text:
Why do Swedish postdoc ads typically have a requirement that PhD date must not be more than 5 years ago?
Ads for postdocs in Sweden appear to always have a rule like PhD degree obtained preferable not longer than three-five years ago:
Example 1, 2.  I've seen it many times in the past but job opening links are particularly temporary.
Is this to protect people from becoming career postdocs?  Is it a requirement from a funding agency?  Or is it just a habit?

This is not specifically a Swedish thing (at least in math, I have seen such a clause as part of most postdoc postings). That said, it is entirely possible that there are also some Swedish laws coming into play here, since as far as I have been told, postdocs are a bit special compared to other temporary positions in Sweden, which usually have some more restrictions than a postdoc might.

@TobiasKildetoft In atmospheric science I appear to see it mostly in Swedish ads.  Never seen it in the UK (and I know plenty of people who have been postdocs for >10 years).

In that case there might well be some restrictions imposed by Swedish labor laws. There are laws along the lines of "if you have employed someone for more than 2 years, you must offer them a position which is not time-limited", but I think postdocs are specifically exempt from this.

@NajibIdrissi Perhaps, but that's rather altruistic and I imagine most PIs prefer to hire the candidate most likely to be successful.

Related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/61880/40589

@NajibIdrissi True, I had in mind a requirement from funding agency or law, not voluntary by PI.

@NajibIdrissi I find it more likely that a funding agency or legislator would impose a rule to protect postdocs, than that a PI would.

@gerrit perhaps if someone is still looking for post-doc positions after 5 years, they are not cut out for academic life.  I don't really know these things but the logical implication is that a bunch of people have wasted the last 15 years of their lives must be painful to some.

@emory: "perhaps etc." - Hardly. I worked in industry for several years after completing my PhD and am now looking for post-doc positions. Am I not cut out for academic life?

@einpoklum whether I (or you) think you are cut out for academic life is not important.  I am sure that there are those in hiring positions who think along those lines.  Good luck in your search.

In Brazil we've barely the same, don't know why. Before 7 years you received your PhD, you can apply for post-doc positions, after that the National Council allows you to apply for "senior internship" funding. But, ultimately, they're the same thing.

@emory: What einpoklum was probably aiming at is that there's a difference between "still [being] looking for post-doc positions after 5 years" and starting to look for post-doc positions after gathering practical experience for 5 years. But then, the OP's quotation contains the word preferable, which makes me think it's precisely cases like the one described by einpoklum that may be considered separately, without enforcing the 5-year-rule.

I don't know about Sweden, but in the US there seems to be increasing mood in Universities to end, or at least not contribute to, the "perpetual postdoc" cycle.  I don't know that there is real pressure from the funding sources, so much as a tough love from community leaders to stop taking advantage of a relatively cheap labor source by dangling prospects of academic success over them.
For example, our policy is to keep the total postdoc tenure to 5 years.  If you come in having done a 3-year postdoc, that leaves you with two more years here.  After this time limit is reached, the lab has to find means to fund you as an employee on the scientific staff if they want to keep you around.
Not all faculty love this, and some point out that by nature of some fields, postdocs tend to be longer.  For example, if you're recording from single neurons and need a large data set, this can take forever.  Despite such arguments, I haven't heard of any cases where the time limit has been waived.
The postdocs are not necessarily hung out to dry.  We have a number of programs designed to help them find satisfying employment.

As they told you, this is not specific to Sweden but happens often, particularly with funding. After a number of years after your Masters, you are not eligible to get a PhD grant, and after a number of years after your PhD, you are not eligible to get a postdoc grant. I would say that's the general rule, written or not.
Reasons? The benevolent rationale I suppose is that after a relatively long time doing something else you might have deviated too much from academia/research and it takes time and money to get you back in track, so they'd rather spend it in a just-graduated that can be 100% productive since day 1.
The malevolent rationale is, well, actually the same one: after some time in the job market, you might actually be much more adult, independent, self-confident, and have built a reputation that allows you to speak up to your boss or find another job any time. Bottom line: much less submissive. Unfortunately, that's not exactly the kind of spirit that many research labs want... as often a postdoc is not considered much differently than an "older PhD student".

"independent, self-confident, and have built a reputation that allows you to speak up to your boss" - what industry position wants those qualities? It seems to me like those are exactly the "soft skills" that you gather early on during your doctoral candidacy, and that you have to work hard to suppress in order to "fit in" once you leave academia heading for industry.

Certainly, we have very different experiences. In industry I have always seen much less need to fit in and you are valued by your skills much more than in academia. In academia, leaving a lab or quitting a PhD/postdoc is seen as a betrayal and people are much more submissive. Just check PhD comics or the many questions of worried students on this site. Changing jobs often an tough salary negotiations are the norm in industry. Just try to do that in academia and see where it leads you..

"In academia, leaving a lab or quitting a PhD/postdoc is seen as a betrayal" - huh? That sounds like a typical industry thing to me, too. It's industry where people are secretive about intending to leave a job until the very day they have handed in their resignation letter. It's industry where leaving a job is seen as some kind of betrayal, precisely because you kind of turn your back on the previous employer and pledge your loyalty to someone else. Academia couldn't be more different in that respect; switching labs at some point is a normal fact of one's career progress and the ...

... intention is freely communicated months in advance, without any fear of getting fired for a lack of loyalty. Likewise, leaving a job does not at all mean cutting all ties there; indeed, moving on to another post is always a great opportunity for the previous lab to expand their network of collaborating institutions - and for the job-switching lab member, an opportunity to bring some new collaboration contacts into their new job. If you have observed anything else, indeed we must have very different experiences.

Great. Thanks for sharing your experience. I have seen you comment my answers often. It would be really helpful for posters if you devoted  the same amount of effort and detail to answering their original questions..

"It would be really helpful for posters if you devoted the same amount of effort and detail to answering their original questions." - I do, as you can see in my profile.

I obviously meant in cases such as this one (the only ones I know), where you spend a huge amount of time and effort trying to refute answers you don't agree with or others whose experiences don't match yours. You are absolutely free to do that, of course, and it's even amusing. However, it doesn't move to a helpful or even better answer at all. Ok, at this point, everyone knows you don't agree with this answer or your experience is different. So what? And, really, who cares? Not providing an alternative, hopefully better answer does a disservice to the goal of the site.

"you don't agree with this answer" - nowhere did I say that. I disagree with two specific points, one made in the answer, and one made in your first comment. Neither disagreement implies disagreement with anything else you wrote in this answer or in the attached comments. I suppose this is leading off-topic, though, so I'll quit this conversation now.


text:
Another student used my completed work, what should I do?
I took a class a year ago, another student currently taking the same class had asked about my assignments to guide her in her work. I explained to her how intense the class is and sent her a copy of my work so she sees how much efforts she needs to put on that paper.
Without my authorization, she used my work for her assignment and now we are both in a mess. The school had contacted me about this matter and wants me to call them for a phone conference about this matter. The school policy includes but not limited to "no sharing of old assignment" or else disciplinary action will be taken. So how can one approach this case when asked to report by telephone?

Explain to the authorities exactly what happened, and provide as much proof as you can. Emails, chat transcripts, etc.

The policy includes "no sharing of old assignment", you broke this rule, now you have to face the consequences. Welcome to adulthood, were actions have consequences.

If I understand correctly, the other student took the class after you took it, so it's clear that she cheated from you, not vice versa. I suspect they merely want to talk to you to find out exactly what happened. You are probably not in any trouble, unless there is a school policy against sharing old assignments, or the professor asked students not to do this, or you knew that she would have the same assignment when she took the class. So I would simply answer any questions they have, and explain why you did what you did.

Yes she took the class after I took it. The school sent me a letter stating that I violated the school's rule and regulation about sharing. I did not know the school is against sharing old assignment.  The student is currently on probation and now they are after me. Do you think they are going to place me on probation?

There's no way of knowing (without knowing more about exactly what your school's policies are, how the disciplinary process works, how convincing a case you can make, etc.).  However, you should take this very seriously.

I am taking this seriously. They sent me a link to review the school's policy and I just noticed the school is against sharing old assignment. I don't know what my fate. Is there anyway or particular thing I need to say while on the phone conference to exonerate myself from any disciplinary action?

There aren't any magic words to avoid discipline that I'm aware of. Explain what you did, why you did it, that you didn't realise at the time that it was against policy, but now you do and won't do anything like that again. Is there a student ombudsman or someone like that you can talk to?

Thank you so much! I do not know of anyone to talk to. This is an online class. I just need to find the right word or try to convince them that I did not share my work to cheat but to guide her on her own work. I do not want be short of words when talking to them. I have never been in a case before.  I will appreciate any help from this forum.

Presumably there's also an "evidence trail" that can back up your assertions. If so, I'd include that to show proof of your intentions. (It will also help if the assignment is one where the is no reasonable expectation that the other student wouldn't just turn in your work as hers.)

What actually happened was that she copied most of my work and submitted it online as her own work. The plagiarism checker detecte it as 100% originality from another student's paper, which is my paper. The school sent me a letter attaching the plagiarized work. They want me to report to them by phone.

So is there anyway to get myself out of this mess?

@Allyson If you have any emails between you and this other student that show that your intentions were not for her to copy your assignment, I believe that would help.

You need local advice, and random people on the internet who don't even know your school's policies or procedures can't tell you what you should do.  If your school has a strict policy against sharing classwork, then there may be nothing you can do but beg for mercy.  Otherwise, trying to prove your intentions were good may help.  However, you should expect skepticism: the oldest trick in the book is to let someone copy your work after announcing that they shouldn't copy it, so you can claim you never gave them permission to copy and had no idea they were going to do so.

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

sort: votes


text:
My professor wants to know if his recommendation is helpful
Several weeks after I received the recommendation from Professor M, he sent an email to me and asked me about the result of my application to a graduate school.  He wants to know whether his recommendation is helpful and my application is accepted or not.
Although I have submitted my application and supporting documents to the graduate admissions, the deadline for the program I have applied for is on the 18th April.
The only message I received from the graduate school was that they had received my application. I have no idea whether my application is successful or not, but the email from professor M made me nervous.
I can see that there are a lot of professors here. I guessed that some of you had written recommendation letters for your students. I would love to know this:

What were your reactions when you heard of your students telling you that their applications failed or your recommendation letters useless?

I feel scared when thinking of this situation.

I can not understand what is the problem here. Prof wants to know the results, you do not know the results now. You tell him, sorry, I do not know results yet, will let you know AFAP. Sounds super easy to me.

Maybe the undeerlying intention of him is to show interest of what you do, or keep in contact for some reason. Then, the question would be just something like "smaltalk", with not much relevance.

Just tell the professor that you don't know yet. I don't think it was his intention to suggest you should have received an answer by now, but if it was, he'll probably let you know (after all, he took the liberty of contacting you about it out of the blue...)

"Was my letter helpful?" is really a pretty useless question: assuming that you used the letter, you'll never really know whether it helped or hurt, because the admissions committee should not ever give you that information.  The professor is probably really just asking the second question twice with different word: did you get in?
You should not feel nervous about this.  Instead, you should feel good, because  it means the professor cares enough about you to follow up with you and to hope that you've gotten good news.  Thank the professor for their interest, tell them the letter was helpful (after all, it helped you fulfill the requirements to apply), but that you don't yet have any news because of the late deadline of this particular program.

+1 for the "tell them the letter was helpful". Unless you didn't use the letter at all, you should reply that the letter was helpful and much appreciated, and that you have not heard any results yet but will let the professor know as soon as you hear anything.

You should not be nervous about the enquiry, he just wants to know the outcome. Many academics lose track of time and/or have unrealistic expectations about how fast things move. I would respond that you haven't heard anything yet, but will let him know, regardless of the outcome, when you hear.
If you get in, he will fell happy for you and if you don't get in he will feel a little sad for you. Even if you are unsuccessful, I would not tell a letter writer that the letter was "useless". The only case I might say something like that, and I would be much more positive about it, is if you chose not to use that individual as a reference. Something like: for that position, I was limited on the number of reference I could submit and I felt my other references were a better fit for the position.

I would just tell him in the email that the application deadline is not for 2 months, so you may not hear back for a few months (in case he thinks you should've heard by now, or sometime soon).

@Kimball A mid April deadline seems very late, so I was thinking the department probably makes rolling decisions.

It is late for most programs in the US.  Since the OP didn't say anything about rolling admissions, I was thinking it might be in another country where they don't start reviewing until April, but you might be right.  @kitty, do you want to clarify?

I am not sure, kimball. I don't know much about their policy, I mean the school I have applied for. Thank you.

Hi, Kimball. But I know one thing, they allow people to submit their applications to the university anytime except in December and May. I am not sure if this is called Rolling admission though.

@kitty That doesn't necessarily mean rolling admissions (which means they review applications and give offers as they come in, rather than after the deadline).  Usually (I think) if they do rolling admissions, the ads should say so (or at least say something like "applications before Feb 14 will be given priority") to let candidates know they have a better chance if they apply early.  (BTW if you don't address me with '@' I won't get notified of your comment.)

@Kimball. Thank you very much for your explanation! Thanks for telling me the secret about the AT symbol, Kimball!

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text:
How long before PhD graduation should I start applying for academic jobs
I hope this is not a duplicate, I saw this question:
How long before PhD graduation should I start applying for post-doc positions?
However, I didn't find any analogous question for applying for jobs (academic). Is there a certain timeline to look for jobs?
In particular, do I need to have completed the PhD or fulfill any requirement (e.g. submitted thesis) before I can look for jobs?
I am considering any kind of academic job, tenured, or non-tenured jobs like lecturer and adjunct posts.
I am looking at mid-tier universities in Asia, in applied mathematics and related fields.

Could you elaborate on what kind of positions you have in mind, and what field you are in? In the life sciences, the ones you've listed all require you to have some postdoc experience (maybe not technically, but certainly in practice).

Too broad. Please one question at a time. Specify your country and your target countries.

@Hexal I am looking at Asian universities.

@Gerhard I am looking at mid-tier universities in Asia, in applied mathematics and related fields.

Provide an estimate when you'd obtain your PhD in your application and better apply early than late.

For postdoc positions: apply approximately 3-6 months before graduation.
For (UK, AU)-lecturer and assistant professor positions: apply approximately a year before the graduation.
Usually, you have to be graduated by the first day you start with your job duties, though exceptions exist.

I'd add that in the US at least, some adjunct/lecturer positions are posted much later than postdocs, as schools figure out their needs after filling/failing to fill various positions, so you should expect to have a long hiring season, sometimes up until almost the first day of classes.

@Mathprof Feel free to add it to my answer if you wish.


text:
Compiling ethical standards for coauthorship across academic fields and regions
One of the hot-button issues on this site is standards for coauthorship, especially variants of the question "Must I automatically include my thesis advisor as a coauthor on all my papers?"
Since these questions (sensibly) come up again and again, I thought it would be useful to have a collection of links to various ethical standards for coauthorship.  To the best of my knowledge, these standards will apply only to one particular academic field and/or to one geographic region.  For instance, most of my colleagues would point to this statement by the American Mathematical Society.  It applies (explicitly) to mathematics and (implicitly, I think) to mathematics done in the US and by Americans.
I was thinking of a community-wiki question where each answer posts a link to ethical standards in some academic field(s) and geographic region(s).  To make the answers better, I would ask that respondents:

Quote in their answer the passages most relevant to coauthorship.
Please avoid "alphabet soup".  Above I wrote "American Mathematical Society" rather than "AMS": mathematicians will know what AMS means, but most other academics presumably won't.  Some other answers here refer to things like "BMJ": I certainly didn't know what that was.
(Ideally) Give commentary as to whether/how the standards in their answer differ from those posted in other answers.

The more comprehensive the list we can compile, the more authoritatively we can point future questioners to this list and tell them what is or is not an ethical practice.

Typically, SE discourages users to intentionally post CW-style questions, which this definitely is (as you state yourself). I realize that we often do things differently here, but we haven't differed in this respect yet. Personally don't think we should start compiling list-style questions, for all the same reasons why CW questions are disliked (need for constant maintenance, ever-increasing scope of discussion). For that reason, I don't think this question is in scope for this site.

@eykanal: The appropriate place to discuss these issues is the meta site.  I find your objections disappointing bordering on exasperating, but if you post a question there I will try to respond to it.

Post added on Meta. @Pete, I generally would post something similar to the above on the question before posting to meta, particularly given that this issue has already been discussed.

possible duplicate of What are the minimum contributions required for co-authorship

@StrongBad: I think that the two questions are related but not duplicates of each other.

@CharlesMorisset While a good idea, many of the questions we get on this site can already be answered with a trip to Wikipedia, which suggests that the existence of that article isn't necessarily sufficient.

This is excerpted from the Ethical Guidelines of the American Mathematical Society:

I. MATHEMATICAL RESEARCH AND ITS PRESENTATION
The public reputation for honesty and integrity of the mathematical
  community and of the Society is its collective treasure and its
  publication record is its legacy.
The knowing presentation of another person's mathematical discovery as
  one's own constitutes plagiarism and is a serious violation of
  professional ethics. Plagiarism may occur for any type of work,
  whether written or oral and whether published or not.
The correct attribution of mathematical results is essential, both
  because it encourages creativity, by benefiting the creator whose
  career may depend on the recognition of the work and because it
  informs the community of when, where, and sometimes how original ideas
  entered into the chain of mathematical thought. To that end,
  mathematicians have certain responsibilities, which include the
  following:
To endeavor to be knowledgeable in their field, especially about work
  related to their research;
To give appropriate credit, even to unpublished materials and
  announced results (because the knowledge that something is true or
  false is valuable, however it is obtained);
        To publish full details of results that are announced without unreasonable delay, because claiming a result in advance of its having
  been achieved with reasonable certainty injures the community by
  restraining those working toward the same goal;
To use no language that suppresses or improperly detracts from the
  work of others;
To correct in a timely way or to withdraw work that is erroneous.
A claim of independence may not be based on ignorance of widely
  disseminated results. On appropriate occasions, it may be desirable to
  offer or accept joint authorship when independent researchers find
  that they have produced identical results. All the authors listed
  for a paper, however, must have made a significant contribution to its
  content, and all who have made such a contribution must be offered the
  opportunity to be listed as an author. Because the free exchange of
  ideas necessary to promote research is possible only when every
  individual's contribution is properly recognized, the Society will not
  knowingly publish anything that violates this principle, and it will
  seek to expose egregious violations anywhere in the mathematical
  community.

[Emphasis added.]

The boldfaced sentence seems too narrow to me.  If I work on a project with someone, then I think they deserve to be a coauthor regardless of whether they wind up making a significant contribution to the content of the final paper.  I think coauthorship is warranted because there's an implied contract when people work together that, in exchange for freely sharing their ideas and spending time on the problem, everyone will be a coauthor.  Am I interpreting the AMS statement too literally, or worse, am I being unethical?  I thought something like this occurred for the Taylor-Wiles paper.

@Michael Zieve: you are applying it a little too strictly, in my opinion as a mathematician. There can't be a general rule for every collaboration, but if two researchers together work all the way up to the edge of a result, and then one researcher has the final crucial insight, it's hard to say that the other person made no significant contribution to the theorem.

Excerpt from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, which governs most medical journal submissions, as well as those in most allied health fields, like public health. The full text is here: http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html

The ICMJE recommends that authorship be based on the following 4
criteria:

Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or
the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND

Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual
content; AND

Final approval of the version to be published; AND

Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring
that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the
work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

In addition to being
accountable for the parts of the work he or she has done, an author
should be able to identify which co-authors are responsible for
specific other parts of the work. In addition, authors should have
confidence in the integrity of the contributions of their co-authors.
All those designated as authors should meet all four criteria for
authorship, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as
authors. Those who do not meet all four criteria should be
acknowledged—see Section II.A.3 below. These authorship criteria are
intended to reserve the status of authorship for those who deserve
credit and can take responsibility for the work. The criteria are not
intended for use as a means to disqualify colleagues from authorship
who otherwise meet authorship criteria by denying them the opportunity
to meet criterion #s 2 or 3. Therefore, all individuals who meet the
first criterion should have the opportunity to participate in the
review, drafting, and final approval of the manuscript.

Note that the recommendation is actually for contributorship as a concept rather than authorship in its traditional context. So from this perspective authorship and contributorship are not synonyms.

@PeterJansson I don't follow.

A big publisher has a brief (and somewhat vague) rule for all its journals, although to the best of my knowledge it doesn't do anything to enforce it. Note the 'or' as opposed to the 'and' given in another answer.

Authorship of the paper
Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant
  contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation
  of the reported study. All those who have made significant
  contributions should be listed as co-authors. Where there are others
  who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research
  project, they should be acknowledged or listed as contributors.

Source here.
which is very similar to the guidelines of the American Physical Society:

Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant
  contribution to the concept, design, execution or interpretation of
  the research study. All those who have made significant contributions
  should be offered the opportunity to be listed as authors. Other
  individuals who have contributed to the study should be acknowledged,
  but not identified as authors.

Source here

By "editor" do you mean "publisher"?


text:
Paper accepted in journal, should I remove style file for arXiv preprint?
I recently sent a paper to a journal (which I put on arXiv beforehand) which has now been accepted with some corrections. I want to put the corrected version on arXiv. The corrected version is written using the style file supplied by the journal.
Should I remove this style file? Does it matter if I don't? Will the journal get mad?

@MarkFischler: Indeed they have (see my answer) and I am rather sure that this was already the case five years ago.

Does the style file contain a license?  This may contain the answer to your question.

thanks for the comments. The style file has a copyright but I can't see a license. Anyway, I think it is better for me to remove the style file so I have consistency in my arXiv preprints.

@math_guy Reformatting takes time; spend the time more productively, do research instead

Legally, the style file at first only is the software which you use to generate your paper and thus there should not be any problems in most cases, for the same reasons that you do not need to ask Microsoft for permission each time you publish something generated with Word. I see three problem cases, however:

If you use TeX, and ArXiv does not have the style file and thus you need to supply it, which would make it be published alongside your article. In this case you may be distributing a software that you are not allowed not distribute. In my experience, many style files are free to distribute though; have a look at it whether it contains some license.
The style file includes a logo or similar (e.g., Royal Society Publishing’s style file does this), which in turn may not have a license that allows you to distribute it and also probably is a problem because of the next point.
The style file makes your paper mention the journal’s name, publisher, or similar, which creates the false impression that your preprint is actually a publication of that journal.

Will the journal get mad? – Of course you need to regard the journal’s copyright agreement (which you accepted) with respect to publishing preprints in general or on ArXiv in specific (Sherpa Romeo is a database that helps you to find this out). But if the journal allows you to publish a preprint content-wise, I do not see any reasons why using its style file would enrage it, given that the above problem cases do not apply. Some journals even allow you publishing the journal’s version of the paper on ArXiv, e.g., the Physical Review series.
Finally, a stylistical argument: If the journal has a single-column layout but your paper has no long equations or something else that would make such a format a good idea, you may want to opt for a two-column layout for your preprint.

Thanks, this is a good answer. So it seems I am allowed to post post-review preprints. Upon consideration I think removing the style file is better so I have some consistency across my arXiv preprints.

I believe some journal style files have a "preprint" option you can toggle.

I think what matters in most cases is whether the journal staff (i.e., not just the external peer reviewers) made some corrections and improvements to the paper. If they did, you generally can't post the fruit of their labor on arXiv without violating the journal's rights. But you can post a version without those corrections and improvements -- and then you can even add additional other improvements of your own that were not in the journal's published version.

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text:
Indian CGPA to US GPA system
I study in India and in here we have 10 pointer system. I wanted to convert my CGPA to american based GPA system of 4. I googled and got this website.
So does that mean I need only >8.5 to get a 4.
This may be a stupid question to some but please consider that I know nothing of american CGPA system.

There are so many variations within India that this question is rather moot.

The link in the version 1 (original version) did not break. So, I roll back to the original version. I don't know why the anonymous user tried to replace the working link. To the OP, if my edit contradicts to what you intend, please edit it. Thanks.

A US GPA is computed as an average of grades, mapped as follows:

A = 4
B = 3
C = 2
D = 1
F = 0

In some universities, there are interpolations between these:

A- = 3.67
B+ = 3.33

and so on for B-, C+ and so on.
I've heard of an A+ being awarded a 4.33, but that's not the case in my university where A is the maximum grade.
At least in my recollection, this maps non-linearly to the Indian CGPA system which is

A = 10
B = 8
C = 6
D = 4

Because of the non-linearity, you can't just for e.g divide your score by 2.5. Moreover, there are statistical normalizations that complicate the process. Personally, if possible, I'd just list the CGPA as is. Your transcripts will reveal the grade specifics, and that's more useful than just the summary number. I wouldn't trust the link you provided since they don't appear to provide any rationale for the mapping.
Separately I'd have a hard time seeing an Indian CGPA of 8.6 and considering it a 4.0. Even with grade inflation, that would be over optimistic.

Indeed, don't attempt a conversion. U.S. admissions committees are well-accustomed to (trying to) interpret varying grading scales. Don't waste any time or energy in a misguided effort.


text:
Postgraduate certification/diploma in software engineering
I have just done my Bachelor in computer science and got an offer to a software engineering position. Some people told me that a master degree is very beneficial for my long-term career development. Unfortunately I do not think I can get into any good master program because of my terrible undergrad gpa + no academic references. A postgraduate certificate program requires nothing.
My question is, what is your point of view on postgraduate certificate in software engineering? Is it just a joke comparing to master degrees? What about starting salary?

This site is for Academia. I took out the off-topic phrase in the question.

Short term wise, the postgraduate certificate will help you to find a better job with a higher salary because the certificate shows that you have some skill printed on the certificate. However, whatever the technology you learn while getting the certificate could become obsolete in a few years.
Long term wise, the master degree proves that you know more fundamentals than just a bachelor. It may not help you that much when looking for a job with better salary. Some employers would think you don't have the skills they want immediately. However, you'll learn those needed skills faster and better because you know more fundamentals.
If you want to find a job as of now, you want to have certificates. If you want to be an excellent software engineer in the future, you should get a master degree

I agree with @scaaahu that having a Masters shows that you have a strong understanding of important concepts. As you probably know there are commonalities between programming languages such as input/output, conditionals, loops, etc. the difference lies in how they are each implemented. However, by knowing one language(i.e. Java) you could learn another(i.e. C#) efficiently and in a shorter time.
It is also true that some employers might think you're overqualified since you have a Masters but others will recognize the added value your advanced knowledge could bring their company and the compensation may even reflect that.


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Ask for funding before or after applying
I finished my master in computer science about 2 years ago...
And I just started to apply for PhD... I have received a prompt reply to one of my email and I really don't know what should I do!? here is the response :
"Dear Ali,
It is impossible for me to know over a year in advance whether I will take any students for Fall 2016.  Your CV looks interesting and I encourage you to apply to the program so you are eligible for any potential openings."
I asked for admission on fall 2016 but maybe I could ask for winter 2015 too...
Should I ask for funding now or after applying? How should I reply him?

Where are you located? Can you find out what the usual procedures at your place is? Do prospective PhD candidates usually acquire their own funding, or do they apply for positions for which someone else has secured funding beforehand? Answers might vary considerably based on this information.

What about Canadian universities?

Your question really contains two parts: about funding and about what to do with the email. @vonbrand already answered the funding part, so I will answer the other half:
This is really a rather common reply. If you apply for the fall 2016, you will likely take courses for the first year, so you're looking for someone who may start to be your adviser in the fall 2017 -- two years from now. I have no idea how my funding situation will look like that far out, nor whether I will gain or lose any graduate students until then. In other words, I cannot promise that (i) I will be able to support anyone financially this far out, (ii) I will have the mental and time capacity to  accept more graduate students this far out. At least in the US (and likely in Canada), you can't generally expect to have an adviser lined up before you even apply to a graduate program -- you have to apply and accept admission to a department in the hope that when you need one, an adviser will materialize.

(I can only speak to the system in the U.S.)  In the old days, you read the catalog.  Nowadays, you read the department website.  It will probably tell you at least 95% of what you need to know about how and when to apply for admission and funding.  It will have a contact email to use for the remaining 5%.
Good luck!

The issue of funding is clearly vital to you (and I dare say all prospective graduate students), so the school can't take exception on you asking for details on the matter. In fact, you should ask them for alternatives that might be available, and (if needed) where, how and when to apply for that.


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Does the GDPR entitle students to see their recommendation letters?
If I am correctly informed, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) entitles any EU and EEA citizen to have right of access of any data stored about them (and non-EU/EEA citizens such access to data stored about them by organizations inside the EU/EEA). This clearly includes recommendation letters which in some form or another must be linked to their identity.
This probably changes the signaling value of recommendation letters so this should be of interest to both reference letter writers and applicants.
A side question would be whether this includes reference letters written before the GDPR went into force.

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1152/should-i-waive-my-right-to-view-my-recommendation-letters

Member states can enact law that under certain conditions restricts the right to access, see in particular Article 23, 1(i). That is, your rights may be restricted when it would interfere with the rights of other persons. Disclosing a letter of recommendation, for example, might infringe with the right of the letter writer to privacy (or perhaps of that of other people mentioned in the letter).

See also https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/individual-rights/right-of-access/, in particular the section "What should I do if the data includes information about other people"

In many jurisdictions, you always had the right to do so. But it would always be hugely in your interest to waive your rights to access them...

The GDPR only applies if data is processed in an automatic way or is stored in a filing system. Does a professor's messy desk constitute a filing system? On a more serious note, the GDPR provides that the right of access "shall not adversely affect the rights and freedoms of others.". The right to privacy of the letter-writer is adversely affected if you obtain a copy, but I'm not sure of the precise details and whether this counts or not.

In the UK, most recently, reference letters during an employment recruitment process have potentially been available to the candidate for whom the letter has been written.
Bound to be the same for academic references.
No obvious reason for this opportunity to be curtailed by the coming into force of GDPR, quite the contrary.

When you say "potentially been available" do you mean that there is an option for letter writers to keep their letters private?  Or that a candidate always has the opportunity to see their reference letters if desired?

@Kimball The previous state in the UK was the Data Protection Act (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Act_1998) which allowed access to your own personal data, as long as it was "reasonable" to search for, and allowed charging a reasonable fee (the standard seemed to be £10). Under typical circumstances, this would be most of the content of a letter of reference for a university, but possibly not all of it(the personal data of any other people in the letter still needed to be protected).

@Kimball not aware that referees could request that their letter be kept confidential from the candidate they write about; yes, by potentially, I mean a candidate may request to have access to reference letters written on their account, if they wish to do so, under the Data Protection Act 1998 indeed

@G-E I was thinking more along the lines of the US system, where it's common for applicants to waive their rights to view the letters (and the letter writer should see that the candidate has waived their rights).

@Kimball interesting; over here, the typical advice for referees goes along the lines of: 'write your reference letter as if the individual you are writing about the performance was reading over your shoulder.'

@Kimball For the avoidance of ambiguity, the right to view and correct one's personal data isn't something someone can permanently opt out of, either under the GDPR, or the previous version. It's just something you can choose not to exercise currently (think 2nd amendment rather than Miranda).

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


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(How) should I describe the company within my bachelor's thesis?
I'm writing my computer science bachelor's thesis in a company. The thesis is about optimizing one of their software products. Obviously I will need to describe the software in the thesis, but what about the company itself?
Is it sufficient to name the company and give a short description of what they're about, or should I go into more detail like e.g. the history of the company?
(I'm new here, so if this question isn't a good fit, feel free to let me know :) )

or should I go into more detail like e.g. the history of the company?

No, in general, there's no need for that: your thesis is not a company's brochure. Provide enough information to present the context of your thesis, but don't add too much unnecessary details.
Anyway, I suggest you to discuss this also with your university supervisor: they surely know what is the policy or the tradition about this in the university, and they can act as buffer between possible company's requests and university requirements.


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Do research-only postdocs harm chances for tenure-track opportunities?
Suppose a person spends their PhD at an institute with a high ratio of PhD students to other students, resulting in a very low teaching load for PhD students, resulting in no or almost no teaching/tutoring.  Suppose he/she spends years in postdocs, where each postdoc is funded by supervisor grants, and involves no teaching.  She/he does great science but does not acquire other skills or experience.
Consider that tenure-track positions always require stellar experience in research, teaching and getting proposals funded — all of the above.
Is it harmful to an academic career if research is great, but all done on other people's grants and with no teaching experience to speak of?  If yes, how could one prevent or overcome this?

I have learned from this site that the answer to this question is very field-specific: in some parts of the sciences it is not assumed that a beginning tenure-track assistant professor has any prior experience as an instructor of record whatsoever.  In some other fields -- in particular, in mathematics -- this would indeed be a concern (how much depending on the institution).  Also the phrasing "leeching [off] of other people's grants" seems unnecessarily loaded.

@PeteL.Clark I removed the leeching phrase, I agree that it is not necessary.

teaching experience/caring about teaching can be demonstrated in other ways than teaching an official course at your college. You can get some outreach experience by teaching a short course for advanced grade school students, or by doing other forms of educational outreach. These things can help an applicant if they have no official teaching experience.

When I applied to several universities for tenure track positions, the calls I received for interviews did ask me for student evaluation records to be presented to them when I visited them for an on-campus interview. This was not a mandatory requirement for the application itself but it (teaching graduate/undergraduate courses) seemed to have a bearing on the final outcome (hire or not to hire). Of course, if you were to apply to a research only university, teaching exp may not count as significantly. I Suppose you would want to target univs/institutes based on their goal/strategic plan?

Tenure-track positions do not always require stellar experience in all of those - or only light experience in them, if there is strength elsewhere. Consider, for example, tenure track positions with few to no actual students, which do exist.

It depends. At my R1 university where the only thing that counts is research, you would be an ideal candidate for our hiring committees.
At other R1s which balance research against a modicum of teaching, you might face a little bit of an uphill struggle. It might be good if you could at least pick up some teaching experience or certification1 to help you in the job market.
You face the most problems at small liberal arts colleges, where you would face two issues:

The concern that you don't know how (or really care) to teach
The concern that you would think yourself ultimately destined for R1s and thus leave the SLAC at the first opportunity possible

You would have to counter these two prejudices in your job letter and interviews.

1. Even at my august institution, we're realizing our graduates are having problems on the job market because they have little to no teaching experience. So we have instituted a teaching and learning center where they can take seminars and workshops on pedagogic methods. They get a little annotation (certification) to this effect on their transcripts. Certainly not comparable to the teaching experience that doctoral students receive at public R1s.

+1. If you don't have much experience teaching, you need to not also broadcast that you don't want to teach if you're applying to a SLAC. Similarly, if you don't have funded grants and are applying at an R1, you should have a reason beyond "I can't be bothered".

@RoboKaren: What you say is true...but describing your institution as an "R1 university" seems to be modest to the point of potentially misleading.  I am also at an R1 insitution....and though we certainly prioritize research over teaching, teaching still counts for something.  In fact I recently gave a very strong postdoc who came to visit me the advice that he should teach at least one course even though his prestigious fellowship has no teaching responsibilities whatsoever.  This guy is amazing...but there is essentially no one who is only looking for jobs at the very top places.

@PeteL.Clark - thanks. I keep forgetting that my institution is not the center of the universe. Ptolemaic replaced by a bit more of Copernicus.

I'm an anthropologist but all departments at my institution view research as of paramount value. Even an ethnomusicologist in the Music Department was not renewed -- despite being an accomplished musician and teacher.

I agree with this completely.

The answer depends a lot on the particular institution but even within an institution there are likely to be significant differences between academic departments.
In mathematics, many post-doc positions include some opportunity for the post-doc to teach a bit (e.g. one course per year.)  I'd advise anyone in that situation to take advantage of the opportunity to get some teaching experience.  Several universities have positions for early career mathematicians that combine a half time teaching load with plenty of institutional support for research- these look really good on a resume.  Visiting Assistant Professor (limited term non tenure track teaching only) positions are also quite common in mathematics.  These are a great way to get teaching experience, but you'll have a hard time doing any research while in such a position.
In the mathematics department that I work in, teaching experience is a significant issue.  However, I've been on search committees in other STEM departments at our institution where most candidates had no teaching experience to speak of and this wasn't an important issue.
With respect to grant funding, it can be quite hard for post-docs to get experience writing grants since they typically aren't allowed to be PI on a grant while in a post-doc.  However, any experience in writing proposals (even just helping your advisor to write a proposal) is a big plus in my opinion.

I don't know any mathematics postdocs in the US that have a teaching load of one course per year.  Could you help me out here?

Some good examples of combined post-doc/teaching positions in mathematics include the John Wesley Young Instructorships at Dartmouth College (which have a one course per quarter teaching load) and a similar program at the University of Utah.  Less formally, it's often possible for a research post-doc to arrange to teach a course and be paid by the department to do so in place of salary from the research grant.  I interviewed a candidate last week who had taught one course in this way for each of the last two years while working primarily as a research postdoc.

One course per term is a much more standard load for a postdoc, sure.  And, sure, if you don't have any required teaching than you often can (and often should, IMO) arrange to teach a bit here and there.  I just took your first sentence as meaning that "one course per year" was a common standard teaching load for a postdoc.  I guess I interpreted it too literally: sorry about that.  (I am after all a mathematician...)

At many institutions, research is all that matters. If you're at an institute with a light teaching burden for your PhD students, it stands to reason that there may not be all that much teaching for the faculty to do. For example, at my graduate institution, faculty taught at most a class or so a year.
Similarly, if you have clearly thought about grants, have a submission plan, etc., they may overlook not having submitted grants if there was a rational reason for that, like recognizing the need to support a much larger grant effort over funding a smaller postdoctoral-level grant.
Basically, it doesn't need to kill your application, but you should be able to articulate what direction you will go in the future for research, teaching and grant writing.


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Are faculty positions more competitive than government research lab positions?
Whenever I've been in the audience of a faculty interview presentation, I left impressed but demoralised. It appears the bar of making it as far as the interview is very high indeed, and I don't know if I'll ever be able to reach a similar level.  On the other hand, I know quite some people employed as researchers at national/supernational scientific research laboratories, or at research divisions of operational government institutes. I don't get the same impression there.  It seems to me that people who obtain faculty positions are more outstanding than those who obtain scientist positions for governments.
Is my impression correct? Is it less competitive to get employed at research laboratories or government institute research divisions, than it is to get employed as faculty at a university?  If yes, why is this so?  At a university, faculty spend their time writing grants, teaching, doing administration, and hopefully still a little bit of science.  At research labs, the exact division of work probably varies, but involves doing research, developing products, writing reports and papers, perhaps doing consultancy or other work.  Unless one loves teaching (I suppose nobody loves grant writing), I'm not sure why a position at a university would be more desirable/competitive than one at a laboratory.  Is my impression wrong, or am I missing something?
(I have this impression for at least Sweden, United Kingdom, United States, and Canada.)

I suppose that this needs a country specifcation. In the Czech system for instance, you don't really have "government research labs", for instance...

@yo'  This is an international question.  E.g. Czech Republic is part of a lot of supranational "government" labs that do research, either directly or as a EU member state: ESA, EUMETSAT, ECMWF, CERN, ITER... and certainly many other international research institutes.  And if I'm not mistaken there's a research division at, for example, the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute.  I don't necessarily mean national research labs and I explicitly include operational institutes that have research divisions in my question.

Of course the answer depends on the university and the lab.  There are plenty of university departments with low standards, and some labs are truly excellent.  However, I think your comparison is right on average for top universities vs. national labs in the U.S.  There are several reasons for this:

Many researchers at universities aren't professors, and in some universities the non-faculty research staff outnumber the faculty by a substantial factor.  To make a fair comparison, you should not restrict your attention to professors, but rather compare all research staff in both institutions (or look at especially noteworthy or high-level employees at labs).
Some research labs are huge.  For example, Los Alamos and Sandia are each the size of a whole university, but they cover a much narrower range of fields.  The top researchers at these labs are exceptional, but the sheer number of positions makes it difficult to maintain the highest standards for everyone.  (And you can't just keep positions open for years while you look for the perfect candidate, since that would compromise the lab's mission.)
Researchers at national labs in the U.S. do not have tenure, and their jobs are subject to availability of funding and political interference.  In some cases they face as much or more pressure to get grants as faculty do.

In his book A PhD Is Not Enough, physicist Peter Feibelman argues that government labs are a superior place to start one's research career. He argues that assistant professors (at universities) are burdened with too much busy work: committees, advising, creating lecture notes, teaching, and grading.
If academia is a merit-based organization, then prestige comes from one work (publication record). In my mind this means finding the best environment for research. Feibelman argues that a scientist's optimal path is to establish one's research at a national lab, then move to a university.

This is interesting, but does it address the title question?

Stereotypically, I would say your perception is correct: university faculty are (on average) slightly more outstanding than their colleagues at national labs. Why is this the case when science is easier at national labs?
A national lab researcher has one main job (research) with a token amount of administration on the side. A university faculty has more roles: research, mentoring grad students & postdocs, teaching class, advising students, and (more complex) university & departmental administration.
Scientists with minimal people skills are often proud of shirking extraneous administrative duties "to get some 'real' work done." Those with this attitude will likely find a national lab to be a better fit, while those with higher EQ will preferentially select faculty jobs. Perhaps this selection mechanism accounts for university faculty members being more "outstanding" than colleagues working in government labs.
But what might attract faculty to such a disadvantageous work environment?

superior university architecture & aesthetics,
convenient university location (universities (usually older than labs) had the city grow up around them),
greater variety of culture & the arts,
teaching/mentoring students is rewarding,
teaching responsibilities offset grant writing pressure,
cheep graduate students can be an effective source of labor,
faculty jobs are more abundant than those at national laboratory, and
the possibility of tenure.

(The University of Tennessee at Knoxville & Oak Ridge National Laboratory furnished me with these stereotypes.)

don't have to pee in a cup (http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jan/31/nation/na-nuke31)

I think you have an overly rosy view of the work of a researcher at a national lab. Beyond the postdoc level, researchers at national labs spend a lot of time on project management, line-managing people, mentoring grad students and postdocs, dealing with government and industry clients, and complex organisational administration (developing strategic plans, impact and vision statements, risk management plans, etc). There is often more paperwork and process e.g. for travel and publishing because we are accountable politically. Teaching is the only think we needn't do.

There is a big difference between the search processes at Universities and National Research Labs. In an open University call you may be going up against 100+ qualified applicants so even getting to the interview is difficult. In my field everyone of those applicants will be doing research in an area relevant to the department, have a strong publication and funding history, and some teaching experience. For a targeted call, the search might be limited to a subfield, for example an Psychology Department might do a search for a Cognitive Psychologist. The search might even get so specific that it is for a Cognitive Psychologist with interests in memory. For a research lab the search will be even more specific. For example, it might be for a Cognitive Psychologist that uses fMRI to understand memory issues of children with ADHD. If the National Lab search is lucky, they will get 5 qualified applicants, so getting to the interview is not that tough. National Labs are more likely to have top people in their sub-sub-sub------subfield than Universities, but that person may not be particularly strong relative to others in their field in general.

I wonder if that is true in general.  As a counterexample, the British Met Office for its scientist positions in its recruitment typically requires only evidence of scientific analysis skills, scientific communication skills, a good understanding of physics in general, without requiring specific atmospheric experience.  Indeed, I know more than one person employed as a scientist at national meteorological institutes, whose prior experience was in space science, particle physics, or other fields where applied research may be sparser.

@gerrit looking quickly at their 21 science fellows, which they equate to a full Professor, I found what seems like complete publication histories on 12 of them. Of those 12, 9 had 50+ publications. Obviously that doesn't say anything about quality, but it suggests to me that they are holding their own.


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Do price and value of degrees correlate much?
Many American colleges and universities have very high tuition fees, in particular at prestigious universities.  For example, Harvard University in 2014-2015 is US$43,938 for tuition and US$58,607 for tuition, room, board and fees combined.  Not coincidentally, the total US study debt is currently US$1.34 * 1012 and growing.
Many European universities have very low or no tuition fees, but their degrees are by no means worthless.  To consider an arbitrary ranking, consider the list of Nobel laureates by university affiliation: tuition fees in the top ranking institution range from $0 to $50,000+.  Personally, I am a post-doc at a reasonably well-known north-American university.  I paid several 1000€ for my Bachelor's degree, 0$ for my Master's degree, yet I work along people who have likely paid far more.   Have those co-workers wasted money?  Or, to formulate the question more precisely:
Among high-ranking research universities, do those with high tuition fees perform significantly better than those with low or no tuition fees?  Do their alumni fare better?  “Better” may be measured by: current research output (high-impact papers published), number of winners of the Nobel prize, Fields medal, and other highly prestigious awards; and for those not staying in academia, lifetime earnings of alumni, or other measures.  This should be possible to investigate

Maybe this question is of interest to folks at [Economics.SE] as well.

Just a suggestion: We have [tag:economics] tag on site, please use it if it is relevant to your question.

It should be noted that while the tuition for Harvard is huge, not everyone actually pays that much. If anything, the sort of folks likely to win the Nobel prize or other awards are the sorts who are likely to get full scholarships wherever they want to go.

@EnthusiasticStudent That seems to be more about the study/research of economics as a field, rather than the economics of academia itself.

@Telastyn That is so.  I have never studied exactly how those scholarships work, i.e. how much is donation, how much a donation conditional upon successful completion, how much a (subsidised) loan.  I'm making the silent assumption that study debts in North America are significantly higher than in low-tuition countries in Europe, but I have no evidence that this is indeed the case.  If higher tuition is offset by higher (and more competitive) scholarships, then maybe study debts correlate less with tuition fees than I might think.

@gerrit See my answer below: need-based scholarship policies mean study debt is largely uncorrelated with tuition fees.

High cost and high quality are not related in the United States.
First, remember that there is a large fixed base cost of room and board, which amounts to around $10K-$15K, depending on location.  Just a quick glance at a few top schools will show that the cost of tuition beyond that is correlated primarily with state-run vs. private rather than quality:

Harvard: $43,938
MIT: $43,720
Berkeley: $12,972
University of Michigan: $13,977 (in-state)

Also, remember that many of the high-priced colleges do need-based rather than merit-based financial aid, so these numbers should be seen as a "ceiling" rather than an expected price: even a super-genius will pay based on what their parents make, rather than based on how smart they are.  That same Harvard article linked in the original post notes:

During the 2012-2013 academic year, students from families with incomes below
   $65,000, and with assets typical for that income level, will generally pay nothing toward the cost of attending Harvard College.  Families with incomes between $65,000 and $150,000 will contribute from 0 to 10 percent of income, depending on individual circumstances.  Significant financial aid also is available for families above those income ranges.

Thus, even at a super-expensive place like Harvard, the cost of education is completely uncorrelated with its quality.

Interesting, but doesn't really address the core of my question. (1) How do you assess the quality of those institutes? (2) I can see the link between need-based/merit-based scholarship and education quality only if quality of education is measured by the quality of the students.  That's a different discussion. (3) I don't think value of degree = quality of education. Perhaps some expensive institute has OK education, but excellent reputation and networking opportunities. Or a place in rural Anatolia has amazingly good teachers, but no-one knows the place, so the degree value is reduced.

Toward (1) and (3): All of the places that I listed are widely recognized as giving high-value degrees in science and engineering fields.  You can use whatever metric you feel like, and they'll all come up near the top.  Toward (2), I don't understand your point?

I don't challenge that they all give high-value degrees. But do you mean they're all in practice of roughly equal (high) value? I think we need more data points than four top-ranking universities to answer my question. Toward (2), what I meant is that I don't understand why you brought up scholarship criteria at all — how is this related to the price/value-correlation question?

Please feel free to extend the dataset: what you will see is that, for science and engineering at least, there is no correlation; I just picked some obvious examples. As for scholarships: the reason I brought it up is that it affects the de facto cost, pertaining to you question about wasting money.

This is interesting. So why put such a high sticker price on it if it will be discounted anyway? I can't imagine that, if there are significant aid packages at above $150k, that there are many people who qualify for the full rate. Is it really worth putting such a high price up if only a tiny fraction of the students will pay that much?


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Book of Abstracts?
So the conference that I am going to present a paper is going to publish a book of abstracts. Is this considered the proceedings of the conference? Or can I still grab my paper and send to a peer reviewed publication?
My field is management / social sciences.

Oh I am sorry, my field is management / social sciences. So, if I have an entry in the book of abstracts, it is still ok (there is no conflict) by trying to have it published in a peer reviewed journal?

In Social Sciences, conference "papers" are more like "talks" and are less like "publications". You'd be mad to do the work of getting a talk together and not publish it elsewhere. No conflict whatsoever, what you propose is the normal pathway.

You can still send it to a peer reviewed publication, and should. Conferences in my field (planning) are often used as a mechanism to obtain feedback on a draft paper. I'm aware of no example where 'conference proceedings' count against re-publication. My whole department submits papers for presentation to the Transportation Research Board (TRB), which then creates a compedium of the whole paper, and distributes it by CD. This is not considered publication, and most/many of the papers submitted to TRB are then revamped and published elsewhere. (TRB does cream off a limited number of papers to be published, formally, in the Transportation Research Record).

If you read the rules of the journals, you will see that there is actually a generally accepted rule. That rule is:
Your submitted journal paper should include at least 25% new material from the conference paper
So, you should not simply republish the same paper, rather you should add something to it.
The logic goes like this: You have a well thought out idea. You write it up and present it at a conference. During the conference, you get a discussion going about your paper and workout some details that you might not have considered originally. Then you go back, add (or clarify) a little bit (25%) and then publish it as a journal article.
This is extremely common in business management.

Someone from your specific field should confirm this, but in general, submitting to a journal should not be a problem.
However, do not use the same title, so that indexing/search issues don't crop up later. Similarly, you may like to modify the abstract a bit so that the two are not identical (which they shouldn't be anyway, the journal paper would typically be an extended/more detailed study).

There should be no trouble with exactly the same title and abstract if the poster wants. There are no indexing issues as the paper is not yet published.

Social Scientist here.
Presenting at a Social Sciences conference rarely counts as publishing a paper, and when it does, you'll know, as you'll have gone through peer review at that point. This usually happens after the conference and results in an edited volume (so, a book) or a journal special issue. "Conference proceedings" are rare in Social Sciences.
The conference book of abstracts is NOT the conference proceedings, it is just a guide for people who are attending the conference. Your paper is unpublished and you can submit it for publication wherever you like.


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How is the PhDs' (in Logics in Math) employment rate?
I am an undergraduate student who is majored in Math now. I plan to continue my phD degree in Logics in Math. My ultimate job plan is to be professor (I know instructor first). So I really want to learn the employment of PhDs in this major.
Thank you for your time.

What do you mean?  The proportion of logic PhDs who become professors?  I don't think such data is available, but you can try looking to see where the students of professors you're interest in working with went.

100% of university professors in this area are employed.

The NSF appears to have produced quite a comprehensive report on this topic, although it only considers 2015 graduates, which is perhaps slightly too recent to indicate long-term success, given the number of years one may expect to spend in postdoc positions without ever actually gaining a faculty position. https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2017/nsf17306/static/report/nsf17306.pdf#page12

I have a Ph.D. that you could think of as a Ph.D. in Logics in Math. Turns out Computer Science has much more money, jobs, positions, and supports than Math., so, depending on the precise field, you could very well brand yourself as a "Logics in CS" professor, and have access to the CS job market, which is better. For a better picture, look at http://cra.org/resources/taulbee-survey/ (In some cases, you can skip the instructor part, if you get post-doc position and then assistant prof.)

Again, which country are you from/hope to get a job in?! Otherwise, your question is too broad. If it's France for instance I think they have quite a lot of people working in logic and related area.

@dendodge, NSF, is for which country? The OP didn't specify where he/she is from.

@Dilworth That's US data, simply because it was the first Google result and I took a punt on it being the most relevant to people here (but not myself!).

"Logics in Math" isn't something that someone in the United States is likely to say (the plural sounds slightly awkward and "mathematical logic" would be more common). To me that usage sounds more like England (where "maths" with the plural is common). Just a guess of course, since OP hasn't specified in their profile.

For mathematics in the US, the American Mathematical Society collects a great deal of data (about employment among many other things) in their Annual Survey of the Mathematical Sciences.
With respect to your specific question, unfortunately they lump logic together with discrete mathematics, combinatorics, and computer science; presumably logic alone would have too few data points to be very informative.  (The inclusion of computer science here doesn't mean the AMS thinks that computer science is one small subfield of mathematics.  That refers, I think, only to people working on theoretical computer science who received their degrees in departments of mathematics.)
This pdf has the table that most directly addresses your question, for 2014-15 doctoral recipients.

When you say "math" you will need to employ one of the first lessons that I believe is fundamental to the discipline: defining. With this, then you can start to build and focus in on your topic of choice: employment rates.
With this said, your best bet (if in the US) is to take a look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In this case, the search parameters are for mathematicians, which loosely covers your search criteria. If you wanted to narrow down your career field, you can select a specific type to consider your aspirations and potential career given that different fields might have differing degree requirements (bachelors, masters, Phd etc.)


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Would lackluster grades in Applied math hurt an application for Pure Math PhD programs?
The question is pretty much the title. To start off, I'm not really worried about my record in pure mathematics classes/research. However, solely for the purpose of having a career backup I've also picked up a second major in applied math and several CS courses. I generally have little passion for these classes and ended up with a fair share of B's. My overall GPA is still fairly high but I was wondering if these grades would hurt my application to pure math programs and if I should address this in my personal statement.

you don't say why you don't like applied maths/CS classes. Pure maths research can be very fiddly and grotty. So if it's that you like studying nice theories, you won't like pure maths research either.

@MarkJoshi I did not think that information would be relevant to answering the question but it's simply preference. I think I have seen enough nasty PDE estimates to understand that pure math also gets fiddly and grotty and I do not find this to be a turn off.

The GPA is certainly one of the competitive aspects of an application for a graduate program in mathematics (and presumably, in most other academic fields), so anything which brings down your GPA hurts your application some positive amount.  Lackluster grades in applied math and CS are probably going to hurt more than lackluster grades in history and cinema studies.
As is often the case with admissions advice, it's hard to be more precise because the individual admissions committee gets to make up its own mind on how strongly to weight everything.  (And this may not be a bad thing: this is what allows one school of a certain caliber to accept your application while another school of the exact same caliber rejects it.)
For this issue, the structure of the department and university may play a role.  Namely, for undergraduate programs at US colleges and universities (your profile lists you as living in the United States) it is relatively rare for pure math and applied math to be truly separate majors.  In my department for instance applied math is an "area of emphasis" within the math major.  Yet more commonly, there's just one major and students show where they fall on the spectrum by their choice of classes.  If the graduate program to which you're applying is really just a pure math department (again, relatively rare at American universities, though my own graduate program was like this), then they may (perhaps) be used to ignoring or discounting applied math courses. If there's just one math department then admissions faculty who look at your transcript are probably going to view the applied math classes as math classes, and the amount that you will get dinged for your performance will probably be non-negligible.
Now comes the time to say that I find your overall approach curious.  You should not major in a subject for which you have "little passion".  If you know you are not interested in something then the obvious -- a bit narrow-minded, but strategically sound -- plan is to take the minimal number of courses required in that subject but make sure that you do well in them.  (Most often required undergraduate level courses at US universities are not too challenging for the type of students who are going on to graduate study.)  You don't like applied math or CS but you might, as a consolation prize, want a career in them?  This doesn't really scan.  I think it is much better to pursue serious career goals one at a time: if you don't get into graduate school for pure math you can still get a real world job with a major in pure math, and if at that time you discover that necessity has given birth to interest in these other fields: so be it, you can learn more about them then.
You ask whether you should address this in your personal statement.  Perhaps, but since I find your explanation a bit strange I'm not sure what you should write.  Consider providing less pointed information: e.g. you were considering a technical / industrial career until you discovered the depth of your interest in pure mathematics....Yeah, I find it tough to put a good spin on your situation that is faithful to the information given.  So a brief "sorry, these grades are anomalous; what I really like is this and notice how stellar my performance is there" may be the way to go.
Good luck.

sorry, these grades are anomalous; what I really like is this and notice how stellar my performance is there I really like this explanation, honest and direct.

Thank you for the honest response. To be honest, most of these courses were taken under parental pressure and misunderstanding of the job market. Additionally I was able to pick up a second major in lieu of some general education requirements necessary to graduate. I decided to do so because I find it much easier to focus on 3-4 pure math classes and get a B or higher in applied math than focus on math classes and get a decent grade in a paper heavy class like literature.

My parents asked me — Oh god no.  Do not blame your parents for your grades.  You took the classes; you earned the grades.  Own them.

@jeffe I in no way, shape or form blame my parents for my performance. I will likely not even mention any of these grades in my SOP. However, Pete said he found my approach curious and I wanted to shed light on why somebody may take classes uninteresting to them. I  think my reasons are legitimate.

B's in the major you are not planning to pursue in grad school are not a disaster.
Sure, in grad school you don't want to have multiple B's in your transcript.  But we're talking about your undergrad transcript here.  B's are allowed.
Your strength in pure math will be apparent in your pure math grades, your math GRE, your undergrad research experience if you have any (this item is optional, so if you don't have it, don't fret), and your essay.  I recommend that you speak in your essay about what really gets you fired up, in positive terms.  (Leave out anything about how if you never have to write or debug another large piece of code again it will be too soon.)
There are plenty of schools where pure math and applied math are in separate departments.  To be on the safe side, make sure at least one of your applications is to such a school.
And tell your parents (who of course want the best for you, but perhaps are not trained mathematicians), real men and women do pure math!  (I'm saying that out of support for what you like.  I personally like applied math best -- but everybody's different!)


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What do people with bachelor's degrees in humanities actually end up doing?
If someone majors in political science or international relations or history, what do they end up actually doing as a career?
I've found numerous sites that give the obvious answers what they can do, but to date no site that says what they actual do.
It's all fine and dandy thinking that an International Studies degree will prepare you for a career as a diplomat, but if 95% of graduates end up selling life insurance, or filling out form 2773A-11 for some bureaucracy, I may want to make a different set of choices.

I have a bachelor's degree in History and one in Philosophy. I am now assistant professor in Computer Science. Even if you end up doing something that is not directly connected to your humanities degree, they can help you to face a variety of situation, develop some skills, and I like to believe that they can sometimes make you a better human beings.

@aparente001 I have reviewed 2638 Closed Votes on Workplace SE. Based on my experience, this question will be closed there for certain.

I'm not aware of any large-scale surveys on the topic.
However, many universities conduct regular surveys on their alumni, to understand where they end up working. You can find them on Google. Here is one example from the University of Stockholm on political science alumni:

Public administration, state level (44 percent)
Public administration, local and regional level (14 percent)
Private companies (14 percent)
NGO's (5 percent)
Universities and university colleges (5 percent)
Political party/party organisation (4 percent)
Think tanks (4 percent)
International organisations (EU, UN, etc.) (3 percent)
Media (2 percent).

As you can see, in this particular University, the outcome is indeed what one would expect.

The reason certain courses (engineering, law, medicine) are referred to as 'professional courses' is that they prepare one  for a particular profession, and that is the primary goal of the course.
In any other course, it is a good idea to assume that you are being taught various skills, but not necessarily being prepared for a career. To expect a career out of a humanities degree may therefore be misguided.  Best to look at it as a stepping stone that could lead you in a multitude of directions.

Although a specific job path for a humanities graduate can be wildly different from person to person. Many jobs in policy, research or marketing are good choices for a well-rounded humanities grad. The degree program is meant to help you learn how to communicate clearly, think critically and make reasoned choices -- skills that can be beneficial for just about any career. Here are a few of the possible job choices for humanities majors:
Craft and Fine Artists ,
Social and Human Service Assistants ,
Community Health Workers ,
Advertising and sales agents ... etc.
Teaching, art historian at a museum , archeologist and so on might be a better option


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What should I do if my admission letter doesn't say anything about funding?
I have received my admission letter for a graduate program. But there isn't any information about funding. I have talked to my professor about the availability of funding. what should I say to my professor?

What did you discuss with your professor?

I contacted him beforehand and he gave me a project and he told me that if do it properly he will give me a funding. I did it well. and then he asked me to apply that university

It is very common that an admission letter itself doesn't contain any information about funding. However, it is assumed (at least in the US) that information about funding will be made available to you well before you have to give an accept/decline decision. This often comes in a separate letter/email, sometimes within 1 day of the first letter, and sometimes more than a week after - all depends on the University processes and timelines.
Regardless, it is perfectly acceptable to contact (call or email) the University to inquire about funding offer timelines. Usually you would ask the graduate program administrator, and they can answer or direct you to who you should contact instead. It's fine to ask the professor, but they might not know and thus haven't answered (they may very well have seen your email and sent off an email of their own and are awaiting a proper answer). Funding in academia is often weirdly complicated, and often requires multiple calls and emails to multiple people to figure out all the exact details. Often this process is made invisible to the student.
If you've had silence from all channels for over a week - or if there is some very pressing deadline approaching for you - you should re-attempt contact and politely inform them of the deadline you are under, and your need to hear about funding prior to that time.
As to what to say to your professor, if you haven't contact them already, it's usually safe to confirm you received your offer of admission, say thanks and express that you were excited/glad/pleased to receive it, and note it didn't mention funding. Then just ask about the status of funding available for you - and that's pretty much it.
Congratulations on your offer of admission, and good luck!

Thanks, is it a polite email for the professor?
I wanted to take the time to thank you for everything that you’ve done for me the past 4 months. Your support has been greatly appreciated, especially during the college application process.
I hope you don’t mind my getting in touch, but I’d like to inquire if there would be any financial support this study?
Sincerely,


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When is the best time to ask for letters of reference?
When should one ask for letters recommendations of the people of one's choice? E.g. when applying for a PhD program, should you ask for two or three letters all at once or should one collect a letter immediately after one has finished something significant like an undergraduate thesis, an (under)graduate research paper or Master's thesis, so that one has all the letters together covering maybe 2 or 3 years when applying for a PhD position?

I used both scenarios on different occasions. It is really up to you and how close you (know) and will be around your referees

agreed with TheFireGuy. if you're in, say, a small STEM department, your good work and efforts won't be forgotten - at least not for awhile.  But, if you are talking about being a student at a large business school, with hundreds of students in those finance and economics lectures, then you might want to set up something like a credential file to be kept at the school, so that you waive your right to read your profs' letters -- confidential letters of reference about your work are what's meaningful, and grad schools will look for this.

So, to summarize: you recommend asking for the letters immediately if the risk exists that they won't remember one's work after several years and asking for the letters when time comes if there's a good chance that they do remember.                                                                          In any case, the letter must be sent by the recommending person and can't just be taken home and put next to the undergraduate thesis until one wants to use them for application?

You can choose either of the options, but I would wait at least till I've had quite a few accomplishment. However, some professors take a long time to write, so it would be good to approach them at least a few months before you start applying. Letter of recommendation can be collected and filed till the time you need them.

authors: Ростислав Ростислав


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Can one's PhD work be an extension of their Masters research?
I am currently pursuing a Masters degree in Literature, and I see potential in further research on the current topic of my dissertation for a PhD in the future. I have been told that an Honours thesis cannot be used as a foundation for a Masters dissertation, so i am wondering if a Masters dissertation can be used as a base for a PhD dissertation later on.

Sorry?  Why can't an honours thesis be used as the foundation for a master's dissertation?

Seeing your question, I guess this can vary from field to field, but the practice I've seen (engineering, neuroscience, and psychology) is that the PhD work often is an extension of the masters research. The masters work explores one facet of the research problem, and the PhD thesis explores two or three more. This is often a practical matter, as sometimes the masters is one step towards the eventual granting of a PhD.

In general the master's thesis and the doctoral thesis should not be on exactly the same topic. On the other hand, it is entirely rational for earlier theses to provide the inspiration for later work in one's career.
What you can't really do is retread the same ground—you will need to develop a different topic, with different literature citations and original research. But the move doesn't have to be radical—in literature, for instance, you don't have to go from Sophocles to Virginia Woolf. But you probably shouldn't do The Winter's Tale for your master's thesis and then Cymbeline for your PhD thesis, either.

Why not?  As long as the PhD thesis contributes enough new ideas/results, why does it matter whether it's on exactly the same topic as the MS thesis?

It can be done, but you do run the risk of boxing yourself in.

I have never heard of any institution imposing a restriction such that your doctoral research is in a different field to your Master's research.
As long as your PhD research is a significant body of original research that greatly extends your Master's experience and appropriately cites any previous findings, there should not be a problem.
Indeed, in some countries it is possible to convert your Master's research into a PhD. For instance, if you are 6 months into a project and decide you want to greatly extend the scope of your research, you may be allowed a conversion. Bear in mind that where I live, a Master's degree is not a requirement to begin a PhD (you only need an honours degree, which is 1 year of postgraduate lectures and a small research project).


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Alphabetical author list in non-alphabetical journal
(A followup for this question)
Say your field's convention is to have alphabetical-ordered author list. What should you do when your work is accepted to a (multidisciplinary) journal in which the convention is to order the author by contribution (e.g. Nature)?

My first stop would be checking if the journal has any particular authorship policies. If it does, follow them - if its not the way your field does it, welcome to the perils of interdisciplinary research.
From there, in my mind, it splits into two questions:

Is it a field-specific paper that happens to be going in an interdisciplinary journal. For example, are all the authors from Alphabetical Author List Field? Then put it in that field's ordering.
Is it genuinely interdisciplinary (multiple fields with different traditions)? I'd probably default to the non-alphabetical ordering scheme, as among people I work with its the more common ordering scheme, and those who come from other fields that don't do that are generally pretty understanding. Or, if the authorship list is small enough, see if there's a clever ordering of author names that gets everyone what they need (it happens).

If it's a well-known journal like Nature, then I would follow their convention. Everybody who reads the article will assume that you do.

Why is this better than having a note saying "alphabetical author list"? Wouldn't that possibly initiate an ego battle?

The note assumes people will read it. Most people won't, especially when skimming the abstract, or the entry on your CV.

The CV is a great example: shuold you re-order the authors list when put there? Otherwise some of you papers will have alphabetical ordering and some not, which might be confusing (for both sides).