, however to conserve space you could put your employment while doing your PhD as subfields. It would also make it easier and more chronological to read.

There is a fine line here that needs to be drawn. Surely, you do research during your PhD, but that is still a part of your education - you are being taught how to do research, and are (at least formally) being supervised in doing so. Generally, the experience part refers to the work experience you possess, over and above the experience you have acquired as a part of your education. Sometimes, people specify this explicitly, by mentioning that research experience during PhD, or acquired in the duration of PhD (e.g. any guest faculty position before PhD defense) won't count as teaching/research experience being sought by them, so it is easy to perceive what they are talking about. But even when they don't, it makes sense to write it in this manner, since you would anyways be talking about your research during PhD while talking about it in the education section. So, if there is someone who doesn't want this kind of a distinction, he can anyways get that info from your CV.
As far as teaching assistantship experience is concerned, it is definitely acquired during the PhD period - you can put it, and while that indicates some exposure with teaching and supervision, it isn't the kind of experience that they are seeking anyways.
IMO, writing the same thing twice in a CV is definitely not advisable, at least according to me.
So, tl;dr - Answer - In the education section.

I don't write the same thing twice. Under "Education" I write, roughly: "1/1998 - 5/2004 Ph.D. Aerospace Engineering, UT Austin" and under "Appointments and Fellowships", I write "1/1998 - 10/2003 Graduate Research Assistantship, Aerospace Engineering Department, The University of Texas at Austin, Firstname Lastname, Supervisor." Each takes about a line and a half and doesn't tend to bloat out my CV too much.

@BillBarth well that sort of implies you have two explicitly defined positions though, one as a PhD student and one as a RA.

@posdef, that's exactly what I had. 20 nominal hours per week of each. I recognize that OP's situation is considered a single full-time role. Even knowing that, I wouldn't have a problem seeing a CV that had pieces of each listed in two places. I look in both sections for both parts of such a job when I'm reviewing candidates for research positions.

Education. Under sub-points you can list the part-time positions you held, such as research assistant, or teaching assistant. I personally keep experience field for my full-time roles and internships.

Please note that PhD studies is a full-time, state employment here, as I have stated above in question body.

True, but the main purpose of the PhD is still education, isn't it? I've lived in Germany where PhD is treated the same way, but the main purpose is still education, rather than employment.

But it is also to collect working experience as a researcher. And you do a lot of "work", it's not studying subjects by attending lectures. So why would it not count as work? I think that is what the question is ultimately about

To strengthen that point: isn't an internship also for "education"? A PhD is an "internship in research"


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What do you call a “practice” class that accompanies a lecture?
In my country it is very common for courses to consist of two types of classes: lectures primarily focus on theoretical aspects of a topic and then after each lecture comes a corresponding “practice” class which covers practical aspects of the material from the preceding lecture, such as how to use it to solve exercises. These latter classes can be taught by the same professor or, quite often, by graduate students.
Is there a term for this kind of classes? If you are from another country, how can I concisely explain to you what these classes are for? How do I indicate in my CV that I was a teacher of such a “practical” part of a course?

As a person responsible for “practice” classes you have to plan them on your own (it is generally assumed that the topic of each class will be the same as that of the preceding lecture, but it is not a hard requirement and sometimes you might need to deviate); explain techniques and practical considerations; prove theorems (yourself or engaging the students) which didn’t fit into lectures because they were not required for the theoretical narration but rather have practical implications; solve exercises or have students solve them with your hints; etc. You are also responsible for designing and grading homework assignments, projects, tests.
In essence, professor “outsources” part of the course to you and then in the end gets your input about each student’s performance in it. The primary purpose is to divide students into smaller groups (of around 15 or less), each assigned to a separate teacher, so that each student gets more personal attention.

in fact the question can not be answerd without knowing which yountry you are in. If you were in Germany, all given answers so far (even the accepted one) are not 100% correct.

Well, I know what it is called in my country, I am looking for something that will be understood by people from other countries, primarily English-speaking once.

In the US, we used the term Recitation Section for such things. A TA and around 15-20 students would work together to make the lectures more personal in some way. In my experience (45 years) it was often used. Such a section would be stable in that the same TA would work with the same students over the course of a term.

Also "Discussion Section" in the US. Typically these involve working through problems as a group.

That is interesting, I have never heard "Recitation Section," what region is that popular in?

@APolyphonyofPirates, several places across the US, actually. Both coasts and the interior.

Why the downvote? Recitation is the standard name in the US, in my experience.

I decided that personally I will go with “Recitation” because, even if it is not universal, at least it seems to be the least ambiguous of all the options offered.

And, elsewhere in the U.S. we'd call that a practicum.

This sounds really British hah. I believe Buffy it's common across the US but I've never heard of this one.

Try "tutorial".
Example writeup on what tutorials are from the University of New South Wales.

Yes, tutorial is probably the closest that I found when googling for a term for this. What doesn’t quite work in this case is that this term is somewhat ambiguous and usually seems to assume a very personal tutoring that happens not after each lecture but rather once a week. To quote Wikipedia “in groups of one to three on a weekly basis”.

@kirelagin when I was taking the teacher training course in the UK, the tutorials supporting the main lecture had between 12 and 15 students with one faculty "driving" - I would not class Wikipedia as an authoritative source of good or current teaching practice or methods.

This is dangerous. In the German speaking world there are such classes the OP described, called "Übungen" or "Proseminare" or "Seminare". However, there also may be "Tutorien", which are non-graded, voluntary question/answer sessions with payed previous students/graduate students. There is a substantial difference in the requirements on the instructor between those two classes. If someone here would read "instructor of tutorials", he would assume the latter type of class, which is much easier/less work/less responsibility.

@StefanS: I wouldn't say those terms are defined very clearly in German. In my experience (compsci in Southern Germany), the terms "Übung" and "Tutorium" are used interchangeably, depending on the preference of the speaker, and may or may not be graded depending on other factors. "Seminar", in contrast, is something distinctly different, in that it is focused on participants giving (usually graded) talks.

In the US I have heard them referred to as "discussion sections," "lab sections," or "fourth hour." Discussion implies a small group where students often work together to make sense of the material, although it may be more or less collaborative. Lab implies that they are working on practice problems or scenarios. Lab is more often used for science classes, although I had lab sections for some mathematics classes as well. The term "fourth hour" comes from a standard class meeting time taking 1.5 hours. Two meetings then would be 3 hours, and might be accompanied by a shorter class meeting to add another hour of time each week.
In the US, your job title would be Teaching Assistant or "TA" as it's often known. It is important to specify the variety of work that you have done, especially the curriculum design tasks. TAs in the US range from essentially teaching an entire course, including many lectures. Other TAs have almost no responsibility. They might take attendance, grade tests, and hold office hours to answer questions. And everything in between.

Rather than "Teacher's Assistant?"

Other names for the same thing: quiz section, recitation section, tutorial, practicum, or just "section".

@Buffy I agree, I think I spaced and forgot the term. I've edited the answer to use it. Thanks!

These are also called "quiz sections" at my university.

Best described as a "Tutorial" in my experience.

This is repeating the other answer

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


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GRE scores per section and their importance for PhD admissions in CS/E.Engineering
What scores are generally expected per section (AW/quantitative/verbal) to get my applications evaluated in top/good grad schools?
Also, would achieving even better scores be a "plus" or it won't matter at all/that much?

My top-10 CS department does not require GRE scores at all.
For applicants that send them in anyway, the only scores that provide useful information are low scores.  Anything below about the 50th percentile is a red flag.
You are aiming at the wrong target.  Top grad schools are looking for strong evidence of promise as an independent researcher.  Test scores do not provide that evidence.

I am just getting a bit anxious about the GRE exam. I will study approximately a month for it and i am not a native english speaker, so i am most worried about AW/verbal. I am also wondering if those sections distract me too much from quantitative, in which i believe i ought to get a near perfect score!

At least in my department, the only way your GRE verbal score can affect your chances is by being really low (<20%ile).


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Why do universities support faculty writing textbooks?
Textbooks take a lot of time and effort to write, so why would a university support their faculty to do so? The author can make a good profit from a textbook and I am guessing the institution doesn't get any of these profits.
What about the grad students that edit and also work on the textbook? It seems as if they are working to fill the faculty member's pocket while being [partially] supported by the department/university and expected to do research.
All of this seems odd to me since it seems like the author is just using the university's resources to generate personal revenue, so why do universities support/allow their faculty to write textbooks?
If you need context, I am talking about in the US and specifically a freshmen/sophomore CS course's textbook.

A similar but not duplicate question: What incentives do academics have to write books?

In the case of graduate- or research-level textbooks, I think you overestimate the profits and underestimate the value to the field.

@DerrickStolee I can understand that, that is why I made sure to mention I was specifically talking about an intro course. I read that an edition can bring in $735,000 to the author.

$735,000 is possible, but it would be an extraordinary amount.  If you make 7% of list price (not unlikely if the book sells enough, and probably described as 10% of net in the contract) on a $150 book (pretty expensive), then you make $10.50 per copy.  That means you need to sell 70,000 copies, which is a huge number.  This can be done if you write an incredibly popular textbook for a high-enrollment course, but it's pretty rare.  In math there are only a handful of people who make this much on textbooks, and I expect the situation with intro CS is similar.

Regardless to how much money they make, the question still stands.

@BenCrowell You are confusing not supporting (e.g., graduate students) with forbidding. Huge difference. My question doesn't say anything about forbidding.

Textbooks take a lot of time and effort to write, so why would a university support their faculty to do so?

Why wouldn't they?  Writing textbooks is an important form of scholarship, with great influence on the field, and this is something universities should strongly encourage.  The only reason I can think of not to support textbook writing is the profit issue, but this is not generally an important factor, since very few textbooks make a lot of money.
The fact that U.S. faculty are allowed to keep the royalties from textbooks they write is a historical contingency, and there's no reason why the system has to work that way.  However, I think it's a good system in practice.  Overall, the incentives to write good textbooks are too low, since both the financial rewards and the academic rewards are generally small compared with the time commitment.  Removing the (small) profit motive would leave the incentives even lower, and I think the net effect would outweigh the tiny increase in university funding.

What about the grad students that edit and also work on the textbook? It seems as if they are working to fill the faculty member's pocket while being [partially] supported by the department/university and expected to do research.

If grad students are being enlisted as unpaid labor, then that's a real problem, but in my experience it's not common.  If there's any prospect of nontrivial royalties, then it's unethical to ask students to work without compensation.  Furthermore, the arrangement needs to be formal enough to include a copyright transfer (otherwise, the students will own the copyright to their contributions).

Great answer. To clarify what I meant about the grad students, it isn't that they are going unpaid but rather their work could be seen as bringing personal profit to the author rather than performing research for themselves, their advisor, and the university. My first thought was faculty are using grad students for their personal endeavors.

Australia's university system, a centrally funded multiple university system, quite simply does not support staff doing this.  Australia had prior to the late 1980s a broad based academic publishing culture that included diverse ancillary publishing by academics in terms of social opinion, literary and arts engagement, and text book publication.  However, under the Dawkins era reforms, Australian higher education research output became subject to a measurement metric (the "Publications count," a quantity count, currently known as the HERDC publications collection) which then informed the distribution of a significant pool of money.  The metric was originally described as a "proxy" for real activity, but increasingly the metric is taken to be the indicator of real activity.  As the metric, funding, and fund seeking imperatives have become tighter—in part as a labour discipline / productivity effort—since the late 1980s, the level of University management intervention into the publishing mode of academics has increased.  Currently, research activity measures within Universities, modelled strongly on the federal funding metric, strongly motivate academic staff to not publish uncounted books such as undergraduate textbooks.  The penalty for failing to achieve the metric includes increased teaching loads and (eventual and sometimes constructive) dismissal.  The effect of this has been academic disengagement from social and aesthetic opinion forming, and a move away from textbook authoring.
By inverting the above example, the reasons why institutions may tolerate staff producing textbooks would be:

an absence of external funding drivers dictating publication modes
an absence of internal management pressure dictating publication modes
the presence of external funding or internal management pressure, but measured against a metric that accepts textbooks as worthwhile activity

Further work can be found in Vestes / Australian Universities Review on the metrification of academic output and funding changes in Australia.  The relevant federal department, and other bodies, have a variety of reports on the actual publication measure.

To widen the perspective (fully understanding the limitations imposed by the OP), I will try to be more general in my reply. All university systems do not support writing text books. In some systems it is up to the researcher to either try to find funding to at least cover some costs or simply try to squeeze it into whatever time can be found.
There are also different scenarios for what to write. If one intends to write a basic introductory text, it would involve providing lots of examples and figures over a broad area. While the text may be relatively simple to write (subject matter not on a difficult level) the amount of text and illustrations will make it an arduous task. If, on the other hand, one writes an advanced textbook, the volume of text is smaller and, I would assume, more focussed on ones own research field. I would therefore think that it is relatively easier to write such a book than an introductory one. Having only written one book, a intermediate level specialist text on my research topic, I have little to compare it with, but it took 2.5 months (in parallel with full time work) to write, and I had someone paid to do the illustrations.
So the situation will vary quite a lot between systems, which is also reflected by the types of books that come out of them. Advanced books come from almost all systems, while introductory texts probably are more commonly produced in systems where such book production is supported at some level in the system.

i think the Universities are for improving the skills and knowledge of the mankind not only for financial growth :) its their duty to make the knowledge reachable to everyone and also make the knowledge grow, find more and develop more.. The books are the medium which all of these are possible. And also in the view of financial case, may be a university dont get any profits straightly but they will get it via the fame of the author who is a faculty of that university. He will attract more students. thus it will help the university :D :)


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Special professor titles?
I have noticed several special professor titles and I was wondering what are the exact details behind them. For example:

Stan Franklin, W. Harry Feinstone Interdisciplinary Research Professor

I am guessing this is some sort of award but what type of awards come with a title like this? Are these internal or external? Does it last forever or is it tied to funding and then no longer applies?

This is called an endowed chair.

Such a simple answer! I figured it was something like that but it proved difficult to google.

Please can you add a brief description of what "endowed chair" means, so that the answer stands on its own right, and it will still be meaningful even after someone's changed the wikipedia page to say that it's something to do with chickens.

@EnergyNumbers:  You can add it yourself.  This is a collaboratively-edited site after all. =]

@TaraB getting this answer to be better is only a tiny part of the story. It's far more about getting answerers  to be in the habit of writing better answers. Link-only answers like this should (and often do) get deleted.

@EnergyNumbers: I wouldn't say this is a particularly problematic link-only answer.  If someone just says "See URL X", then it becomes near-worthless if that site disappears or changes (the only hope would be archive.org).  On the other hand, here the phrase "endowed chair" is itself a useful answer.  Even if someone vandalized or deleted the Wikipedia entry, searching for this phrase would still lead to valuable information.  So I agree that a more detailed answer could be nice, but I'm not too worried about it in this case.


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Worthwhile to put subreviewing on CV as a grad student?
It is common for PhD students in Computer Science to assist their advisors with reviewing conference papers, known as subreviewing. The students' reviews may or may not get turned in with the actual reviews but it is a great form of practice for the students.
I have seen some students list the conferences they have subreviewed for in the Service section of their CV. I thought this was a little strange since it isn't official.
Should a grad student list this on their CV? It would help add some content to a short CV and show that they have at least some experience reviewing. It may also help a student associate with a conference that they haven't had the opportunity to publish at, yet.

The status of subreviewers, and even the designation as reviewer or subreviewer, varies a lot from venue to venue. In some places, reviewers are official and are listed in the proceedings. In others, it's as you say: informal assistance provided to the actual reviewer.
A student should definitely list instances of official reviews (i.e where there's documentation of their effort) in their CV. But if the subreview is less formal (or there's no record of it maintained by the conference), then I'd be inclined to leave it off the CV, mainly because it's difficult to verify. I understand the desire to indicate some degree of competence with research critiques, but the danger is that without documentation the process is ripe for abuse or at least inflated claims.


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How to handle letters of recommendation requirements in this situation?
I'm wondering about the best way to handle the following situation. Some time ago I've asked my then-potential referees about possibility to become my reference sources and they kindly agreed, after which I've updated my CV with their contact information.
After some analysis of the academic job market advertisements, I had an impression that most institutions (at least, solid ones) do not expect receiving letters of recommendation directly from a job applicant, but rather from referees (via either e-mail, or online forms). However, recently I ran across at least several institutions (including some well-known ones), which, in their instructions, ask job applicants not only the traditional set of documents (cover letter, CV, samples of research, teaching and research philosophy, transcript, teaching evaluations), but also recommendation letters instead of references.
The problem is that now I have to explain this situation to my referees and kindly ask them to send me those letters of recommendation (for institutions, expecting them from applicant) plus to submit those letters directly to institutions, which expect that information from referees. Is it a reasonable request? My referees are very nice people, but quite busy, and I feel uncomfortable to bother them more than needed. However, I don't really see any workarounds in this regard. Is there anything else I can do to optimally solve this problem? I would appreciate your opinions.

When I was applying for postdoc positions, I sent in about 50 applications and researched quite a few more that I wound up not applying for. Out of these many applications, only one or two asked for references' contact info; the rest wanted recommendation letters. In every case the letters were to be submitted directly by their writers, not by me.
The point is that, at least in my corner of academia (but I think in many others as well), when someone serves as a reference for an applicant, it is a standard expectation that they will write a letter on behalf of the applicant and submit it in some form that does not allow the applicant to see it. I would be very surprised if any of your referees/references agreed to fill that role without expecting to write a letter on your behalf and submit it to whatever institutions you're applying to. Of course they won't write a brand new letter for every application; typically they write a generic letter that can be used for many jobs, possibly customizing it a little if they happen to have connections at a particular institution. Once the letter is written, it's very little additional effort for them to submit it to each new application.
Note that, as I hinted at above, it's standard for reference letters not to be visible to the applicant. I think it would be quite strange for a job listing to require that a reference letter, written by someone else, be submitted by you.

Thank you for your answer (+1)! I agree with you. The standard way of submitting letters of recommendation (by referees) is what my referees and I expected to follow. I, too, was quite surprised, when I saw instructions saying otherwise. Unless I misunderstood the text (which I doubt), it seems that those particular instructions were not written clearly or, rather, are confusing. The more people confirming my initial expectation, the more relief I'm experiencing, as the problem seems to be non-existent and I won't have to bring additional inconveniences upon my referees and myself.

Everything will be fine. If they have ever written more than a handful of these letters for others, they will recognize that different institutions have different requirements. Just tell them what you need, and thank them very much for their time and patience.

Thank you very much for reassuring me (+1) - the time is stressful enough already.

If you are a student or postdoc, your current institution may be willing to take care of this for you.  I remember when I applied, the secretaries sent out all the (paper) applications for me.  They had my letter writers send a copy of their letter directly to the office, and they made copies (I think with a note) for each application.  I never handled these letters myself at all.
If you department does not do this, the usual thing to do for writers to give you sealed envelopes with the writer's signature/intials over the seal to show you didn't open them.

Thank you for your advice (+1)! I'm neither student, nor postdoc - I've recently graduated and now I'm looking for a job (I target both industry/consulting and academia, simultaneously). So, I have to go through all necessary steps and do it all myself. That's OK. However, I'm surprised by your last sentence - most institutions, positions at which I consider applying to, handle references/recommendations electronically (some even emphasize not to send paper documents).

@AleksandrBlekh All of my answer was assuming they wanted you to send in physical letters.  I've never heard of an institution asking the applicant to upload/email letters of recommendation for their references.  Have you actually gone through the online application form to make sure they mean for you to upload the letter yourself?  (Intial instructions are sometimes unclear.)

I very much doubt there are any schools that expect you to submit letters yourself electronically, because you should not have access to the letters. What you may very well find is that they expect you to do the leg work of reminding your letter-writers to submit their letters through the school's online system (rather than your simply submitting a list of names and leaving it to the school to contact your references). But this is very different than what you've understood; you should just go immediately to check how the application actually works, before proceeding further.

@Kimball: I haven't gone through the application process, as I thought that I need to have recommendation letters in order to be able to submit them, per instructions. I guess, some instructions aren't written clearly enough.

@TomChurch: I hope that you are right - that would eliminate my original (perhaps, assumed) problem of the two types of requirements. I will try to apply (once I finalize everything) and will check what online forms will be asking for. Thank you for your comment!


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Ideas for and approaches to adding value to literature reviews
One of the tasks in my short-to-mid-term plan is to convert my dissertation into several research papers. In this context, I was thinking about extracting my dissertation's literature review (which is IMHO quite detailed) and re-working it by adding academic value, so that it can be published as conceptual paper or literature survey paper in a good peer-reviewed outlet, such as conference proceedings or, preferably, journal. With that in mind, I am interested in learning other people's ideas for and approaches to adding value to traditional review of literature and/or making it more rigorous. At the present time, my thoughts and ideas on approaching the subject are as follows:

Integrate research streams into and propose a comprehensive conceptual framework;
Identify gaps in research coverage and suggest corresponding future research directions;
Identify commonalities and differences in research approaches and methods, used to study different topics and areas within and across research streams, belonging to the paper's scope.

This is going to be field dependent. In my field, good peer reviewed journals simply do not publish what you describe as "conceptual" or "literature survey" papers.

@NateEldredge: Thank you. Hopefully, people from fields, other than mathematics, will share their thoughts and perspectives. Just to clarify: my field is information systems, which is multi-disciplinary (typically, an intersection of CS/SE/IT, management science and social sciences). However, I welcome opinions of people from all disciplines.

Your question very field dependent. In my social sciences field, literature reviews 1) answer some kind of open question in the field, just like an empirical paper does and 2) are, these days, usually systematic reviews.
You'll hear a lot of researchers talk about the right "time" for a literature review. They may say it's too early for a lit review in the field, or that it's the "right time." What that usually means is that there's enough collected empirical research in the field to do the review but ALSO that there's some sort of open question or idea that the literature review contributes to. Turn it back on yourself: if you were looking for papers in your field, what kind of literature review would you want to read? Methodological ones are good; there's a well-cited one in my field that reviews the empirical work in my area using a specific method that I use, and it's very useful in conceptualizing and writing my own papers.
More theoretical ones can be useful, too, if you're trying to answer a question: What really IS this X that people in the field have been talking about in 27 different ways - can we come up with a unifying concept or underlying theme that makes it easier to talk about that X? (I think that's the first idea that you highlighted in your question.) There are about a million papers on whether Y affects Z; have we come to some sort of conclusion as a discipline about whether and how Y really does affect Z? In my field, the people who write these papers are usually senior scholars (or a team that usually has a senior, established person on it). Some journals don't accept them unless they specifically invite the scholar to write one, or unless the scholar contacts the journal ahead of time with an outline or plan for what they want to write.
Basically, journals don't want a random summary or even a simple synthesis of several papers. They want a review that's going to push the field forward in some way. Most dissertation literature reviews don't do that - but if you can write your review in such a way that it does (or at least lay the foundation so that when you go back to it later, it's easy to transform it into one that does) you'll have an easier time getting it published.
The other thing is that in my field, these days, most journals want systematic reviews. It's a very specific way of doing a literature view that makes it akin in format to an empirical paper: with bounded year dates, specific search terms, and a systematic way of deciding whether to include or exclude papers (hence the name "systematic review"). It's a way of trying to ensure that authors don't only include papers that support their views. Many times systematic reviews also include a meta-analysis; I suspect that they are more likely to get published if they do.

I appreciate your nice, detailed and insightful answer (+1; will likely accept). Actually, your thoughts on the subject are strikingly in line with my understanding of it and made my thoughts less fuzzy. I've seen many systematic reviews, maybe that's because my field (information systems) significantly intersects with social sciences :-) (and, some, perhaps, even consider it as such).


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Including teaching statement in RA position application package
It seems to me that it does not make sense to include my teaching statement in an application package for a research associate position (UK), which is focused on a specific research project (the only teaching-related activities there might be presentations, seminars or similar events). Could including teaching statement hurt or, vice versa, benefit the application and subsequent decisions?

What does the job description or application website ask for? Only submit what they require.

@BillBarth: Thank you. I realize that in such situation a teaching statement is not needed. The question is, however, whether it could be beneficial (due to small teaching component - seminars, etc.) or clearly have a negative effect. P.S. I already applied without including TS, but I'm still curious about this question.

I wouldn't hold it against anyone personally, but it could be bad or it could be good. If there are teaching or training opportunities as part of the job (like there are for people I hire), then it might be marginally helpful. It at least indicates an interest in the ancillary functions of the role. However, if it's a pure research position unattached to an organization with no possibility of a teaching role, a particularly unkind or paranoid sort might hold it against you since it could serve, to them, as an indication you'd prefer a professor/lecturer position, and that you are likely to not stick around very long if you can find one. This kind of stuff matters a lot more to some folks than it does to me personally. There's some legitimacy to this kind of thinking since the hiring process is time-consuming and expensive. You don't want to lose someone shortly after getting them on board.
My recommendation is to stick to the requested materials and no more. Tailor your application, CV, and letters to highlight the things that the position description wants.

Thank you for your nice answer (+1 and accepted) - the logic is clear to me and indeed makes sense. I'm glad that I applied without TS, intuitively following this logic or, likely, my gut feeling. However, I'm not too worried :-(, since my chances to be hired at several positions I'm currently applying for aren't very high, to put it politely. Several of such positions mention list of publications, which I currently don't have (besides dissertation). However, I decided to apply anyway, since I have some skills that they need, plus I don't want in the future to feel guilty that I haven't tried.


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Is use of unconventional design elements or layout something frowned upon in academic context?
I quite enjoy paying attention to how I design my documents and presentations. I usually spend hours thinking over and designing my slides for a workshop or presentation, so that they are aesthetically pleasing and as intuitive as possible. Likewise I recently started revising my CV I figured and I wanted to make it stand out a bit more. (Just to make it clear I don't mean making a clown of a document but just better use of colors, contrast and design elements.)
I have long wondered whether or not this is something that can backfire, since most documents in academic context are extremely plain, at least in my experience. It's very common to see the default Powerpoint slides (white bg, black arial text) or something as hideous as that.
My question is as follows: is putting time and effort into design of academic documents something that can backfire? Will I risk being prejudged with first impressions such as "well he put much effort in the presentation his documents, perhaps because the content is sub-par"?

I realize that the question might be somewhat subjective from person to person but I encourage everyone to consider it in terms of this SE blog entry: Good subjective vs Bad subjective.

If used with caution, I never saw a nice document to backfire. I myself take a very similar stance to yours and never had issues. This view is also adopted by many other in academia. Just look who the authors of great LaTeX packages are. Take an example of LaTeX beamer (pgf/tikz), etc. People from academia. Good design is never bad.

Thank you for this question. I sometimes have the impression that scientists, in the best case, are the Amish people of layout. In the worst case, they are the clowns of layout, with entire posters typeset in Comic Sans.

If down well, new design is good. E.g. presentations in Prezi usually attract more attention, and people tend to sleep less on a non-generic talk. However, throwing a lot of candy features may be bad (good != inconsistent, with tons of things from different styles).

@PiotrMigdal interesting, I will check it out. Thanks for the tip

Prezi talks make me motion sick.

@JeffE: Here here! There was a talk here at Rice on Prezi recently and while it looked cool, beyond a certain point it was just disorienting. I expect that its success possibly depends on the content and execution (what doesn't), but with so many equations and so much zooming in and out I eventually just gave up on looking at the slides entirely.

Many graphic designers fall into the trap of designing beautiful looking CVs that are very difficult to read and understand, which shows their graphic design skills but not their logical/reasoning skills.

@MichaelLai Aren't graphic design skills the most important thing for a graphic designer, though?

It all comes down to a cost/benefit analysis. But, there is little risk to improve the design, graphics and typography of your documents (theses, figures, presentations). There is little risk that it backfires if you present a higher-quality document. In fact, the only case I can think of is if it seems that form took over content: i.e., if you have a very shiny designed presentation with just-meh scientific content, the contrast might draw attention.
One thing that might be a problem is if you put too much theatrics, 3D effects, animations, cartoons… I had a colleague who used every single “animation” possible (it was the early days of Apple's Keynote and its nice 3D effects) in the same presentation, and it was simply too much. It distracted people from his message.
Finally, coming back to the cost/benefit analysis: I believe that as in everything, 20% of the work can get you 80% of the reward if you choose wisely. People will have different pet peeves, but the areas which I think you should polish for presentation slides are:

Graphics quality: no pixelated crap
Consistency between graphics and text, and self-consistency of graphics: same quantities reported and plotted, same units, consistency between graph scales (as much as possible), etc. Sometimes you take pictures from an earlier paper, and they don't quite match what you are showing with them. Avoid things like “graph on the left is concentration, graph on the right is volume fraction” when they can be converted straightforwardly.
Careful about background colors: to me, this makes the different between decent slides and good slides (for the presentation, not for the scientific content). If you use a colored background (not saying you should), don't include graphics with white background. Try to use graphics with transparent background (easy with vector graphics, use PNG with alpha channel for bitmap images).
If visualization requires it, use movies to show a complex system: time evolution of spatial distribution, autorotation of a structure you present if it makes it clearer, etc.

Good points, nothing new for me but useful for others who might stumble upon the question. For the record, the only animation I will ever use in my slides is the "appear effect", which I use to iterate through a list of item, one at a time. Anything else is a big no-no in my view of how a presentation should be.

There are arguments against visualising things as movies or animations, namely, that it is easier to remember two images, such as a before and after shot, than to remember an movie. (Source: What's use of lectures? Donald A. Bligh.)

@DaveClarke that's why I said “if the visualization requires it”. For example, there are some intermolecular reactions with multiple steps that definitely benefit from a dynamic presentation.

Good design is invisible.  The goal of design is to increase understanding/clarity. If your design is truly good then it will go unnoticed but your content will be better understood.  If your design is noticed and distracts, then it is bad.  I feel these principles are universal.
So to answer your question, yes, good design is worth it (it increases the amount that your content is understood), but just adding "design" elements without a good understanding of the audience and their expectations will not likely result in good design.

I feel you are going a bit into the theory of design there. For the sake of clarify, or relating it to practical terms, can you elaborate on what you mean by the audience and what their expectations might be, in different cases. I personally feel it varies from person to person, such that no two individuals reading a document or attending a presentation will have identical expectations or preferences.

Oh and I should also add that I am not really in favor of the following statement: "Good design is invisible".

@posdef you are entitled to disagree but I really do think that good design is invisible.  Good design should only serve to increase clarity and understanding so if you are doing that then the reader/viewer is only aware of the fact that they clearly understand the content.  The design might be interesting or beautiful but if it distracts from the content then it is bad design.

In other words, design is a mean rather then a goal.

@dror that is something I definitely agree with, however it doesn't mean that's "the mean" should be completely invisible, especially to those who have a keen eye.

Indeed, many people think good design means "pretty" or "stand out". +1  for bringing up the question of audience - good design can work only in context.

The only other note I'd have to add is that you should also remember who your audience is when designing your documents.
You can have a fancy version of a CV or a presentation template, and there's nothing wrong with that. However, as an example of where this could backfire: assume you have a LaTeX'ed CV that is being sent to an HR department of a large company. The text of the CV will probably be tested against some set of keywords for "appropriateness"; if it can't match because of ligature issues, you're out of luck.
Similarly, if the documents will need ti be scanned in on the receiving end (perhaps because they require an actual signature), then the design should be one that doesn't make the scanned version illegible.

Interesting points, I am not sure I follow though. Perhaps it's because I am not familiar with the procedures you mentioned. Why would there be ligature issues? or why would the design of a document make it's scanned version illegible?

Ligature issues — If a company isn't smart enough to parse the ff ligature that LaTeX puts at the end of my first name, I really don't want to work there.

Some scientists don't know how to properly layout a thesis, a presentation or a poster. They probably never learned it and too often don't care about it. This doesn't mean that you have to follow this bad example. I always appreciate when my students care about readability of text and figures, and think for a long time how to present something in the best way.
As for your question, I'd say this really depends on what you consider 'unconventional'! If your CV bursts with colours and Comic Sans, it will certainly backfire. If it's a sleek design with understatement, it certainly won't.

This answer is a tad too negative for my tastes, and may not even be true. I would imagine it's more likely that most academics are too busy to put lots of work into design, and don't care enough to put time into it.

@eykanal: Isn't that exactly what he wrote?

@JeffE Nope you are seeing a rather toned down version.

@JeffE - The original text was that academics don't know how to do good layout. I'm suggesting that irrespective of whether they know how to, they just don't care to. The distinction is subtle but it's the difference between an insult and an observation.

I think the original observation is correct.  Most academics don't know how to do good layout.  I don't think this is any more insulting than "Most academics don't know how to make their own bread."

Assuming that we have similar concepts of what good design is (clarity, readability, ...), the only point I can see where it could potentially backfire is if there is a mandatory layout and you choose not to use it.

thesis formats are often mandatory, and you don't want to risk failing because of not meeting formal requirements.
The call-for-papers that comes with an ugly Word template that is to be used
Many universities have a corporate design that is mandatory for public/outside presentations.
However, my complementary experience is that judicuous changes that leave the overall impression of where you belong intact, but e.g. allow better contrast in diagrams are usually not backfiring.