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Time allocation in conference presentations
How much time should I expect to 'leave' at the end of a conference presentation for questions? This question suggests to allocate 2-3 minutes per slide, including front/back matter (like a question slide). Does this mean I should leave 2-3 minutes for every 15 minutes of presentation delivered? Is there a good 'rule of thumb' for this?

There is no "correct" answer to this. Just ask the session moderator what they recommend and follow that.

And even that may chance sometimes. In more "relaxed" conferences, the chair might let you use a bit more time if previous presenters were too quick.

The only rule of thumb I'm familiar with is a bit like this, keeping in mind that some of the additional time may serve as buffer in case there are questions during the talk:

For talks of or less than 30 minutes total, include no less than 5 and no more than 10 minutes for questions.
For talks between 30 and 60 minutes, include no less than 10 and no more than 15 minutes for questions.

So that essentially means at least 5 minutes for each half hour (not too far off from your estimates).
For longer talks, there never seems to be enough time for questions, so I would suspect there isn't one rule for all situations.

Good answer.  Better to choose a number based on the length of the talk than on the number of slides.  Some slides are dense, some are dynamic and get flipped through quickly.

Rarely (never?) does an audience complain that the presentation ended too early. (Particularly at a conference when it can be hard to stay on schedule in the first place and is running late)


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Post tenure job search in the humantities: a waste of time?
I've searched many forums and websites and I am hoping to find a more direct answer to my question.
I am a tenured, associate professor of humanities at a SLAC (yes, I do appreciate this). My family is very unhappy where we are living. I would have gone on the job market before getting tenure but had a confluence of personal crises that went on for over a year. Anyway, I looked for a job last year but noticed that all except one or two in my field are for assistant professor.
Is it "not done"/completely a waste of time to apply for assistant professor positions?
Last year, I had one campus interview, and they said they would hire me as associate but not tenured.  Didn't get that job, obviously.  I am actually okay with moving without tenure, due to wanting to improve things for my family.  I am just a humanities prof, however -- I don't bring grants, funding, all that jazz with me.  I'm not a hotshot in publications, either.  I don't want a different job or a different university (a move up), just a different location where my family might be happier.
Am I wasting my time?

What is a SLAC?

@Mangara: Small liberal arts college

Whew! For a moment I thought you were teaching humanities at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.

I'm sure he'd be a smashing success.

I think offers like "we will hire you as an associate professor without tenure" are often accompanied by an understanding that you would be eligible for tenure after a short time, maybe a year or two. And by talking to the chair, reading institutional policies, learning about past tenure cases, etc, you might be able to have confidence that you would get it. So next time you have a proposal like that, it may be worth looking into it further.

The two SLACs where I worked (both ranked top 25) before my current R1 didn't have the category of untenured associate. Rather, they'd hire you as an effective 6th year assistant professor and put you through tenure review immediately in your first year. Since your previous job MAY allow for a one year leave of absence, you could use this to test if the grass is indeed greener and not just painted green.

Thank you all -- I know it's hard to do, and I do wish I'd done this pre-tenure, but life has a habit of getting in the way.

@user20274 It does. Don't blame yourself or lose hope. With tenure, time is now on your side. Be good to yourself and your family.

As a practical matter, if you really want to move you'll probably have to start over as an assistant professor.  Are you willing to consider that?

Senior level hires at small, liberal arts colleges (SLACs) are uncommon in the sciences, rare in the social sciences, and very rare in the humanities. Why would a small college pay the same price for an associate or full professor when an assistant costs half as much?
R1s do senior hires because we want and can pay for name-brand profs. We often have named (and well funded) professorships to entice people to switch. Big name professors also bring in big name grants and attract graduate students. These latter concerns aren't as important at SLACs.
That's not to say it doesn't happen. A SLAC might hire a senior professor in the humanities for the following reasons:

It's starting up a new program and needs an experienced hand to guide it
A senior faculty member died/left/was fired and all of the remaining members of the department are too junior to chair it
There is so much infighting in the department that the provost wants an outside chair to step in
Freak accident of nature

Since you have tenure, you can afford to be patient. Keep your CV, cover letter, and job talk polished. Go to all the right conferences. Be portable.

Why would the college pay the same price for an associate or full professor when an assistant costs half as much? — Presumably because tenured faculty provide the college something that assistant professors don't. Otherwise literally nobody would get tenure.

That's the direction we're moving in, Jeff. It's even worse, colleges realize that they can hire 4 adjuncts for the price of one assistant prof. Not only is tenure dying, professors as full-time employees are becoming more rare.

That's why the OP needs to realize how lucky he or she is.  I'd also suggest the OP look into "survivor's guilt" and "post-tenure depression" before making hasty decisions.

I've looked into post tenure depression/let down stuff, but my family's desire to move is real.  We live in an incredibly tiny, incredibly conservative area (we aren't especially political, but it's sort of like living in the US of 30 years ago).  There is just a lack of opportunity here especially for my spouse.

Sure, I totally understand. I was stuck in a midwest college myself for a while before getting fortunately picked up by an R1. I count my blessings each night. In order to get out of your college, you need to focus on your research publications and your prominence in your field, even at the possible expense of service work and teaching at your current workplace. R1s want the best scholars (well top-10) in their fields, work towards being that.

Pump out books and articles like crazy. Be active on your national organization's (MLA, etc.) committees where other scholars will see you. Try to get national grants (NEH) and awards. And finally -- try to be the best spouse you can. You'll need your spouse's help to gain exit speed.

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Is having a job that you love an advantage or disadvantage when applying for a Masters?
I'm currently applying to a masters program in a field unrelated to my current line or work. I am lucky to have a job that I love in a different field. Will this make the admissions committee question my commitment to their program? I am satisfied with my current job, but the Masters would enable me to try and do my dream job.
In case it's relevant, my PhD is in physics, and the Masters is in Computer Game Engineering. I am applying to a one year, full time taught Masters at a UK institution. (Related to this question.)

Giving the impression that you might be a person who doesn't stick around for long can indeed be a negative when job hunting (although there are exceptions).  I suppose conceivably it might be a problem for some PhD admissions scenarios.  But I can't imagine it would affect you when applying for a masters.  They just want to be confident that you will stay for one year -- and the life story that your CV tells will not throw that into question!
I once read about a musician, top in his instrument, with a successful concertizing career, who went back to school to study medicine, and then after ten years practicing medicine successfully, went back to concertizing.  From that we see that if you're good, you're good, and that's what people care about.
One of the things that makes you good is that you are not afraid to follow your nose, and pursue things you want to learn more about.  You don't need to hide that.

If it is a full time master, I strongly advise you against having a job, especially a full-time one, at the same time. I don't know what the degree you're applying for looks like, but a master's course is usually pretty demanding and requires a lot of personal work. By pursuing two full-time activities at the same time, I think you put both of them at risk.

I would leave my job but I was worried the reaction would be why would you want to change direction if you already have a job that you love? I should have been more clear with my question. Sorry about that

@Beetroot Only you have the answer to that. Why do you want to change direction if you already have a job that you love? What is your project? I don't think people at uni admissions are here to pass judgment on your life choices. They are here to assess whether you are qualified for the degree you're applying for.

A person qualified in another area (such as a Phd in Physics) who wanted to learn a new topic (like computer game development) would likely be welcomed on a full-time taught masters course. Full-time taught masters courses are often designed for those who want a change in direction and have the motivation to focus for the year to achieve that goal.
There are people who want to be an astronaut, for example, who go back and learn new skills and knowledge and collect several degrees in the process.
You do have to have an interregnum in employment, as a full-time course is exactly that. A lot of daily, weekly and monthly time needs to be devoted to it to learn all that material that others will have picked up in a three year Bachelor's degree.
I teach on such a course and we have many "career change" applicants who are well qualified in other fields. It is quite normal.

This is word-for-word identical to the answer you posted here, but the question is very different. I don't think this answer applies to this question in the same way.

@eykanal - I typed up this one first and then realised I'd answered the wrong one of the OP's questions! I felt it still applied after re-reading both questions, so left it here as it appeared useful.....

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Getting a PhD much later on

Possible Duplicate:
Age and Graduate school

Is it difficult to get a job as a professor if you don't go to a PhD program immediately after undergrad? For example, suppose you work for 5 years before returning to get a PhD? Is this very rare?


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How do you find time to conduct deep work weekly as a senior academic?
As seniority increases, admin tasks increase, and effective time for research decreases. There's no way around investing long hours in replying to e-mails, filling up budget forms, and screening/interviewing prospective lab members. Assuming there's no additional staff to help, this can take almost a large fraction of the week, in random slots.
Do you have habits that work successfully to conduct research i.e. "deep work", during long hours e.g. papers/theory/programming every week without interruptions, for at least 3-4 hours? What I care about is a strategy to get research done weekly and consistently, and notice when having many weeks without active research conducted.
I have considered blocking on a fixed weekday the same morning or afternoon slot for this purpose. Alternatively, having a limited slot for replying to e-mails no longer than one hour. This has limitations e.g. urgent meetings/emails that need to be replied to.
Thank you,
Examples of strategies for deep work (Medium).

My "joke" answer would be to become a mathematician. And if you are a bit of a curmudgeon, you won't be welcome in meetings. I think this is field dependent, actually.

https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/89362/17254

Reading these type of questions and answers, I wonder why anyone wants become PI. Actually why? It sounds really depressing to me.

@tom Simple, at some point you realize you want something done and this something is bigger than yourself. So instead of taking joy in raw, unhindered, first-hand scientific discovery you end up pursuing a distant, bigger dream. It is not as much as people want being PIs, more like hitting their limits, which is more or less depressing - some realize they are not the brilliant scientists they've been aspiring to be their whole lives and are better suited for administrative work, some are more capable of both keeping up with research and managing the team.

@Lodinn but it is worth working out first whether you have the research management ability (or can gain it) for that strategy to realise your goals.  There are some that are well able to keep up their research, but it would take more time and energy to supervise someone else than it would take for them to do the work themselves.  Sometimes goals are better achieved by collaboration rather than by going into research management.  Both are valid approaches, but unfortunately you need to be able to assess your aptitudes correctly, which is not always easy.

@tom in many countries the only way to get stable employment is to take on management responsibilities.

Well, you might have to accept that from a certain point on you become a manager and no longer an active researcher. For instance, managers in industry do not perform the dirty job of directly designing products, but they are the ones who provide the infrastructure and the organization so that other "lower-level" employees can design and manufacture the products. Likewise, a senior academic, in many cases (with exceptions), no longer performs the dirty calculations or the dirty lab work, but provides the group infrastructure, the organization, the experience, and the big picture so that younger colleagues can do the research work. That's why in certain fields the principal investigator is considered worth of autorship even if they don't directly perform the research: without them, there wouldn't simply be any research.
However, with some care, one can still do a bit of research. My technique is the following:

Be organized and efficient. Setup standard workflows for your bureaucratical tasks, and allot specific weekly times for some of these tasks (e.g. reply to students only twice a week at certain times, or only when you want to take a break from more demanding tasks). This seems something you already thought of, but relax your expectations on urgent stuff.
Train yourself to switch rapidly between different tasks. For instance, if when I was a PhD student I could work for hours on a single task, nowadays I'm only able to dedicate 10-20 min to each task, and I've learnt to switch quickly from one task to another, even if they require concentration.
Use idle time to perform background work. For instance, I usually conceive lectures and classes in my mind while driving to work, while shopping or while having a walk. I also use these idle times to organize papers, so that when I arrive at work I just have to write what I thought.

But, in any case, forget to have 3-4 hours uninterrupted...

Good PIs, I suspect, also become "idea factories" pumping out ideas for others (especially doctoral students) to actually follow up on. Their insights might also help prevent students from following unproductive lines of inquiry.

@Buffy Yep, I was considering that under providing experience and big picture ;-)

+1 The problem is that you tend to get promoted by being good at research to a level where you become a research manager.  Unfortunately being a good researcher does not mean you will be a good research manager - the "Peter Principle" in action.  It is worth asking yourself whether you actually want to be promoted to that level - is it worth the extra money?  Unfortunately some institutions are not happy with excellent researchers who don't want to be research managers (it may be that they are primarily interested in grants ;o).

Also you can be an "ideas factory" and provide insights from experience without being a research manager, just by being collegial.

Massimo's answer is great, but also optimistic: For a lot of us at the more senior end of things (I'm 49 and been a full professor for 10 years now), all good intentions often don't lead to much concerted research time. I've tried to block off my Tuesdays for work at home, uninterrupted by meetings. But in practice, I spend most of most Tuesdays preparing for classes, answering emails, having meetings that simply didn't fit anywhere else, even though I've generally been able to at least work from home.
So one, not completely unreasonable, answer to your original question is: There is no magic incantation; a lot of us don't find that uninterrupted deep work on a regular basis. For me, it is a rare day when I get to work on something for 2 or 3 hours at a time; that happens once or twice a month. I just need to work within these constraints and focus on the tasks that I can do within the constraints of my schedule, and that is often doing the writing on papers, rather than the underlying work.

Do you get interrupted on weekends also?

@Lodinn For most people there comes a point in their career where "I do my management and advisory job during the day and I do groundbreaking research on evenings and weekends" is simply not doable anymore. Energy and other commitments (family, hobbies) do not allow it.

@xLeitix ''hobbies''  Then drop the hobbies if they are using time which you need for research.  Sorry.  If you have to make sacrifices then do it.

@xLeitix I know it is not sustainable for me in the long run, either, and not taking breaks just leads to burnout eventually. But I wanted to know if not having 2-3 hours of time at all is conditional on maintaining the work-life balance or are people later in their careers even more screwed than that and there's no room even for sacrificing "free time" even on a non-regular basis.

@Tom no, don't do it, you will burn yourself out and be replaced by the next exploitably ambitious academic fresh off the production line (your institution will probably not be grateful).  Overwork is not a way of producing good quality research in the long run.  I know this from personal experience.

@Tom So academics should save hobbies for retirement? That's a silly opinion. Sorry.

I decided towards the end of my time as an Assistant Prof that I was burnt out and needed a day off work per week. So Saturday I no longer work, and I manage to do that pretty consistently and not feel bad about it. That's the time for cycling, hiking, and climbing. Sunday is a half-day of work at most. I would be in mentally much worse shape if I worked 7 days a week, and I suspect I would not be more productive either.

Get an assistant if you can. Offload admin tasks onto them.
Otherwise, create set hours for stuff and/or use dead time to multitask those tasks that can be.

Do you work on the weekends?  I work 7 days a week so that I know that I always have two days undistracted where no-one else is around.
Reminds me of when Steven Weinberg was asked how he did so much whilst also teaching, writing books and having a wife and family.  He answered 'I don't ski and I don't go to church', or something like that.  His wife also stated that he just did nothing about from work and had no real hobbies to speak of.
You could perhaps sit down and honestly see how much time you are losing which you don't need to lose, like spending it on phone conversations and stuff like that.  Ultimately, life is about making choices, so if you have to sacrifice something to make way for time to spend on your ambitions, then do it.
Terry Tao also has some general advice on his blog which might be useful.

-1 Steven Weinbergs are vanishingly rare, but the Dikran Marsupials of the academic world are practically ubiquitous, if you want to follow Weinbergs approach, be aware the odds are heavily against it working over a full career.

Yes, and when you go into a PhD as a student, the odds are very heavily against you going into an academic career at the end of it.  So what?  Doesn't mean you can't do it because many others have failed.

It's not fair to tell people ''don't try this type of thing, I tried it and it didn't work for me and most people are like me''.

Your logic is faulty.  If you get a PhD and you actually want to be an academic, then the odds are not "heavily" against you.  Also nobody said that you can't do something, just that it is unlikely to work.  Having very few successes where many others have failed is a pretty good definition of the "odds are heavily against it", at least if you are a frequentist.

I have been an academic for over 25 years, it isn't just my experience, I have seen what has happened to colleagues and friends as well.  None of them were Weinbergs, the really successful ones all had hobbies and lives.  It is perfectly fair to warn readers when bad advice is given, it is kind of why SE has up- and down-votes.  At least I gave an explanation for the down vote.

I don't want to be too harsh, but according your profile you are still a PhD student. Things tend to look differently once you are 20 years in and have another 20 years of work ahead of you. Even the Tao blog you linked seems to say that working on your research while tired or unmotivated is a bad idea.

"working on your research while tired or unmotivated is a bad idea."  this is exactly the problem.  If you work when you are tired, it takes longer and the quality suffers.  You also get more tired and risk a downward spiral.  Having time away increases the amount of good research you get done.  Having the odd "sprint" of a couple of weeks is fine, but it shouldn't be standard operating procedure.  It isn't how many hours you work, it is how much progress you make.

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If a paper is accepted as a poster, must you attend the conference?
I know that submitting a paper to a conference implies a promise to present the paper if it's accepted. However, I have seen conferences where a paper that you submit could be accepted as a poster instead. I have a limited travel budget (who doesn't?), and I would rather not travel just for a poster presentation, so I haven't submitted anything to that type of conference.
However, now I'm wondering: If you submit a paper, and it's accepted as a poster, would it be perceived poorly if you decide not to present the poster? (Of course, if you do that, your abstract wouldn't appear in any proceedings.)
EDIT: By "decide not to present the poster", I mean withdrawing it. I certainly wouldn't plan on being a no-show!

If you cannot attend, you can ask a colleague of yours to present the poster.

@MassimoOrtolano - What you've mentioned is true, but the question becomes more interesting if we discount that possibility. :)

You may refer to IEEE Handling of Non-Presented Papers

A paper submitted to a conference can be accepted either as an oral talk, a poster talk, or a short demo/industry track, with variations (small talks, long talks, plenary talks, e-posters, etc.). In some fields, the poster is considered less important, and will not be published as a paper in proceedings. In others, they have the same importance.
Conferences have two main purposes (I forgot about vacations in paradise places):

present your paper, either talk or poster,
attend other talks/posters, meet people.

To me, "submitting a paper to a conference implies a moral obligation for one of the authors to present the talk or the poster, if the paper is accepted". If one does not attend, the submission should be withdrawed, for different potential reasons:

you (and your co-authors) do not need, or cannot afford a poster presentation,
the conference program is not good enough for your purposes,
you should not fool attendees with papers that will not be presented.

In the conferences I do summit to, both oral and poster are considered even. I now do:

prefer posters when I present, as I have more time (1h-2h vs 15 min-20 min) to present, to talk with attendees, adapt to their background,
prefer attend to posters than to orals, except when I spot a specific point for a given talk.

Plus, I do bring along with me small copies of the poster, copies of papers that are related to the work at hand, that I can offer to attendees. Reminder of the root: a "publication" means: make a research "public". Posters are a good vector for that, and bring you more feedback (very few questions asked in traditional oral sessions). Sometimes, somebody who cannot attend your allotted slot can propose a specific meeting. I should admit I even went to a person presenting a poster, to ask him about her/his previous work.
In those conferences, poster chairs spot "no shows": poster panels without posters, posters without presenters, posters with a presenter who is not a co-author.

Example: No-show papers are defined as papers submitted by
  authors who subsequently did not present the paper in-person (no
  videos, no remote cast) at the technical meeting. Presentations by
  proxies are not allowed, unless explicitly approved before the
  conference by the technical co-chairs. No-show papers that were not
  withdrawn and were published in the Proceedings must be identified as
  "No-Show" in the files submitted to IEEE for further publication (IEEE
  Xplore). No-shows will not be available on IEEE Xplore or other public
  access IEEE forums. IEEE will maintain an archive of no-shows.

Authors of "no show" are sometimes blacklisted, and can be banned of publications in the scientific organization places (future conferences, even journals) for a couple of years.
So it will be perceived poorly if you do not warn the organizers and withdraw the paper, is unethical to other attendees,  and involves consequences for you and your co-authors.

Your answer made me realise that I've been underestimating the value of posters.

When I present a poster, I do bring along with me copies of papers that support the work, that I can handle to attendees. Reminder: a "publication" means: make a research "public". Posters are a good vector for that, and bring you more feedback (very few questions asked in traditional oral sessions).

+1, but just wanted to ask - does this only apply to posters which are related to something (article/abstract) being published in the proceedings, or does this also hold in cases where that is not the case?

"does this only apply to": no (imho), once you have decided to present it, do as if it was the most important thing ever. This generally gives a good impression.

For some conferences, the proceedings do not actually distinguish between oral and poster presentation. For a conference of this sort, you should treat it as just as important to go as if you were giving a talk.
Even for conferences where posters are given lesser publication or are not published at all, however, if you do not intend to present you should formally withdraw your submission in a timely fashion after you learn of the decision.
There is no stigma associated with doing so, though it does signal clearly that you are more interested in the publication than the community. It will, however, look bad if you don't withdraw and just fail to turn up.

"There is no stigma associated with doing so, though it does signal clearly that you are more interested in the publication than the community." - Good point!


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Is it possible to transfer schools in the middle of a Master's program?
I entered my university a year ago. I am enrolled in the master's thesis program. I wanted to do a thesis  , but none of the faculty in my department who do fluid dynamics have an opening for a new researcher in their group. It seems I wont be able to find a thesis advisor in my subfield.
What's my best option in this situation?
is it possible to transfer schools a year in?

It depends where you are (geographically - i.e., what country you are from), and the policies of the university.

I'm in the United States.


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I am re-taking the 4th semester. How does that look in the eyes of a graduate school admission committee?
I finished first year undergraduate studies at the home university and continued the second year (accepted directly into second year) at a top university in the field in  Europe.
It all started nice (i had top scores in the main subjects) but  soon I stopped going to classes (depression, no social contact) and I ended up failing the second  semester and therefore the year. Now i am re-taking the 4th semester and  I am in the top 10% (with rank 1 and 2 on two main subjects).
My question is: How does that look in the eyes of a MSc/PhD admission committee or even an employer?

To the admissions committee:
You'll definitely want to explain it in your Statement of Purpose (or whatever the equivalent may be in your country). It will probably be noticed but there isn't anything you can do about it now except do better and possibly seek help about your issue if you haven't already.
Some relevant questions are Explaining bad grades in application: SOP or separate letter and How do I make a bad semester not look bad during my scholarship application?.
To employers:
This is highly dependant on the field and employer. In Computer Science/software engineering, from my experience, employers don't care. They care about your abilities and the only time they even want your transcript is to check off HR's requirement that he/she does indeed have a degree. Larger and more corporate companies may care more, but my horrible undergraduate transcript has passed many times without any question (as have my colleagues').

"do better and possibly seek help about your issue if you haven't already."
It has actually gotten much better since, but sincerely, thank you :)

@MarkoKarbevski Then it really sounds like you have won the battle. Don't stress too much about a bad semester. I assure you, I've known plenty of people to have bad spots on their transcript and still get into the schools they want.


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What subjects benefit from textbook editions?
I've read several questions relating to the (typically US) practice of requiring students to buy up-to-date, expensive, editions of textbooks. I can see why the publishers are in favour of this, but I don't understand why everyone else plays along. As far as I've seen, the UK seems to get along fine without this.
In my field (mathematics) it seems pretty obvious that new editions are generally not that important - maths just doesn't change that fast (the material taught at undergraduate level has mostly been around for the odd hundred years). So my question is:
Are there subjects for which it is important to have the most up-to-date edition of a texbook, enough to justify the cost to students (/libraries)?

I haven't spotted this question elsewhere. I'm not certain about the US tag.

I agree that while the US are a prime example and likely the biggest textbook market, this question is really not specifically about the US. I'll remove the US tag.

I suppose it can be more practical. Different editions often differ in numbering of exercises, page numbers, etc., so this can be a huge pain if different editions are in use. Presumably bookstores only sell the latest edition, so if you would settle for an older edition, it might be more difficult to obtain the right one.

..."practice of requiring students to buy up-to-date, expensive, editions of textbooks". This is reasonable when the student should buy the book. If they could just borrow the book (libraries) it would make sense to use an older version. But why buy an outdated version (except if the book is bought second-hand) when it would not be much cheaper to buy an older version?

@PieterNaaijkens FWIW the incompatible numbering is one of the strategies publishers use to force people to use the latest edition. If publishers were motivated to deliver value rather than to protect profits they could easily design their textbook editions to be backwards-compatible.

@PieterNaaijkens I firmly believe that a university student should be able to deal with different page numbers, and if they can't then they should learn fast. What empolyer is going to hire someone who cannot manage without perfect instructions all the time?

@Alexandros I would consider buying second hand books (say from the year above) to be standard, not an exception. There are a couple of subjects I know of where there are texts of such importance that each student will keep a copy after they graduate (eg medicine), but not many.

Might be an unpopular opinion, but IMHO this problem should be solved by the lecturers (or TAs) quoting the exercises they assign in full rather than merely referencing them. Reeditions have their uses, but there should be no edition requirements on a course unless something is needed that the older editions do not provide.

If copies of an older edition simply aren't available in sufficient quantities, the course runners don't have much of a choice.

@MarkPlotnick I would think it's fairly unlikely that not-enough-copies-available will coincide with very-frequent-editions, unless publishers decide to make that deliberate.

In design courses (i.e. structural engineering), codal provisions are more likely to change every 3-5 years. Hence, students need to be up-to-date with the recent rules, regulations, calculation methods and equations.

Take undergrad economics. While standard micro- and macroeconomic theory likely doesn't change quickly enough to warrant a new textbook edition every few years, students might be... irritated... if recent economic events (the US housing crisis, the Great Stagnation, right now the ruble meltdown) were not reflected and discussed.
Suppose the last example of a major crisis in your econ textbook (printed in 2004) were the dotcom bubble bursting in 2001 - today's college students were barely walking back then. This would be ancient history for them.
Yes, of course a motivated instructor could work with an older textbook and provide the updates based on his own notes. This is a lot of effort, though, and apparently few instructors go to this trouble.

"This would be ancient history for them" - if that's a problem then they're going to be in real trouble when they're asked to consider the South Sea bubble or tulip mania ;-) But sure, like you say, students don't just want to come out knowing the theory, they also want to know how it applies to the examples they're familiar with from the news.

But does that actually require a new textbook?  I have plenty of classes where the teacher assigned journal and news articles to supplement the textbook readings each week.  In some cases they were recent articles, but not always ... but they always were directly related to the chapter(s) assigned from the textbook.

@Joe: I agree it doesn't require a new edition (the Q was which subjects benefit from new editions). Publishers could certainly just print updates covering these events, tied into the theory that likely didn't change. Software companies issue patches and don't require you to buy and install a whole new installation to deal with one bug. So why don't textbook publishers follow this "patch/update" model? Answer: because they can.

Note: I have selected this as the accepted answer not because it is most correct but because it gives roughly the most specific answer (of those so far).

With regards to "the most up to date," it certainly depends on the frequency of versioning: for example, I cannot imagine a subject in which a new version every year would be justified from a scientific consensus perspective.
There are, however, fields where the consensus is advancing quickly enough that a new version every 5-10 years would certainly make sense.  A number of biomedical sciences, for example, would have this property, as there has been a continuing rapid advance in our understanding of the mechanisms of control within individual cells and their relationship to organism-level behaviors.
Of course, a highly motivated instructor might collect notes and surveys themselves such that a textbook was not needed, but that's an independent axis from your question, I believe...

Machine Learning and related fields in statistics, etc require fairly frequent revision. New algorithms are being developed and adopted at a fairly rapid pace, in large part because the technology is enabling datasets and algorithms that were previously infeasible to be common.
Even an introductory machine learning text with a copyright 5 years ago was probably drafted even earlier. So a now common technique might have been brand new. One fairly simple example would be elastic net regression, which was first written about in 2005.

Communications engineering, from what I understand, is rapidly changing (what with the Internet at all). In fact, any textbook related to computer technology is bound to be severely outdated in several years (with some exceptions). There can be issues, for example, when students are led to believe (as is the case in my telecommunications textbook published in 2005 and used in 2014) that Token Rings are common alternatives to Ethernet--something that this article from 2007 quite firmly denies.
While introductory calculus hasn't changed much in the past couple hundred years, fields that are rapidly changing, e.g. anything involving computers, require up-to-date textbooks. I don't imagine anyone will benefit much from a textbook on internet communications published 5+ years ago as opposed to a current one.

I find that many STEM fields like to use specific editions of textbooks not because of the content, but because of the end-of-chapter problems.
These tend to change per edition (if not the actual problem, sometimes the numbering), and many intructors like to assign these as homework. This practice doesn't work as well if not all students have the same problems available under the same problem number.
I'm not saying it is a good reason, but it is a reason it happens.

I'm fully aware of this practice, and it is extremely poor behaviour on the part of the publishers designed to rip off students. My question is about why people put up with it.

Frankly, we don't have a choice. They are not going to change their practices, and dealing with different problems in different orders is just too much of a hassle. This is worse though if the instructor insists on a specific edition of a book that is technically outdated, because those will usually be harder and more expensive to obtain.

Sorry, but you really do have a choice. In the UK the problem is pretty much non-existent. If you insist on following one book doggedly, especially if it's an expensive one, you can still solve the problem by not assigning numbered questions as assessments. You can write out the questions you want the students to answer. Or be really daring and make up questions like the rest of us. Better still, ditch the expensive textbook. Give the students lecture notes, like we do. Or use one of the open text books now available.


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How much vacation time is typical during a PhD in Singapore?
Just to check if anyone is familiar with the vacation period of PhD students in Singapore?
I am considering a PhD in Singapore, there are two main universities NUS (National University of Singapore), and NTU (Nanyang Technological University).
There are two vacation periods for undergraduates, namely the "summer" break from May to July, and the "winter" break from December to Jan. (Singapore only has one season, hence the quotation marks)
However, I am not sure if the above applies for graduate students, especially PhD students on stipend.

"Summer" break from May to July and "from December to Jan". You can rest assure that as a PHD student you can not have 4 months of vacation, unless you are planning to graduate on >5-7 years, in any part of the world.

@Alexandros, yes, but for someone coming from and undergraduate background, OP may not understand that being a PhD student is more like a regular job. Typically PhD students are also employed as research assistants and work over these breaks, too. We got time off when we needed it and when the University was closed for official holidays. A PhD student without an assistantship might have been able to leave for the whole break period, but I didn't know anyone in that situation.

There may be a difference if your stipend is coming from teaching versus research. (@BillBarth Many students in lab sciences did not get normal holidays off.)

@Kimball, did not get them off officially, or were forced by their supervisor to work even though the university was officially closed? My university is officially closed for the time between Christmas and New Years, and graduate students should not be in their labs working. Did we work? Sometimes. Were we supposed to? No.

@BillBarth Where I was, at least as far as I know, the university being officially closed was just about administrative/teaching duties--I don't think there was any policy about students not being in labs on holidays.

@Kimball, when UT Austin closes, it's really supposed to be closed. Skeleton crew only on some of those days. Graduate students can certainly be in and do work, but they cannot really be required to. There's a difference between Spring Break (not closed) and the week between Christmas and New Years (closed), 4th of July (closed), Labor Day (closed), etc. Now, nobody's going to check, so unless you complain, nothing will happen. But I can see a prof getting in trouble for requiring students to be in the lab on Christmas Day.

@BillBarth: In general, this seems to be entirely university-dependent. I know German universities that do not have any concept of being "closed"; employees have to either be at work or take a vacation day, as long as it is a day between Monday and Friday and not a national/state holiday (i.e. including, for instance, Dec 27 to 30). I also know other German universities that are really closed during some times of the year, to the point that employees cannot even enter the buildings with their office keys. As this question asks about universities in SG, though, neither my experiences from ...

... Germany nor yours from Austin will be very helpful to the OP, unfortunately.

You'll have to ask specifically.

I got my Ph.D. at NTU.  Ph.D. students would generally be getting 21 days of leave for each calendar year (i.e. Jan-Dec) in both NUS and NTU (see links below).
With a 5 day work-week, that means a maximum of 4 weeks + 1 day of leave.  This can be increased if the period coincides with one or more of Singapore's 11 public holidays (as published by the Ministry of Manpower).  No-pay leave may also be possible, if the Ph.D. supervisor agrees.
Note that Ph.D. students would be still be working during the undergraduate summer break vacation periods.
References:

http://nus.edu.sg/ngs/leave_ngss.html
http://www3.ntu.edu.sg/asis/gso/rsls_leave_policy.pdf
http://www.cee.ntu.edu.sg/Students/Graduate/PhD_MEng/Documents/Leave%20Scheme.pdf


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In computer science, how hard it is to get a job at an industry research lab?
As a PhD graduate, how much easier it to get a job at a research lab like the ones at Microsoft, Intel, Google etc. compared to getting a job as a Professor at an R1 university?
Is it possible to get a job at an R1 university, if one spends a period of time publishing papers at an industry research lab?

It is much easier to get a job in an top-notch industry research lab than an R1 professorship for one simple reason: there are vastly more such research lab jobs available.
To illustrate this, let's consider an illustrative example.  The Stanford Computer Science faculty has 55 professors.  To sustain a department of that size, they'll probably be hiring 2-4 people per year, depending on what fraction fail to make tenure.  Meanwhile, right next door is its cousin, SRI International, with about 2100 employees: most of those don't have PhDs, but a lot of them do, and a quick search on their open job postings finds more than a dozen that are looking for a PhD-level candidate right now.  That's just one company, and one you've probably never even heard of.  There's a lot more big ones out there, and far more than that if you start considering the smaller ones as well.
Now, getting back into a professorship, that's a different story.  It most certainly can be done, if you maintain a good research presence.  For most people, however, the trip to industry is a one-way trip, simply because you generally don't have to publish.  Many research companies like it when you publish, and many strongly encourage it---but the fact that they have to encourage it should tell you that the incentives are just not there the same way.  At a company, you are not measured primarily by your ability to publish, and so it tends to get triaged in favor of other things, like writing proposals, delivering demos to customers, or product development.  There's nothing against publishing, but there's no "publish or perish" and so there's a lot less publishing.
Bottom line: you can move in either direction, but it's a lot easier to move from university to industry than the reverse.

Excellent answer (+1). I think that what you describe is applicable to other fields, too, mostly hard sciences, but, perhaps, to a lesser degree, social sciences as well.

It's also very dependent on the lab and on the area in Computer Science that you're in.  You mention Microsoft Research, Google, and Intel lumped together but in a lot of cases industry research labs can be very different in terms of size, turnover rates, and hiring practices.
For example, Microsoft Research can be comparable or even more difficult to get into than an R1 depending on the year and what the institution/company is looking for.

@jakebeal: Is publishing in industry not required due to the quality of research in industry, or such a formality is not required once you join industry.

@motiur Industrial research varies in quality just as much as university research.  There are "R1 companies" just like there are "R1 universities" (just much less systematized).  Similarly, publication can be very useful in industry, helping to obtain external funding just like at a university.  But an industry researcher is not building a tenure case, and so "enough publication" is a much more balanced and less anxiety-inducing concept.  Also, some industrial projects may not be allowed to be published, either due to internal IP restrictions or external funder restrictions.

Is there list of such R1 companies - I found a list of R1 universities, I am just curious.

@motiur I don't know of a formal list, but in any particular subfield researchers will know who the real players are...


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Studies on lost teaching hours due to USA Affordable Care Act?
In the USA, the Affordable Care Act requires employers to provide health care to employees working above 30 hours. Some employers to save on costs have either cut full-time employees hours to part-time or eliminated some full-time positions entirely.
 I'm a part-time instructor at my university. My hours were cut to put them below the 30 hour cut off for next semester. This reduced my classes from three to two, with a reduction in pay.
Have there been any studies on how the ACA has affected employment of adjunct faculty?

Hi Bob, your question is not really the kind of question that is suitable for this site.  Stack Exchange focusses on specific, factual questions.  If you rephrase your question to ask about statistics of how many academic employers in the USA have responded to the ACA by reducing hours of employees, it could probably be on-topic for this site.

Edited to make it a general question on hiring.

It's a reasonable question, but the answer is almost certainly no. ACA hasn't been around long enough fir any eeasonable studies.

I think it's more than just ACA, as there has lately been a general trend toward employing more adjunct professors than in previous years.

While the requirement of "adjunct faculty" likely makes this too specific to have a study done looking at this, that doesn't mean we can't at least drawn some expected inferences from wider observed market forces and more general studies.
It's a "known issue" that the 30-hour requirement is resulting in some people having their work hours reduced so they don't count as full time. Back when the Affordable Care Act was not even passed yet there were employers - especially restaurants and other low-wage institutions - stating explicitly that this is what they'd be doing. So without a study, we'd explicitly expect this to be one effect of the law
As for studies seeking to quantify the effects, there are some, such as Effects of Federal Policy to Insure Young Adults:
Evidence from the 2010 Affordable Care Act’s
Dependent-Coverage Mandate. On page 23 we see:

Our data allow us to investigate the effects of the federal mandate
on whether young adults report working, whether they report working
full-time (30 hours or more), their weekly work hours, and their rate
of job turnover. We also examine the impact of the mandate on their
work schedule flexibility by evaluating the probability that young
adults have work hours that vary from week to week.
Our results,
starting with the first column of Table 7, show no statistically
significant evidence that the mandate affected the probability of
employment of young adults. Since the receipt of ESI is usually tied
to full-time work, we examined this measure next and find that the law
is associated with a reduced prevalence of full-time work by close to
2 percentage points (roughly 5.8 percent) during the period after
implementation began, relative to pre-ACA enactment. We also find
statistically significant evidence for a reduction in hours of work
(about a 3 percent reduction); these effects are statistically weaker
when we examine log hours as the dependent variable.

So this isn't a specific study to adjuncts, and this study specifically looks at young adults who aren't so likely to be adjunts, but without a specific study we are certainly permitted to assume that this is a real effect of the law - some people will see a cut in pay/hours so as to avoid having to be provideded benefits.

Thanks for that info. That report though is from 2013.The ACA was just barely coming into effect then so I would not expect the effects to be large at that time. For instance, at my university, part-time workers, including adjunct faculty, were only warned in 2013 of the coming changes in work-hours. The changes came into effect in Fall, 2014 which forced a 1/3rd cut in hours, and of course salary, for many part-timers.
I would like to see survey starting from 2014.
Bob Clark

@user3544 Me too! There are some government reports,  but the only ones I've seen are aggregate and don't parse reasons well (and aren't specific to academia either).


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Postdoctoral job search: positions and job titles
As I'm currently pursuing an academic job search (in parallel to the industry one), which includes potential postdoctoral positions, I would appreciate some clarifications on the following aspects.
Positions (terminology). I have seen various titles for postdoctoral positions, i.e., postdoctoral scholar (or researcher), research assistant, research associate and similar. Question: Are there any essential differences, implied by these titles, or they are just terminology variations (perhaps, geographically- or university-dependent) for essentially the same type of position?
Note: My field is Information Systems, a discipline, which can be considered as a sub-domain of Management Science, which, in turn, is a social sciences discipline.

Contrary to StrongBad, I would say there are important non-terminological differences. While both are junior positions that a recent PhD grad may hold, at my university, a postdoc or Postdoctoral Researcher is intended to be a temporary position for 2-ish years. On the other hand, the Research Associate title is the first in a sequence of permanent full-time research staff positions that goes Research Associate, Research Scientist, and then Senior Research Scientist. While there is no tenure for these positions, the levels are intended to parallel the professor levels here (Assistant, Associate, (full) Professor), and the requirements for promotion are similar (minus teaching).
These permanent positions are expected to continue as long as there is funding to cover them, whereas postdocs are expected to move on after a few years. Given the commitment, most professors, especially the junior ones, will not have Research Associate positions to offer. These are more often affiliated with large labs, centers, or institutes that are large enough and diverse enough to be able to offer long-term funding stability.
There are other differences as well. Postdocs at my university require a special exception to be allowed PI their own grants while Research Associates may PI them from the start without special permission. RAs usually not involved in teaching, where postdoc positions seem to be more flexible in this regard. Also, given the permanence, RAs come with considerably higher status than postdocs, though the respect doesn't really kick in until Research Scientist is reached. Postdocs are a further training position intended to allow a recent grad to finish publishing things from their thesis, branch out into some new areas, and get ready for a faculty position.

Excellently formulated and extremely useful answer - very much appreciated (+1 and, likely, will accept). Great points - some clear, some more subtle - which make much more order in my head as I'm trying to circumnavigate the ocean Academic Job Market for the first time :-). Would appreciate your opinion on the rest of my most recent 4-question series of questions on academic job search.

This does not seem contradictory to my answer, unless you are claiming that all, or even most, universities use the same terminology as your university/department. You are just giving an example of a department/university that is consistent on the titles it uses.

@StrongBad, your first sentence seems pretty absolute. I wanted to give just one example, which is pretty common in my experience, where the titles have important meaning and distinction.

It is all just terminology. Within a single university/department there might, but not necessarily, be consistency on what the titles mean, but across universities all bets are off. Some postdocs have teaching requirements while others do not and sometimes departments try and use different title. Same goes for using title to highlight differences in how the position is funded. Sometimes the title is specified by the funding agency.

Thank you for the clarification (+1). Pretty much in line with my expectations. By the way, are RA positions, which mostly imply supporting roles for one or more faculty members, considered as respectful as more traditional research projects-focused postdoctoral positions (perhaps, I should add this to my question)?

@AleksandrBlekh I would not discount a position just because of job title. If you have questions about the expectations, ask whoever is running the search.

You misunderstood me. In my question in the comment above I expressed a concern in potential difference in respectability for a position, based not on title, but on position duties and focus: (more individual) faculty support versus (more team-focused) research projects.


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How to politely reject a professor's request for work that I was recommended for?
A very high profile Prof. A recommended me to another high profile Prof. B to do some work for him.  While normally as a graduate I should be very thankful and jump on this, I simply cannot do the work asked due to time and I also believe there would be a more suitable candidate for the work.  Prof A's recommendations hold very high weight in the field I work in (his previous recommendation got me a job as an undergraduate).  I feel that Prof A may have misunderstood my skills (he confused Java programming with Java web programming essentially).  Prof A knows me somewhat well (I work for him currently), so perhaps this is why he recommended me.
How do I turn down Prof B's request in a polite manner without losing any face to myself or Prof A?  In my response, should I also forward candidates whom I think would be able to do the work (e.g. cc them in the email)?

"While normally as a graduate I should be very thankful and jump on this, I simply cannot do the work asked due to time and I believe there would be a more suitable candidate for the work."
That is more or less exactly what you should say. Express your gratitude to Professor A. If you have a major academic obligation taking up your time, like comprehensive exams or something, mention that. Do NOT CC the candidates you have in mind, but do mention to Professor B that you can recommend someone else who you think would be a good fit.

The request is only from Prof B.  Should I say anything to Prof A?

Of course, like I said: express your gratitude to Professor A. You can also let him know that you are unable to take this particular position, but the point you want to emphasize is your appreciation. If you have a very good excuse for not taking the position, it may further help to show that you are not dismissing the opportunity lightly.

Thank you Brian.  If I clarify that my background is in Java but not Java web programming, would that cause Prof A and myself to both lose face?  I guess these may be easily confusable, especially since Prof A's field is mostly theoretical.  I do not want to appear incapable of taking additional work (and therefore less likely to be recommended for something in the future?).

I probably wouldn't bring that detail up, at least not to Professor A.

Don't bother going in the detail about Java, just tell both professors that you do not have the available time to commit to prof B.
If they mention changing your schedule with prof A, then recommend your alternative candidate (which hopefully you do anyways), and express your concern that taking on prof B's project may take more time than you have available, even if prof A gives you time off from working for him.
Another possibility (though I don't know how well this would work, since you don't provide any project details), would be to say that prof B's project is going in a different direction than you see your future heading.


text:
Referencing next section to avoid confusion
I am writing one research article in the field of biology. I want to refer some concept which I am going to describe in next sections but have not described in current sentence (or previous sections) to avoid confusion. I felt it will break the flow of the article if I explained that concept in previous sections. For example,

Section 1: Some Title
... We extended this task by performing XYZ (explained in section 2.3) which will help in better understanding of this issue...
...
...
Section 2.3: XYZ
This method performs ...

I have seen few papers with such referencing. I was just wondering if it is logically fine or there is some alternative style.
This is not similar to the content which we put in supplementary data. And also this is NOT a problem of keeping it in Materials and Methods. It is just complex concept which will need separate section for its clarification.
I have found one similar post but answer was not satisfactory and slightly unrelated to above situation.

It is indeed fine to reference forwards in a document. If this weren't the case, knowing when to read a specific appendix would be very awkward... In some journals it's even the norm to provide some forward references in the introduction to explain how the rest of the paper will be organized.
Also see
Is it formal to inform readers that a point will be discussed later in the chapter?

It doesn't help the reader to write, in the introduction, that

We extended this task by performing XYZ (explained in section 2.3) which will help in better understanding of this issue

because the reader won't know why XYZ...will help until later. That's okay if XYZ is well-known. (Albeit, I'd then replace explained with detailed.) Otherwise, it would be useful to briefly explain XYZ and why it will help in the introduction.

Always think of the reader. If XYZ is relevant to understanding something then if possible you should summarise at that point the key points of XYZ that are relevant. If you do that, it is quite OK to say 'more detail in Appendix Y' and/or 'a full account of XYZ is given below in Chapter X'.
What you must avoid is the kind of thing that might be quite acceptable in a work of fiction: 'for reasons that will only become clear later...'.


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How to figure out timing for working on and submitting independent research?
I am a PhD student in mathematics and have an idea for a general theory, which in a sense is an intermediate case between two opposite ends of well-understood theories. This intermediate case has gained little attention in the literature.
I came up with this idea for a more general theory by studying an explicit example in this intermediate case. The theory includes the two well-understood opposite ends in a trivial way.
I have checked with my supervisor, and he said it was a good idea and "I should write up the details". I have done so, but it has been sitting like this for almost two years. It's very tangential to the research of my supervisor and, as far as I can tell from trying to get his input, he is more interested in this particular example and not in the theory that should be built around it.
I read in "How to protect your unpublished ideas?" that the best thing would be to put this idea on the arXiv and try to submit it as a paper.
I obviously can't ask you here whether my idea is really good. But other than my supervisor, there is no faculty with this area of expertise at my university. I also don't know any other professors well enough to simply write an email asking for an opinion.
Developing the theory in all generality would be time consuming. So I'm wondering which of the three options would be best:

Submit a paper now, co-authored with my supervisor, using just my example and hinting at the more general theory.
Working out the details for some other cases and try to publish alone.
Wait until I have more time to focus on this project (after my PhD).
Put a preliminary version on the arXiv, running the risk that it contains some errors (errors on the order of magnitude of forgetting additional hypotheses, I know it works in a few examples).

In any case, I would confer with my supervisor to see whether it would be okay for me to try to publish something by myself.
I should also say that, for my taste, I'm a little short on papers (I have two short papers in B-grade journals) and I'm looking for a PostDoc soon.

You don't submit ideas.  You submit results.

@JeffE I meant "working out the details of what up to now is only an idea with a few motivating examples and submitting the results" but it was too long for the title. (I changed the title now.)

Sounds like a great project to pull forward from a back burner to help you deal with the anticlimax you will very likely find yourself dealing with after completing the PhD!  If there is no great danger of someone scooping your idea -- wait.

I can not give you a fully fledged answer at all, but some things to take into consideration:
Where do you want to place your article? This determines the amount of time you will have to spend on it. This has to be in-line with your idea about being short on papers (because it might not help the issue if noone reads the journal).
I personally would find it a tad rude to publish alone, if the idea has spawned from something connected to your work for your insitute (and might also not be allowed depending on your contract).
If you are not pleased with option 1 with respect to your ideas about the paper's benefit for you I would go with 3. You could also think about finding a PostDoc position which includes the work on this subject. If you do this intelligently, you could also use this as a selling point for yourself. Ideally this also would be the general idea of a perfect PostDoc position, allowing to develop your own ideas and research. You could try doing so with a research stipend while going abroad.

Thank you for your thoughts, especially with respect to the social/ethical aspect. As I said, (1) this is completely tangential/unrelated to my research, (2) I had the idea by doing calculations independently, and (3) I wouldn't consider publishing alone without talking to my supervisor. Are you saying it would be rude to ask?

In my book asking is almost never rude, if you ask considerately. This however depends solely on the person you're asking.
What I usually do is: Imagining to be the person you're about to ask and trying to figure out his goals and thoughts about the topic (publishing, author lists, hierachy, in this case). It helps me to find out about possible directions to proceed in and also the direction of approach to the person (i.e. the specific way to formulate the question).
He is your supervisor, so if he acts to your best benefits, I would ask him and let him advise myself.

I personally would find it a tad rude to publish alone — Unless you acrually did the work alone, in which case publishing alone is not merely not rude but mandatory.

@JeffE Could you explain why you say "mandatory"?

@Earthliŋ, the usual mantra for academic publishing is that only people that contributed substantially to the work of producing the results described in the article or to the production of the article itself should appear in the author list. Some communities have agreed to try to follow the Vancouver Protocol which is stricter than what I just said. Different communities have different standards, but you should not put people on the author list who did no work on the article.


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Is Artifact Evaluation anonymous?
My paper has just been accepted. This is my first paper. I am going to perform Artifact Evaluation now. But is it anonymous at this stage?
If it is, then the path in the code that I open must be modified. Because many file paths have my name. My paper is this conference. It seems that there is no such introduction on his official website(https://hpca-conf.org/2022/artifact-evaluation/).
Thanks

For the particular conference you mention, Wetenschaap's answer if useful. As a more general question, the question cannot be answered by us, because each conference has their own policy. If something is not clear from the available information, you need to clarify it with the organizers.


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For my PhD, should I go with the more prestigious university, or the one that is a better research match?
I will be starting a PhD in computer science in the UK this year, but have to decide between two offers that I'm pretty torn about. I've communicated with the supervisors from both universities in detail and contacted current graduate students there, and feel I have all the information I need, but am still struggling to decide.
University A has a very reputable department with a lot of academic staff and graduate students in it. The academic community here seems bigger and more vibrant than I am used to, which would be a big learning experience. At University A, I would be funded to work with a younger supervisor who's pretty early in their career and who can offer me more office hours due to less academic duties. However, our research interests don't align as closely.
University B's department is also of a very good standard, but is less prestigious than University A's. It is also significantly smaller, both in terms of staff and students. I have previously spent 1 year at University B and know that the research being conducted there is a closer match to what I want to work on. The supervisor here is more established and is well-liked by the community, but has more academic duties.
Funding from both places is comparable and I believe both supervisors would be good mentors both academically and personally, so the two options seem to be equal on these points. Even though the student community is very important to me, I would be willing to sacrifice the better community at University A in favour of working on my preferred research at University B. What I am more hesitant about is whether choosing the less prestigious option now will hurt me in the future when looking for jobs (ideally, I want to stay in academia). I'm under the impression that going to the more well-known institution would put me in a better position and provide me with more options when applying for postdocs.
I appreciate that I'm very privileged to be in this position in the first place, and am thankful for the opportunities in front of me, but I've been thinking this over for weeks and still haven't made up my mind. What I find the most scary is that it feels as though where and with whom I do my PhD will stay with me for the rest of my academic career. I would appreciate any feedback from people who have been in similar positions in the past, and/or tips on what I should prioritise when making my final decision.
Thank you!

I'm hesitant to say this because I was privileged to do my degree at a prestigious institution, but I would say that you should choose the place that you think will allow you to do the best research.

Also individual reputation of the supervisor might count.

When in doubt, go to the more prestigious university.
The reason is simply because it's less likely to change. A university that's highly prestigious today is likely to be highly prestigious 5 years in the future. Comparatively, what you are interested in can change quite quickly, especially since as a new graduate student you don't have much experience with research. For example, in physics, one thing undergraduates are often interested in is MOND (modified Newtonian Dynamics) because it's "cool". However, once one actually starts to examine the evidence against MOND, it's not uncommon to realize that there are good reasons most people don't work on it. At that point if one joined X university because they worked on MOND, it's too late. There are other ways things can change as well: for example if you like Y topic, then find that working on Y actually involves doing things you don't enjoy (e.g. figuring out how to make code run more efficiently).
Furthermore:

More prestigious university is likely to have better students, and as the Chinese idiom goes, 近朱者赤，近墨者黑 (roughly translated as "People are easily influenced by their surroundings and the companions they hang around with")
More prestigious university is also likely to have more/better-known visitors coming to give seminars and such, in turn allowing for better networking.
If you work in industry after you graduate, nobody is going to care about your research topic, but they will care about the name of your university.

See also: University rank/stature - How much does it affect one's career post-Ph.D?
One more thing: you'll be staying at that university for several years. If you find you dislike the city / country / etc that the university is located in, this might override all other considerations.

Thank you for answering! Your MOND example is helpful because one of my concerns is in fact that after a few years researching my topic at University B, I might realise that it is not very useful and will want to switch topic, but there won't be as many options to do that as there would be in University A. As for your Chinese idiom, I wholeheartedly agree!

" you'll be staying at that university for several years." not completely true, especially for CS. It can very well be that you manage to get a lot of freedom. At least spatial freedom

If you want to stay in academia, your top priority should be producing excellent research.  From your post, it sounds like this will be possible at either university.  Another helpful factor is your academic advisor.  Ideally, you can study under a very famous/well-respected/talented person.  Again it sounds like you have two good options in this regard.
If I may, it sounds like you have two good options.  This is a positive to me in that you cannot 'screw it up' and make the wrong choice.  One piece of advice is to consider the process of obtaining your degree rather than what happens when you're done.  You're looking at years of effort, so why not try to enjoy/maximize it instead of fretting about ultimate placement?  Live 'in the moment', as the millennials like to say.
A last cliche bit of advice is to flip a coin.  Heads = A, Tails = B.  Once you see the coin land, you'll either feel a quick sense of glee or sting of disappointment.  Then ignore the coin result and pick based on this feeling.  Good luck!

Thank you for your answer. I agree that my top priority should be to produce excellent research. I'm just unsure whether in that regard I should prioritise having a bigger and better research community (University A) over liking the research more (University B).

Questions:

Is it a sole PhD or MPhil (MS) +PhD? If it is a sole PhD, then I suppose that you are already in touch with your advisor. Have you discussed your research perspectives in details with professors at each university? Do you find them helpful in providing you research advices?

Is the research group you are interested also super interested in you, and have they invited you to their regular group meetings?

My suggestion:

If you not yet have a firm direction to do you research, go to the better university because your interests are likely to change. A better university is far more likely to have better professors who meet your needs.
You can do you degree at the better university, while visiting the other university and collaborate with the research team that interests you for now.

Thanks for your answer. 1. It is a sole PhD and I've discussed research prospects with both professors. I have actually worked with the supervisor at University B before, which is why I'm more confident I will like the work better there. They have both been helpful, but after talking to their students, the younger supervisor at University A seems to have more hours in the week for chats with students than the more established supervisor at University B. 2. The research group at University B invited me to a group meeting already while University A seemed keen for me to join in the near future.

@tetromino If you are 100% sure about what you are going to do in the next 3 or 4 years, then go for B. The established professor B is also far more likely to find you a better job.


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Drifting away from the "boring" slide in the conference
I am not a fan of heavy/text-infested slides and hope my audience also second my opinion. I did resort to the healthy image-text ratio in most of the slides and am relying on my speaking skills during my first presentation! In this context, how should he/she adapt himself to suit the interest of audience,dynamically? If I realize that a couple of sides have turned out to be cumbersome or "boring"**, how should I seamlessly switch over to the next section and regain the lost interest.
**boring = Many example slides are available as follows :

Example 1 :Slide which talks about the approach of simulation, when actually results of the simulation are the "meat" of the talk.
Example 2(The first few slides of the talk)

Hypothetical Talk : Thumbdrives have changed the world, Jan 2003
Motivation Slide, 1 : End of the road for Floppy Disks(3 Bullets)
Motivation Slide, 2 : The Storage Roadmap(Image), the arise of the
PenDrive(3 Bullets)
The News Slide,   3 : Ascend,ManDisk and Watergate 3 News Clippings + 3 Images
The Cool Feature, 4 : Pendrives = 1K X Floppy Disks, they are Reusable CDs
Paper Starts    , 5 : How I used the cool features efficiently to build something
even cooler?

Edited the question to include two example-scenarios,which I expect to tackle during the presentation.

In your talk, every slide tells a story.  That story can be as short or as long as you want.  Just like the overview slide tells the story of the whole talk in a single slide, each section of the talk and even each individual slide can be presented at multiple levels of resolution.
Familiarize yourself with the story you want to tell at these multiple different levels of resolution, and you can change the pacing to match the interest level of the audience.
For example, let's say you've got a slide explaining the details of how you performed a simulation.  You might present this same slide at three radically different levels of detail:

High detail: explain each of the parameters and why you chose it
Low detail: "To study this in simulation, we selected these parameters.  The important choices here are ..." [explain the critical choices]
Minimalist: "We studied this in simulation using these parameters, and ..." [move on to following results slide]

If you are concerned that you are boring your audience, you can shift to a lower detail presentation without actually disrupting your narrative.
This is also a good technique for managing your time, to ensure that you don't go over-time or badly under-time, and can help you customize your material for different audiences.

You can adapt the order of your talk, putting the boring details towards the end. So, you briefly state your simulation, show the cool results (and why should we care about your simulation at all), and then, once you have hopefully convinced your audience that what you did was meritful and worth paying attention to, explain the details of the choice of parameters.
Another advantage of this approach is that you can keep more people engaged for longer. The moment you start talking about the details of the parameters you will loose most of the people non expert on the topic, and you are unlikely to get them back in time to hear your results.


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How does a prospective applicant fail to qualify for RAship, but fit the bill for TAship?
I wish to know how the Graduate Admissions Committees for top Universities in the USA decide about awarding Teaching Assistantship to a prospective student. If one had preferred both 'RAship' and 'TAship' in his/her application, does that mean he/she must first be eliminated from the RAship race and then awarded TAship as a consolation?
Also, if being a Research Assistant requires a stellar undergraduate research record, publications and so on, what are the factors which would have been considered for awarding the Teaching Assistantship?
To be very specific, if the student is from a country like India or China, would his English-speaking skills and academic competence be re-reviewed?
If so, please help me understand how these two factors transform from mere selection criteria to those for awarding Financial Assistance.
The Universities, I received assistant-ship from are among the best in my field of interest in Computer Science. Also, their CS departments are known to be well-funded and generously award their students with assistant-ships and scholarships every year.

What country is the target university in?

I would think it is very dependent on the specific department and university.  Many moons ago when I was a grad student, my department supported the 1st year grad students as RAs, assigned them as TAs the second year (to get teaching experience), and then you had your advisor support you the rest of the way as an RA.  Even students with external scholarships served as TAs at some point. Somewhere else it may all depend on the number of classes that need TAs...

@JonCuster, thanks for the reply. Was wondering if I the question is headed to be downvoted with the decreasing comments per views ratio.

In the US, TAships and RAships are generally assigned by the department. There may be a rule about first year students (ours was that 1st year students could not be assigned TAships). You should also not assume that the division is made by a committee. RAships can be grant-related, or funded by generic department funds. The PI would usually make the decision if a student is considered especially appropriate for the project (unless the PI has a lousy department that doesn't give him/her much autonomy). Depending on the level of democratic sentiment, either the chair decides on the allocation, an admissions / funding committee does, or the whole department faculty does. TAships are also subject to university rules, if any, or department policy, about language competence, so it may be impossible to grant an incoming student a TAship if their English isn't certified for oral proficiency.
Generally speaking, an RAship is better than a TAship from the student's perspective, but the department might either have a particular need for a TA (prehaps in a specific area) in that year, or it might be advantageous to have a year's teaching out of the way so that in your second year you can do something else. I would say that you should not over-interpret either outcome, if you checked the "both" box. "Prefer" means prefer.

So,I have been told that the assistantship can change till the semester starts in a few months from now. I am only wondering if I should write to Professors or respond enthusiastically to a PI's mails so that I can give a shot at getting an RAship.

I recommend that you express your enthusiasm over the prospects for an RAship on whatever that project is, to the PI or other relevant faculty. since it sounds like that's what you would really prefer.

Here's the way I read one STEM department in the US that I have some insight into, but I'm also reading this through third-party comments and the experience of a few students I know, so take it with a grain of salt. RAs go to professors who have grant funding or startup funding to support them. If a student is admittable, but no professor puts their hand up to say they want to support them on an RA, then they may or not be actually admitted depending on how many TA slots are available and how the committee feels about them otherwise. There may be a handful of department-level or privately-funded RA fellowships available for really great students. Some students may be admitted with no funding, though I think this is unlikely for students explicitly applying for PhDs (more below).
I know of two separate cases where a student was rejected when no professor was willing to stick their hand up and offer them an RA during the committee meeting. In one of those cases, the student was admitted the subsequent year after publishing a few great papers and making a few contacts. The other student decided to do his PhD at another nearby school. I don't know what drives this difference between TA and RA admissions in this particular department, but it seemed clear that if you have someone who wants to work with you, you can surmount many admission obstacles, assuming they have funding. Not having a champion can also scuttle your chances. I think that some really top notch students must be "claimed" by professors based on their applications only, that is without prior contact with the  prof, but I can't prove that and don't know how it works.
My strong impression, but more speculatively, is that some students are admitted to the master's program with no funding hoping to score a TAship along the way or impress a professor in one of their early courses and land an RA. After that, being admitted already, they will try to upgrade themselves to a PhD student along the way. I think a lot of the TA positions go to these students. This latter impression is based on the huge number of requests for RA positions I get in a non-academic research organization every year from MS students with no apparent funding.
Now with all that being said, students coming to this department with master's degrees already in hand appear to be at a disadvantage unless they have very strong CVs or prior contact with a prof that wants to work with them. That was the case with the two students I mentioned before.

For the record, I don't think my answer is definitive, @envy_intelligence, but it's your check mark to give.

I probably think it is my fault to have put up such a "controversial question". I am getting a feeling that people may not want to comment on such issues and I respect their choices. However, I do appreciate the fact that you gave 2 examples, which helped me understand the importance of the funding. Thanks again!

@envy_intelligence, I don't think there's anything controversial in your question, but I do think it varies a lot from department to department as well as university to university. It would be a lot of work for everyone to provide their own unique perspective.


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Is it possible to keep one published paper in two persons thesis?
Me and my colleague are working towards our PhD. We have worked on same problems (80%) over the past few years. We have published some papers based on the work we have done. We have decided to write thesis now. Is it possible to keep two or three chapters in both thesis identical (because we both did the same work).
Thanks.

I am having hard time to understand the relation between the title and body of your question. Do you mean the shared chapters are kind of previously published papers and you both want to bring that publication in form of a chapter of your theses? Could you please edit your question and clarify?

If your university has rules about the minimum number of papers per PHD, usually they have to be unique per student. So, if the university requires 3 papers per PHD, you should have at least 6 joint papers.

Due to my work I have seen a fair share of PhD thesis in different fields. Occasionally you will come a cross identical chapters. I have not come a cross a thesis with more then one overlapping chapter. However this of course would not necessary mean this is impossible. But, every time there is an overlapping chapter it is already indicated on the published paper the first and second author should both be considered first author.
Your SUPERVISOR should be able to answer your question, ask her/him


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Why might professors in an online masters program give fewer assignments and less feedback than those in an in-person program?
When I was a graduate business student some 20 years ago in a major state university in south central US, my general impression was that almost all professors, with very few exception, were spending lots of time with the students' learning, in that they were behaving the same way as if they were teaching undergraduate students.
Now I am taking a second master degree in math with another state university, but this time around I am taking it online. My general impression here is the exact opposite of my past experience. Almost all teachers are spending less time with teaching, meaning that they passed out only class notes, rarely (if at all) gave assignments, and much less returned them with feedback.
For your info, my school is a non flag-ship school in the state university system, almost all students are HS math teachers whose only goal is getting master degree in math for job purpose, and I suspect lots of them do not even have enough math prerequisite. I am also a HS teacher but I think I am the only one who have middle name in math. I am not venting here but here is my question:

Is there any hardship or predicament on the professors' side that the public are not aware of, that cause them to behave the way they did?

Thank you for your time and effort.

It's not clear to me why you assume that this is due to some hardship affecting the professor, and not a deliberate pedagogical choice to run the course this way. Given that your current course is in a different field of study, with a different student demographic, in a different delivery format, and with a completely different goal, why would you expect the style of teaching to be the same?

@ff524 : I sensed that you gave me an indirect answer. The prof's are behaving like that because they knew that the students are not interested in learning higher math in the first place, therefore they kind of "give up"? (Or perhaps because there are very few who know abstract math and know how to teach?) Thanks again.

It does not necessarily say anything about "giving up" or teaching ability. It could say that expectations for MS students are different between disciplines, that teaching styles are different between disciplines, that the best teaching style for a group of would-be executives is not necessarily the same as the best teaching style for a group of HS teachers, that certain teaching styles work better in person and others work better in an online delivery format... you seem predisposed to believe that this is some kind of failure on the professors' part. It may be... or it may not be.

@ff524 : I think it is more than just style. I've seen prof who covered only no more than 4 concepts in whole semester, another who rarely responded to email, who started contacting the online students only two or three weeks into the semester. I am trying to understand them here. Thanks again.

Then it sounds like what you're really asking is not about a hands-off vs hands-on teaching style, but rather the amount of time professors seem to be putting in to the class. If that's the case, please [edit] the question to clarify what you're really asking.

An online program is not limited by physical space in the classroom, so perhaps they have more students. Or maybe the university regards the online program as lesser, and thus giving less teaching credits.

@Davidmh : Interesting! By "teaching credits" do you mean those points accumulated toward the prof's seniority? Thanks.

@A.Magnus however that is counted at the university. Where I know, professors have a yearly quota of teaching; but it could be anything in other places.

As someone who has taught both the answer is actually pretty simple.  When you're in class you can't help but make a physical connection to students.  Online, you have to make an effort to do that.  Some teachers  do, but many don't.


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How does the CRediT system work?
I'm preparing a submission to Royal Society Biology Letters, and they also require that each author's CRediT contribution is provided.
I'm not familiar with this (I usually publish in engineering venues that do not require detailed contributions), could someone clarify a few things?
There are four options for each category: lead, equal, supporting, and not ticking the checkbox.
Question 1
I'm assuming that not ticking a checkbox is a valid entry for "no contribution" for that category. If a category is not very relevant for the study, can it be skipped entirely?
Question 2
Are lead and equal mutually exclusive? Or can they be used to split contributions into three levels? Same between supporting and equal. (Author 1: Lead, Author 2: Equal, Author 3: Equal, Author 4: Supporting 5:Supporting)?
edit: in a bizarre turn of events, when I logged back in the CRediT accreditation was no longer in the system, and instead there was a field for freetext in which to write a statement of contributions, following RS's own guidelines. No idea what happened there.

Does it really work?

I suppose it depends on what you mean by "work". Does it incentivize people to have this conversation earlier, add clarity to author contributions, and to what should be considered a sufficient contribution for co-authorship? Probably. Does it eliminate free-ride authorship without sufficient contribution entirely? Quite certainly not. Is it a good requirement for journals to have? I think so.

Journals use a variety of formats for reporting author contributions. This content is like a conflict of interest statement—it's not typically evaluated as part of the peer review, but more a contractual reassurance in case of later concerns such as whether an author is added with no contribution.
I've used CRediT statements in several published papers. I don't know a citation for my claims below, but I strongly suspect:

Yes
Not mutually exclusive


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Why do academics write/publish book reviews for journals?
At least in the humanities, it seems to be fairly common for journals to publish book reviews. To be honest, I don't think I fully understand why many academics write them and why many journals publish them. I don't read them very often because I usually don't find them very enlightening. If I want to find out whether a book is worth looking at, it is usually easier to take a look at the table of contents or else to get it from a library and take a look rather than reading the review.
However, I could imagine the following incentives:

The reviewer thinks the book is particularly interesting and should be known to a greater audience, so they want to promote it.
Writing book reviews is considered a service to the community, and authors would also like to get their own books reviewed in a journal later on.
Reviewers influence the community with their evaluation of a book.
Reviewers accrue prestige by publishing book reviews.

Which of these reasons, if any, make academics write book reviews? If it does add to their prestige, how much? Is it, very roughly, possible to say that one research article equals x published book reviews in terms of added prestige (and increased prospects for promotion)?

related: Why do academics publish?

I wrote a book review once. For me (1), (3), (4), and the first half of (2) were all relevant factors. (Like all book reviews in mathematics of which I am aware, it was at the unsolicited request of the journal editors.)
In mathematics, book reviews are uncommon, and (contrary to cheesemeister's experience) they are somewhat prestigious to write. Only about a quarter of my book review actually reviewed the book. In the rest I described (as I was asked to by the editors) why someone would want to read a book on Subject X in the first place. I had an opportunity to "sell" my research area, and this was definitely rewarding!
Finally, it was an excellent excuse to thoroughly read the book I was reviewing, which I was eager to do in the first place. This was a lot of work, but it was very rewarding (as I could tell from the beginning that it would be). Personally, I would only review a book if I was keen on carefully reading it.

Interesting, thanks for contributing your perspective. May I ask whether you also (regularly?) read book reviews?

I regularly glance over book reviews in Nature and Science, which are the only journals I regularly read that do reviews. I've almost never heard of the books that are discussed, and occasionally spot something I'm interested enough in -- or that the review makes intriguing enough -- that I'd read it.

In my experience, reviews are written at the request of journal editors and are typically not initiated by the person writing them.  My colleagues and I usually write several book reviews every year because our supervisor is on the editorial board of the journal and tells us to write them.  As reviewers, we do receive a free copy of the book, if you consider that an incentive. There is no prestige associated with writing one, and they don't count as publications in our annual performance reviews.

Reading through a book makes you learn its contents.

I'm a bit late to this game, but thought I'd remind you that librarians are academics! We read book reviews to help with our collections decisions. I'm a nursing librarian, so I read reviews in nursing journals regularly.

It looks like a comment. I think it should be expanded?

Thanks for posting this - I really hadn't though of it from this perspective!