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How to cite online articles that don't have a publication date?
I am very new to the ordeal of incorporating citations into my work, but I'm working on a project for school, and in it, I'm using the APA 6th citation format.
https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/core/
This is a source I used. I believe it falls under the category of "Website" (translated from Norwegian, I'm using a website that shows the different formats of citation for different text types). Now, the link provided is described by NatGeo as an encyclopedic entry, and no authors nor publication date is to be seen anywhere. I couldn't spot it at least. Now, the website I used said that the format of citation for "Websites" is like this:

Blah-blah-blah (National Geographic, 2009)

However, I can't find that date that I need to include at the end. Is there then an altenative format to use? Or am I just not looking properly for said date?

For web resources, which can change without notice, it is typical to give the date on which you last accessed the article.

If you go to your link, scroll down and click on 'Credits", it provides a "last updated" date. In the case of NatGeo, maybe it can be trusted. But I agree that giving the date you last accessed the article is also useful.

@Buffy Reading on the site that gives a tutorial on how to use citations, it says that for the case of websites, one should include the date of access in the citation list in the end. However, it says how one formulates this in Norwegian, so my question is, how does one write this in English? Is it Accessed 8th November, 2020?

That would be fine. In that order the comma isn't needed, actually. But in the US we also write November 8, 2020, with a comma. That isn't universal in English, however. What you have is actually fine.

@Buffy Okay thanks, I've already sent in the assignment, and I went with "Accessed January 28th, 2021". That way, it matched the format of year and date that was included in another website I cited.

The APA blog answers this:

Determining Website Dates
If no date of publication is provided, use the letters n.d. (which stand for “no date”). The copyright date on the website itself should not be used as the publication date for particular content on that site.

(Note that you should use the updated date if there is one.)
When you have multiple citations for the same website and both have no date, you should append a letter to the end, similar to an actual year: “n.d.-a”, “n.d.-b”, etc.

Okay, so in my case, that would be (National Geographic, n.d.). If I were to use any other article from NatGeo in that same text, I would have to change the first one to (National Geographic, n.d. -a), and the other to (National Geographic, n.d. -b).

@A.Kvåle Exactly, except there’s no space before the hyphens.

Okay, thank you :)


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When should one apply for a PhD in the UK?
In September 2021 I will be starting a Master's degree course in Economics, and I want to pursue a PhD after its completion. The Master's course finishes by September 2022. However this raises a problem. If I want to start the PhD course in September/October 2022, I would have to start applying/searching for funding for the PhD right as I begin my Master's degree, this September. At the same time, if I decide to apply for a PhD only after finishing my Master's degree, I would probably start the PhD in September/October 2023.
On the one hand I would prefer to start working on a PhD programme as early as possible and it would feel like I have wasted on an entire year just for applications if I were to start in 2023. On the other hand, if I start applying this September (for late 2022 entry), I feel like my chances of securing funding or making a good proposal could be lower since by that time I would only be starting on my Masters course, and so would not even have a thesis continue my work on.
At this point, I am open to all advice or experience that people have with this issue. I hope everyone is well and thank you very much in advance for your time, advice and kind consideration. Sorry, if my explanations are a little unclear due to the dating.

I would have to start applying/searching for funding for the PhD right as I begin my Master's degree, this September: This is surely common amongst all applicants following a similar path. At the same time, if I decide to apply for a PhD only after finishing my Master's degree, I would probably start the PhD in September/October 2023: Why not start between September/October 2022 and September/October 2023?

Everyone doing a Master's is in the same boat. PhD applications aren't usually due until late January or early February, so that's a good four or five months into your Master's course. This gives you plenty of time to work on the applications and get to know your lecturers to secure a reference letter or two.
Plus, you may end up working on something completely different for your PhD than you did for your Master's so it doesn't really matter how far along in your Master's work you are at the time of applying for PhDs. Furthermore, admissions committees are fully aware of this situation.
Good luck with the applications.

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Disclosure of history of depression
I have studied for eight years at University and have at the moment achieved a masters degree in Mathematics. During my first 4-5 years or so, I suffered on and off from depressions and my performanes varied. I did a bachelors project in physics and was supposed to do a masters there too, but a combined factor of the depressions with a professor who has a bad rapport with students made me interrupt the education. For a year or so I considered whether to leave academia or to actually fulfill the masters, but the experience left such a bad aftertaste that no interest seemed to come in finishing it.
After a while I decided I wanted a masters after all, but it had to be in a different subject - Math. I took some courses and talked to a lecturer about doing a masters project (he knew about my situation).
I finished much of my remaining course work (doing well in most courses, getting the equivalent of As or Bs pretty much all way through) and did a project under him. By this stage I had essentially overcome my depressions and was at full health. The project went really well and is now considered one of the better works done in recent years and several independent senior people have told me that chances of getting a PhD with such a thesis will be very good.
Considering my history though, it has been explained to me that I will not get one at my current Uni. (Guess it would be too talked about, and I am well-known at several departments). I was however enouraged to apply to other Unis.
So I did and only a bit more than a week ago I got an interview. Having had it I thought it went fine, but now after 10 days or so I havent heard back and am believing that perhaps I havent gotten a position (they announced three). During the interview I was asked about why I wanted to leave my current Uni and the answer I gave was that they didn't have the direction of reasearch I wanted to persue (which is true). I think in retrospect that they wanted to now about this history (that I assume my supervisor mentioned in his letter to them).
My questions:

is it wise to disclose my history of depressions? They can obviously see my registered masterproject that was never finished and probably contact the department for more info. If I can convince them that the depressions is not a problem anymore I think it is only good, but to what extent will this be the case? Will it look better to avoid the question altogether?
10 days having passed and no confirmation, but am I really out? (After the 20 minute interview I had a private discussion with one of the potential supervisors and he did mention that my master project was very strong and that they seemed interested in the commite. The discussion felt good)
I wrote an email after 4 days or so, asking how things went. The response was very short and went '' The decision is not quite made yet. We will announce shortly.'' Is it OK to email him again after a week from the first letter if there has been no response? Or would this potentially ruin any remaining chances?

It would seem weird for you to disclose your issues this late in the application process (a week after they said that they'll "announce shortly"). Even if there was some benefit to being honest about your past, it's probably too late to do it now. It would have been a good idea to mention your past problems, how you dealt with them, and how you are feeling now if it would give a better impression of your current state, at some point early on in the process, e.g, during the interview, preferably brought up by yourself, but if you contacted them about it now, it would seem more like a desperate attempt to salvage an application process you think is failing (even if it actually isn't).
Even if it could make a difference between being accepted and not being accepted, you have to then wonder why the commitee haven't brought it up themselves then? If this is the issue that'll be the decider here, then I find it highly unlikely (and highly unreasonable) that the commitee haven't given you least a chance to talk about it from your perspective. So, if they know about it and haven't brought it up, it's probably not what's going to decide whether you are accepted or not, so bringing it up now is likely to have no effect.
But, if there's a next time, and you're sure it will be mentioned in your recommendations letters, then bring it up yourself. But remember, nobody is expecting you to disclose the detailed circumstances of what and why. That's your private life, it's nobody's business. But you should at least explain how you overcame it and how you are feeling now. and make clear that it's entirely in the past now (if that's true, obviously, but I can understand how you may not be fully aware of whether it truly is in the past yourself. Just make sure to act in good faith).

To clarify: what I really meant was to disclose my history in general and not now when the interview is over. But I agree it might have been a mistake not to explain the situation. Lesson for next time!
Also, they didn't ask this explicitly but one person definetly tried to ask in that direction. I just didn't realize this at the time.

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My university is listed on Anabin as H+ but my degree is not listed. Should I worry about this?
I'm planning to do my MSc in Germany and found that in order to apply a master program in Germany, I should check my undergraduate degree is whether acceptable(H+) or not(H-) via Anabin database. The problem is my university is listed on Anabin as H+ but my degree(Abschlussbezeichnung) isn't. The thing is most of the universities listed on Anabin seem to have the same problem. I searched for the BSc-Physics in the US universities but there was only one on the list. Should I worry about this?

Could someone add an english explanation of Anabin?

Downvote for unclear question. What are Anabin? H+? H-?Abschlussbezeichnung?

Anabin is a List of Universities of the world. H+ the institution is considered a university in their country . H- the institution is not considered as an accredited university. H+- a categorization is not possible.

Link to Anabin, in German only. Click on the "suchen" (search) tab, then on "Alle Länder" to choose a specific country. All the institutions listed with "H+" are accredited universities (according to them, at least).

In the hard end, what some random listing says about your school is irrelevant. You will get accepted or not.
The only way to find out how much importance your prospective places for MSc studies place on the listing (or not) of your undergraduate degree is to ask them directly. Attach a short description of your undergraduate studies, state the degrees listed in Anabin, and give e.g. your GPA. It might just be that your curriculum is too new to have been included, or has not been presented for evaluation, or has other external certification that might be relevant. That you'll have to ask locally, and add to the above.

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When are usually the applications deadlines in United States for a Computer Sciences graduate program?
I’m a French student graduating in computer science this year, and I want to do my master in the United States, I want to join the US Army, but that's another story. I have to apply for a program starting Fall, 2016 at the latest in order to still have a chance to join the French Army as a commissioned officer, a second-choice job plan. I know I have to pass a the Toefl and a GRE test.
Yet, I’m absolutely new to the Anglo-Saxon system, and it seemed that most application deadlines were closed by the 8th of December.
Thus, generally speaking, what are the deadlines for applications?
Is there an official date? And last, do I still have a chance to join a United States graduate program for Fall, 2016?

Please do come back around Christmas and let us know how this story worked out.

There are official dates, set by each program.  Most of those are in the winter prior to the autumn in which you hope to start.  Of the timelines and deadlines I'm aware of, it's too late to apply for starting fall 2016 at most schools. Especially if you haven't yet taken the TOEFL and GRE, you should be targeting next year's cycle (assuming you still want to apply then).  It takes a while to get those tests scheduled, taken, and graded, and you generally have to have scores in by the application deadline.
A quick survey of Masters' application deadlines for schools in the first page of Google results:

Stanford: Dec-08
Columbia: Feb-15 (but may accept some late)
Chicago: Feb-01 for international students
Brown: Mar-15
Carnegie Mellon: Dec-15
Georgia Tech: Feb-01
UT Austin: Dec-01
Illinois: Dec-15
Michigan: Jan-15

Look for programs that are of interest to you and then check their application deadlines for a specific answer.

There are some lower-ranked programs that will look at applications well into the summer, particularly if you're not seeking funding.

Also, there could be programs with rolling admissions (in other words, no fixed deadline, admissions treated as soon as they are filed). My university is doing rolling admission for PhD studies for the sole reason that we are new and relatively unknown.

Some of those places do have rolling admissions, but even with rolling admissions there comes some time when you have to roll to the next year and change the start date offered to successful applicants.  That's the deadline in a rolling setting.

@WBT, in my university, even the start date is rolling. Not sure if any long-established university will have this leeway, though.

@svavil do you have classes on a semester schedule or something like that? Are there dates when it becomes too late to join a class in the current semester, and one who wishes to join must wait until the next semester?  Are there sequences of courses where earlier courses are prerequisites of later ones?  Are there required courses, especially if they are part of such sequences, that are not offered every semester?

@WBT I am now talking about PhD student admissions, which, in our program, are only required to take few courses. PhD students may start working on their research at any point in time. Also, we have two-month long terms, which probably makes it easier.

@svavil Yes, rolling start dates make much more sense for PhD programs that are heavy on research and light on classes.

Okay, I started my application for Brown University and I already have taken the TOEFL with a result of 92 and I'm undergoing the GRE. I found that Citadel University also still accept application. I know this is very short, I'm not use to the Amercian educational system. Thanks anyway. Anymore advises?

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why some author not provide free pdf of his/her book on internet?
why  some author  not  provide free pdf of his/her book on internet ?
I see Allen Hatcher  Books are available on his website with free of cost and no need to charge for  download the pdf
There  many good book with  red( Wiley) and yellow (springer) cover .But that book price is very high and not available on internet .Poor student  can not afford  it

This is why libraries exist.

Would you work for free for thousands of hours?

@HermanToothrot that difficult to answer .

@HermanToothrot Book royalties are in addition to salary. Also, thousands seems like an overestimate.

@user2768  thousands sees right to me.

I mean, that's like asking why not all movies, games, and music tracks are made available for free by their authors. Some do, some don't, and some would like to but can't because a third party (a publisher) is against it.

@user2768 Presumably the time requirement depends on the book in question. I'm reminded of the preface to Mahan's Many-particle physics book:  "I am often asked why I wrote this book. The questioner usually has an understanding of the work involved and so regards my efforts as reflecting poorly on my sanity. On the whole I agree, and if I knew at the beginning the actual investment of time, I probably would not have started. The actual time is about four to five hours per page, which is roughly divided equally among writing, editing, and library searching." That book has about 1000 pages.

@Anyon 4-5000hrs, that's years, wow.

%90 of the people who write textbooks shouldn't, they are generally worse than the existing options and it mostly exists to stroke their ego.

@user2768 I don't think you really know how writing a book works. You are not hired or paid by the hour. You write the book and the publisher takes a cut of the sales, you don't get paid a salary.

@HermanToothrot Academic authors are typically university employees who receive a salary

Publishers pay authors for exclusive distribution rights, forbidding the provision of books for free. Some authors better negotiate terms, allowing for free distribution. E.g., terms may allow distribution of preprints.

"Publishers pay authors"  https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/63619/how-much-revenue-do-academic-authors-make-on-their-published-books

Because they want to make money from it.
If you are interested in spending hours of your time working for free in the name of dissemination of knowledge, I got lots of copyediting work you might be interested in.

People write textbooks for a variety of reasons. Money is only one and for most authors the monetary rewards are modest (very modest). There are exceptions. I once (more than 35 years ago) had a colleague who was a millionaire based on publishing math books. Economics texts can earn astronomical amounts of money for an author. But these are mostly elementary texts, because such things have a wide potential audience. The first Calculus course is taught to millions of students every year.
But advanced material, such as Hatcher's books, have a much smaller potential audience. They are therefore much more expensive (per copy) to produce since the returns are small.
Moreover textbooks seem to have a limited lifetime, though some old classic math books are, IMO, priceless.
But there are other reasons to publish books. One is that a person wants to teach a course in a certain way and doesn't find a suitable book for their students. Another reason is reputation. One way to earn tenure and advance in rank is to publish books.
Another reason is just that a person is interested in a topic and wants to bring their ideas together and share them.
In the case of Hatcher, it is a combination of all these things. I suspect that money was the smaller part of his equation, since he was paid pretty well and is now retired. His books have been harder to find in print, due to financial calculations from the publisher, so he decided to share them. He feels good about what he has done and it is reward enough. Especially for someone who has had a successful career and is retired. He probably has a substantial pension, making book revenues immaterial. That is also my own experience, though I use a different model that keeps the price per copy very modest, but not zero.
But, publishing printed materials is an expensive operation if you want quality. The few books I've done with established publishers, such as Springer, have taken a long time to produce with many people involved, just to get to the point where it makes sense to actually cut the trees to produce the paper and print the book, never mind the distribution costs of getting it into your hands. Everyone along the way has a right to be compensated fairly for their efforts.
Some people are willing and able to make the results of their efforts a gift. I celebrate that and wish it were possible for more people to do so as well.
But, if you think of it as paying it forward, then taking the gift puts an obligation on you to pay it back in the future. But pay it back not to the authors themselves, and not necessarily in money, but with contributions of some form to the community at large.

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How much can a one really bad semester destroy my chances for MS in the top US/Canada Schools?
Due to some really harsh personal conditions, I had a GPA of 2.1 in my 6th Semester, now overall my CGPA is 3.3. I have a pretty good research experience. 2 Decent LORs, one from a highly esteemed professor, 330 in GRE, an international publication, couple national, an international intern. That semester had some major courses relating to what I am applying in MS(got C's in them). Should I mention why I failed to perform in that particular semester in my SOP? If then how much emphasis should I put on it?

Several points.
First of all - yes. You should definitely mention it. If there is a separate personal statement than that is the place. Often the first cutoff is mostly based on GPA and GRE. So mention it early, be concise, avoid any temptation of trying to gain sympathy (many have some difficulties along the way), and explain how you overcame that personal hardship.
It is what it is and you cannot change it. So chin up and forward march. Try to polish whatever you can polish. I you have a publication in a decent venue and good LOR's, it might cover for GPA issues any way. If your LORs are 'decent' and that is not modesty, I might start from there.
Good luck!


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Problem with organizing tables on a television series
I hope to ask for advice regarding how to best present my data for my thesis.
Currently I am working on a thesis that requires me to catalog instances of wicked women in a series, which includes dialogue, camera settings, aesthetics, etc. My problem is how to best show these instances as my data for my thesis.
I have four shows in total, so while the table method seems good to compare these instances, it's not very good for dialogue, as the dialogue is sometimes really long. And I can't just put episode title as an example because it's a descriptive kind of analysis.
Any advice would be nice!

When you say a table, do you mean of the raw data or a table with summary statistics of some kind?

You might find it worthwhile to consider that most theses do not present large amounts of raw data in the body of the thesis. Raw data is often relegated to an appendix or even to an attached medium, such as a CD in a sleeve of the thesis cover. I say this because the (possibly large) samples of dialogue that are causing you difficulty seem to be raw data.
In the body of your thesis, you might, instead, present a table in which you have abstracted salient features of the dialogues or summarised the features of the dialogues that are important to the argument or line of enquiry that is central to your thesis topic. You could then refer the interested reader to the raw material if they wish to look at it.
When you think about how, exactly to lay out your tables, it is easy to make the mistake of thinking about too narrow a range of options. In your case, it sounds as if there are some categories of data that are very short (e.g., "camera settings"), and suitable for entry into a single column of a table, whereas other categories (e.g., the dialogue) contain extensive raw data. If you attempt to create a table of just four lines, in which each line represents a "show", then you will end up with something absurd. The dialogue will be squeezed into a column that is far too narrow to hold it, and the column of dialogue will (for each "show") extend far beyond the data for any of the other columns.
Instead of doing that, consider creating a table in which you might (or might not) have "columns", and where each show is represented by multiple lines. You could use formatting features like bold-ing, and background shading, to highlight the title of the show on a single line stretching the whole width of the table, and below that to have a line that has three or four columns (each with its own small bolded title) to show more succinct data. Without seeing your data, it's difficult to know, but here is an example (based on lots of assumptions!).

Hello! Thank you for your advice! I plan to put the data in the appendix and refer to it in short form in the thesis itself! I just don't know how to format the table in the appendix because putting the dialogue within the table makes it so stuffy.

If you have a spreadsheet or data base file with the raw data AND the data itself is not subject to copyright (big question) you can consider storing the data on a site that allows viewing or (if you what to allow reuse) downloading.  There are many options for this, ranging from Google Sheets to Drop Box to your university's academic works site to ICPSR Open and more. I would suggest utilizing one of those. Social science faculty and in some cases life science faculty are likely to know about these options.

When presenting data it is best to use visualisations through various kinds of plots, following the adage that a picture tells a-thousand words.  Indeed, in an academic paper or thesis, the actual data tables would usually be relegated to an appendix or supplementary material and the information in the data would be presented in plots with associated descriptive text.
Since you are undertaking a thesis at a university, you can begin by talking to your thesis supervisor, but you can also seek supplemetary advice from other academics who specialise in statistical analysis and visualisation of data.  I strongly recommend you go and talk to a statistician at your university to get help with your data and presentation of that data.  Most universities either have a statistics faculty or some kind of statistical consulting unit that can assist students.

Associated issue/rant directed at my fellow academics: For any research candidature that involves or anticipates empirical work involving data collection, analysis, or visualisation, the primary supervisor should always ensure that there is a statistician on the supervisory panel from the start of the candidature.  There is little that is more frustrating for academic statisticians than being asked to come in to help a problematic research candidature at the eleventh-hour to clean up messes or provide a post mortem for failed statistical methodology.  If you are a research candidate at a university, please talk to your supervisor as early as possible to see if you anticipate any empirical work, and if so, insist on having a statistician added to your supervisory panel from the start of your candidature (unless your primary supervisor is already a statistics expert).  If you are told this is unecessary, please direct your supervisor to me and I will try my best to set them straight.

Hello! Thank you for your advice as well! I didn't think to ask the statistics department! I will do so once schools have opened! Thank you so much!

Many colleges do not have statisticians. However, they have many researchers who know how to organize data.


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Getting a degree quickly while already having years of experience
I am a software developer with 5 years of professional experience and 5 years of freelance experience. Prior to that, I taught myself programming since I was a kid. I have no degree.
I was able to get my foot in the door using that alone, but recently a Reddit thread was posted showing that someone with no degree had applied to over 400 jobs and only got 10 or so responses. That has been my experience, as well.
I was fortunate to get the jobs that I have with the use of recruiters. Due to circumstance, I really need to maintain employment to the best of my ability and have more stability, and would like to be able to pass the automated filters for degrees.
So while I'm working, I'd like to take classes in the evening online and just knock out some degree.
Does it matter if it's an associate's degree or not, in your knowledge? And are there accelerated programs that I could pursue in the evening, online? I've looked and looked and I just cannot find what I'm looking for, without submitting my personal information to sketchy website forms.
Clarification in case it matters: I'm in the United States.

Check out the Open University (UK) - been doing online degrees for decades and are well established & fantastic reputation. Not sure what credit you might get for experience - that's a chat for the admissions etc...

@SolarMike, Open U is limited in where they can offer degrees. Several years ago they tried to open a US branch but weren't successful at it - market conditions, I think.

@Buffy that detail was not there when I made the comment - need to polish my crystal ball, or make the assumption that all questions are US based...

@SolarMike, I worry about OU with the looming Brexit. They may, then be limited to UK only, but I haven't been in touch with anyone there lately and don't know their position on the Continent. But it is high quality, for sure.

@Buffy Brexit is a minor "blip" in the history we have with the countries in Europe - trading and travel going back over 2000 years... a LOT of history...

I think that an associates degree isn't going to get you terrifically far in the employment market. In the US the first couple of undergraduate years (i.e. an associates) is pretty general, rather than focused on employable skills. The advanced courses normally come later.
However, it is a start. As with most applications you want to show not just general qualifications, but how you are especially suited to the position and highly likely to be a success at it. In your current situation it may be your employment history that is your most important asset.
But specialty courses that are available online through some reputable outlet can add to your CV. That would be true even without a degree.
There are some US universities that can give you credit for "life experiences" in some cases. If you are in a place with a lot of educational opportunities (NYC,...) you might explore what your real requirements might be and how you could get a degree part time and at night, week-ends, ...

It looks like you are highly depending on the work you are doing, so being a full-time student is not an option I guess.
Here are the options I see:
In germany we have something that lets you work half a year and the other half is being a "full-time" student, during the student time you also get full money from the employer(In general you get paid about 50% less as if you already have obtained a degree, depending on the work place it is about 1000€ here). This degree counts as a full degree. Maybe there is something similiar in the US?
We also have something called "Fernstudium"(Blunt translation is: "Studying from afar") where you get all your material sent home and you work in your freetime whenever you want. You only have to attend the university about 10-15 times a year(for exams and small courses over the weekend sometimtes). This also counts as a full degree.
Now the options end which gives you a fully recognized degree. The next things are online courses, specializations and other training which gives you certificates. The recognition of those is highly dependent on the work place you want to apply.
I have completed several courses as software architect on coursera, got nice looking certificates from them with a logo from university of alberta, signed by professors etc., but my experience during job interview was that they did not seem to care at all. You could also look for "udacity nanodegree" which is an online course...but you would need to check how they are acknowledged in your area.
My advice: Try to get a full degree in your freetime, look for something in the US that is similiar to a "Fernstudium". I would be surprised if there isn't anything like that.


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Where would you publish a serious research proposal/idea that you don't have time to work on yourself, but would still like to get credit for?
I am an ex-academic (Ph.D + a couple of postdocs) who has been in industry for more than a decade. I work in enterprise analytics and data science.
My current work is fulfilling, but takes up most of my time, and along with my family responsibilities, I don't have the time to work on pure research projects, or to collaborate with an academic team.
I have a couple of serious research ideas in AI and ML, arising from my current work experience plus my previous training and some of the recent results in the literature, that I think are definitely worth pursuing.
They are not just good one liner ideas. I have a rough idea of the steps and experiments needed to implement them (roughly on par with what a serious Ph.D thesis proposal would look like).
As I said, I don't have the time to pursue them myself, but I seriously think they are worth pursuing, and I would like to get credit from coming up with the overall approach, even if can't execute the actual code and simulations myself.
What is an avenue for publishing the ideas and the approaches for investigating them, such that they would get the attention of people who actually have the time to follow through on them, and getting credit for thinking of the approaches?
Does a solid, well substantiated research proposal count as a legitimate contribution?

How about looking for an academic partner to co-supervise students with?

What's your field? In software engineering, there are several possible venues for presenting ideas at halfway stage, including workshops and "new ideas" tracks. Some of them might expect preliminary results, others accept short "position papers".

@lighthousekeeper I work in Data Science and Machine Learning.

Does a solid, well substantiated research proposal count as a legitimate contribution?

No, it does not.  A plan for achieving something, where none of the steps have been completed, is not a significant achievement.
Sometimes it is necessary to do experiments or calculations in order to form a plan.  That could be an achievement.

I agree with this, to a point. People get a bit too attached to their ideas sometimes (see all the questions about people afraid their ideas will get stolen). Ideas are relatively cheap, most researchers have lots of them. Putting ideas into practice - securing funding, putting time into research and writing up the results into practice - that's a lot of work. That said, if you have a good idea and won't be putting it into practice yourself, user347489's answer is a good idea about how to have someone else put the idea into practice.

I think that your answer is field dependant, in mathematics for example I would argue that getting the right idea for proving a theorem can be more important than filing in the details, especially if the details follow naturarily.

@ObscureOwl There's always the balance quantity vs. quality. Generally, quantity wins out - when it's the mass of work which should get the credit rather than the neat, but unsubstantiated idea neeings lots of steps to establish. However, occasionally, the key idea is the main contribution without which all that work would lead nowhere (or would not even be undertaken). I have seen several cases of that in my career, so I am not a follower of the "it's the work, not the idea" school of thinking. That being said, there are many "cool" but mediocre ideas around and, yes, these are cheap.

@CaptainEmacs agreed, there's no one answer that's always true for these questions. The contributor of an important idea is, well, a contributor. But someone who contributes an idea then sits back while someone else works several years on it (OP mentioned a PhD project) isn't really a full contributor. That's why I think user347489's answer is a good idea - staying involved as a supervisor allows you to contribute experience > time, and help keep the project on track. Just contributing the idea and then stepping back probably wouldn't be enough on its own to be a full contributor.

@NickS as a (pure) mathematician, who has seen this kind of view expressed from time to time ... I accept there is some truth in it but I personally think that quite often the devil is in the details, and there is an unfortunate trend for "important" mathematicians to feel that somehow the details are beneath them. This may however vary slightly between mathematical sub-disciplines

@YemonChoi I am not saying that the details are not important, and often I cringe when people leave the "obvious" steps out... I found mistakes more than once in that part... My comment was more related to the fact that the answer is saying that the idea or plan means nothing without the details, I am trying to say that in mathematics sometimes getting the right idea means a lot, of course completing all the details is also important.... Just to make this crystal clear, if I am struggling to prove a theorem, and someone gives me the key idea for that, I think they deserve to become co-authors

@YemonChoi At the same time, I said sometimes, because I don't think that suggesting to someone to look in a direction, or see if some technique can help with a type of problem or giving some suggestions for proving minor results should qualify one for authorship... I am just saying that, especially with papers whose goal is to prove one major result, the right idea or plan may be the most important thing for the proof. It is definitely not the only important thing, but it is a "legitimate contribution".

As per Buffy's suggestion I'm turning my comment into an answer.
It seems like you're in a great position to start a collaboration with a university researcher to co-supervise students with them.
Frankly speaking I don't know who your best bet to talk to would be, but reviewing the current literature in the areas of your proposed research is a good idea. Hopefully you're located in a geographical area that allows for an in-person collaboration.
You should also make some research about organizations dedicated to connect academia with industry in whatever country you're located. The cases I know about are the Insight Data Science Fellowships and more broadly all the programs by MITACS in Canada (an maybe even WA state). MITACS programs allow you(r company) to pay half the salary of a graduate student or a postdoc(!) and co-supervise them together with an academic partner in a predetermined project. These internships can be as short as 4 months or constitute a full postdoc.

I think this answer gets you closest to "credit", in that a supervisor who does helpful supervising would normally be credited in the student's publication. Whether that's as secondary/supervising author or in acknowledgements should be discussed before the student commits to the project.

What do you mean by credit? You have to be more specific about what is it that you want? Normally researchers publish articles/research outcomes in research journals and are then considered as contributions. If your idea is theoretical,  then you can prove it theoretically, try for a publication directly in a theoretical journal or conference (some good venues that allow theoretical research in machine learning are (1) COLT, (2) ALT (3) JMLR. On the contrary, If your idea is experimental, then develop it into a concrete plan of action. Then look for collaborations for carrying out the experimentation. Based on your agreements in collaboration, you can be an author or first author of the publications/patents/startups that result from this. How you collaborate for experimental work is crucial here. You need to convince your team that your idea is worth pursuing and would yield benefits to the collaborators.


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Struggling postdoc Physics
I am seeking some career advice on my situation.
I am around my third year of my first postdoc in Physics.
Haven’t published a first author paper for three years now.
I come from a poor immigrant family.
Despite this, I have managed to get into top 5 European bachelors and PhD programs.
I was quite good at high school: could solve math and physics problems without much studying (though not at a genius level of international olympiads folks).
But I have been struggling since I have started university. I have had a really hard time improving: this had a big hit on my already low self esteem (and I will not talk about how lack of money had also a really big impact on me).
Today, people that I did not consider smart enough, and people that I considered smarter than me, are getting ahead of me in their academic career, and know what they are going for.
I love science. I have ideas. I understand things quite quickly.
But to stay in science I have to publish. Something it seems I am not capable of (I am currently stuck on all of my projects, and there are some collaboration deadlines, circling around the same topics).
It seems like I can not make progress.
I actually was on the verge of leaving academia after my PhD. But the fear of missing out (and also of proving to myself and people that I am smart enough to make it in academia) made me stay.
I have to be rational.
I might not be suit for this kind of field, or for technical stuff.
But I also do not want to give up.
I am reconsidering again my cards.
But not sure what to do at this point. And I do not have the courage to talk to my academic supervisors (one of which already considers me a failure).

You haven't said anything about why you haven't published. It is very difficult to give any advice but to publish. Do you have adequate support in your postdoc, for example? Have you submitted papers that were rejected?

No rejected papers. Usually what I publish is high quality. But I just struggle to have consistent progress to show to collaborators as others. And struggle to make progress on simple things that I know how to do. But just can go ahead…

As a wild guess, your focus on smart, smart, smart in your post makes me think that you might be one of those people who relied on their smarts as far as they could and then got stuck once this strategy no longer worked for them. In contrast, people who learn early on that understanding stuff deeply involves working hard instead of just being smart (because they were not so "smart") end up outperforming them.

I think this point related to my low self esteem makes lots of sense actually. Thanks.

Just know that as the kind of person you describe yourself as, you'll be very welcome in a lot of companies. Often, it doesn't even matter what your PhD is in. You have one, which distinguishes you from a lot of applicants. So you could choose what kind of work you want to be doing and use this as a way to make some yummy lemon juice out of those lemons :)

I suspect you stayed in academia for the wrong reasons. You wrote about fear of missing out, but no matter what you choose in life, you will miss out on something else.

Your post and comment suggest that your issues aren't technical, but psychological. You might benefit from scheduling a few sessions with a mental health professional with whom you can discuss this. I went through a period of burn-out and I also suffered from extreme introversion. A pro helped me with the latter, but I had to change the situation to get past the burn-out. But someone with experience in counseling academics knows about these and other common issues and can probably provide you with a plan.
Many (most?) universities have a way to provide such help. It won't hurt to talk, and might help.

Thank you for your point of view. I have not actually considered burned out. I had one during high school. I will consider this.

Another common malady is Imposter Syndrome.

I am no psychologist, and I would not try to diagnose you, but your story reminds me a bit of myself. I discovered late in life--about the time I finished my PhD--that I have ADHD. I always thought that people with ADHD could not focus; but it turned out that hyper-focus is actually a symptom. I could really focus on my academic work... that is, until things were not going so well. I had some major setbacks in my program. And my ADHD kicked in really hard, and I had a very difficult time keeping myself going. It's been a year since I graduated, and I still have not published anything. I have projects, sure. But I bounce around too much, and I am too perfectionistic about my work. I get overwhelmed by the massive vision of what it would take to "adequately" develop what I want to develop. And yes, I do often feel like a failure in comparison with others. However, I have learned some ways to cope, and I try to keep working on my research, even if it doesn't look like the path others take. And I remind myself that I have something to offer that others who think more neurotypically might not. So, for what it's worth...

Quite similar to me. Scary. Thanks for sharing.

All the other issues aside, which have been touched on by others, the most important thing that needs to be addressed ASAP is talking to your advisors. Do not make any assumptions about what your advisors think of you or how they will act, especially if you are in a mental state that is currently very self-deprecating.
Most any reasonable advisor wants their students and postdocs to succeed. Talk to them, explain where you currently are and what some of your current struggles are, both long-term, and project specific. It is their role to guide you through it.
Then start making a plan. Set small goals. Publish some average instead of stellar papers just to get back into it. I think momentum is often more important than that one glossy article, especially for a struggling student/postdoc.
As an advisor, there's nothing that disappoints me more than group members who do not communicate and let things build up to a breaking point, when in reality it could have been easily resolved, together.


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Balancing reading and college responsibilities
My exams start in three weeks. In three weeks I will reach all the planned obligations, but I have one problem. I bought a book that I wanted to read for a long time. The book has a large number of pages, and I have to start studying for exams, so I would have to balance reading and studying. That might work, but I used to have an approach to books where I read the exam books and the books I chose separately. I am afraid that my literature will get mixed up and that I will not understand well the two different contents. How did you balance reading with schoolwork? Did you read books during the exam period?

I was in Electrical Engineering (EE) so there's little danger in conflating the material with study material, but if your major is say English lit, you would possibly do so!  If this is not a problem, you can take small breaks to read, but I would focus on studying.

Hi. Would you consider editing your post to add a few clarifications? Pretend as if we don't know anything about what you're studying, what year you're in and how university works in your region of the world. Pretend we don't know what are "planned obligations", we don't know whether the book you want to read is related to your studies or not, we don't know whether it's a novel or an essay or a textbook; pretend we don't know how large is a "large number of pages"; etc. Pretend we don't even know what's an exam book: is it a book with exercises, or with lessons, or with past papers?

What kind of book?

I am studying at the Faculty of Law, and soon I will have exams in the subjects of philosophy of law and international procedural law. The book I want to read is The Downfall of the West by Oswald Spengler.

It seems that you seek a compilation of examples in hope for someone to offer a recipe that mediates between your desire (read a literature book) and your need (study for exams). We could substitute chocolate cake versus cardio exercise, and we'd be at the same quandary but in the StackExchange for Eating Habits. Improve your question please by tempering your general request for examples of how folks handle their battles of wants versus needs and by focusing on something with stronger relevance to an academia-oriented question sans the physiological underpinnings.


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Could getting fired from a second job significant affect the likelihood of admission to a master's program?
I am applying to graduate school to work on a Master's of Science in Nursing (Family Nurse Practitioner) in the fall. I've been working for the past few years, and it's time to go back. When I first started applying, I worked two jobs, and my second job is for a company that I'd largely stopped working for (I set my schedule with this company), but I had previously worked with as my primary employer for many years (too big to leave off a resume). Long story short, I was fired from that job about two weeks ago. My primary employment, where I work a regular schedule, is unaffected, and all of references for my application are from my current employer.
The question is: how much is that likely to affect a school's decision on my admission? I understand that there are different departments, different factors, etc., but is it likely that being fired from a second job around the time that applications are due will significantly hurt my chances of getting in?

I am unclear how a grad school would know you were fired.

This is something that I'm unclear about as well, and I should have clarified that component of the question: do graduate schools call employers listed on resumes/applications to verify employment? Could they even become aware of that kind of thing?

Was your job related to nursing at all? If not, do you even need to include it on your CV?

Yes, both jobs are nursing jobs, so it's tough to leave off the resume.


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How long can you give job talks on your thesis-book project?
I'm two years out of my PhD in the humanities and have given a couple of job talks since, all on material from my dissertation.  Not only have I spent months trying to make the talks themselves as good as possible, they're based on ideas and material I've had the entirety of my PhD to feel confident about presenting.  My question is: at what point on the market do universities expect you to present new material that's not part of your dissertation research?  I'm at the very early stages of developing my "second book project," but my research / argument aren't nearly as developed!

Most universities want to see that you are at the publication curve or ahead of it. For example, its perfectly ok to talk about your dissertation three years out of grad school if you are talking with your now published results. If, on the other hand, you are discussing a phd that you never turned into a publication, that can be a little trickier. If you are currently in the revision process of the publication, thats probably ok too.
The main point that I am getting at is that talking about your dissertation is ok, its likely the foundation of your future research. Its even better, though, if you are discussing the published results from your dissertation in a journal or in your case, your published monograph.

I do not know how it in humanities, but in general the idea is that in job-talk you present the solid work that you have already done and preferably published. Put it simple: you should present the most solid work that you have done because it is the track-record that you are judged. The talk can include some portion of newer work, but as soon as it is not published it is better to be only small part. In job-talks there is a common practice to devote 5-10 last minutes to future directions. Your new part can go for example there.

If you are already in a tenure track position, you should start talking about new work now.  Maybe make it a blend if you just don't have much.  But certainly I would not emphasize earlier work just because you have a more polished talk.
If you are still looking for a good position (out of work, or doing post docs or lecture positions) than it is fine and maybe even preferable to concentrate on the thesis.  But even here I would emphasize some of your recent work.
Remember these talks are not just talks on the content and for enjoyment but advertisements of you.  Yes, make them pleasant and revealing, sure.  But make yourself look good.

I’m in a vastly different field, but if your work is progressing at approximately the same rate as your community’s then I wouldn’t worry about it.
Perhaps you can talk about your ongoing work as well just to signal that you’re not stagnant. The point of the job talk is to assure the department that you’re going to do good work while there!

For as long as the material is relevant.


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Violated academic integrity on an online coursework. What do I do?
basically I was working on the answers with my friend and didn’t realize the questions were slightly different and therefore I used the answers we got that were based off of hers to mine. I am scared, what should I do?

To what extent do the syllabus and regulations permit working together?

What were you working on?

Found nothing on syllabus, we were working on mathematics

From your post & comment, my understanding is that both of you worked on the questions together (i.e. you didn't just copy her answers without understanding how she got there) and to the best of your knowledge, there's no rule prohibiting students from helping one another with assignments.
If that's the case, I would recommend contacting the lecturer (or their assistant, depending on how the course is run) and explain the situation to them, and offer to redo your assignment with the correct questions. Make it clear that you didn't simply copy from work that your friend did, and that neither of you were aware of any rule against helping one another with assignments.
If you don't do this, there is a risk that they will notice the identical answers and assume that you copied from your friend. Depending on university policy, there may also be consequences for your friend if they assume that she let you copy. Even if neither of those things happen, you probably won't get a good grade for the assignment if you answered the wrong questions.
If there is a rule against collaborating on assignments... there may be some consequences, but it's going to look a lot better for you if you come forward instead of waiting for them to notice.

In the worst case, you have been caught in the act of submitting someone else's work as your own. I imagine that, even absent a statement on the course syllabus, the university has a policy statement on Academic Misconduct, it explains that this type of behavior is frowned upon if not prohibited, and you were told about the policy at some point.
The simplest form of punishment is that you will receive a grade appropriate to an incorrect answer.
The extreme form of punishment is that you will be called upon to explain yourself.
To mitigate against the worst extreme in the latter case, I recommend that you and your friend visit the instructor sooner rather than later. You should offer an apology from both of you. Your friend gave away her work to allow others to use as their own. No harm there, but she should have recognized that her work was not to be submitted by you for you to get a grade. You took her work and submitted it unaltered as a way to get a reward (a course grade) for no work on your own.
In the case where individual efforts are demanded for a question, team work is the approach where you get together, assure that you understand the question and how to do the work for it, and then each go home and do the required work on your own. Academic Misconduct is by comparison the case where you go home, each do some work to get to some type of answer, get back together, decide the "best" answer, and then submit that identical "best" answer for each of you. You did somewhat the latter rather than the former.
Lesson learned. You should hold no major anxiety. It happens all the time, and your case is very minor. Admit to it, apologize for it, promise and hold to the promise never to do it again, and move on.


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Is the "Journal of Innovations" in management a Reliable Source for Academic Research?
I came across the Journal of Innovations in [specific subject area] (https://www.journal-innovations.com/) and am considering it as a potential source for my research. However, I'm uncertain about its reliability and reputation in the academic community.
Does anyone have any experience with this journal or insights into its editorial practices, peer-review process, and overall credibility? I would appreciate any information or feedback that can help me assess whether the Journal of Innovations is a trustworthy platform for scholarly publications. Thank you!

That might be a question for your supervisor and co-authors. Not being from your field, the journal homepage looks suspicious to me. Multiple typos / poor English / low APCs for OA / PayPal as the first payment option / an APC depending on the author number / a T&F publication until 2023 but now not longer with them / .... If in doubt, ask your local library as well.

Does this answer your question? https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/83764/how-do-i-identify-predatory-and-low-quality-journals-with-bealls-list-gone-ho


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Advice for learning the original works of previous mathematicians
I recently become interested in understanding the exact works of previous mathematicians, such as Peano, Frege, Russell, Hilbert, etc. Just to be clear, I'm not interested in a shallow history of past mathematics (like for example "that person came up with that"), but rather in really reading their books page by page and understand the context/motivation of what they were doing. How is that possible to do? I find that going directly to their books by myself without any guidance/commentaries is not efficient. I also don't seem to find any university courses that take the books of previous mathematicians and explain it to students. So any suggestions on that would be appreciated.

Related: Why older papers are more difficult to read than the new ones? There likely are"Collected Works" of some of the names you mention or other historical expositions that can help with notation and background. For more specific questions, note the existence of the History of Science and Mathematics site.

Are you undergraduate or graduate student?

The easiest way to do this is to read more modern and more readable expositions and then go back to the original text.

@learner graduate

First, there is probably no "efficient" way to do this. You have to either slog through it, seeking the insights that the original author had or utilize other insights that you have from the study of other, possibly later things.
Don't forget that the original author was placed in time. That means that they had certain general and explicit knowledge of the field, including shared insights about what was true and what might be true. It is hard to place yourself in that context if you have studied later works that have expanded on those insights. Math builds on math as insights build on insights.
Second, to become a good mathematician, this isn't really necessary. I don't need to go through and redevelop the insights of, say, Hilbert to understand what he did. I can, studying what he left behind, follow the trail of breadcrumbs and move on from there. Such study might be fun to undertake, but mathematics has moved forward from the greats of the past.
You don need to gain insight into things, but that can be done many ways. And few, if any, of those things are "efficient". It takes hard work and a deep dive. In another field, note that it took Einstein about ten years to develop the insight that let him publish the Special Relativity paper and he had access to the great ideas of the day as he did so. He also discussed his ideas with others. It wasn't enough to re-plow the past furrows, but to build on them and deviate where necessary. Not very efficient.