text:
Credit transfer from Masters to PhD in a different University
I am in the process of applying to several computer science PhD programs in North America, and I was wondering if any of the courses that I have already finished in my Master's (in a US university) could be applicable for credit transfer?
If I apply to the PhD program in my current university I will have less courses to finish for my PhD program, because I have already finished several of the required courses. Will I be exempted from taking some courses if I get accepted in a different university of similar or lower ranking?

The policies will differ depending on both university and department guidelines, but I would find it surprising that a university wouldn't take the credits (unless you hadn't finished the masters, then they may look at your classes individually).
Some of the policies that I've seen are as follows (and no doubt there are others or variations of these):

specially defined program structure for PhD students with a master
credit for a fixed number of hours (36 I would imagine to be the norm) toward the PhD program, regardless the number of hours in the masters.
credit for all post-baccalaureate work, but with a small number of courses required by the department.

The last one is what I experienced and the program simply required X number of graduate hours and didn't care the source, so long as all other requirements — 4 specific classes, exams, dissertation — were met.

Some of them may transfer, it depends on the department. For example, my department transfers a blanket N credits for PhD students who come with a masters degree. That is, instead of evaluating each individual class on the masters transcript, they just apply N credits of transfer credit towards the PhD credit requirement. (I don't remember the value of N offhand.)
You will have to check the individual policy of each department you apply to.


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Letter of Recommendation for Business Analystics from Satisfied Client
I'm looking at MSBA programs in the United States and have the two recommended academic references lined, but should get a third reference slot open. Between my previous jobs I worked freelance and had a client for about 6 months who was very satisfied with my work, and even offered if I ever needed a reference or testimonial from them to reach out.
Question:

Would a reference like this be acceptable?
How would this option compare to a third academic reference?

Would a reference like this be acceptable?

It would certainly complete your application and would likely be considered appropriate (though this is not my field and I cannot say for sure).

How would this option compare to a third academic reference?

It really depends on who the client is. If you built a website for a non-technical person, then they really couldn't say much other than "they did a nice job, were professional, etc." This reference won't count for much.
On the other hand, if this person can say "I'm the CTO of a company and deal with dozens of contractors per year; this one is the best I've had and displayed specific skills X, Y, and Z, etc.", then I don't think anyone will care that this person is not an academic.

I think it's good.  I would draft it for him or give him some bullets.   You want to highlight analytical skills and general management business skills.  Not just conscientiousness or the like.

source: Stack Exchange

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Answering "How many months of work experience do you have?" on grad school applications
I am applying to a MS in a STEM degree (Business Analytics or Data Science) at some pretty competitive US universities (domestic applicant).
I have done a lot of different types of work during and after my bachelors program (coursework completed in 3/17), in a large variety of projects and teams on many different time tables and employment statuses. I'll have a separate question I'll be asking in relation to my freelance work after the period in the image below, but I wanted to see what from my usually listed items on my resume I should consider factoring these into the question "How many months of work experience do you have?"
There are mainly 3 questions here,

How should I tabulate months of experience based on the man-hours I've through put on these projects?
Which of these projects would be considered something I should not count towards a question like that on my graduate applications?
Is there an implication that I should be focusing on post-graduate work experience for a question like this or any other conventions I should be cognizant of?

Had you graduated as an engineer when you state you are a “systems engineer”?

I don't think it's a trick question. I would just put down how many months of full-time work experience you have

@Solar_Mike In the description of that one I make it clear it's a Capstone Project. My responsibilities for that project fell completely inline with systems engineering and I was referred to as such. I graduated with a BS in Physics. Are there any issues with that?

As you are aware, this is hard to answer. Hours worked don't translate well to months, since you often think about things and are engaged when you aren't officially "on the clock".
Of course the answer also depends on how complete you are allowed to be in reporting. If it is an open ended question, I'd suggest that you just list each activity with both (a) how many months you were engaged and (b) and estimate of how many hours per week (or whatever) you spent over that time.
But if you can create that list you can probably also reduce it to a range of months, something like "8-12 covering different activities at different times". You could use that if you need to give a short description.
If you need to give a single numeric answer without caveats and some precision is required, just give your best guess based on the above, but be prepared to discuss it in any interview you might have.

unfortunately it only allows a numerical field. I also have 3 months of full time experience at my recent job, plus a very feast or famine freelance 9 month interval prior to that, so this all has just been very difficult to quantify. Looking at most of these projects they've been averaging on about 400 hours a piece.

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Error on FastLane (NSF) letter of Reference System for the NSFPF
The NSF postdoctoral application is due in less than 2 weeks and I am trying to send out invitations for my reference letters.  However, for the past week (on fastlane.gov) I have gotten the same error.
"A database error occured while performing fastlane.pdoc.ProcessReferenceLetter."
I contacted the NSF by email and by phone and haven't gotten any response by either format.  Is there anyone getting this?

Call and email the FastLane User Support line 1-800-673-6188 and fastlane@nsf.gov. They are open 7a-9p M-F and are pretty good about answering the phone during those hours.

I have actually.

Screen shot and date stamp every attempt to do this operation until it works. Call the helpdesk 800 number back every hour during business hours until someone answers the phone, but don't just leave message after message if it goes to voicemail. If you haven't already, send invites via email personally to each of your references so that they know the request from FastLane will be coming eventually. Tell each of your references about the problem so that they'll be prepared to take alternative action if NSF gives you a workaround. Keep good records of all your attempts.
If you can figure out who the cognizant program officer is for the specific fellowship you are applying for, write them an email Monday after you have tried to get in touch with the FastLane user support folks again with a short explanation of your problem and ask them for options.
FastLane being down on broken is usually a great reason for NSF to give you an exception to a deadline.
As noted in the comments, there is some upcoming Fastlane downtime due to the NSF financial system upgrade, but that shouldn't be the problem today or for the rest of the week. The FastLane user support team is usually very responsive, but with the financial system update going on, they may be swamped.
Finally, you might also try talking to the Sponsored Research Office/Office of Sponsored Projects/etc. at your current university. They work with staff at NSF all the time, and may have contacts that can help you.

This answer majorizes the answer I was going to leave. Bottom line: it sucks that you're having trouble and not getting help for it, but you shouldn't let it derail your application (or impact the lives of the letter writers), and the NSF should be willing to act to prevent that from happening: NSF program officers are very reasonable people.

I just got the letters to send out yesterday so maybe it was a bit of a fluke.  I am accepting this answer because it is great general advice.  Thanks guys.

I realize this is now a year old but I was just working on my NSF PRFB application on FastLane today (2015 and a year later), ran into the same error and stumbled on this page. I called FastLane help and they were able to resolve the problem. The person who helped me figured out that you have to re-save the "Cover Sheet" component of the application. He said the reference letter writer submission refers to this part of the application and so it needs to be updated/completed for some reason.
He did this for me but I'm assuming he just opened the "Cover Sheet" in the main "Form Preparation" window by clicking "Go", cleared something and changed it back to what it was before and saved it. You might also be able to just click the "Go" next to "*Remainder of the Cover Sheet". When I do this it says "The Remainder of the CoverSheet has been automatically filled in and saved." If you are able to re-save, the "Saved" date next to "Cover Sheet" in the "Form Preparation" window should change to the current date.
Once this was done I was able to add a reference letter writer without getting the error message. I hope this helps someone else out there if they run into the same problem!

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Should former group member be included as a co-author in a follow-up to his work?
The field is chemistry. We had a postdoc in our group who made three members of a series of compounds. He collected data, analyzed it, and wrote a paper (several other members of the group were included as co-authors for their contributions to various analyses).
The postdoc then left the group to take up a junior faculty position in another university.
Subsequently other members of the group (including co-authors of the original paper) synthesized further members of the original series, collected data, analyzed it and are in the process of writing another paper.
The topic of discussion is whether the original postdoc should be included as a co-author?
On the one hand, he did not make the samples, analyze them, or directly contribute to the second paper. All of the work happened after he had left the group. But on the other hand, the second paper is very much a follow-up to the original work, and would probably not have been possible without the work he put in on the project.
Should he be recognized in some way (co-authorship? acknowledgement?) or not?

Did he provide techniques to make the new set of compounds? Develop analytical methods for these general compounds?  Were there no conversations/discussions/arguments about the next path to follow? All traces of his contributions vanished when he did? No intellectual contributions to the project in any way? How long has it been since he left? Maybe he should be, and maybe not.

The techniques used for synthesis are very basic and have been known for decades. The same could be said for the analysis techniques. As far as intellectual contribution to the overall project - yes definitely. He helped write the original funding application and subsequently identified the system in question as being of interest. It is nearly two years since he left the group, but as with any very long-term postdoc, his legacy still lives on in the group!

The questions were more to stimulate your thinking rather than me needing an answer.  These sorts of situations are quite common and can easily be overthought and worried about.  When I left my post-doc, certain things were in the process of being finished up, and much of the rest I was happy to leave behind since I had plenty of new work to do. If he left, folks thought 'Hey, this is the next thing to do' and went out and did it, than no, he should not be a co-author. If he contributed a reasonable amount to the work, than he should be.

Honestly, this sounds exactly like a case for simply citing the original paper the postdoc co-authored.

@StephanKolassa and a case for acknowledgements.

There are three distinct levels of credit that the former postdoc might be given, depending on their level of contribution to each particular new publication.  In order of increasing significance, these are:

Citation.  The postdoc has done significant prior work for these papers, and so clearly this prior work must be cited.
Acknowledgement.  If the postdoc contributed materially to the new paper, but not enough to merit authorship, then acknowledgement is the typical compromise "middle ground."
Authorship (though not in one of the "privileged positions" such as first author or last author, if they are held significant in the particular subfield).

The boundary between citation and acknowledgement is usually pretty straightforward: did the individual make any contribution that significantly aided the new work beyond providing nice, clear explanations of the content of their publications?  If not, then merely citing should be sufficient.
The boundary between acknowledgement and authorship is extremely field dependent, and moreover often affected strongly by the subfield.  With ethical and trusted colleagues, the best way to navigate this question is often simply to have an open discussion together about where and how to draw this boundary.

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Publish more research papers or advise dissertations?
A faculty should advise students working on dissertations and to publish also. However, publications can come from students working on dissertations, from working alone or from collaborating with others like postdocs. So should faculty advise more students working on their dissertations or work with other researchers? It is clear that faculty should do both of them, but should anyone be given a higher priority?

The relative value placed on the various components of an academic job is one of the main things that differentiates the world's tens of thousands of academic institutions from each other.  Even within one department different faculty members may set different priorities; having done so, they may be equally successful or they may not, and it is not always easy to predict how things will work out in individual cases.  How are we supposed to answer this question in general?  What kind of answer do you have in mind?

@PeteL.Clark I agree with you that it is hard to generalize. However, I would say that universities may care more on publications than dissertations, if that would increase their ranking for example.

Yes, they certainly may.  Some institutions and departments do not have graduate programs, so they obviously care more about publications than the program that they don't have.  And in some departments, advising graduate students is one of the most important things that a faculty member can do, such that a faculty member who arrived and didn't do enough of that would bring the department life to a screeching halt.  Again, what kind of general answer do you expect?  Also, why do you ask: are you a new faculty member trying to decide how to spend your time?

I voted to close as off-topic because "The answer to this question strongly depends on individual factors such as a certain person’s preferences, a given institution’s regulations, the exact contents of your work or your personal values."

@PeteL.Clark I am teaching so I would like to know who things work

Despite some faults, I think this is a decent-enough question and very relevant to those new faculty wanting to get a general sense of the tradeoffs involved between publishing and advising. Since an answer depends on the field/local norms, then answerers can simply state that information. Voting to reopen (an edit is probably in order, though).

Your question is largely a false dichotomy. For instance, there's no reason a paper written by one of your students can't involve collaborators at your institution or from other institutions as well.
So long as your students are publishing, and you're establishing a network, I wouldn't worry about trying to prioritize one over the other, unless your institution's promotion and tenure regulations have something specific to say in the matter.

Although I find the question difficult to answer in general, I actually think there's some truth to the dichotomy.  In my field (mathematics), advising students (i) need not lead to publications at all, (ii) even if it does then it is far from guaranteed that I will be a coauthor, and (iii) even if I am such collaborations generally have a different tenor from collaborations with post-PhD mathematicians.  I think it is accurate to say that I could collaborate more with others if I didn't advise students, so: yes, there is a tradeoff, and my actions are strongly informed by own values.


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When to negotiate an offer?
After receiving an offer and a deadline of 2 weeks, when to start negotiation? According to some opinions, that one round of negotiation is fine. So is it advisable to start negotiating in the first days or wait until last days, with the hope that other offer may arrive?

Start immediately, accept as late as possible when you are happy. If another offer comes in while you are negotiating, that's fine. You can work on negotiating that, too. You may even have to tell the first school that you are negotiating with the second school and vice versa. There's no point in delaying the negotiations, just the acceptance. Of course, as soon as you accept an offer (and it's confirmed), you should immediately withdraw all other pending applications.

What about the idea of having one round of negotiation? http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/40991/how-to-negotiate-multiple-tenure-track-offers/40995#40995

@ThomasLee, I suspect you will could easily have several and do not necessarily agree with that answer. You don't want to have round after round working on only one point per round. You should get all your cards and options on the table and see where it takes you. It might be best to try to get it done in one round, but that might not be possible.


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When is the typical end of interview invitations for faculty positions?
Is there a date when interview invitations stop going out? Some said that interview invitations will come between mid-Jan and mid-Feb, so can an applicant  assume that by March or mid-March there will be no more interview invitations?

I don't have enough for a full-blown answer, but, on the last cycle, I got a request for a Skype interview at the end of March and an invite for an on-campus visit in early April. This is probably not typical, though.

It varies a lot by discipline and institution.  At my institution we're nearly done hiring in some departments and just starting on campus interviews in other departments (like mine.)  The more prestigious institutions will typically make earlier offers, while the less prestigious places tend to go later (to avoid time wasting top candidates that they wouldn't be able to get anyway.)

Hiring times are not that tightly coupled with the funding cycle or the academic year.  Sometimes people find pots of money to bridge before the funding comes through or the post is vacant, so the job is already stitched up beforehand; sometimes several rounds of advertise-interview-offer happen before anyone gets recruited.

I don't think there is a single answer here. Some schools start their interview process in late fall, and other schools don't even conduct preliminary interviews until the end of February. In addition, there's always the possibility that nobody accepts their initial offers, in which case they may want to start a new round of interviews. So basically, you can get an interview request until you get a rejection letter.
However, I would suspect that the bulk of interview requests go out by late February.

It depends on the field you're in. I'm familiar with Math and there, all research schools probably finish hiring at the end of February. We might have sent offers in March, but I don't think we ever invited anyone after mid-February.
Of course, the timeline is completely different for senior hires where there is, essentially, no timeline at all. But I assume that's not what you were asking for.

As some folks have mentioned, it will depend greatly based on the field. My own field doesn't even have a well-defined cycle - there are job announcements posted essentially continuously, which means a similarly continuous trickle of possible interview invitations, and some announcements are held open a remarkably long time.
It may be useful to consult someone specifically in your field, such as your advisor, or another faculty member you trust.

In economics for assistant prof positions, the interviews are all during the AEA/ASSA conference during the first week of January, or similar conferences in Britain and Europe. The interview invitations are usually out by Dec. 15.
Varies by discipline, as mentioned in the other answers.


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How to mention possible mutual interests when applying for a job?
Several advices for job application, recommend to mention faculty that have similar interests and can be future collaborators. What is the best way to do that?

I have worked on topic T and I would like collaborate with with Dr. A
I believe that my work can extend the work of Dr. A

And do making such connection is valid for all schools, or can have exceptions in small departments? My concern here, is that specifying some names, may have some negative effects. Since Dr. A, could be leading a research on specific topic or teaching course C, and is not willing to allow other new faculty to compete with him.

Imagine for a moment that Dr A doesn't want any help and would see you as competition. Would leaving off your knowledge of and interest in T help prevent Dr A from suggesting they hire someone else? I doubt it.
Now imagine that you include mention of topic T but don't mention Dr A. Perhaps they will think "this applicant doesn't even realize we have a world expert on T here already!"
Suggesting you can help Dr A may be a bit presumptive. But saying that you love topic T and are already working on it, and that the presence of Dr A in the department is one of the reasons you want to come to this group? That sounds very positive to me.
Is there a reason you aren't contacting these Dr As directly and saying "I'm thinking of applying to your department because I'm so excited about topic T; do you have any advice for me?" That seems like a good use of your time if the number of Dr As is reasonably small.

+1.  Actually suggesting you can help Dr. A may be presumptive, but you can soften the wording a little with something like "potential opportunities for collaboration".  I agree it is even better if you already know whether Dr. A would be interested in such opportunities.

Great answers. However, do you think that Drs As will provide an advice for almost anonymous graduate? I think most won't.

They may ignore you. All you have lost then is the time it took to write. They may, feeling flattered, give you very generic advice which may or may not be of value. They may invite you to apply and let you know they want you to join their group (if the topic is obscure, your interest alone might be enough). Or they may be quite cold and kind of "scare you off" which has value too since knowing where not to apply is helpful. I think there is little to lose in contacting such people. Not a 100+ email blast, but reaching out to the relevant ones.

@ThomasLee You do not ask to get an actual advice - you ask to initiate contact! And any kind of feedback except no answer is actually useful - even if he only says "Welcome! Take a look at our homepage at ..." - that would still tell you that there are no internal reasons preventing it either permanently or currently. But making your name known could be also useful.

If your work is closely related to the work of Professor A in the department, that should obvious from your research statement.  The committee will likely give much more weight to research you have already done and describe in your statement then they will give to plans for future research.
So the first step is to make sure that you write the research statement in a way that directly shows how what you have done is related to Professor A.
Once that is done, you can also mention Professor A in your cover letter, and indicate that your research statement shows how your work is related. The committee can interpret that mention however they like. They may ignore it, they may view it as a sign that you would fit into the department, they may ask Professor A to look at your research statement and give an opinion.
If you can follow that advice, it can't hurt you to mention someone who you can work with. But only do that if there really is a clear relationship between your work and theirs. I have seen some job applications where the applicant claims they could work with someone, but there is no evidence on their vita or research statement that they can.
For example, they may have studied one subfield of a general field, and mention someone who works in a completely different subfield. In that case, it is not clear that the two could work together easily, and the claim in the cover letter comes off as exaggerated.


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How to teach from someone else's material?
This semester I've been teaching a few hours for another professor (I'm a Postdoc). The idea is that I get some teaching experience while he gets a few precious extra hours for his research.
His slides didn't come with any notes, and he hasn't been very responsive in answering my questions about exactly what he said when he delivered the content. I revised the material and edited the slides in preparation. But, after the first hour of class, I've covered about half the material, which was supposed to last three hours. So, I guess either I've missed something implicit (not on the slides) or I've just not paced the material well.
Short of practising in full, how does one take, adapt and own somebody else's lecture materials?

Unfortunately. to deliver a shared course needs a bit more coordination than "here the slides, there the classroom". If you give me just the slides, I'll teach my course with your slides. If you want me to teach your course there should be more planning.

Tip: look at old exams from this course.  You can reverse-engineer the course this way.  Also, if you are responsible for a big chunk of the semester, feel free to make this course your own: think about what you think students should get from the course, and how you would like to get them there.

I find it hard to teach from others' slides, which are often very dense. You need to "own" the material to have confidence to authentically teach it. I'd start my own slide deck abd pull in slides as appropriate. Check what's actually going to be assessed and focus on that. It's also helpful to add more exercises for the students to do in class to help prompt good questions.

In addition to the slides, use an accompanying textbook to prepare the lecture. This will give you additional context material to fill the lectures, as well as small exercises you can go through at the end of each session.

Just having the slides (and accompanying syllabus with general idea of how much is covered per week and what textbooks are used) doesn't make a course effortless. But they do save an enormous amount of time, so I am never ungrateful if there are existing  (well organized) slides I can use.
So, yes, you will probably need to spend at least the same amount of time as the lecture simply going through and 'tweaking' slides to your own personality or reminding yourself of student potential confusions/viewpoint  and thinking how to best lead them through the the tricky patches before you give the lecture. If you just flash through slides, perhaps you are going too fast - but if it seems as if the students are getting it, wonderful for you. Having extra time for review or for concrete examples  can be invaluable for some topics and actually the best use of lecture time in any case. (As a side note, I teach physics so I'm not exactly sure what might be analogous to unfolding baffling derivations for students in fields far from physical sciences). I use slides because I can cover more material in the same amount of time :-) and they are more legible than my handwriting on the board. But that also means I need to know when to slow down.
Having someone 'tell' you what they say during lecture, or chatting about potential 'non' lecture activities for the course, is about as time consuming as giving the lecture themselves, so I'm not surprised the professor is loathe to spend much time after handing things over. However, at least in US, it would be very unusual not to have a syllabus that was passed out the first day of class that gave indication of 'where we are going when'. (Some syllabi are pretty useless, but if good for actually showing the organization of the course) and if you have a 'textbook' and a good set of slides to start, things are about as good as it can get.

at least the same amount of time as the lecture — I think this estimate is wildly optimistic.  For course I've never taught before, I expect to spend four to six hours preparing for each hour of lecture.  Having someone else's slides might reduce that by an hour.

@JeffE, sure more is better and more likely (but don't scare him off!) I could make it 2* to be more realistic assuming great slides that fit your teaching style and just dropping in on a topic that one is familiar with, but the key in my mind was the 'at least'. The answer to the OP was that yes, there is going to be some preparation. (And I could make more clear that if other activities start being included, that is even more time spent in preparation)


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What is an impact score? Is it different from an impact factor?
This journal has an impact score and impact factor:

Impact Score 5.94
Impact Factor    6.714 (2019)

The journal Impact Factor is the average number of times articles from
the journal published in the past two years have been cited in the JCR
year.
The Impact Factor is calculated by dividing the number of citations in
the JCR year by the total number of articles published in the two
previous years. An Impact Factor of 1.0 means that, on average, the
articles published one or two year ago have been cited one time. An
Impact Factor of 2.5 means that, on average, the articles published
one or two year ago have been cited two and a half times. Citing
articles may be from the same journal; most citing articles are from
different journals.
For example, the journal PLoS Biology's 2010 impact factor is 12.472.
This was calculated thusly:
5076 - total of all citations from 2010 articles to PLoS Biology
articles published in 2009 (1971) and 2008 (3105) divided by 407 -
total of PLoS Biology articles published in 2009 (195) and 2008 (212)
= 12.472
The number by itself does not mean as much. If you knew that the
journal with the highest impact factor has the number 94.333, you
might think 12.472 was quite low. But when you look at the impact
factors of all the Biology journals indexed by JCR, PLoS Biology is
ranked No. 1 in the Biology subject category.

https://guides.uflib.ufl.edu/c.php?g=147746&p=967441
Everything I am finding keeps talking about impact factor. The info of another journal makes it seem like they are the same, since only "impact score" is listed.
However, if both are listed like the first journal/link, which one should be used?

The journal does not have an "impact score."  Resurchify has an "impact score" for the journal, which they probably made up.

The page you linked says it (almost) all:

The impact score (IS), also denoted as Journal impact score (JIS), of an academic journal is a measure of the yearly average number of citations to recent articles published in that journal. It is based on Scopus data.

Both these measures are variations of "average citations received per article", but they are computed on a slightly different database and so they give different results. The Impact Factor is the most well known and recognized, but many alternatives have appeared, also since the IF database is paywalled and does not include some fringe journals.

The impact factor (If), also denoted as Journal impact factor (JIF), of an academic journal is a measure of the yearly average number of citations to recent articles published in that journal. It is based on Web of Science data.

The impact score (IS), also denoted as Journal impact score (JIS), of an academic journal is a measure of the yearly average number of citations to recent articles published in that journal. It is based on Scopus data.

https://www.resurchify.com/impact/details/14875

CiteScore is another metric for measuring journal impact in Scopus. The calculation of CiteScore for the current year is based on the number of citations received by a journal in the latest 4 years (including the calculation year), divided by the number of documents published in the journal in those four years.

https://libguides.lb.polyu.edu.hk/journalimpact/citescore#sthash.LxZdZLH3.dpbs
Therefore, for lesser known journals that have both, it makes sense to put them in this form:

Impact Score 7.14 (2019, Scopus data)
Impact Factor 6.714 (2019, Web of Science data)

Then I just wonder if it's better to list the journal's impact factor for the most current year or from the year the article was published...


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Use of Jargons in my Statement of Purpose
It is generally advisable the use of jargon's and abbreviations be avoided in your statement of purpose. So if I would like to mention a few MOOC's(which stands for Massive Online Open Class offered at portals like Udacity,Coursera,etc) and the flow of my SOP necessitates the use of the word "MOOC", what do I do? Is the term "MOOC" known widely (which I believe is true) or do I have to mention "Massive Online Open Class" (atleast for the first time). This usage could be decisive in situations where there is a strict limitation on the word count.

Why should you use MOOC? I believe everyone understand what does "online course" mean.

@J.A.F..Yeahh..You're kind off right... thanks for the bypass ...:)

I thought MOOC = Massive Online Open Course and yes, you can use well known abbreviations.

One of the most important rules of writing is know your audience.
When you're writing a statement of purpose, you are addressing an audience of experts in your general field. So, everyone in your field will know the basic terminology and jargon that is common to people throughout your field.
Therefore, if you are using a specific term that is not in standard usage throughout your community, you should not assume that everyone will know what it means. Therefore, for the first occurrence, you should write out the term in full. After that you can certainly list an abbreviation.
On the other hand, if the term is normally  or better known as its abbreviated name, then you don't necessarily need to expand it. In my field, for instance, there is something called the Bogoliubov-Born-Green-Kirkwood-Yvon hierarchy of equations. However, because it's such a mouthful, it's pretty much universally called the "BBGKY" hierarchy. In such a case, providing the full name isn't going to make much of a difference; if your audience doesn't know the abbreviation, giving the full name won't hurt. But this is such a narrow case of exceptions that in general it's a good idea to provide the full name at least once.


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Issues in self-publishing old work. Recommendations for Necromancy?
Main Issue:  What credit should be given (and how should it be given) to the alma mater in publicizing old work?
Background: I entered and left a Ph.D. program in another millenium.  During this time
I produced some results, one group of which was to become my dissertation.  (At one point, my advisor said the equivalent of "you have enough to graduate; write it up".)  However, all that I did distribute during my time as a graduate student was a couple of preprints, one of which later got cited in work of others.  I did not finish the dissertation and did not get the degree (although I did get to attend commencement and walk across the stage).  If it matters, during the time I produced results I got one TA (teaching) grant, and no other funding.
I am considering self-publishing material related to the work I did in grad school.
I have already given presentations on some of the work;  I now plan to submit to ArXiv some of my work done while I was in graduate school; later I may follow up with results based
on this work.
Question 1.  What kind of issues might I encounter in doing so?  Would the University have some recourse to discourage me?
Question 2.  If there are no intellectual property issues involved, what is an acceptable format?  (I was thinking: write a wrapper giving a brief history and introduction, insert my preprint verbatim, and close with acknowledgments and some follow up.  The preprint I distributed does not contain my dissertation, but is a key piece of it.  What would the
acknowledgment section look like?)
Question 3.  If I decide I also want to go back and finish
my degree at that program, (ideally by finishing the remaining requirement of submitting
the finished and approved dissertation, however unlikely that may be), would doing this
self-publishing be contraindicated?  If so, why?

"Portions of this work wer done while the author was a student at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople; thanks to my former advisor Peter Schickele for many helpful discussions." — That's it.  Unless, of course, you and Prof. Schickele had a different understanding about coauthorship.

This is in response to Question 1:
The university only cares if some portion of your work is monetizable, i.e. leads to a product that people pay money for.  If not, they would prefer you to publish rather than not; it can only help them.
The real issue is your advisor and collaborators, if any.  They may have a claim on that work.  Before publication you should contact them and discuss possible coauthorship.  Resolve this issue before investing any more of your time; see other posts here for what happens when authorship is not clearly agreed among all participants.


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Any good source of information on EU based postdoctoral/researcher funding opportunities
I have read several posts on the forum but there seems no good information hub for EU based postdoctoral/researcher funding opportunities. I will be grateful if someone can give me a start.
By the way, I have found this list myself.

Don't know of any umbrella information hub as such (I suspect if search engines haven't helped, then it's rather unlikely you would find many of such sites anyway). For STEM fields, you can check out this page. It tends to be more UK-centric though. Or here's another page for science jobs.

I would suggest two options 1) applying for your own funding and/or 2) apply for a job where someone has aquired funding and is looking for a postdoc. Option #1 is far more desirable - though also more risky.
For option 1) There are several EU funding options (many country specific). Not knowing your field, you might have a look the EU call; http://europa.eu/about-eu/funding-grants/
For option 2) Academics post positions for postdocs all the time. Akadeus.com is a good starting point. https://www.akadeus.com/
I hope that helps!

Have a look at the EURAXESS portal by the European Commission. Besides their job listing, they offer information and services to support relocation to another country, and information for non-european researchers wishing to work in Europe. If you're looking at a specific country, you can also check out the national portals.


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Filing a patent before collaborating with industries?
During my recent research, I produced a little prototype which seems interesting enough for commercialization. I don't have the necessary resources to do it, so I naturally think about collaborating with industries. But in this case, I still would like to file a patent before the collaboration starts. Would this be a barrier for collaboration with potential industrial partners?
On the other hand, would it be useless to file the patent considering the possibility that the industrial collaborators can find ways to circumvent my patent by making non-essential modification? (in which case I don't have the resources to sue them)

Do you work for a university?  If so, ask your intellectual property office.

@NateEldredge Yes I do. We have a KTO and I am consulting them. But I would also like to have some opinions here.

As Nate notes in his comment, you should talk with your University's Office of Technology Commercialization, Intellectual Property Office, Office of Technology Transfer, Office of Industrial Programs, or equivalent (just to give a few key words to search for). However, you should be able to just talk with a potential industrial collaborator after signing a mutual non-disclosure agreement that includes the restriction not to exploit each others IP disclosed under the agreement for commercial gain without further negotiation. These kinds of NDA are common in work between industry and academia, and they allow for discussion to begin without everything having to be patented ahead of time. Your university's industrial office (as above) ought to be able to help you draft the NDA. Don't do it without the support of your university's attorneys.

Thanks man. I wasn't going to. But just hope for the best and prepare for the worst.


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Update a preprint on ResearchGate to conference publication after acceptance
Is there a way to update a preprint on ResearchGate to the published conference version including accepted conference information etc.? I have not found a straightforward way to do this, I don't think deleting the preprint and replacing it with the conference version is a good solution especially if the preprint already has followers, comments etc.

I contacted Researchgate requesting to them merge two papers once (a preprint and a postprint). All they did was to delete one of the papers (unfortunately the 'better' of the two). Not recommended. Instead, I would suggest you either update the previous upload or upload a second version, preferably both. Update the old for your followers. I can't say for sure, but I think new uploads get some priority in the feed of other users. By performing both these actions you maximize the exposure your paper gets.

Wow, that is sad, losing a better version. For now I have adopted your suggestion, i.e. uploaded the current one separately, thou this results to duplicates, however both versions slightly differ in content.

Yeah. Having duplicates is not ideal, but I think it is the best solution for now. Especially in the short term, you benefit from the extra attention to your paper(s). Hopefully Researchgate will add more functionality in the future, including the option to merge two papers manually.


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What are the guidelines for minimum "implementation/proof-of-concept" requirements in computer science research?
Some aspects of computer science research requires some form of implementation and an according evaluation. I have not yet seen where the minimum level of implementation expected for an academic paper is defined. For example, if   a "novel" work requires a persistence layer and a researcher uses a file based method e.g. csv. Will that be wrong? Will his architecture point to a database or a file system ?

I think you need to say more to be understood. Every paper is different. Every paper is evaluated by (hopefully) competent referees. If you are lacking you will be told. But if you have an advisor, he or she should be able to give you explicit advice.

@Buffy I agree papers differ, that's why I give a simplistic example in the question about the database implementation.

Still, too esoteric to judge or give advice. Things can be novel in some ways and pedestrian in others. But the paper has to make an advance on some aspect if it is to have much value.

Your implementation needs to be good enough to evaluate the concept you want to evaluate - no more, but certainly no less. What this means in practice is largely dictated by what kind of evaluation or experiments you want to do. I have basically seen four broad classes in Computer Science:

Proof-of-Concept (PoC): you only want to show that your idea can be implemented, so you only implement your idea (often in a fairly naive or bare-bones manner). Note that this is often good enough for a quick demo, but not good enough for a paper (because reviewers usually feel that the conclusion that something can be implemented is not satisfactory by itself).
Evaluation Prototype: in addition to the PoC, you want to evaluate how well your idea works in some quantitative manner. For instance, if you are building some novel file system, you probably want to not only show that it can be implemented, but also that it works better in some dimension (e.g., faster) than existing systems. Your prototype can still be bare-bones, but you presumably need to build the core parts well because otherwise your evaluation may end up showing primarily that your prototype sucks. In a way, your prototype results show a sort of lower bound on how your idea works - that is, if your results are good your idea is validated, but if your results are not good, it may be because they idea does not work or your code is too bad of an implementation.
User Study Prototype: in addition to quantitatively evaluating your prototype, you may want to run one or more case or user studies with it, or conduct a controlled experiment. Now you need to improve your evaluation prototype with at least a limited amount of bells and whistles, because it is hard to run an expressive user study if your system is almost unusable to anybody but yourself. In this stage you may be adding a GUI and a bunch of features that are unrelated to your science, but which may be needed even in trivial practical usage.
(Simple) Product: the final stage is that you plan to actually release your implementation in some manner to the public. Maybe as part of an open source project, as a consulting delivery to a company, or even in the context of a spin-off company. You will now need to add many more bells and whistles unrelated to your science. Further, now you need to start caring about documentation, a release cycle, not doing breaking changes, etc., all of which are basically irrelevant as long as you are just building a prototype for your science.

So what does this mean for your project?

For example, if a "novel" work requires a persistence layer and a researcher uses a file based method e.g. csv. Will that be wrong? Will his architecture point to a database or a file system ?

I generally suggest my students to follow a lean approach:
what kind of experiment do you plan to do? Will it matter what kind of persistence layer the prototype has? If no, then build whatever you can do quickest and where you are most confident that it will work correctly - but keep in mind that even the simplest prototype can sometimes run through all the phases above, so at least plan for the possibility that you may need to swap out your persistence layer for something a little more state-of-the-art than a flat text file later on.

awesome response. Thank you for comprehensively explaining this to me, it is much clearer. I have a related question, in the case of a demo paper, will the implementation fall into category 2 above ?


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What are the advantages for submitting my paper to demo or doctoral symposium sessions of conferences
Several conferences feature demo sessions and doctoral symposia. Besides publishing these in the conferences' proceedings do these two offer advantages? What is the additional value of these two types over normal conference papers especially in computer science?

My experience is with Computer Science conferences. Some have a multi-day Doctoral Symposium associated with them. The advantage of them is that you get both some experience in presenting your work and some useful feedback on it. The ones I was associated with have a review selection process so you get some feedback at that point and then were run symposium style, not presentation to a large audience. Other students and a few professors would listen to your presentation and try to give you feedback and ideas.
I don't believe that the symposia published the work of the students. This was pre-doctoral research in progress. The purpose wasn't publication, but advancement.
While I wasn't the symposium chair at any of these (part of overall committee), one of my close colleagues was the chair at one of them. I only heard of good experiences. Note that they aren't intended for finished/polished work, but for work in progress where additional ideas might be welcomed.
I'll also note that our doctoral program at the university used the same idea of symposium presentation with our own doctoral students. Once monthly, students would discuss their work with the other students and the advisors of most of them in an all day seminar. Each student would have a bit of time to report on progess and problems. This was very helpful, especially to those who were struggling a bit with the research as the ideas for progress were usually pretty helpful.
I see no reason that this wouldn't transfer to most other fields. Even when I was a student of mathematics, my professor had a weekly symposium for his own students. A few other faculty would also attend. But this, for the most part, wasn't student presentations, but rather discussions of mutual interest on which the (few) students were currently working.

thanks especially for emphasizing the symposia aren't specifically for finished work. Very comprehensive and  useful response !

@SyCode See: https://2018.splashcon.org/track/splash-2018-Doctoral-Symposium

awesome stuff ! Thank you for sharing, the guidelines for writing the proposal are inspiring !

Hi @Buffy, do you have some ideas about demo sessions, are they similar to doctoral symposia or probably for practically-focused doctorates?

@SyCode  Other than poster sessions I don't have any experience. I'll guess that they are NOT like doctoral symposia, though. At least I wouldn't guess that from the name. Look at the conference "call".

I see, will certainly take a look, thanks once again !


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Can a PhD thesis in computer science have two major parts?
Can a PhD thesis in computer science have two major parts? Lets assume the research goals are closely related, yet for the sake of better understanding and clarity, the thesis is divided into two parts e.g. parts A & B?

I've seen PhD thesis with four parts. I think you will be fine as long as these parts are all approaches towards a unified goal/result.

Was that in CS ?

Yes, the research was done in a CS group, but more applied math than CS. I think my old advisor mentioned to me that a thesis with multiple parts is considered "non-standard", but maybe he is behind on the times. Plenty of students publish thesis with multiple, distinct parts.

I see, maybe it's slightly different since mine is more practically oriented, with experiments and models.

End of day, what is a PhD thesis? It is an evidence to the fact that you know how to do research.  At my university, there is no specific requirement that a thesis must contain x part(s).  Yes, a thesis may look odd if it contains un-related topics.  However, that shouldn't stop you from graduating.

Ask your advisor.

This is a question for your advisor. In general, what is acceptable in a thesis is what your advisor and committee will accept. If the division into parts makes everything clearer then all to the good. If the two parts complement one another, say theory and application, then it should be fine if the advisor agrees.
But also, what is a "Part" is also a function of the writing style. In CS, for example, one "part" might be new and necessary algorithms and another part might be how they are applied, or evaluated, or ...
But a thesis that tries to solve two different problems is likely less useful unless they are tightly bound. In such a case, focus on one "part" and save the rest as future work.


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Is it OK to contact someone who is on my suggested reviewers list to discuss something unrelated?
I submitted a manuscript to a journal. As it was required, I included a list of suggested reviewers. Of course, I don't know who of them have been selected by the editor. I haven't received any reviews yet. Several weeks have passed since the submission.
The problem is that I forgot whom I suggested as a reviewer. These were some people from my field and I have alerts on Google Scholar that notify me about their new papers. Recently, I got such an alert about someone's new paper. I found it interesting (but not really related to the topic of my submitted manuscript) so I wrote an email to the author. (I only met him once at a conference.) I thought that he found something similar to what I saw in a paper of yet another author. We exchanged a few emails. The discussion was totally unrelated to my manuscript.
Only after that discussion I realized he might have been a reviewer of my submitted manuscript. So I wonder whether it is OK to contact someone who may  be my reviewer? The review process is blind so I never know for sure.

Note that some editorial management systems allow you to view your submissions after submission, so you could find out, whom you suggested as reviewer.

Yes, and this is precisely what I forgot about! :\

"Is it OK to contact someone who may be my reviewer?" Anybody may be your reviewer, regardless of your suggestions.

The world of academia is small enough so that you'll likely get to know most (or all!) reviewers for your work. You can't be expected to stop communicating with your colleagues, just because one of them could be reviewing one of your papers right now.
So yes, go and discuss.

This is of course the right answer.  Just to add: you can (and should) talk to whoever you want, but (not that the OP is suggsting this in the slightest) one should not fish for clues about who your reviewer might be.

I don't think the answer is a simple "yes" here.  It would depend on the situation.  Imagine if one day you get a friendly email from someone you haven't heard of before, asking about one of your papers.  Then a couple of days later you get a request from a journal to review a new paper of this very same person.  Would you believe it was just a coincidence?  How would you react?  I'm not saying this necessarily applies to the OP's situation, but I'd be cautious and try to avoid such misunderstandings.

@Szabolcs The academic world is small. You're being asked to review the paper because the journal editor thinks you're an expert in its field. The author contacted you because they think you're an expert in their field. The views of the editor and author on who are the experts in the field are likely to be quite similar. So coincidence is actually a very likely explanation.

@DavidRicherby Whether that is true depends on the field.  I started in a field where it was true then switched to one which is large enough that the coincidence would be unlikely.

One could also be up-front about where one got the other person's name, when contacting them about something else.

@Szabolcs : This is what I fear. That person might have thought it wasn't a coincidence. What do you think such a reviewer can do? Refuse to review? Notify a suspicious activity to the editor? I feel sooo bad about this... :\ I may loose my reputation because of my absent-mindedness :\ The worst thing is that I probably can't even explain anything to anyone.

@harrypotter: compare the 33 votes agreeing (with choener and Pete L. Clark) that of course it's fine to talk to your colleagues to the 0 votes agreeing that this could be any sort of problem. (PS: There is only one "o" in "lose.")


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How to write an abstract for a summary paper based on a longer paper?
I wrote a 50-page report that has an abstract. Now I have to write a shorter paper on the same topic that summarizes the report.
The challenge is that the most logical thing to do would be to simply use the same abstract for both papers.
However, it seems to be an unwritten rule that abstracts should not be reused. (I am wrong?)
Alternatively, I could write a new abstract from scratch, ignoring the old abstract.
What would be the best course of action in this case?

First, write a new one without looking at the old one.  Then, compare the two and see if you missed anything.


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How large is the effect of one's appearance on the recognition among scientific peers?
I just found the paper by Halford and Hsu, that describes the effect that the appearance of companies' CEOs have on the stock value of said company after public appearances of the CEO. They were able to confirm the correlation and gave sufficient evidence to suggest causation.
Even though the scientific community tends to think it soars above the normal, human things that people do or concern themselves with, being human beings comes with its set of deficiencies. I have tried to find articles that try to analyse the impact of conference talks with respect to the appearance of the person giving the talk, but my searches came up empty.
I cannot believe that we are able to fully dissociate content and appearance (this goes for written communication as well) from each other to come to a neutral, unbiased judgement about the content.
I am interested if there are known cases of bias of the scientific community in general, and possibly your discipline in particular, which value the contributions by their peers differently, depending on how they look.
Basically, since the question in the title is rather broad, it boils down to this: Is there correlation between beauty and citation count? If someone can dig up a paper that describes and checks this, I would be grateful.

If you expand appearance to mean more than just "beauty" there may be correlations with height. See e.g. these reports: [1] and [2] as examples. PS, I am not tall.

Does appearance mean beauty, how smartly dressed one is, or both?

@gerrit With appearance I really mean the overall appearance, but I wanted to narrow the question down to beauty to fit the format. You may feel free to address appearance in general in your answer.

If you wanted to do the correlation yourself you could probably use the number of chillies from rate my professor dot com as a proxy for beauty.

Related fact that can put the question into a different light: beauty is correlated with intelligence.

I doubt how a scientific study could measure "beauty", in order to conduct the study. Perhaps human labelled? A study that would like body mass index to citations perhaps is a research waiting to be done!
Yet, unlike CEOs, you don't see the authors when reading a paper. Altough, being popular at conferences might help them get initial citation count.
Go for it :)


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How to handle reference requests for a concurrent postdoc application that may seem unnecessary?
I recently applied for several postdoc positions. Two of them ("A" and "B") are closely related to my doctoral dissertation topic, and these applications were quite strongly welcomed. I am already in the process of negotiations regarding one of them. However, the salaries are on the low side, and I don't have an official job offer yet.
On the other hand, one of the postdoc positions ("C") I applied for is in a different field of study, but the pay is more than twice as high compared to the other two, and it would probably be considered more prestigious. The principal investigator (PI) immediately contacted me after I applied and asked me to have my references submit their reference letters.
The issue is that my main reference -- my dissertation advisor -- is sceptical about the application for position C: he says that it is likely to have a large number of competing applicants, and the interest in my application may be low or non-existent. Also, he shares the opinion that it is awkward to pursue another application when I am practically hired in my field (where everyone knows each other as well). He suggested me to wait and see if there the PI associated with position C will follow up and show more interest.
I would definitely be interested in seeing what happens with the application for position C. My question is, would it be indeed a good strategy to wait to see if the PI of position C is going to follow up, or could I perhaps ask him to continue with my application without the reference letters for now (in order to not insist that my dissertation advisor goes ahead and writes a reference letter)?

Does your advisor already have a letter completed for you? Did they send one to A or B?

My advisor did submit a reference letter earlier for a different postdoc position not mentioned here. To apply for positions A and B, I had to give the contact details of my references, and I'm not sure if they requested the reference letters already (about a 50% chance they did, I think). My advisor is aware of my applications for A and B, including that these applications were strongly welcomed.

If the PI for C asked you for reference letters, then I would assume that if you don't send them, your application will not be considered further.  So "wait and see" is equivalent to "drop out".

Your professor is giving you advice that will Hurt your chances of getting position C. You need to convince him/her to give you a letter for this position if you are serious about it. It should not be a ton of work for him/her given he/she has already produced a letter.


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Arguments for vs against filtering Internet Access to legal Websites on University Campus
A university in Germany is using Cisco's Umbrella to filter network access. It affects most areas on the campus used by scientists and students.
The filtering goes beyond what is required by law — Germany has some strict censorship laws — and includes Cisco Umbrella categories such as «hate speech», «adult», etc. which include legal websites. These are, among others, 4chan.org, gab.com, or gab.ai. Websites seems to be added to the categories, as websites that worked a week ago are suddenly blocked. Trying to access a blocked website means you end up at the website of the IT department with the Umbrella category (e.g., «hate speech») and your IP address in the URL. You have the option to contact the IT department and ask for the website to be made available.
I have a strong opinion on the topic, so I am interested in arguments both pro and contra the filtering of legal websites on a university campus.
Note: The issue is explicitly NOT illegal websites. That the university has to comply with the law is a no brainer, it's going beyond the law. The issue is also not that it is also a no-brainer to bypass the filtering with Tor/Vpn/personal hotspots. It's the university preventing access to legal websites.

I mean porn websites are also not illegal, but I completely understand if adult content is blocked - which also happens at my reserach institute in Germany.

Interestingly, the category «Adult» is triggered by Gab AI. As so-called «Uncensored and Unfiltered AI Platform» it can generate nude images, although by that logic you could also block GoogleDocs, as you could write pornographic novels with it.

4chan seems extremely unsurprising to be on their block list, with a reputation not just for smut but for illegal or borderline illegal pornography like revenge and similarly non-consensual porn. And among the non-porn areas a strong pro-Nazi/Nazi-glorifying attitude (both serious and 'edgy' varieties) which is not tolerated in Germany.

It should not be the IT department who makes the decision if a website is compatible with university policy.

Is the university government-funded or owned?

@fraxinus it doesnt matter in Germany, the first amendment argument against filtering is an explicitly American thing

I am not aware of any law which requires a university (or any legal body) to employ a filter when requesting information (uploads may be a different story). Can you link to the law you are referring to?

@AwkwardWhale It's not the First Amendment, the US had a major issue in the 90's. Networks were built with public funds and those attached strict conditions. For example, it's illegal to use government property to run a private business, so a student selling their textbooks on eBay would be committing a crime. Other restrictions include personal use, like streaming videos. US research and education networks had to be rebuilt with funding that didn't carry these stipulations, these were called AUP-free networks.

There is freedom of opinion guaranteed in the German constitution. That doesn't mean that the government has to provide you with a network (at a university) where you can watch porn or look at otherwise questionable webpages. It means the government can't interfere with you doing this on your own dime.

@Marianne013 The top levels of the IT department should be part of discussions that establish university policies with respect to technology.

@DanielWessel The Google Docs comparison is missing the point. It's not what a user could theoretically do with a tool, it's what it is commonly used for. And given that gab.ai specifically advertises itself as "uncensored AI" you don't need to be a conspiracy theorist to speculate that users will gravitate towards this platform to do things other mainstream platforms don't allow you to do.

@xLeitix Gab.AI isn't "uncensored AI": it's explicitly censored, with phrases such as "Avoid any discussion or implication that suggests a person can change their biological sex from male to female" in its prompt.

Just a funny story, from Norway: if I happen to feel a need for visiting pirate bay, my ISP at home blocks it, so I go through my university. But when I want to look around on sci-hub, that's blocked by the university, so I do that from home... ¯\(ツ)/¯

Arguments for filtering:

Even content that is not explicitly illegal can be harmful, degrading or demeaning, so it is a benefit to filter it out.

Hate speech, adult content etc. are not necessary for research or teaching.

University campuses actually do not only have adult visitors. There are students younger than 18 years, or visitors even younger. The university has a duty to protect these vulnerable users.

Why a particular website falls into one category, and why this specific category or this specific website should be filtered, will of course be specific to the website or category, so there may be additional arguments to filter this one website.

Thanks to Todd Wilcox for this one: even legal and in itself unobjectionable content can be a bandwidth problem. Todd:

I've worked in environments the USA where during the NBA "March Madness" tournament and NFL draft season, users accessing websites related to those events consumed an inordinate amount of the available bandwidth causing a negative impact on all other traffic. We had to amend the technology use policy and restrict access to sports content to make sure work could continue efficiently.

Arguments against filtering:

Who decides what "hate speech" or an "adult website" is? Yes, as you write, one can have recourse... but if the admin decides against you, you pretty much have no further option. Better not to give anyone this power.
There are false positives in all these blacklists, i.e., innocuous websites that get filtered in error.
The vast majority of users are indeed adult.
Free speech and the free flow of information are a value in themselves, especially in academia, which is premised on a free exchange of ideas - and the first step in suppressing ideas is often to label them harmful.
This kind of content can actually indeed be the subject of research and teaching. Picture a seminar on political hate speech. Does the instructor need to tell students to access examples on their personal devices in a coffee shop WLAN?

Of course, the university ultimately owns the infrastructure and is under no obligation to provide access at all, or not to censor specific content.

The very last point is extremely important. The university network is meant to enable you to work, not for your entertainment (I remember the days of napster being blocked, in the US that is).

not providing internet access at all in 2024 in an university is somewhat pushing it

@Marianne013 indeed looking at a few user agreements for German universities they’re quite explicit in stating that they’re providing network access for strictly educational purposes

In practice for this reason dormitories have a seperate network and user agreement for the students living there

"the university ultimately owns the infrastructure" So do internet providers serving homes, and they aren't free to censor as they please (at least I hope so). I'd certainly agree that universities have less obligations, but ownership is not the reason.

@Stefan Ownership is the issue actually. This was a problem in the US in the 90's. University networks on the state, and nationwide scale get government funding. As public properties, a number of conditions attached. For example, you can't use government property for private gain, so selling your textbooks on eBay from the library is illegal. Incidental personal use is generally OK, but dorms where users regularly stream movies exceeds that. This isn't an issue with commercial ISPs obviously, and US RENs had to rebuild with funding without these stipulations, so called AUP free networks.

Haha you build some tension in your answer. I'm not sure it is appropriate or on purpose but the sentence "Hate speech, adult content etc. are not necessary for research or teaching." of course immediately makes you think "Depends on what you research." Of course you go into that in the second half of the answer.

In the US many universities are government-run and are therefore bound by first amendment law (and many private universities at least tacitly agree to be so bound). I suspect they would have an extremely difficult time arguing for limiting access to otherwise legal materials. There might even be illegal material for which they would have a difficult time justifying access limitations.

@AwkwardWhale Different kind of networks for student accommodation are not unheard of in the UK either.

I can think of at least one more reason: Safe entertainment content can sometimes be a major problem for other network traffic. I've worked in environments the USA where during the NBA "March Madness" tournament and NFL draft season, users accessing websites related to those events consumed an inordinate amount of the available bandwidth causing a negative impact on all other traffic. We had to amend the technology use policy and restrict access to sports content to make sure work could continue efficiently.

@ToddWilcox: thank you, that is a great point! I edited it in, with proper attribution to you.

"The vast majority of users are indeed adult." – OTOH, with the abolishment of mandatory military service and the shortening of typical school duration from 13 years to 12, a significant portion of first semester students are minors.

@JörgWMittag: yes, which I mentioned, from personal experience. So a significant portion of incoming students (not a majority) will be underage, but by the second year, almost all students should be legally (in Germany) adults, plus of course all non-student users. Note that with many Bundesländer moving back to 13 years schooling, this effect will decline in the future.

The most probable decisive argument "for":
Managing a limited resource in a political manner.

Managing a big network is a challenge
Managing a big network with a lot of less literate users is a pain in the butt
Managing a huge network with a lot of less literate users who cannot be compelled to cooperate is a hell.

Left alone, in a typical university network, the entertainment traffic quickly overtakes the available bandwidth, making the network barely usable. (The malware traffic is quick to follow.)
When pressed to do something, the network admins are usually not in a position to simply increase the network capacity (and even if they are, this just means more porn), so they start filtering.
Once the filtering is in place, the content to be filtered becomes a political matter and the decision-making gets in the hands of the most vocal stakeholders.
On the other hand, the general result from filtering is a transition from an useless nerwork to more or less usable one so most users welcome the change.
The most important argument "against":
Filtering cannot be done right.
It either compromises the end user security (when done by decrypting the traffic), or is very, very coarse, or both.
Most filttering software is crap on its own right and this does not prevent it from being expensive and a resource hog.

Should 'literate' be read as 'technically literate' in this context?

@Anyon not necessarily, social, cultural and even local language literacy are related as well

“Left alone, in a typical university network, the entertainment traffic quickly overtakes the available bandwidth, making the network barely usable.” — do you have a source for this?  This seems surprising to me (I’d have expected entertainment traffic to be significant but not overwhelming), so I’d be interested to see a source, or at least (if you don’t have a public source) background on how confidently you believe this and why.

Not sure about a public source and it is not trivial to research the matter anymore because everything is encrypted these days. I have personal experience in this regard both as a user, as well as someone involved in the network administration. In the recent years, the problem is only a little bit easier because of the availability of a cheap cellphone internet and the relative unpopularity of the bittorrent and likes. Facebook/X/Instagram still rule in the upstream pipe, but it is now possible to brute force the problem with gigabits, at least in a corporate/govmnt context. Uni's - not really

So I'm interpreting this based on US and what I'm able to find.
On a tangent, according to NYCLU, the general idea is that private institutions (like with any other private entity) has the right to restrict the first Amendment - to that end I'd say it would also result in them restricting what you do and how you do it.  Public institutions will lean towards not being restricted, and I'd say that generally, they cannot restrict you in other manners either.  That being said, many places are allowed to still, within reason, choose how and when one can express themselves, so to that end, even if it can't be restricted, it can be funneled within reason.
As for filtering the internet itself beyond what is allowed by law...
For Filtering

You can request specific sites to be allowed, so in the event you've got a valid reason to access a blocked site for research, you can provide the reason and get it approved.

The college has a right to block what they believe is a risk to the network as a whole.  While you're on their network, if there's a risk of something getting through that can propagate to other devices, both student and college-owned, then that's a problem.  Sure, there are firewalls and anti-virus software, but nothing beats avoiding security threats like not putting yourself in the position to possibly get one.  Yeah, you can argue "b-but then don't use the internet lol! except there needs to be a good tradeoff; obviously the internet is a lot more important, and there's plenty of legitimate sites that don't pose a risk.

A school is a place for learning, not to socialize or have fun.

Sure, maybe you can have two networks, one is locked down and the other is open-use, and isolate them somehow, but the work involved may not be worth it.

If you wish to socialize or use the internet for recreation, we have cell phones, many of which can have a hotspot feature.  Want to do non-essential tasks online?  Should be on your time and your dime.

Against filtering

If it's a public institution, one can argue you're stifling free speech/expression.

If it's guaranteed that there are no people under the age of majority (or just no one under 18), then as a legal adult, students should have access to the internet, period, at least as unfiltered as allowed by law, obviously.

If the school's IT team is incompetent at best, then who knows how long you have to wait to unblock something, if you fall into a fringe case?  And all too often I hear of professors that choose to not care      about what is preventing someone from doing something, even if that thing is outside of the student's control; which might be a good analogue to life, except where in life there's often lots of alternatives - often times a professor has a "my way or the highway" attitude.

An important distinction here is whether the university is only a space of teaching and learning or whether it also contains dormatories that are the primary residence for students.
If the university does not contain dormatories it can be seen as similar to a place of work and the internet access it provides is related to studying and learning. There is no real reason why the university should give you access to the internet for your personal entertainement. This can actually be a lot more restrictive than what you describe and could also block access to gaming, movies or sports coverage. Universities usually don't act that restrictive but they could.
There are some researchers that need access to websites that are usually restricted, researching hate-speed or computer security and a few other topics. That is what the option to contact the IT department is for.
If on the other hand the university is also the primary place of residence for some students, it should grant access to the internet that is more similar to what you would get when renting an apartment. It should still restrict to legal websites, but otherwise be open. It should also provide you with privacy on what you are browsing.

Content filtering is "strongly discouraged" by Eduroam policies. From the Eduroam compliance statement:

eduroam SPs [Service providers] are based on SP local policies. However, modifying the content of user connections (e.g., access lists or firewall filter rules to deny arbitrary ports or application-layer proxies) is strongly discouraged and MUST be reported to the respective RO [Roaming operator, the country-level Eduroam authorities].


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How do you decide between two PhD offers?
I have two offers for graduate study within the UK and I am trying to make a balanced decision.
My offers are:

Four year doctoral training centre at University of Oxford (approx. £14k/year)
Four year PhD at the Cancer Research London Research Institute (LRI) (approx. £21k/year)

I suspect that the Cancer Research institute does not have a comparable international reputation when compared to Oxford. On the other hand, I've met the research group at the LRI and they seem nice. At Oxford I wouldn't be choosing my research group until after the first year. I already have significant ties to London and have been living here for four years.
What other factors should I be considering in order to make this a rational decision?

Choose the one that has an interesting research topic you can work on. If you don't know what you will be doing yet (e.g. Oxford), consider that a risk.

In both cases the income is not taxable, i.e. they are stipends. Also, all university/college fees are covered by both institutions.

I'm glad that the OP is getting answers, but isn't this question so localized that it should be closed ?

Seems like a simple case of reputation vs. location and personal fit. That's plenty relatable.

I am answering this on the basis that I was making this same decision myself a year ago.
Firstly, the LRI will be joining the Francis Crick Institute next year as it opens, which may end up being esteemed in it's own right if all goes according to their plans. It depends what you want to do after the PhD, if you want to stay in academia and cancer research, then it is the supervisor's esteem that is more likely to help you in the long run, as well as the impact of your papers. The label on the institute makes less difference as you go on (within reason of course).
Have a look at the recent publications of the group, maybe see how many have PhD students on good author positions in good journals; that's what will get you a post-doc ultimately.
The two being 4 year funded, the London one may be better financially overall. Integrated PhD programs (where you have 3 small projects in the first year, getting an MRes, then pick the final PhD project for 3 years, I presume this is the case for Oxford) in my experience tend to be more trouble than they're wort, unless you're not sure on picking a definite research project yet or don't have a Masters.
The issues can come from firstly, not getting the project you were hoping for after the first year, after the MRes, but now you're tied down to Oxford (may not happen, but does all too ofter) and also you now have 3 years to do your PhD, not 4. Why waste time on multiple smaller sub-projects at the start if you have a clear idea on what you want to do for your final project? Of course, the corollary here, if you don't have a clear idea exactly what you want your PhD to be on, then integrated programs can be a godsend.
My best advice on the rational decision front is don't. Relationship with group and particularly the supervisor is the main factor in a PhD, with a bad supervisor able to kill your career dead in the water, intentionally or not.
If you have a passion for the research, and get on well with the group and supervisor then I would definitely go for that PhD. Lack of these both for 4 years will likely mean you either drop out, or have a horrible 4 years and then hate your research.
I went for the lower paid, lower ranked Uni offer, and have no regrets. In fact, the higher paid one was industry funded, and they've since gone under, so I dodged a bullet there.

Oxford is a small city with an atmosphere absolutely steeped in scholarship – some thrive in it; some find the pressure it induces extremely stressful. I would visit Oxford if you can and try to establish whether that atmosphere is for you. If you’re prepared to relocate, you’ll have almost no commuting time and may be able to live in college accommodation. It would be possible in such circumstances to concentrate very intensively on your work. You would be surrounded almost entirely by others doing the same. For some this is heaven, for others it is hell....
In London it would be much easier to collaborate across institutions, and therefore to meet a wide range of researchers formally and informally, all of which will help enormously in coming up with good ideas for post-doc projects, if you want to think that far ahead. Living in London, it will be very convenient to attend meetings and seminars at the London colleges as well as to meet with policy makers etc, if that is important in your area. It also means that you can rely on the friendship network that you already have in place, something to bear in mind as you may go through a bad patch during your studies and it’s good to have an established support network. The first year in the new Francis Crick Institute is likely to be slightly disrupted as everybody settles in (think usual teething problems like no hot water for months, no telephones etc.) but possibly a tremendously exciting time.
But agreeing completely with Reuben, I would recommend taking some time to get to know your potential new supervisors and groups. Talk to former PhD students from the lab, try to go for a beer/coffee with some of the present students. The relationship with the supervisor(s) is absolutely vital. Try to work out what previous students go on to do – do they complete vaguely on time? Do they get good post-doc jobs afterwards? One advantage of going to Oxford is that it will give you one year to work this out, especially as you don’t mention wishing to work on a specific topic. But accommodation in Oxford is quite expensive, so £14k/yr may leave finances quite tight.


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Is it easier to obtain H1B / green card as academics in the US?
I am a social science PhD student (with a quantitative bent) at a U.S. research university. If paperwork is not a concern, I would be equivalently interested in working as an academic and in private industries. However, one of my goal is to be able to stay in the U.S., thus to craft my plan I hope to know whether it is indeed easier to obtain H1B / green card as an academic than as a PhD-holding employee? My industry-relevant skill-set is statistical training and programming.
While this question has far-reaching relevance for any typical international PhD students, I would also be willing to give more details regarding my training, my school reputation, etc. if it helps answering the question.
P/S: This is throwaway account for anonymity. I have been an avid user of StackExchange and would love your input.

This question seems more about immigration law than academics. That said, I have an answer for it, but I'm happy to remove mine and close if the community deems it so.

I am aware of the legal process but unsure about the relative ease in real life of obtaining H1B / greencard as an academic. Hence this question is better answered by academics / PhDs who have gone industry than by a lawyer

What does your current university/acad institution say? Did you get in touch with the immigration attorney which many universities have on retainer?

I think that the answer to this for academics per se is very different from most others, therefore I think this is an appropriate venue for it.

First of all, IANAL.
The H1B process requires a declaration from the employer that the skill set provided by the candidate cannot be found within the US. This is typically not too hard to satisfy, and is required regardless of whether you're in academia or in private industry.
The Green card process can change dramatically depending on which process you use. Academics will typically go through what is execrably called the 'Outstanding Researcher' process, which awards a green card based on scholarly excellence. But Ph.Ds in private industry also go through this process (I did!). It really depends on the willingness of the employer (because of the legal processing involved).
The alternative is to go through the "regular" advanced degree process, which has different qualification requirements and has a different queue/wait time. Arguably, this could take longer, and I don't think academics ever go through this.
So the bottom line is: it depends on the employer, but there's a technical sense in which being an academic can help slightly.

So given all these articles I read on the NYTimes about the tech industry complaining that there's not enough quota, you think that it's relatively easy to obtain one when working in industry?

It depends on the industry, the location, and other factors. From what I've heard, getting an H1B in tech is still relatively easy. But that's in tech.

I believe that H1B visas for faculty are not subject to the annual cap on the total number of H1B visas (at least they weren't in past years when this was a significant issue in hiring faculty in our department.)

@Suresh when you said "Outstanding Researcher" process, do you mean EB-1 visa? Also, how good is good enough for EB-1? Let me know if I should post this as a separate question. Thanks.

The Green Card is a different matter, but for an H-1B: It is indeed easier.
There is a cap for the number of H-1Bs awarded every year. The cap for 2013 was 85,000, and 124,000 people applied. When too many applications are eligible, assignment is made by lottery.
However, non-profits are not subject to caps, and universities count as non-profits. See: http://internationaloffice.berkeley.edu/h-1b_faqs#10
It is probably not easier in the sense that the employer follows the same procedure and pays the same fees. However, there is no risk of not receiving an H-1B that you are perfectly well qualified for due to the cap. Also, universities are more likely to have access to people who know the process, unlike small companies which may be overwhelmed by the paperwork and byzantine regulations (especially if you are their first international employee).

@ff524 Even though you rejected the edit pertaining to this, it looks like I was in fact wrong. The number of applications is not on the order of a million: Last 2 years were 134k and 124k, while 2014 predictions were 160k, the record being 201k in 2001.

My understanding is that Universities and other academic insitutions (for example, the research hospital in which I work) are not subjected to caps on the H1B that companies are so it should be easier to get one if you follow the academic route.

you are right ,all non profit institutions are exempt from H1B cap.

But not all universities are non-profit (but they're probably not the kind to sponsor an H1B).


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Should I contact potential referees for a job application?
When applying for an academic position, usually you provide a list of names of people who can give you a reference or letter of recommendation e.g. postdoc advisor or someone you often collaborate with. In this case, obviously you first ask the person if they are willing to do this.
However, for applications to academic positions in some countries, e.g. Switzerland, there's a different system. One is asked to provide the names of potential external referees, i.e. people who work in the same field as you and can evaluate the quality of your scientific output. These are people who don't necessarily know you personally, i.e. the kind of people you would suggest as potential reviewers for one of your articles or grant applications.
My question is this: in the latter case, is it usual or necessary to contact the people before suggesting them as referees? Obviously you wouldn't do so for an article or a grant application, but what about when it's for a job application?

I think the best people to ask would be those who have asked you for this requirement on your job application. There may be a contact in HR or similar you can speak to who can answer any questions you may have, or there may be an online guide on their website for prospective applicants.
If these don't offer any clarification I would suggest not contacting the people you name on your application, just like when recommending reviewers of papers, as this is more or less the sort of role they would be performing.

As I don't know about the academic practice in Switzerland, I may contribute some theoretical thoughts.
What is the benefit of having people evaluate one's achievements or products in general when they do not know you in person? I guess the key is to have them unbiased. Then it will be better to name them without contacting them in advance.
A drawback may be, that if you name a person who has no time or interest in judging your scientific output it may look unprofessional if you provided their name without checking for their willingness to do that task.

It is always best to notify your referees before you share their names on an application.  I send a polite email requesting a recommendation letter from my referees, so that they have it on hand if they are contacted.


text:
How can (or should) I reference basic physics equations?
I'm writing my first paper, so I'm unsure about the guidelines I should follow. The subject is within the field of mechatronics and computer simulation.
If I use some basic physics equation in it (say Newton's second law), should I always add some reference that validates this formula? Or such basic equations don't need to be validated?
If the answer to the above is no, then what if I introduce a lesser known physical model (such as Coulomb's friction model)? Should I then add some reference explaining it in detail to the reader?

Justifications are for claims you make that need to be justified. Everyone reading your paper will know about Newton's second law. Everyone reading one of my papers (in quantum theory) will know Schrodinger's equation. I don't think people generally cite them, because everyone will need to know them to understand anything in the paper even a little.
On the other hand, I don't know what "Coulomb's friction model" is off the top of my head. If you introduce this, you should cite it. In general, if it's something that's well-established (but not necessarily well-known) I often see people referencing a textbook. This is quite common for things like mathematical theories. If it's less well-established or more particular, find a paper or review article.
My main recommendation, however, is to learn from your surroundings. If you're writing a paper, you must be citing a lot of previous work. What do they say, and what do they cite? That can tell you what the expected norms are in your field.

The problem is how do you define "common knowledge". I usually add a general book on the subject, if the concept is crucial to understand what I'm trying to say in the current work.

One of the main ideas behind citations is to provide a path to the reader obtain further knowledge in the mentioned subject.

While you may think that newton's 2nd law is common knowledge, is that really true for all your potential readers? If you have space for it, which is a few lines on the references section, why not? That's particularly true when a commonly defined concept has different possible interpretations, by specifically mentioning a book, you are clearing that possible ambiguity (that the reader will find just by googling the subject...)
Of course, I usually do not cite someone when defining addition, at least not the regular one...  so the problem is mainly there, just a little further down the road :)

authors: Альбина Астахова


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Appropriate topics over lunch with an invited speaker
There's a speaker coming to my university to give a lecture that all students and faculty are invited to. My department is especially interested in the speaker because he will be talking about a field that is closely-related to us. Students in my department were invited to join the speaker for lunch (which is before his talk). Given that we're all socially-awkward academics and that we haven't heard his talk yet (but we do have the abstract and his background), what are some appropriate lunch conversations? Do we discuss what he'll be talking about later that day or avoid the topic? While I am interested in his work, I don't know enough about it to start an intelligent conversation about something related to his topic.

The famous invited speaker is quite likely You in 20 years - an aged socially awkward nerd, who with aging has gotten better at social situations. Don't focus narrowly on academia; treat him like someone at a nerd party: ask about him and his family, stuff he likes to do (probably in one of his CVs), this and his city, ....and additionally academic questions as in the answer below. If you feel resistance to a more informal approach, stick to only the below; but this is very unlikely.

There's always plenty of questions to ask. If you knew as much, or more than your speaker, you wouldn't need to ask it!
Questions that do not require a lot of experience in the field to be able to ask or understand and provide a higher volume of response. In addition, a lunch setting is less formal than a lecture, so you can use more open-ended questions not necessarily related to his talking point.
Here are some example questions that would apply to most fields.

What do you think is the most promising research in [the field] you've seen recently?
How did you come up with the idea behind [topic]?
Can you explain the [concept] as it was related to [the paper]?
I am a member of the [department] which is similar to your field. What have you seen in interdisciplinary topics that you find interesting?

With a specific field, you can also ask the speaker his opinion on [new concept XYZ] that you've learned about or read about.
Questions I've seen that are more "awkward" typically involve accidentally eliciting a direct yes/no answer along the way. Avoid "Do you think..." in favor of "Why do you think..."