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Is it OK to call a professor by his first name when he/she signs emails by only first name?
If a professor in a North American country presents his- or herself by his/her first name in email messages, does this mean that students can refer to him/her by his/her first name? Or is this generally not a good idea, unless the professor has explicitly mentioned that he/she can be referred to by first name? I've noticed that most professors, who prefer to be referred to more formally, do not sign their emails with just their first names, but usually initials or first and last name.

This question has been addressed before, for example here and here. The safest answer is to continue formally addressing your professor unless you have asked them otherwise; signing emails with their first name suggests that you can ask them but doesn't necessarily mean you should switch without asking.

@BryanKrause I've heard at least one student from my class call him by his first name. But probably it's still better to ask the prof. That's a bit confusing.

@sequence: That alone does not mean much. Perhaps that other student in your class got to a first name basis somehow else and it is not related to the class, like writing a thesis in the professor's group.

@MartinUeding I'm wondering if it will be appropriate to refer to him as "professor" (more formally) if I've already referred to him by his first name? Of course, it would be better to ask for his preference, but we meet in a public setting most of the time (with other students around).

@sequence: You mean address him with “professor” in a non-public setting (ilke his office, email)? On the floor that I work on, the policy seems to be that if you have an office, you are on first names with everyone. I've written an email to a professor who is not my supervisor with “Dear Professor” and he eventually came to my office and told me (with a laugh) to address him by his first name. I said that this way it is easy for me to become less formal, I just wanted to avoid being too informal. I still have not figured out the perfect way to refer to the professors when addressing students.

In grad school, I called my research advisor and most professors by first name. As an undergrad I never did, even when they would sign their emails with their first names. In fact, my undergrad research advisors and professors, even after all these years, when I speak to them (mostly exchanging emails), I always address them the way I had always addressed them (i.e. Professor, Dr.).

Unless the professor has specifically stated that you should refer to him by first name, stick with "Professor X" or "Dr. Y". If they wish to be addressed by first name they'll correct you. Email signatures are often automated, so he may have automated his signature as e.g. "Bob" or "Bill" thinking only of communications with fellow faculty members, and without intending his email signature as permission for students to address him by first name. When in doubt, go for more formality rather than less.

If by "North America" you mean "the US and Canada" to the exclusion of Mexico (which is a part of North America but culturally very different) then you should amend your answer to reflect this. -1 for this crippling undefiniteness.

@E.P. North America also includes Greenland. However, I'm not sure if this matter of etiquette is too different in Mexico or Greenland. So I do mean what I mean - the entire North America. If you want to comment on Mexico or some other country of North America, then you're definitely welcome to do so.

I don't think you understand just how different the figure of professor is in Mexico, compared to the US and Canadian systems - or, indeed, how arrogant and imperialistic it looks to ignore those differences. (Also, you realize that Greenland is a full 2500 times smaller than Mexico, right?) If you're considering Mexico as part of your question, then you might as well not localize it at all. I stand by my downvote and my criticism of the arrogance in the premises of this question.

@E.P. the "arrogance" part is malperceived. I really do not know the difference between the figure of a professor in Mexico and one in the US or Canada. And I do not see why the size of Greenland as compared to Mexico should matter in this respect. Actually your part about Greenland sounds disrespectful of Greenland, as if its size somehow made it unimportant in this respect.

If you are a foreigner, then you can just ask. Most academics are used to deal with foreigners and know that such subtle and unwritten rules are hard to know. They recognize that just asking is often the least awkward solution.

I'd have to agree, just ask. I've been called Dr Richard before and it's just annoying. If they must call me Dr I'd want to hear my last name given local cultural norms/it sounding grammatical incorrect. After asking they realise hey can just use my first name without any mention of title at all.

@RichardKavanagh In some countries, "Richard Kavanagh" would mean that  "Richard" is your family name and "Kavanagh" your given name, so "Dr Richard" would be "normal".

@alephzero: exactly. And, in those countries, they wouldn't expect me to apply foreign rules to local names.

@RichardKavanagh - I hope you don't just stay annoyed, I hope, instead, you let them know your preferences.

@alephzero, yes I remember on of my friends from Sir Lanka having just that naming scheme.

@aparente001 yes I just told them of my preferences, it's the easiest way.

Thinking about it one I've seen that is difficult for someone in a western country is no surname at all. Software generally assumes it exists.

I'd agree, but I don't think you have to be a foreigner to ask.

@RichardKavanagh: By any chance did you graduate from UCC?

@copper.hat No not UCC, but there are a few people with the same name as me. More generally I guess this shows how difficult naming conventions can be and it's always best simply to ask.

Just ask.
It doesn't matter if you're a foreigner or a native, asking someone how they would like to be addressed is not rude or unusual. The answer will vary from person to person, some like having their title used, some like being addressed on a first name basis and (very rarely) some may prefer a nickname.
It is much better that you ask and are sure rather than being confused, and the professor (asuming they are a rational, decent human being) will understand that.

You will never give offense by honestly  asking how to avoid giving offense.

It is always safe to ask. Throughout my undergrad and grad career, all my professors have always asked their students to call them by their first name. Some professors say this is because they respect you and because they don't address you as "Mr/Miss Smith", then you shouldn't address them as "Prof. Smith". Other professors explain it's because everyone is an adult and you wouldn't call your boss "Mr/Miss Smith".

Culture-dependent, again! In some countries, if you called your boss "Mr Smith" you would get a very frosty response if he was "Dr Smith," not plain "Mr."

In some places, if you call a consultant (medical) a Dr, they might not like it too, as their title on becoming a consultant becomes Mr again.

"Dear Prof. Smith -
  I noticed you signed your last e-mail to me, "Jim." Does that mean I
  should call you by your first name? Are there circumstances when that
  would be appropriate or inappropriate, such as with undergraduates or
  outside the lab?
I apologize for asking, but I'm unfamiliar with American academic
  protocol here.
Yours sincerely,
  Xxx

If a professor in a North American country presents his- or herself by his/her first name in email messages, does this mean that students can refer to him/her by his/her first name?

Only in some situations. You can be relatively certain that you can reply to his/her email and say "Hello Alice/Bob, I noticed you said X but what about Y?"  . However, in a "Reply All" to that same message you can't make that assumption. You can't make the assumption about speaking to her/him in class. etc.

Or is this generally not a good idea...

Unfortunately, there is no "generally" in this matter. As others have indicated - if not absolutely certain, ask.

... unless the professor has explicitly mentioned that he/she can be referred to by first name?

It is not very likely that someone will explicitly tell you how to address him/her. Not many people make the effort to consider this finer point and actually instruct students on how to address them in different contexts. Also, it's might feel a bit vain to them to tell other people "refer to me as Professor X"; it's like you're expected to defer to them in that sense rather than have them tell you to do it. Which means it can be hard sometimes to realize what's the proper form of address (and whose propriety standard you should be adhering to).

I've noticed that most professors, who prefer to be referred to more formally, do not sign their emails with just their first names, but usually initials or first and last name.

Now that's a good indication - in the other direction. That is, if you get this kind of email, stick to "Professor X" unless told otherwise.

I've heard one student refer to a professor by his first name, and it was in a public setting. So maybe I missed something from a lecture, probably the first one, where he might have given that introduction.

@sequence To refer to him without him present is sth else than addressing him.

@Karl  I'm confused because at least one student calls him by his first name in front of other students. But another student addressed him as just "professor".

This depends highly on the culture (and language)
Address him as he addresses you
The most important part is not how he signed but how he addressed you.
So if he uses "Dear Mr." or whatever, use "Dear Prof.". If he uses "Hi Michael", use "Hi Simon". And so on. If he never addressed you directly, stay conservative.
Signing with his first name can happen by "incident" without thinking to much. Or because of other addressed people. It's a bad indication in general (but, of course, should be consistent with the addressing).

What if a professor refers to someone as "Dear Micheal"? If you were Michael, would you refer to the prof as "Dear Richard", say?

I don't know where you are from, but in my country professors address students by their first name but it would be very weird and impolite if students addressed them by their first name...I've never heard anyone do it.

It would be utterly bizzare to me for a professor to call me by my last name even in relationships where I still call them professor. At least in my neck of the woods, using my first name isn't an indication they want me to use theirs

The behaviour described in the answer is the common, western form between adults. Wether one regards undergrads as adults is a matter of taste, probably. ;-)

I disagree - referrents are a proxy for relative professional/social status. The formality of address in the salutation gives the sense of how the writer regards the recipient, which is not the same as how the writer expects the recipient to regard him/herself.

@hBy2Py, I agree, but under adults, you basically use the same level of formality when talking to each other. It is a different thing with children, but I really don't know of any situation under adults (except the army maybe) where you treat each other on a different level. Therefore, you are right, but my answers follows directly. Furthermore, your argumentation somewhat also implies that therefore how he signs is what he expects to be called, right? And, as written, if he addresses you with your first name, he will most likely also sign with his first name (otherwise, it's strange).

Mayou, this may just be a cultural difference. Here in the U.S., I would not find it strange at all for a professor to address me by first name in an email, but then sign as 'Dr. X' or 'Prof. X'.

@Lewis, so where are you from? I am from Europe and None of the professors talks to the students calling them by their first name but with Mr./Mrs., mostly  (although, this is in our native language where it is also more common to use the Mr./Mrs. title. We further have the polite form, which is sometimes used with the first name.)

@hBy2Py yes, I really get the impression that it is a cultural thing. For in German, we have a more polite form of "you" together with the first name, which then still implies a "Prof. blabla" as re-addressing (as the first one, although the first name was used, still is a polite form). On the other hand, as a German speaker, being called by the first name in English really leaves the impression of the "personal" "you". Interesting, but makes quite sense know to me!

@Mayou36 Interesting. I live in Southern Europe. I think we can now all agree that it all depends on culture. If I was OP I would just ask fellow students though.

If there's anything to suggest the professor signed the first name out of absent-mindedness, then hold off before responding with "Hi Sally."
Otherwise, you would be okay using the first name.
However, just because you can, doesn't mean you have to.
It's always fine to ask, if you're in any doubt.  One need not be an international student to ask.
For example, in office hours, you could ask, "What do you like to go by with your students?"  or "What would you like me to call you?"
Make sure to notice subtle signs of possible discomfort when he or she responds to a question like this.  If the results are contradictory, you'll generally be safe with a somewhat formal approach.

I'm wondering if it will be appropriate to refer to him as "professor" (more formally) if I've already referred to him by his first name? Of course, it would be better to ask for his preference, but we meet in a public setting most of the time (with other students around).

@sequence - What do the other students call him? // When I'm at my thirteen-year-old's school, I call his teachers Mr. XX and Ms. YY in front of my son or other students.  But if we're on our own in a conference room, or if I'm writing an email, I use the first name most of the time.  I wait until they've indicated that first name basis is okay with them, for example by observing the person's tone in an email message.

I'm confused because at least one student calls him by his first name in front of other students. But another student addressed him as just "professor". @aparente001

When you get mixed signals like this, the safe thing is to go with the more formal option; it's generally okay to ask; keep in mind that the formal student might be going with the more formal mode because of his or her cultural upbringing, not because of something the professor said or didn't say.

I am a professor at a Swiss university. I have a lab with >30 members (neurosciences) and my policy is to stay formal with my MSc/PhD students and postdocs for the first few weeks. This is because sometimes things do not work out, and I find it easier to address difficult topics (particularly the prospect of termination) if there is a certain amount of formal distance between me and my coworkers. Over time, however, I offer to everybody that we go first-names. Interestingly, I have two (Italian) postdocs who expect me to address them by first name, yet have always refused (since several years) to address me by first name. They feel uncomfortable with that, they explained to me.
A big mistake that Swiss and German students often do, however, is to address Prof Einstein in English as "Mister Einstein". Call me old-fashioned (or worse), but that really does get on my nerves. If you go formal, then please call me Dr. xy. Or else be informal and call me by first name. But if you do go formal, please address me with my academic title. Particularly if it is a title that you do not (yet) possess!

Rather unusual, at least in Germany. The title is used in formal occasions (talking about the Dr. or Prof. to outsiders, during the first meetings, addressing him in front of an audience), but most Profs don't want to hear their title repeated to them eighty times per day. They hear it often enough by students in lectures.

Actually my last comment ("If you go formal, then please call me Dr. xy. Or else be informal and call me by first name. ") related to emails. I agree that the academic title is unnecessary in most oral communication.

As a Swiss native student, I completely understand the "Mr./Mrs." "mistake" and made it myself in my early years. The reason behind this is very simple: in Switzerland (even more then in any other german-speaking country I think), people are not addressed by their title but rather as Mr. or Mrs. (which is, I think, a nice syndrome of an egalitarian society). This is completely different  in English and it took me a while to realize that. From the German language, similar: "you + surname" = informal, "Mr. + last name" = formal and two adults use the same form if communicating with each other.

Here in the United States, in my experience modes of address in written communication are a proxy for the relative professional/social status of the individuals involved, as well as the level of familiarity in the relationship. Especially in an academic setting, the former can be somewhat hard to ascertain in some situations; the latter can be tricky, because if one party assumes too much familiarity where it's not desired by the other, awkwardness ensues.
I would break situations like that of the OP into three categories:

An undergraduate student addressing a professor.

Always address the professor as "Dr. X" or "Prof. X", unless the professor has explicitly invited you to do otherwise. Always. An undergraduate student always has inferior "professional status" to a professor, and so any sense of familiarity is pretty much irrelevant.  The only exception may be if a particular student has either engaged that professor enough in office hours or in the context of a research project that the student's expertise and status has advanced to that similar to a graduate student.

A graduate student addressing a non-advisor faculty member.

Similar to #1, but the 'familiarity' aspect starts to become more important, especially as the graduate student advances along the Ph.D. program.  Graduate students are on their way to becoming members of the professional research community, so their status is coming loosely in range of that of professors. Familiarity thus becomes more important, and if a student has engaged that professor in extended conversation about, e.g., course material, a first-name basis may be appropriate. In this kind of situation, if such a professor signs an email addressed specifically to the graduate student (i.e., not a general class email, for example) with his/her first name, especially on a repeated basis, then I would feel comfortable addressing the professor by first name, at least in an email.  I would still hesitate a bit to address them by first name in person, at least until it seemed that no negative reaction was forthcoming from first-name address in emails.

A graduate student addressing a faculty member in a direct advisory role.

Very similar to #2, with the exception that familiarity with most advisors ends up developing quite rapidly (in my experience, at least). Thus, for all except the newest of students to the research group, as long as the professor is okay with being addressed by first name in general, the students they are advising end up calling them by first name after a very short period of time.  As well, by the end of their tenure, most graduate students end up more knowledgeable about their specific research area than their advisor(s), almost completely eliminating the 'status' element of the situation.

In all of these cases, such first-name address will probably make the professor aware that the question of the propriety and/or preference in mode of address has arisen in the student's mind. Therefore, pay attention to how they sign future correspondence.  If they change to "Dr. X", then stop using their first name, promptly!

I'm a professor. I have discussed this subject with many, many colleagues. Here is the consensus.
a) What to call the professor?
As a rule, regardless of which country you are from or what a professor signs off on in his/her email, you should always continue addressing him/her as "Professor Lastname" in person, in email and in any other communications .... UNTIL that professor specifically asks you to do otherwise. The professor MAY ask you to call him/her something different. The professor MAY not correct you. As a default, call him/her Professor Lastname.
b) Can I ask the professor what he/she likes to be called?
NO. Do not ask him/her about his/her preference. Why? Imagine that you are a medical doctor. You're been in school for many years, trained hard and despite all odds, succeeded in getting your medical degree. You of course will expect all patients, colleagues, interns, residents and others in the workplace to call you "Dr. Lastname." It would be odd for one of them to ask you if it's ok to call you something else. If you wanted to be called something else, you would probably say something.
It is the same for professors. Professors have worked many years and long hours to achieve their doctoral degrees. Addressing them by their appropriate title is the respectful and appropriate thing to do.
c) Should I really call EVERY professor "Professor Lastname"? Students tend to more frequently call professors who are not white men by their first name while calling their male, white professors "Professor Lastname". Do not fall victim to implicit bias. See point a) above. You should call EVERY professor - regardless of gender, ethnicity, nationality, etc. Trust me. They will appreciate it.

There is an important point missing in your answer: how do you, as a professor, call a student resp. how is that correlated to how you would like to be called?
If you call someone by his "title", e.g. Mr./Mrs., I completely agree with your answer. But if you as a professor call another adult by it's first name instead of his title, why do you expect to be called by your title?
On the other hand, it seems that you quite correlate the calling with respect. I don't think this is culturally given everywhere and may depends on the regions you're living.

I am a professor as well, and in fact I hold both a PhD and an MD - and I wholeheartedly disagree with b). I see absolutely nothing wrong or disrespectful with students asking the professor how he or she would like to be called. It happens often to me, and I am always ready to elaborate. This is particularly true in an international, diverse setting, as different cultures handle these issues in a variety of different ways.

Disagree with (c). Or rather, that only happens in certain universities / departments, not in others.

This answer completely misses the point. The question was what to do when the prof is inconsistent in how he addresses his students, signs emails with his first name etc.

authors: Bob Jarvis - Слава Україні


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how to reply to a blind reviewer?
I have a paper under review. Two of the reviewers have accepted the paper. The third reviewer is ......This is the first time that I met such a blind reviewer. Most of his questions are superficial and they have answers in my paper. It is just his careless review that makes him did not find it. For example, he asked me where the shear stress is measure. However, the definition is just in the text and the Table. In another Table, I compare my date with others and I just call my date as "present". This is very common and the author's study is always called as "present". But he did not find it and asked me aggressively that why there is no date of mine in that Table... He asked me why I just present others' date without mine. Also, he criticizes me that the error in a Figure is 10MPa... Dear God, please give him a new pair of eyes. The error is not as big as 10MPa. He just match the wrong date. He may compare my date in a position with the reference date in another position. Also, he forces me to cite papers......I just sent emails and complain about the reviewer 3. I also ask whether it is possible to accept the paper by finding one more reviewer(If 3 accept and 1 reject, I feel this is more convincing...) However, When I contact with the EIC, the editor told me that:
Once I have such request again, he will reject my paper....
That is all his reply. Nothing else... He did not even go into this issue and just conclude that.....
My advisor just asked me to bear it. But I just try to find some support here. I have publicized 6 journal papers (IF 2-4) and I am a PhD student in Aerospace. My research is finite element methods. Thank you.

Just write him what you explained in your question but in a formal way. This would be enough.

Thank you, John. It seems that this is the only thing I can do. The reviewer is so impolite. He uses a lot of "!!!!!!!!!!" in his review comments and his words are very aggressive.

You use a lot of ....

I never do so in a formal review comments...

I feel much better now after nearly one hour's anger and I will go back to revise my paper. Thanks for reading. I never predicted that someday I will be such negative. When I publicized my previous 5-6 papers, I all felt very happy. This is the first time that the anger dominates me in dealing with a paper.

You may want to go through your question and fix the use of the word "date" -- I'm pretty sure you mean "data", which is something different altogether.

Yes, it's a typo for an angry man. However, many people here just assume that it is my poor paper writing that causes this problem even if they did not read my paper. First, my advisor is a very good professor in the top 10 universities in USA. He gave me a lot of revisions before we submit the paper. Second, my paper is not written by "English". A mathematician write papers by equations and few English. So you know, those people with general beautiful positive words below may know nothing about a math paper...But people love those sentences. That makes them cool.

I get frustrated too if a paper is poorly written or does not follow 'standard' convention.   There are no 'blind reviewers, assuming the venue is reputable.  You only have reviewers who gave up on your paper because it is poor or not interesting or things that should be there are not there.   Other things that annoy me are grammar mistakes, and poor writing practices.
Now calm down.  Let it sit for a while.  After you are rational, then revise your paper accordingly.  Address the reviewer's comments and make it clearer.  Ask yourself, why did the reviewer get frustrated at this point?  Presentation errors are the easiest to fix.  Try addressing comments that ask you to prove X is true, and your only answer is, I'm not smart enough!

Thanks for such a positive answer and people love positive things, instead of negative truth. I know how to do it. I explain everything in details politely in my response to review comments. Why I say these here? I just want to vent my anger and then go back to revise my paper...

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Repeat dropper and failure at multiple colleges. Is a Master's ever possible?
Just found this site and did some searching around but I'm not sure anyone is as nuts as I am.  Long story short I've been living with a severe anxiety surrounding school.  I'm 29 years old now and am finally getting to the root of my issue, and it's making a lot of sense.  Everything except how to move forward.  I've always wanted to go "all the way" through a Masters Degree but I'm almost certain any competent admissions committee will reject me without question.  Here's my scenario:

Community College 1: About 9 years ago I registered for my classes, didn't show up.  Dropped by the administration.
Community College 2: About 7 years ago I registered for my classes, showed up for a week, dropped by administration.
Community College 3: 4 years ago I registered for a fresh start.  Did one semester successfully but got a D in one class because I had anxiety surrounding showing up for that class.  I retook that same class 5 more times each resulting in either a self-initiated withdraw/drop, or a flat-out F because I stopped going and had too much anxiety to admit that i'm dropping again.  I have 1 "ok" semester, and 3 complete failure/dropped semesters.  Ending GPA is 1.75
Went back to Community College 1.  Did well and have a GPA of 3.4.  Did not transfer any of the classes from any other school.

Now I'm looking to apply to a 4 year university.  I know I need to give them all transcripts from all schools, but I'm really nervous about not getting in anywhere because of my rough history working through that anxiety.  I'm mostly concerned about a future Master's program not giving me the time of day.  I have an excellent work history because I always put that first but now that I'm learning how to focus on academics I want to go all the way.  Maybe even further for a PhD., if I continue to bust my behind the way I have been.
I'm floating the idea of maybe doing a 2nd Bachelor's before a Master's if I have to do that to prove to a committee that I'm worth a shot.
What would any of you do in my shoes?

Schools will often consider your "exit velocity" and since your recent experiences are good you definitely have a chance to accomplish your goals.

If you prefer learning things on your own to taking classes, perhaps a research master's instead of a taught master's would be worth considering. You have to have a certain amount of self-discipline, but you can focus on a project that interests you.

First off, congratulations on your persistence and overcoming the anxiety. I have family members who have been suffering from an anxiety, so I understand the struggle and what you are dealing with. Some Universities are more accommodating than others. Choosing a more accommodating school would be helpful. You can also consider attending couple of classes at your target University to strengthen your application. This would show that you can make it in the new environment. And being forthcoming and honest comes along way.

Thanks for the optimistic responses.  I do like the idea of a research master's and will also be looking into that.  I do much better learning on my own since i'm a full-time web developer right now which is all self-taught.
I also really like the idea of taking classes at a target university before being accepted.  I never knew that was even possible!

If your anxiety is about attending classes why not go for an accredited Open University (Bachelor or MSc)? Going at your own pace, would probably work better for you and you can still have a (part-time) job on the side to support yourself.

@mhwombat I never knew there was such a thing as a Master of Research. thanks

Let me come at this from a different angle (and from someone who has faced something similar in the past.)
Why do you want a masters?  What is your goal in getting a masters and/or a PhD?
Is you goal "Because I always kind of wanted one"? Is it "Because it will help me with my career goals"? Is it "Because I want to show that I can"?
This is not to be a negative nelly, though it may sound that way, but Graduate course work, especially in Computer Science(an assumption based on your current work as a web-developer), can be very challenging and stressful. Depending on the program and the instructor, it is not unusual for over half a class to have, on paper, a 'failing' grade. Some teachers are great about communicating that this is OK and expected, other's will let you hang out and stress about whether your 'failing grade' is really a failing grade. Some of these courses can involved 20+ hours a week of project or coursework. Some have no 'right' or definite answers.
None of this is to say you shouldn't go for it. Recognizing and working on an anxiety issue(or any mental health issue) takes a great deal of strength and hard work. That you have persevered to complete an undergraduate degree shows that you are a hard working, intelligent, passionate individual.
What I am saying is - analyze your reasons for going to graduate school. Make sure that what you get out of graduate school will actually match those reasons and that you approach it in a doable fashion. I would recommend a multi-step process.

Identify the school / program you are interested in attending
Register at that school(or a school with similar characteristics) to take courses
Take high level undergraduate courses. Look at the graduate degree you are interested in - often they have prereqs that you could take. Take difficult courses that are stressful to get a feel for what graduate courses will be like.
If you have time - get involved in a research lab that interests you. Make some connections with professors(and incidentally the admissions council).
Once you've got a year(ish) of courses under your belt - go for that Masters or PhD!

Doing the above benefits you in many ways. First and foremost it gives you a safe place to fail gracefully. If you're taking a course not for your masters but as preparation then dropping it isn't a big deal. Maybe you'll find you need another prereq, maybe you want to spend some time buffing up on the material. There is a big difference in having the pressure to 'pass right now or fail forever!!!' (well, what you brain tells you is failing forever and what is, in reality, not a big deal) and 'well I could take this later once I do ____....'
Secondly this gives you a little bit of a buffer. This shows any admissions group that you can take challenging classes and pass them. That you can work through the rigors of Masters program. And you can point to this during your statement of purpose as 'proof' that you have improved your reaction to anxiety around school and have a support network/plan in place for the rigors of graduate work.
Thirdly this gives you a chance to get the admissions committee on your side. If professors and admissions officers know your name(in a positive light) it can make a real difference in how your application is received. Additionally some schools have 'backdoors', so to speak, into Graduate programs especially for non traditional students.
Finally, and I hope this goes without saying, make sure you have a support network in place. I would recommend, as someone who has been there and gotten the teeshirt, that you have a local therapist for, at least, your first few semesters. Additionally there's no shame in deciding that graduate school isn't for you(I ultimately decided that PhD papers are the bane of my existence and am not current pursuing a PhD.)

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My supervisor wants me to include another professor's name in my paper while... what should I do?
My supervisor wants me to include another professors name in my paper just because he was declared as my second adviser on the project. But the problem is that this man has not done anything but giving foolish and useless comments on my work. By foolish, I do not exaggerate since my supervisor thinks the same but it seems that he made a deal with the other one.
What should I do? I can't really tolerate the fact that he will get acknowledged for the work which he doesn't know anything and didn't do anything about.

Also see When should a supervisor be an author?

I wouldn't close this as a duplicate - in the other threads, the second supervisor did nothing for the work. Here, the second supervisor provided unhelpful comments. Due to the delicacy of the issue, I would suggest to keep this question, as someone seeking for help in such a situation may see this situation as different to the ones mentioned by @ff524 - having said that, the answers are still likely to be the same.

@DCTLib I agree. There is a world of difference between "did nothing" and "did things that I considered unhelpful" (but I have the feeling that we may have had the latter discussion somewhere as well).

@DCTLib Questions where the answers are the same should be closed as duplicates, even if they have small differences that don't affect the answer, so that all answers would be in the same place and benefit all askers. A valid reason to keep this question open would be if the answers would be different.

@ff524 I think that the answer should be different.

@ff524 - Hmm, wouldn't that basically invite this question to be asked over and over again on this site in the long run, provided that the askers think that the questions are not duplicate?

@DCTLib that would be fine - some duplication helps future users find what they're looking for, after all. But if the answers apply to the first question, then they should go there and this one should be marked a duplicate, so that users who come across either question in the future will see the answers.

Is it possible that you misjudge why your advisor wants to see the other prof. on the paper? You say that the reason is that he was "declared as my second adviser on the project" ... but then you go on to explain that he actually was part of the discussions leading to the paper, so it does not, or at least not entirely, sound like a courtesy co-authorship to me.
Of course, you (and maybe even your advisor) do not value the input he had, but unilaterally throwing him off the paper for this reason is a dangerous road to go down. If he had any part in actually doing the research or writing the paper, I would at least talk to the guy first and ask him whether he thinks that he contributed enough to become an author.
However, prepare that there is a non-zero chance that the answer to this question will be "sure, I advised you regularly on the project since it's start, why wouldn't I be a co-author??" (and mean it!). Decide in advance how you will react to this. Note that, if the prof. feels this way, there is likely no way to remove him from the paper without him being annoyed or worse. Your task then becomes to decide whether you want to add him to the paper purely to keep relations intact (or not).

In my defense I should tell you that he did not advised me regularly. In the period of 2 years he asked about my works 2 or 3 times and when I provided him with the updates he tossed around some comments that when I talked to my adviser about them. He laughed about them. this man has never answered my questions or provided me with the necessary material to find my answers. HE WAS COMPLETELY USELESS.

@user17830 This wasn't meant to attack you, more to provide perspective.

I know... I just want to make myself clear and adding some fun to the comment :)

Have you simply talked to your supervisor about it? You have a valid point, and don't need to worry about upsetting the professor (he likely won't be) by leaving his name out of the list since he hasn't contributed anything towards the actual content of the paper. Your supervisor is more than likely just trying to do a 'fair' thing for the professor since he "helped out".
Anyways, the best thing to do would be to simply speak your opinion. If you have real evidence (or there is a mutual knowledge) of the lack of contribution, you'll be fine.

don't need to worry about upsetting the professor - There's a reasonable chance that either this professor thinks his contribution is meaningful (and would be offended by the suggestion that it isn't), or he doesn't and wants to be an author anyways (and would be offended by being called out on unethical behavior). The OP is not in an easy situation, and I think this answer downplays the likelihood of offending someone.

Then the question should be - what role does the professor play in OP's education (i.e., could offending the professor have a negative affect on OP's grades/evaluations)? I agree they should not explicitly try to offend, but if the idea that the prof's name will be on the paper bothers them that much, then I think OP seems to be willing to take that chance.


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Ethics of giving students gifts?
I am instructing a section of a senior level capstone design course at an engineering university, split into two groups each working on a different project. One group of six is working with some specialized computer hardware, the relatively cheap RTL-SDR USB devices. They have expressed an interest in continuing to learn with these devices after the project is over, but I of course can't give them University-owned equipment. So, I had the bright idea to spend $10 per student out of my own pocket and give them these RTL-SDR devices as a prize for a project successfully completed. My intention is to further their academic interests in this field, and it costs me relatively little to do so, similar to treating them to dinner.
So, two ethical queries:

Is giving a $10 prize/gift to each of six students itself ethically questionable? It bears mentioning that I am research faculty, not a tenure track professor, and my teaching evaluations have no bearing on my career at this stage.
Is it unethical to give a gift/prize to one team and not the other? I have four more students working on the second project, and would gladly invest $10 per student in that group as well. However, their project doesn't lend itself to some low cost, project related hardware that they can continue to learn with after the project is over.

$10 is not much for even a student to spend if they wish to pursue a topic. An offer of continued guidance on their topic of interest would be worth much more.

Regarding point (2) in your post, is there a similarly priced gift that at least relates to the second project?  For instance, a book, or something similar?

To point 2, yes, I've just today found a similarly priced item that relates to their project.

Rather than giving them as "gifts for project well done", why not just say "If you are still interested in continuing to learn with the devices after the project, come see me after and I'll work something out?"
Its still a gift, but now it is positions as a reward for enquiry rather than for work done. And it is not positioned as being related to the Course as such.

I think this is context specific. Is this common practice at the institution?

This is not a common practice at the institution. I just thought it would be a way to encourage the students to keep pursuing and tinkering and learning with the devices.

Many institutions have a dollar limit on what is considered a small gift that does not present a conflict of interest or other unethical circumstance.  $10/person is probably well below that limit but you could probably check with admin.
However, that does not prevent the students of the second group perceiving unequal incentives for the different projects.  It could be de-motivating for them to see the other group being materially encouraged.  It would be ideal to somehow equalize the incentivizing of both projects.


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Is it possible to submit a PhD thesis with two authors?
We are two students working in the same field under the supervision of the same professor within his chair and all of our publications are done together.
Hence I am curious: Is it generally possible in academia to submit a PhD thesis with two authors?

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

A few answers have noted that PhD theses with two authors do exist, and that is interesting trivia.
However, I think it is useful to address your underlying issue. I.e.,
what is the best strategy to adopt when you are collaborating closely with another PhD student, you are working on a similar topic, and you have the same supervisor?
This situation arises for many PhD students (I can think of a few), yet they still work out a way to write their own thesis.
If you are publishing joint papers, then you may want to think about ways that you and the other student can be the lead author on different papers. You probably also want to formalise the description of who made what contributions to each paper. I know at my institution, papers that form part of a PhD need to have a statement signed by all co-authors listing the contribution of each author.
You want to think about how your thesis can be distinct. You should work with your supervisor to carve out your unique focus.

It is definitely possible in the sense of "It has been done." However, the only example I know of is this thesis from linguistics: http://dare.uva.nl/search?arno.record.id=123669 (Groenendijk & Stokhof 1984)
Whether it is possible in the sense of "You could do it." will depend on your university's regulations concerning these matters, as well as your advisors and committee's preferences. They are the people you should talk to about this.

Yes, indeed. I know another very high-profile (and deserved!) case which I won't name here, and was accepted at very high-profile level. But it is strongly inadvisable in general, as the risk is very high.

Just out of curiosity, is there a reason not to name that thesis, given that it's published anyway?

Calling @CaptainEmacs ... At least 4 people want to know more. ;-)

I am not sure how much of the story is public knowledge (probably it is, but I do not want to take chances). I can, however assure you, that the thesis is worth it.

Ok, but couldn't you just give the reference without the story?

@Andreas Anonymous Mathematician response below found a source that indicates it is public; the Krohn-Rhodes theorem.

No. The PhD thesis consists of your personal contribution to the field and is a demonstration of your expertise.
This presented a problem for a pair of fellow PhD students while I was working on my degree (in the sciences, in the United States). They published numerous impactful papers a co-first authors, but thesis committee members had many objections for the student had the misfortune of presenting second. They had to clearly delineate their personal contributions in the thesis itself, where each had to have enough to individually merit the degree. This was a complete headache for both of them and ended up being a significant amount of extra work.
This merits a discussion between you, your advisor, and your colleague before you get any further in the proposal/thesis writing process.
Edit: As a few have mentioned, it seems like there are some instances where they are accepted - but the overall trend is that they are very uncommon. Do to the many reasons listed in the multiple responses, they are not recommended in general even if allowed by your university. In any case, you both would still need to prove each of your personal contributions are deserving of a PhD.

Sorry, but this is wrong in general. The regulations at my university explicitly allow group dissertations if the contributions can be separated.

Yes, it is technically possible if your advisor and university agree, which is a big if.  In addition to the example from linguistics mentioned in the previous answer, there is the Krohn-Rhodes theorem, which appeared in the identical dissertations of Krohn and Rhodes.  See, for example, page viii of "Applications of Automata Theory and Algebra" by John Rhodes.
However, you shouldn't even think about trying this yourself.  It's vanishingly rare (I'd guess somewhere between one in ten thousand and one in a hundred thousand dissertations), and unless your thesis is absolutely amazing, this will immediately become by far its most attention-getting aspect.  That's really not what you want people to focus on while you are trying to establish your reputation.

I don't know, it depends what you want your PhD for.  It would make you memorable, and a lot of companies might not care that much.

Could you make a specific link to the answer instead of saying "previous example"? The order of answers tends to shift.

It happened to me to a lesser extent: a small part of my PhD research was in collaboration with another PhD student in another continent. When we were about to write our thesis (more less at same time) our adviser had to come to a mutual agreement on what part would be in my thesis and what part to my colleague's thesis. Even if it was not against the rules to include the same work, it definitely wasn't advisable to do so to avoid any potential awkward situation in the future.
Even if the adviser agrees, and even if it's technically not against university rules it could potentially raise many red flags in the future for someone that catches the situation (and I think it will be very easy for someone to spot it). I would strongly advise not to.

With a huge overlap of publication, the situation you are describing could actually be alleviated by a double thesis. Anyway, the question did not ask whether doing this is a good idea (in either version).

@Wrzlprmft It asked if it's possible. I said that, according to my experience, it's not possible, but not necessarily according to strict rules.


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Is there any forum or FB group where people would exchange academic literature?
Does anyone know any forum, FB group or other platform where students from different univerisites would exchange academic literature available in their libraries?

Related: Ways to get free and legal access to research papers as a researcher

Possible duplicate of Ways to get free and legal access to research papers as a researcher

On Twitter, there's the #ICanHazPDF hashtag. Wikipedia explains:

Users request articles by tweeting an article's title, DOI or other linked information like a publisher's link, their email address, and the hashtag "#ICanHazPDF". Someone who has access to the article will then email it to them. The user then deletes the original tweet. Alternately, users who do not wish to post their email address in the clear can use direct messaging to exchange contact information with a volunteer who has offered to share the article of interest.

This 2013 article has some more information about the practice, including estimated usage figures and demographics. According to the data presented there, 24% of #ICanHazPDF users are students.
On Facebook, I don't know of any groups devoted to sharing literature, but I've certainly seen a lot of (successful) requests on my Facebook feed along the lines of "Can anyone get me a copy of this paywalled article?".
It's also worth noting that, if you are already a student with access to a university library, the library itself can provide you with interloans or copies of material from other libraries worldwide. As a university student, you have access to people who are literally paid to help you find the literature you need. Don't ignore that resource!

I just tried to use the #ICanHazPDF hastag on twitter a few days ago and created an account just for that (as I am not a twitter user). After some minutes my account got banned/locked. Does anyone have experience with that? Is the hashtag not allowed, maybe for some cases? I looked for a very old book which is the primary source for some papers I found...

@JayFromA Searching for the tag on Twitter brings up a lot of uses by accounts that haven't been banned. (Note that this is probably only a small proportion of the true usage since the tweet is usually deleted once the request is fulfilled.) I don't know of any official Twitter policy against #ICanHazPDF, but it may be that they are trying to suppress it quietly at the request of Elsevier et al.


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How do some researchers have such beautiful figures in publications, while their homepages look simple?
Do some PIs who publish in Nature, Cell or Science collaborate with professional designers?
The thing is that I have never seen it mentioned in their work. Is it a service offered by the journals? Or do the PIs pay for these services and outsource them?

Not a duplicate, but the reasons why academics' personal websites tend to look ugly is addressed here: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/69275/do-academics-look-down-on-well-designed-academic-websites

related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38619/why-are-professors-websites-so-ugly

@MassimoOrtolano I wondered that too. But I think it's because of the implication that they are including (unattributed) design work and passing it off as their own.

I took the liberty to remove the question “Is it acceptable to do such thing?”, as it is too different from the titular question (do not ask more than one question by question) and none of the existing answers addressed it so far. (@MassimoOrtolano I presume this is where the ethics tag came from.)

Could you add an example of a figure you find particularly well designed?

The question in the title (about researchers’ design skills in papers vs on websites) is quite different from the question in the body (about who designs figures in published papers).  This is causing major confusion in the answers — some address one, some address the other.  Could you edit so that the title and body match, and it’s clear what the actual question is?

As a side note all the "beautiful pictures" found in journals take literally 30 seconds with LaTeX or any other plotting tool like R/Python or the like (that you are supposed to have knowledge of anyway, if you're doing research). On the other hand, learning HTML to build a website is something that academics (almost) never need.

@GennaroTedesco I am talking about illustrative figures and not matlab figures.

If this is a problem (and personally I don't think it's a very big one) the effective solution would be for the university IT department to provide an easy-to-use and good-looking homepage template for everybody, not for each prof to learn how to design one themselves!

Good design, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder - or in the case of web sites, the poor chaps like me out here on the other side of the browser trying to use those at best marginally usable "well designed" web sites.  I mean web sites that force you to use particular browsers, or particular versions of that browser, or which present marquee images or sliding popups running by too fast to read, or which insists on using particular colors, or...  In my experience, most academics have good, usable web pages, while most web designers would serve society better as ditch diggers.

I'm a graphic designer and one of my clients is also a PhD student on top of owning her business. The research team she is part of hired me to work on a really complicated figure not too long ago. So for sure, sometimes design work can be outsourced to professionals and are not necessarily representative of a researcher's design skills.

Designing for the rigid format of print is much simpler than designing a webpage. All you need is a short intro to graphing and a vector suite and you are good to go. Ive teached a lot of doctoral students to do this. They would all get quite good at it within a month of introduction. But alas to try to teach them web design was like trying to swim in teracle.

It used to be absolutely routine for publishers to employ professional graphic designers to redraw all illustrations supplied by authors. It's much less common now that many authors can do a reasonable job of it themselves. But perhaps journals like Nature and Science still do it. I know that when my attempts at diagrams have been redrawn by professionals, the results have been stunning: very often the designer won't just make cosmetic changes, but will suggest completely different ways of presenting the data.

@crobar that looks wonderful. Clean and neat.

What is good web design depends on the purpose. I am sure Wells Fargo Bank and Google both have access to expert web page designers, but I find the current versions of news.google.com and the Wells Fargo on-line banking web pages extremely frustrating.
The problem is they both use lots of white space and severely limit the information that is available in one view. I am used to reading textbooks and academic papers. I like information-dense web pages, where I can see a lot of words and numbers in one view. That preference may be commoner among academics, who tend to be very good at reading and processing information, than in the general population.
Some, at least, of the academic web pages that don't conform to current web design fashion are well designed for people like me.

Aren't you ever intimidated by a wall of text, especially when you need to read it in order to solve a more important problem?

@Ooker, imagine a printed dictionary with one definition per page.  In a nice stylish font, well-chosen to integrate with the word being defined (so the words "harsh" and "soothing" and "water" are all in different fonts and colors).  In nice large letters, center-aligned.  Now imagine trying to actually use it to clear up a term from your textbook.

...and yet, actual printed dictionaries solve the "wall of text" problem just fine.  Guide words at the top of the page.  Entry words in bold, slightly less indented than definition continuation lines.  Example sentences in italics.  The result is an extremely information-dense page that is very easy to scan through to acquire useful information (assuming you know the alphabet well enough).

I'm not sure how your preferences about Google News and your online banking system relate to this question about the quality of artwork in journals...

Researchers don't have much interest in and time for design (exception: Edward Tufte), otherwise they would have become designers. Luckily, they can rely on the work of others for "beautiful figures" - division of labour and all.
The beautiful figures are

generated by preset LaTeX packages like Tikz/PGF
generated by preset R libraries like ggplot2
preset designs created by publishers.

By contrast, many universities only provide some webspace or a CMS in corporate design for researcher's personal websites.

Of course LaTeX was designed by a researcher (Knuth).. precisely because tools to typeset equations didn't yet exist, and he needed something. Similarly, I had to design my own graphing software in the 80's to plot the output of my instruments (from a 6502 based "computer" with 32 kB or RAM). But those days are mostly in the past now.

@Floris Not really important here, but "La"tex comes from Lamport, not Knuth.

@deviantfan And TikZ/pgf (it's to day most powerful drawing tool) even by someone else, namely Till Tantau :-)

To add to your list: Python packages like matplotlib (my preference) and bokeh.

Successful researchers react to incentives—and there's little incentive for webpages to look beautiful. I doubt a better webpage design even attracts better graduate students, and I'm sure it won't help you get tenure or a grant.
Conversely, there are incentives to communicate clearly to reviewers and readers. To whatever extent authors prepare well-designed figures, it's to write clearly to reviewers. Some figures can make or break a paper.
A few journals also employ professional designers/typesetters (like journals you mention apparently, see https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/92944/8966), but that's the exception, not the rule.

"I doubt a better webpage design even attracts better graduate students," Well a pretty web page probably wont, but one with useful information certainly will. Actually lots of people I know respond well to a web page that also includes some hobbies and interests, if you want to get a position under someone its good to know they are human. But lots of things that many web designers consider 'pretty' are actually just annoying and take too long to load.

"one with useful information certainly will" agreed, but that can still be ugly (or plain).

Researchers at large experiments or laboratories (e.g., CERN or Fermilab) tend to use the same templates, scripts, etc as those who wrote papers before them. Some experiments even have their own guidelines about how any graphics published or presented must look, on top of any requirements from the journal.
As such, the same set of scripts and templates tend to get passed around, to ensure all of those guidelines are met. This also ensures a consistent style is used for all papers from that lab / experiment / group.
Those scripts and templates are developed / passed around largely by grad students and postdocs.
There may be similar templates available for faculty webpages, but they won't be as pretty looking because the need just isn't there. In a journal or conference presentation, you are limited by number of pages or time; therefore, you need to make sure every word is needed, and every figure is conveying as much information as it can while being as clear as it can. You may pay some amount for each figure you put in the paper, so you make sure the ones you have are stellar. There is no such limitation on faculty websites, so there is no incentive to make them look as nice.

These are different skills: Web-design vs Figure Design.

Web-design is closely related to layout of whole pages. It needs to do things like margin sizes, and text-widths. How much white-space around a figure. These kinds of problems. In many fields laying out papers is a solved problem - use LaTeX.
Web-design is actually more difficult than paper layout, since it needs to handle different screen-sizes. And all the other things like menus openning up, and keeping a nav-bar in place (or not) etc. There is a lot of scope to handle and a lot of places to mess up.
Web-design has very little shared skill with figure design.
Even assuming one has both the aesthetic sense to know what looks good in both, the ability to actually pull it off does not leverage one skill for another.
Basic web-design is HTML+CSS, plus maybe some form of templating language. Figure creation normally involves either a plotting tool eg Matlab, ggplot2; or a vector graphics tool, eg Tikz or Inkscape.
The time spent also varies. I regularly spend 4-8 hours on a single figure. I might spend 4-8 hours every 3 months on the appearance of my whole website.

+1, though laying out some figures is not a problem solved by LaTeX—and it overlaps with web design.

I'm not sure what you mean? Layout specifically is positioning figures and text on a page. That is done up-to occational tweaking needed in latex. And the occational tweaking needed is things like setting various penalities for too many floats on a page (nothing like webdesign).

I meant layout within the figures. Alignment, proximity, consistency and contrast (the basic design concepts I know) all apply in both cases. Yes, LaTeX best practices typically overlap.

Figures in a paper communicate information about the results. Graphic design elements don't.

Professors at my University hire undergraduate students (me included) to format their papers as well as other small tasks. Nobody has ever asked me to do the same to their website. My guess is that they really do not care as long as the information on their website is correct and (sometimes) up to date.
I generally use LaTeX because I like the programming feel and you can make the paper and figures look however you want it to.

Professors are well versed with using LaTeX, R in their teachings/ lectures hence their publications viz. Papers, presentations, etc. are so beautiful in terms of figures and presentation.
However it is not the case with their websites because it involves a lot of time to implement various web designing techniques which they are constantly running out of.
Also usually the different Professors follow a template given by University to keep the whole website uniform.

Papers, and where they get accepted are regarded by many (especially the publishing business, lol) to be the measure of success in academia. Therefore it is not strange if more effort is made to try get your papers into good journals. We humans as well as many animals are easily mesmerized by shiny and pretty things, so the papers have higher chance of being accepted into good journals if they are shiny and pretty.

Without disclosing more information. I can say that I know a research group which published a paper in either science or nature and they used the help of a graphic designer for 2 of their figures.

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


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Do people actually scoop others?
I was wondering if there are real faculty members who go to conferences or read the abstracts (if it's being published) and scoop others?
If not why some professors are so paranoid? IMHO A real entrepreneur would love to share his ideas and maybe someone else would do it instead of him. Consider Elon Musk for example who shares his ideas on Twitter. I would argue that Einstein wouldn't care if someone else had created general relativity.

That might happen, but I think much more common is that two people are working on the same thing, and person A is closer to publishing, but person B realizes they are going to get scooped if they don't hurry up and publish their own work on the topic. It might not be as complete as the work of A, but the work of A becomes a lot less groundbreaking once B publishes their work.

What field?  This would be rare in mathematics for various reasons, but other fields maybe not so much.

There is no question that this happens sometimes.  I think more useful questions are (i) how common is this kind of scooping and (ii) whether and how to take this possibility into account in one's professional practice.

Actually Einstein did care. He collaborated with Hilbert in some phases on the development of General Relativity and later complained about "nostrification of results" when it seemed that Hilbert had gained some advantage. The aftermath gave mostly Einstein the credit and Hilbert never complained about that, although historians keep arguing who published what first and who inspired whom. But the point is: Einstein did care. And so would probably anyone with something as important as GR (and probably also quite a few people with things quite less important than GR).

Musk isn't an academic scientist, he is an entrepreneurial businessman. Musk is mostly going after ideas that no one but him is willing to throw money at...in part, he is sharing his ideas to help convince others to partake in his ventures. He won't share parts of his ideas that are patentable unless he already owns the patents. Musk isn't under pressure to publish to be successful in the next grant cycle.

@BryanKrause I agree.  I was talking about entrepreneurs and I think that great scientists usually have also a vision.

I guess 90% of cases of scooping work like this:
Two labs are working on the same or similar projects, one lab takes the work to a conference. The other lab sees the talk and/or abstract and thinks "Cricky, we'd better get a move on double-quick else we'll be scooped" and publishes post-haste while the first lab is unaware of the competition. Additionally its possible that the second lab might see an interpretation of the data that they had been missing in their work, and might publish that as theirs.
It is possible to be first-principles scooped, but I think its unlikely. They only time it has happened to me is when I was a grad student working on my own on a project, and a company but a team of 10, equiped with robots, on the same project.

I know at least one case in which the reviewer deliberately slowed the reviewing process and then published before the reviewed article.
Like this question on academia stackexchange refers to: A reviewer has stolen my idea – what can I do? [duplicate]

Citation? There are such stories, but many of them may be apocryphal. Part of the mythology.

@Buffy, some may be apocryphal, but some are definitely not, as I can aver.

@Buffy, there's no way to prove it with evidence. The reviewed manuscripts and reviewer comments are not revealed outside the Journal.

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


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Email to potential advisor after submitting an application
I applied to graduate school in US about two months ago and I am still waiting for my result. I was thinking may be it is a good idea to email my potential advisor again and asked them whether they have looked at my application or what is the status of my application?
Can you please tell me how to start this email? How should I politely ask about status of my application?

It is uncommon to ask a faculty member about the status of an application as most of the time the admission staff should handlethis kind of inquiries. If the faculty has said that you can email him/her, then maybe that is fine. Otherwise, check with the admission staff.

What kind of contact did you have with this potential advisor before?  Also: related question

I told him I am interest in your research and I asked him do you accept new graduate student.

And did he reply to that?  Unless he previously showed specific interest in you as an applicant, such an email will probably not be received with much enthusiasm.  (By the way, if you don't address your comments, like @user59419, I don't know you've responded unless I view the question again.)

@Kimball. Yes, she told I will be accepting new graduate student. Please express your interest to my research group then I will look at your application more closely.

@Penguin_Knight Can you please turn your comment into an answer so that I can vote it up?

It is uncommon to ask a faculty member about the status of an application as most of the time it's the admission staff who handle this kind of inquiries. If the faculty has said that you can email him/her, then it may be fine. Otherwise, check with the admission staff.


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IQ and Probability of Success in Two Difficult Fields
I've had my IQ measured on multiple tests over the past several decades. The first time was in middle school and it was measured at 120. I guarantee you that I didn't care about the result when I took that test as a kid. I probably wanted to get it over with. Much later in life, and consistent with another time later in life, my IQ was measured at 138. I am a believer that these measurements can vary with motivation, health, alertness, sleep deprivation, and other psychophysiological factors.
Based on my measured IQ range of 120-138, I'd like to see an answer to the following questions:
What is the probability that I could complete a PhD in Mathematics or Physics? What is the probability that I could contribute at least slightly significantly to either of those fields over the long term as a PhD?
One of my "best" qualities is that I'm very tenacious regarding problem-solving. I might not get there the quickest, but I don't give up until I do or the pursuit begins to interfere with other aspects of life. People might accuse me of being physically lazy, but there's no way they can accuse me of being problem-solving lazy. I'm the kind of person who will hire a home maintenance technician as a last resort only because I don't have the tools. I'm pretty frugal.
I feel pretty inferior to many of the people who have posted comments on StackExchange.

@Mad Jack - Thanks Jack. No. I definitely don't have that attitude. If someone asks for my help they get it, unless they and I have some issue.

Not sure there is a solid relationship between high IQ and completion of a PhD in any field; however, if you're the type of student who goes around with an attitude of "I don't have to help out with [insert tedious research task here] because I have a "high" IQ score," then, no, I don't expect that to work out too well.

You are guaranteed to be a modern day Carl Friedrich Gauss, and to buddy up Terry Tao. So it's a definite yes!

@ gnometorule - Hah! :>) I guarantee you Gauss was on another intellectual plane. Did you hear the story about how Gauss solved a rather complex problem in grammar school? Or the story about how he could do elementary math before he could talk?

I don't really agree with the downvotes.  The OP is worried about something so he's asking a question.  The answer is that he's wrong to worry..but that means that he's right to ask the question!

Looking over the answers, I see some fairly egregious misunderstandings of the concept of IQ (and a bad/misinterpreted source...). You might consider consulting the psychometric literature instead. The short answer: you're smart enough to finish a PhD in math.

A phd involves a considerate amount of effort. IQ only doesn't get you there. I know two perfect examples of that, one guy is terribly intelligent, but not disciplined, didn't get past undergrad. Another is not that bright, but is very disciplined and really puts in the effort...and is an overachiever, with several diplomas....

What is the probability that I could complete a PhD in Mathematics or Physics? -- Exactly 47.2%.

Let's put it this way: a lower IQ makes it unlikely that you will succeed with a PhD, but a higher does not make it more likely. Motivation, discipline and some creativity are all more important, once a certain level is reached.

are terms like 'smart' or 'IQ' really scientific though? see NNT aka Nero, Dweck and salman khan

IQ is a terrible test for anything but certain types of pattern matching and to aid in educational intervention, and its limitations are well understood by actual psychological practitioners.  There are correlations, but the correlations are pretty loose.  With all those caveats, according to Wikipedia, you are totally in a reasonable range to get a Ph.D..

@ jakebeal - Thanks. I think this site agrees with what you, keshlam, and Mad Jack said: http://iqcomparisonsite.com/Occupations.aspx

@Inquisitive Notice the extremely high overlap between janitors and college processors (and pretty much everything else) on that page: that should be enough to say that IQ is a terrible predictor of occupational fitness.

@ jakebeal - I know Jake. Isn't that incredible?!?

@Inquisitive I don't find it any more incredible than finding a weak correlation between parental wealth and career. What is more surprising is how strongly people believe that IQ is meaningful...

@jakebeal: Well...janitors are special, as is well known. That's the Good Will Hunting effect.

jakebeal, because terms like 'smart' or 'IQ' are not really scientific right? see NNT aka Nero, Dweck and salman khan

Others have given the right answer several times over, but there are still some nuances that I would like to hit.
Most importantly I would say: IQ tests are neither administered by the post K-12 academic community nor used for them by any purpose.
They are -- sometimes, anyway -- given to children to identify them as being eligible (or not) for certain "Mentally Gifted" programs.  In this way, I took an IQ test when I was seven years old.  I did it because my best friend had taken one and got to spend one day a week in a special "MG" classroom.  I walked by the classroom one day and -- well, this was a while ago, but the way I remember it, I saw a big room which did not have individual student desks and a bunch of kids milling about in it.  I knew it was the MG room because my friend was there.  Some other kids placed a crown made of brown construction paper on his head, and he was grinning from ear to ear.  So I asked my parents to arrange for me to take the test, took it, and some of my other friends followed suit and got to spend one day a week with a special MG teacher doing much more fun stuff.  Sometimes it was on the brainy side: I remember learning about prime numbers there, for instance.  But there was also a bit of what I would identify now as a Montessori-style emphasis on manipulating and building things.  I did this in the second through the fourth grades, then I went to a different middle school with no such program, and then when I went to my high school those same test results allowed me to take a few special "MG" courses, including creative writing.  (Looking back on this it all seems a bit unfair.)  They also kept our test records in a big file cabinet in the "MG room" (as before, a fun place to hang out), and one day when everyone else was gone, I decided to sneak a peek.  I remember being a bit disappointed at my score: I think it was in the 130's, just like the OP.
Once someone is a college or university student, I see no point whatsoever in taking IQ tests: rather famously, the academy administers plenty of tests of its own, which we largely do believe determine students' potential and suitability for future study.  Should you get a PhD in math or physics?  Who cares what your IQ is: assuming you went to a partway reputable institution, what matters is how you did in your coursework there.  Wondering how you'll measure up against other ambitious aspiring mathematicians?  Take the math subject GRE.  This is not telling you everything -- and certainly, whatever it's telling you should be calibrated against your prior training and education -- but it's telling you a lot more than an IQ test, and whether you believe that or not, many graduate admissions committees do.
I feel like a few of the other answers are assuming that IQ is measuring how "academically smart" you are.  I really don't think that's the case at the tail end of the spectrum that you're talking about.  I mentioned my IQ above: it's in the top 2%, I guess.  (Allow me to omit the ritual reading of the CV, but:) My academic intelligence is considerably higher than my IQ test would indicate.  By this I don't mean to imply that the IQ test "got me wrong" or anything like that: my spatial reasoning skills are average at best; I have never completed a crossword puzzle in my life; I am only moderately quick at solving the kind of logical puzzles that appear on the LSAT.  But I have a big vocabulary and can read and write quickly and well; my memory becomes much sharper and clearer on anything academic than, say, political or financial matters; and I can learn and do mathematics quickly and easily (relatively speaking, of course: if the famous plastic philospher had actually said "math is hard", she would still have gotten in trouble but she would not have been wrong).
So I want to be honest and say that I do believe in academic intelligence -- though I heartily agree that it is not everything, and again in a certain tail end of the spectrum it ceases to be very important -- but I just don't think it's the same as having a "high IQ".  I think that the probability of academic success of anyone with an IQ of, say, 125 or above does not depend on their IQ in a meaningful way.  It's really one of the last things you should be thinking about in making a career decision of this kind.

Thank you Dr. Clark. I look at many of the answers people provide in the math and physics sections and feel inferior. I like math and physics to the point that I try to solve problems for fun sometimes. I am neither a physicist nor a mathematician, but I look on them with envy because I perceive them to know secrets about the universe. I remember being blown away by things like Gauss' Law, Green's Theorem, Stoke's Theorem, etc. When I first learned to integrate, I was astounded that I now had the power to figure volumes for irregular shapes.

I think that variations in IQ (at least on the higher end of the scale, where the OP is) would have very little relevance to the ability to earn a PhD.
First, IQ tests measure one's ability to answer questions that the test writer already knows the answers to.  A PhD measures one's ability to answer questions that nobody knows the answers to yet.  So nobody (not even the people who write these tests, whoever they are) is qualified to write an IQ-like-test that would simulate earning a PhD.
Second, IQ tests take a matter of minutes or hours whereas earning a PhD takes years. The ability to think quickly is important for an IQ test but less so for a PhD. On the other hand, perseverance is important for a PhD but less so for an IQ test.

As others have said, IQ isn't the best predictor of academic success. The IQ test is criticized for focusing on a quite narrow band of intellectual skills. Traits like creativity, collegiality, and tenacity are just as important as one's "intelligence," as measured by the IQ test.
Since you asked specifically about math/physics, one of the better examples would be Richard Feynman, who was a Putnam fellow while at MIT and shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga. Many sources have claimed that Feynman self-reported his IQ as a "merely respectable" 125. So, while Feynman did have a relatively high IQ, his accomplishments in math/physics cannot be ascribed to his IQ alone.

@ Florian - Thanks for the tidbit about Feynman. Very interesting.

IQ is only part of the question.  Determination,  wisdom(how you apply your intelligence), and other factors also enter into it. You don't have to be a genius to do good PhD work. Remember, 10% inspiration,  90% perspiration... and a bit of good luck never hurts.

Haven't read all the other answers but what I can say is that your IQ score doesen't exactly predict nothing. It could estimate your maximum level of academic achievement as it has correlations, CORRELATIONS, no relations of causation to academic achievement.

One of my "best" qualities is that I'm very tenacious regarding
  problem-solving. I might not get there the quickest, but I don't give
  up until I do or the pursuit begins to interfere with other aspects of
  life. People might accuse me of being physically lazy, but there's no
  way they can accuse me of being problem-solving lazy. I'm the kind of
  person who will hire a home maintenance technician as a last resort
  only because I don't have the tools. I'm pretty frugal.
I feel pretty inferior to many of the people who have posted comments
  on StackExchange.

This may be more important than a score to predict anything. IQ, the number, alone can mean nothing. Say someone has an IQ of 160, next day is hit by a car and dies, had 5 years. Isn't the next Einstein. Life is extremelly complicated to a "factor" of "sucess" determine anything. Intelligence is a complicated subject, your IQ maybe have helped to got you where you are now, but your house, your city, the world economy, a lot of factors too.
Dawn P. Flanagan, Patti L. Harrison-Contemporary
Intellectual Assessment_ Theories, Tests, and Issues-The
Guilford Press (2012)
Malcolm Gladwell
Outliers: The Story of Success
Little, Brown and Company on November 18, 2008.


text:
Is it reasonable to submit a paper to a journal that I have uploaded to the Arxiv 4 years ago?
I have a paper submitted to the Arxiv 4 years ago (with another co-author). At that time, the only reason that we put the article  online was that someone asked us to do that in order to cite it.
 Since then it has been cited some times, including authors that claim that have found (independently) the same proof as ours.
The paper is the solution of a combinatorics problem.
I have been thinking lately that it would help my career to get this paper published in a Journal, but I'm not quite sure if this is a good idea, since it is certainly not a new result (and it is not super-interesting, just a nice solution for a problem).
What should I do? Has anyone been in the same situation?
Any advice is very welcome!
PS: In case that is a good idea to get it published it would be nice to have some kind of advise of which journal might consider articles of the types I described, as I guess that lots of Journals won't even consider it.

What's your question? Are you asking if it's reasonable to submit, given that it's been known for a while? Or are you asking if the journal will have a problem with it having appeared in arXiv?

The first one, considered that since we posted our result there has been some papers with esentially the same solution (these papers cite us )

Was it a new result at the time you posted it?

It was a completely new solution to a problem (which had a much more complicated solution).

Is it still a relevant result?

In math, it commonly happens that, for whatever reason, an unpublished work gets cited several times.  (This is rather annoying when it is something useful but not easily accessible, though this is not quite your case.)
I think that whether you can easily publish it depends on how similar the work is now to published work.  A collaborator and I were in a somewhat similar situation (though not the same), but our focus was different and we discussed some different things so it was publishable.  (He didn't think it was interesting enough to publish originally many years ago, but then we did some additional things that made it more interesting, even after someone else had published the main result with the same method independently.)
If you want to publish it, here are two suggestions:  1) try to publish as is in conference proceedings, or 2) incorporate your old paper into a new paper which does some other things (it could be expository, or with additional new research).
As for whether publishing it will help your career, my guess it won't make a huge difference, unless you only have 1 or 2 publications, though it may help some.  (It's not likely to get into a top journal unless you do something else.)  It sounds like people know about your work, so letter writers can talk about it if they think it's important (in which case maybe you should've published it! but one doesn't always know in advance what will be interesting), and on your CV you can always list it as a preprint.

I would attempt placing it in a journal. You did the work and I'm assuming you came up with the first, greatly improved proof. You also have citations so it must be important to someone other than you.

You say that the result is "not new" and "not super interesting", so I'm not sure why it should be published in any event, regardless of whether or not and when it appeared on the arXiv.

Even things which are "somewhat interesting" may deserve publication. Who judges what is "super interesting", anyway?

It is interesting enough to have attracted some citations, apparently.


text:
How can I publish my independent research?
To many of you this might sound extremely ambitious, but I am already doing a lot of innovative things in my area of expertise. I think the results from this research could benefit the general public. It would be nice for me to be able to write my results in a formal paper and publish it. However I am not affiliated with any university and I know how much scrutiny there is in publishing.
So assuming I have a paper written what are my next steps to publish it?

This question is far too broad in my opinion. The answer to your question as it stands is "find a suitable journal and submit the paper". If you are up to speed with the literature in your field you should have some idea of a suitable venue to publish in. If you're interested in the actual process of submitting an article, look at this question.

related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/91138/41302

If you have a paper written, the next step would simply be to submit it to the journal of your choice once you have done the formatting...

"To many of you this might sound extremely ambitious, but I am already doing a lot of innovative things in my area of expertise." - This is funny. In fact, the oposite is true. Most users in this site are involved in doing innovative things. Since you don't say anything about yourself, this sounds nothing close to "extremely ambitious".

I posted @astronat comment as an answer. It's a perfect answer and I couldn't resist posting it. Sorry.

@user2789433 Usually a easy/good rule is to check the journals where the papers you cited were published.

Try to publish some article in the newspaper or in the magazine. Maybe it will interest them!

Find a suitable journal and submit the paper.

I'll add the traditional Academia.SE warning: suitable journal means, among other things, one that is not from a predatory publisher. There are many questions/answers here on this SE site and other resources around the web.

@RenatoDias couldn't have put it better myself ;)

Some ideas on how to find those suitables journals that would publish my independent research? :)

The same ones that would publish it if you were affiliated to a university.

I agree with the existing "Find a suitable journal and submit the paper." answer, but a bit more detail may be helpful.
An experienced professor as academic advisor can be especially helpful to a new researcher in two areas, knowing what is innovative and selecting a venue.
To know that a particular idea is new requires broad knowledge of related research. Similarly, selecting an appropriate venue requires experience with the various journals and conferences. Objectively judging the standard and degree of interest of your own paper relative to the papers typically published in a journal can be especially difficult.
To do those things yourself requires a lot of reading of papers in your field, and often related fields. Read to select papers that should be referenced in your paper. Read to know the style and structure of papers in your field. Read to know what sorts of papers are published where.
Select a journal where, based on its stated scope and other papers it has published, you believe your paper would best fit. Go to that journal's web site. Look for "information for authors" or similar. If you cannot find that, use the "contact us" information to ask.
Follow the journal's process for submitting a paper. Be careful to follow all formatting guidelines. Await results. There are many questions and answers here on what results you might get and what to do about them. Broadly, the paper may be accepted or rejected outright, but often there will be questions and requests for revision. The process should improve the paper. If the final decision is rejection, consider submitting to a lower prestige journal, one that publishes less important papers than your first choice. However, avoid publishing in a predatory journal.


text:
MPhils or Masters by Research in Germany in a mathematical subject
I was wondering whether there are Masters by Research or MPhils in Germany in a mathematical subject? I have been advised to look at the 3 Berlin universities (TU, HU, FU) but have only found PhD's and MSc's. What is the equivalent of a research masters in Germany? Thanks!

Are you quite sure that these MSc degrees you found are not research based? That does not agree with my experience of Masters-level degrees in Germany. Some links to the information you found could be helpful.

I don't think the distinction between MPhil and MSc is that well established in Germany (the Master title is pretty new there). So you need to look at the content of the program rather than the title to find out whether it is research focused or not.

An MSc is an integrated research master (i.e., completed by writing a Masters thesis) in Germany. Although the alternative (a non-thesis Master) is possible by law, to the best of my knowledge this isn't offered by any university in Germany (technical or otherwise; note that universities of applied science (Fachhochschulen) are different). The possibility of a third-stage thesis-only Masters is not provided for under the German system.

Although what you could do, if you already have a non-thesis Master degree, is enrol in an MSc degree and get your coursework in the non-thesis degree recognized towards the MSc -- if everything lines up perfectly (which it never will...), you'd only have to write the thesis to obtain the MSc.

Most master’s degrees in Germany require a thesis in some form, usually comprising the final semester of studies. However, because of the Bologna process, there are unlikely to be “pure research” programs.


text:
UK Postgraduate student loans for 2016-2017 intake
The UK government announced that from 2016-2017 student loans for masters degree will be available up to a value of £10000.
I will complete a masters degree in August this year and I intend to do another masters degree starting in October this year.
Will I be eligible for these new student loans?
Or will only people who are doing their first masters be eligible?

I have heard of a rule saying that you cannot get funding for a second masters degree in the UK if you've already had funding for the first one (also in the UK). Not sure whether that applies to loans.

The UK rules on student loans are described here.
Basically, it says that those doing their second masters are not eligible.


text:
Where to correct an inefficiency of algorithm in a published paper?
I spotted a serious inefficiency in our algorithm, which was already published. Basically, we have an algorithm to encode a problem A into a formula X. But we later found that we can encode into a formula X', which is equisatisfiable, but with much less (up to thousand) of variables.
This change is very trivial in logic, if we need to correct the algorithm, we only need to change 1 line with one subscript. But it improve the performance drastically, up to 10 times in some instances.
If somebody build on our work, I don't want them to make the same mistake. If somebody want to compare with our work, I want them to compare with the improved algorithm, not the result we reported in the paper.
But the change is so trivial, how could I let everybody know?

The change only appears trivial to you now that you know about it.
Moreover, while the change may be simple, the validation of that change is not: I'm sure there's lots of experiments to run to verify your statement, and maybe some new analyses to be performed as well.
To me, this sounds like a fine opportunity for a followup.  If your paper was published in a conference, then the improved version can go into the "extended version" journal paper.  If your paper was already published in a journal, this is a good time to follow up with a short conference paper.  If you're in a field that doesn't like conferences, there will probably be journals that take "short papers" or "application notes" or some similar.
Bottom line: one way or another, there should be a good place to put this not-as-trivial-as-you-think piece of work.

I'm sure there's lots of experiments to run to verify your statement: really? Why are you sure? Nowhere in the post is anything said that could indicate this, and in fact OP says the change is trivial, which suggests that at least after it is pointed out, it is obviously recognized as correct. Needless to say, if that's true then there isn't any need for a followup paper, unless the new improvement opens up genuinely new directions to explore.

@DanRomik To quote the original post: "But it improves the performance drastically, up to 10 times in some instances."  That statement implies 1) experimental testing and 2) a potentially significant dependency on problem structure that is probably worth elucidating.

Most journals have errata for published papers.  Contact the journal and ask them how you can amend your paper with the updated algorithm.  They will likely simply post the erratum you provide to the online version and put a note in the next issue of the print version with the revision.

But there is no error, this is just inefficiency. And the paper was published in a conference (I'm in Computer Science).

Errata don't necessarily imply "incorrect".  Inefficiency that is improved would still be published as an erratum to the article.  Conferences often do the same thing as journals.  Depends on the conference.

I would call this an addendum rather than an erratum.

I would call it "addendum" too. I was referring to the section, not the modification.  Some journals have separate errata and addenda, but most put them both under the former's header.

Sounds like a prime opportunity for a second publication!
In all seriousness, you can cover/publicize this through a white paper. It has the benefit of being picked up by Google Scholar and should be found by anyone doing a literature survey of your work. Most universities have a method of publishing white papers or you could use a service like arXiv.
If you'd like to generate a little more publicity, throw up a blog post or some sort of social media post as appropriate to your field (i.e. Twitter, Reddit, etc.).

Your suggestion for a white paper is not necessarily a bad idea now that I understand what you mean. However the first sentence of your answer only makes sense as a joke, and it was initially not obvious to me that that's what it was (even now I'm not entirely sure). I recommend removing that sentence, and maybe clarifying (assuming that's what you mean, again I'm not completely sure) that the white paper and social media suggestions are meant to get the community to learn about the improvement to the algorithm rather than as self-promotion for the OP.


text:
My grade is 2.1 in my country but first class in the country I want to study in, how will I be treated?
I've got another year of undergrad studies left and am looking for good masters degrees, but am having trouble estimating where I stand in terms of candidacy, I'll work with the British system as an example of a foreign system, as it's more likely to be familiar to everyone:
I project I'll get my diploma with a 7.1 to 7.5 out of 10, depending on the last year's test results, which in my country is upper second class (according to the conversion tables I've found), but in most countries I've found interesting degrees in, it's first class honors (or something like that, I find the exact names hard to remember and beyond the point of these systems). There are a few more differences, some in favor (we have lower average grades which puts the same grade in a higher percentile) and some against me (we have a higher passing grade, 5 instead of 4, so they're grades would be theoretically dragged down if we assumed an even distribution in both countries), and my big advantage is a very strong CV in terms of experience and a very good internship, also it's a 5 year diploma that I'm finishing, with 300 ECTS, but not exactly an integrated masters.
TL;DR / The Question: So how do universities view foreign students' degrees? Do they look at the grade alone or do they take the conversion based on titles for granted? Also, does the percentile in which you finish count? If so I'm in luck since we have uncharacteristically poor grades here.
P.S, seeing the message on the "graduate-admissions" tag, field of study is Computer Engineering, location, as "diploma" may have suggested, southern Europe. Also, though I state my situation to illustrate my concerns, do notice that my question is indeed fairly (in my humble opinion) clear and generally applicable rather than personal and generic, just in case.

My experience going from Brazil (MS) to France (phd) was that those details were totally ignored. My phd advisor knew the lab I was during my MS and unicamp's reputation. I don't think he ever saw any transcript (or even the MS diploma - I sent the B. Eng. for the university for paperwork, that's it).

That's quite an encouraging encouraging start, I hope that's the general case

I know people in the admissions teams and I myself come from Spain, where grades work similar as you describe. No worries, admissions people know, it should not be a problem. Also, often they look more to rec letter and other things rather than the GPA