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Is it safe to address university administrators as "professors"?
Last time I had an appointment with one of the university advisors, she kept mentioning that she is going to "teach" later after the meeting. Long after the appointment I realized that I should have called her as "Professor XXXX" rather than "Ms. XXXX". However she does not have any scholars' websites, nor we could find out on internet that she indeed teaches some classes.
It is common in US to address college teachers as "Prof." I wonder if it is safe to address all university administrators as "professors", because if they are senior enough, most of them could have taught one or more college-level classes, orientation sections, or training sessions. Some of the administrators have ruling powers over the students in many scenarios, and it is not wise to insult them.

I added the United States tag to your question because in many countries "Professor" is a job title and therefore only used by actual professors, rather than generic teachers.

No. Many university administrators do not actually teach, and some fraction of these may actually think you are confused if you address them as "Professor". I am rather surprised that Googling didn't reveal that she taught classes in your case.

In addition, many administrators have a "higher" title than "Professor," e.g., "Dean," so it would be typical to address them as "Dean XXX."  And if it's not clear from university website or their business card, you can always ask them how they prefer to be addressed.

At my university, some advisors often led quiz sections for program/college intro classes, much like grad students do in other coursework. Maybe that's what she meant? She still wouldn't be a professor, but it would explain what she was doing w/o being a prof

@Kimball Dean Firstname or Dean Lastname?


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Professor has no interest in the topic of my research proposal
For a research paper in my course we had to come up with a topic proposal.
When I talked with my professor about my topic he did not seem interested in my proposal and only talked about a topic of his interest, in which I am totally inexperienced and not really interested in. He didn´t even comment on my research proposal.
The problem is, that my professor is really into this topic. How could I politely ask him to discuss my proposal instead of only his proposal?

What level is that? PhD? MSc? Something else? Answers depend. Generally, it is not a good idea to have a strong opinion about what topic to pursue with a prof that has a strong opinion preferring a different direction. Better to seek another prof.

I don't understand the question. Are you basically asking us if can ask discuss with a sort of supervisor / teacher etc? Of course you can. The rest is obscure.

Usually, when students who are just starting propose something, it is either old, too easy or not interesting or/and way too hard to an experienced researcher.    So I'm not surprised by your professor's reaction.   My advice is to ask him/her what is wrong with your proposal.

Yes, of course you can ask. And, depending on his personality and yours, you might be successful or not. Be prepared for the "not", I guess. But you would be wise to give some deep thought to his suggestions, since he likely has more experience at this stuff than you do.
And one of the things you can ask about is why the professor doesn't advise you to follow up on your own plan. There might be some unstated reasons - though such things should be made plain. I think he owes you that much, at least.
But the best you can probably hope for is to be allowed to follow up on your own idea but with little help or guidance. If you are really new at this, then that guidance might be invaluable.
And fighting with professors seldom leads to successful outcomes.

Try and arm yourself with arguments how your topic would be beneficial for the group.  Perhaps you could say that working on a certain topic would produce results and papers a lot faster than the Prof's prefered topic and hence could potentially lead to a larger number of and higher quality publications.  Also listen to what the professor is saying too.  They tend to know what is and is not a good topic.  Perhaps a compromise where both topics are persued, if time permits.  If your topic is more fruitful then perhaps you could win the Prof over.

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Toxic colleague talks about me to Professors
I am a PhD student with a very difficult colleague - someone I thought was just socially inept, and rude. I was always friendly, giving her the benefit of the doubt, even though she offended me and others on a constant basis with her privileged, superiority complex. On paper, she looks brilliant - she has had many educational opportunities that my parents couldn't afford - something that has made her unbelievably unaware of experiences not her own.
After many derogatory and humiliating comments, I eventually started ignoring her quite a bit - she would never respond to my hellos, would interrupt me in class, laugh when I didn't know a scholar she brought up, etc. It was taking energy to be kind and outgoing to her. Her demeaning behavior was obvious to many, but because she is my classmate, I see her the most. After seeking guidance from mental health professionals, I decided to no longer be upset by her, but also not entertain her behavior. I blocked her out as much as I could, while trying to maintain professionalism.
Granted, there may have been a few times when I questioned her in class - asking for clarification or further explanations into her method of thinking. As PhD students, I am under the impression that we should be able to defend our research, and my professors never said anything to me about the questions I asked.
However, very recently a few professors approached me about "tension" between us. They informed me that this girl has complained about me to them. She apparently has discussed me often, even going as far to say that I "trigger" her. I am shocked. I have never said anything to my professors about her, even though she has offended me several times. I am friends with almost everyone in the program, while she has isolated herself.
I now am feeling extremely insecure, and painted in a very negative light. Professors are suggesting that I meet with her, and show her my "softer" side - I'm from the East coast, we can get a bit...intense. They are encouraging me to reach out to her and comfort her. However, I have been kind to her from the beginning, only recently trying to ignore her toxic attitude. I'm not sure what to do, or how to go about this.
Suggestions?

If she's some kind of sociopath, then every morsel you give her is just ammunition to use against you. Don't do it.

Why do the profs think it's their business telling you to be nice to her? Is that normal in your academic culture?

What country are you in?

Probably something you said or did upset her and she has hated you since. If this is really a serious drama-causing person then I don't know if there's a solution. Such people just create their path of destruction through life and everyone else gets out of the way or regrets it. But it's hard to judge from one side of the story. What do you mean by "intense"?

A short comment on her being triggered: Triggering means you cause her to remember traumatic events in her past. This is nothing you are expected to know before it happened at least one time, so this is not your fault. You can be careful next time when you know what topic triggers her, of course.

"Unfortunately, we do not have the best rapport and, after a number of incidents, I decided to keep a certain distance, which I hoped could be maintained. I am sorry that she inconvenienced you with this inconsequential personality mismatch. However, please understand that, after my experiences, I'd rather continue to keep my distance." - and, of course, do so, unless you absolutely have to interact with her, and then only minimally.

@allo It should mean that, but in recent years "x triggered me" seems to have become synonymous with "x made me angry or upset" with some people.

I'm also someone with diagnosed PTSD and take "triggers" very seriously. I think this word is being thrown around and that is extremely offensive to me.

A campus is a complex social environment that not everyone can adapt to, which is why most campuses have a free, confidential consultation office regarding harassment and personal issues. I'd recommend discussing this with that office before trying to engage with this troublesome student directly.
It sounds like you have gone out of your way to avoid confronting this student, and you don't want professors to know about your negative feelings towards her. When you consult a third party, there is no need to cover up such details. Let the campus staff specifically know that

This person was making you feel uncomfortable.
You tried your best to avoid conflict by disengaging with her.
She is now complaining about you to professors, even though you are no longer communicating with her.

The professors apparently don't understand the full story with this student. It is wrong for them to ask you to confront her directly.

In graduate school, there are a bunch of unreasonable and entitled people. This is not uncommon. However, as far as politics and the person who is expected to go to bat for you: talk to your advisor.
Your advisor will be the one representing you at faculty meetings, and has likely spent a long time navigating the politics of the department and college at large. His/her expertise in this is exactly what you need to tap into for appropriate direction.
That said, I would say ignore her completely and totally. Word gets around in graduate school, and if you are nonconfrontational and she is witnessed consistently doing the opposite, people will see the emperor's clothes.
As far as formally complaining, I would treat that delicately. If she is sound academically and her parents have a lot of resources it can end up being a headache for your department. Even if every professor sides with you, they still don't want to fill out paperwork on you two or be a character witness to the college itself. I'm not saying don't do it, I'm saying speak to your advisor candidly.

The suggestion to talk to some HR part of your university seems like the best first option.
But if it is not helping enough: tell the professor who tried to mediate that you disagree with the version that the other student has made out, and that you would only talk to the other student about it if someone else is with you in that conversation so that it wont further any miscommunication.
This way you may add your side as well if it continues to be a thing, and the professor gets the option to also just agree that it is not something worth their time if they feel that such a conversation is too much of a hassle.

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Referring to the work of other academics in interview with potential supervisor?
In an interview with a potential PhD supervisor, is it ok to refer to papers published by a different academic, or should I mainly talk about the potential supervisor's papers?
thanks

I imagine this depends on the subfield and university and supervisor, but I would rather have a widely read and knowledgeable student than one who is trying to suck up to me.

I talked about zero papers in my PhD interviews; the interviewers were far more interested in my own work than in my opinion of their work.

If the supervisor rejects you based on you citing other people work, it will probably be a bad supervisor anyway (except if the paper you cite is very low quality).

There's no ideal answer here—it really all depends on the ego of the potential supervisor. A good potential advisor not only teaches her students, but is willing to learn from them as well. If you know something that touches on the topic you're talking with a potential supervisor about, I see no reason not to mention it. You're demonstrating familiarity with research in the field, and that shows you're willing to put in the work to learn, which is an important part of becoming a good researcher. I'd prefer that a candidate tell me what she knows, rather than hide it for fear I'll be mad about the fact that she mentioned someone else's work.

thank you for your answers. i have come across an article some 16 years ago that I probably find more interestng then the direction of his current work, is it a bad idea to mention this or not?

If you’re not interested in his current work, why interview?

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Chance of funding while applying for multiple PhD programs at the same school
I found the same question in here, however, my story is a little bit different:
I contacted a faculty member in one of the US institution and he promised an admission. But, for the chance of funding, he suggested me to apply to two programs, and I did so. Recently, I've noticed he is a faculty member at another program (third program) too. I asked him whether he recommends applying for the third program. His response was "I'm involved in this program as well. The chances of funding are pretty good. I would suggest you modify your statement...".
My question is does applying for three separate PhD programs can significantly increase the chance of funding? or conversely, as some stated before, does it have a negative impact on my application?
This professor is a faculty member in all three programs, and they are placed in different colleges.

Are you applying for three separate PhD programmes or three separate sources of funding? What country is this in?

yes. I edited the question.

Something is odd here. Usually individual professors in the US cannot "promise" admission. I wonder if there are other issues here as well.

Actually, after sending my CV, he mentioned "Admission shouldn't be an issue, and Internally I can strongly recommend you. You must likely will be admitted."

@tangentbundle I have never heard of such a restriction, in fact, I applied to two programs at three different universities (and was admitted to both at one).

@tangentbundle Could be, I'm not in humanities

This answer is coming very late, but may be useful to people who land up on this thread. By referring to different departments, I mean different PhD programmes.
Regarding the PhD application:
Since the same professor is in all the three departments and he is conducting research which are aligned with your research goals, there is no harm in applying to all 3 programs. It may make a stronger case for your selection as well (not a guarantee always, but no negative impact surely). The graduate committee is made of professors who are very well aware of the fact that almost all phd applicants apply to multiple phd programmes, the difference here is that they know where 2 other applications of yours went. They may ask you to set a priority, that's all. Showing interest is different from receiving an offer, professors may be interested in multiple candidates, but due to constraints give out offers to a smaller pool. They should not hold anything against you. If they do, you are better off not joining that programme.
I applied to 3 phd programmes in the same university, and got selected in my second choice. All 3 departments knew that I had applied to the other 2 as well. They had no issues with it.
Regarding funding:
Often different departments in the same university have different ways of selecting candidates and providing funding. In my case, two of the departments gave out department-centralized PhD offers, where we would have to choose our advisor after joining the programme. However in the third department at the same university, funding was through the grants of individual faculty. So the PhD advisor was fixed from the beginning, and the funding was specific to that project's requirements. You would have to ask the graduate programme manager for exact details.


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Does having an M.Phil degree affect my chances of geting accepted for a PhD in the future?
I have completed my master's degree from a Russell Group university and I am planning to pursue a PhD degree in the future. Now, I have received an offer from a well known university in the UK. But due to lack of funding they are offering me an M.Phil degree of 2 years. My question is, if I pursue this degree and perhaps complete it successfully, will I be at a disadvantageous position when I apply for PhDs in the future?

No, you will not be at a disadvantage. A two year MPhil degree should have at least some research and dissertation component. Doing well in the course and particularly in the research aspect should strengthen your PhD applications. You would also be able to ask your MPhil supervisor for a reference letter for those applications.
A word of caution: sometimes an offer of an MPhil due to lack of PhD funding is something of an implicit rejection, especially if the MPhil itself is unfunded. I would advise against undertaking an unfunded Masters or PhD. It's not worth it if you're not getting paid.


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"Poster presentation" vs "poster only" in academic conference
I want to submit an abstract. I have three options:

Oral presentation
Poster presentation
Poster ONLY

What is the difference between 2 and 3?

Your choice depends on the question why you want to submit an abstract there.

Some conferences select a small number of poster presenters to give a more traditional (albeit short) slide-based talk in a special session.  So, you either present just a poster (if your abstract is not selected), or you present the poster and a short talk.

A poster presentation generally means that before the poster session you get a short (~3 min) slot to summarise your poster to the audience.
A poster session (poster only) implies that you only want to display your poster, not speak about it to the audience (you should still stand near your poster to answer people's questions about it as they walk around).

Thank you. A poster presentation is preceded by a pitch and then answering the questions during the poster session? or you answer the question after the 3 min presentation and you don't have to stand near the poster during the poster session?

I would probably stand near the poster anyway because you can get into a proper conversation rather than limiting yourself to a Q and A sessoom.


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How to judge the relative prestige of named postdoctoral fellowships?
I see more and more named postdoctoral fellowships being advertised — sometimes funded by departments, sometimes by universities, and sometimes by government agencies or NGOs. I often notice recipients of such fellowships (or their PIs) claiming that they were awarded "the prestigious fellowship X", but I can't help but think that if everything is prestigious, then nothing is.
How to judge the relative prestige of such fellowships?

This is verbal fluff. Unless you already know the fellowship in question is prestigious by your standards, just ignore the claim.

And why would you think there is any reasonable scale on which to judge "relative" prestige? Seems more like a vast space of possibilities, not any approximately linear ranking.

Why would you want to judge them? What is your position? Are you filtering interview candidates?

@user111388 I am not filtering candidates, just wanted to hear some opinions about it. Are the criteria different depending on who is judging? I would expect a fellowship applicant and a hiring committee to judge the fellowships' prestige in the same way, so the question can be answered from either perspective.

@Pyem: My point is: Some people have to judge candidates (hiring comittees). Other people (researchers, common citizens etc) do not have to. my opinion is that if one does not have a strong reason to judge people, one should refrain from it: what is the point to rank people?

One (imperfect) indicator for competitive postdoc positions is the acceptance rate. For example, my postdoc position is named (local national science foundation) and the acceptance rate is about 15%. You need a pretty good application, which is quite comprehensive, and you get about 250k-300k EUR to work on your own project which you designed. I would say locally this is a pretty prestigious fellowship because people know what it entails. Of course, as in any grant application process there is considerable randomness involved.


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What to do about repeated PhD rejections?
I'm a prospective graduate student in political science with a strong GPA and research interest in climate change and environmental conflict. My challenge is that I have been finding it difficult to get into a PhD programme. I have been applying since 2018. This year I hoped I would get into my desired choice but I was rejected due to my low GRE score. I don't want to take the exam again but political science departments seem to strongly value high GRE scores.  What can I do to improve my chances of acceptance?

I'm not sure what you want us to tell you.  If the schools you want require a good GRE score, you have to deliver that or lower your sights.

Concurrent here doesn't sound the right word to me: do you mean recurrent?

Why don't you want to take the GRE again, especially since you know that that's the obstruction to a competitive application?

Fear of failing and cost is why am not willing or should i say confident of taking it again.

I know that you want us to say "It will all be ok", but it may just be true that either (i) you have to take the GRE test again and get a better score, or (ii) change your approach to applying. The fact is that apparently things haven't worked out with your current approach, and so to keep trying isn't likely going to yield different results.
So take the test again, with more studying, and get a better grade. And/or, broaden your scope. Of course everyone wants to get into their favorite graduate program, but not everyone can. So apply to other programs at other universities and see how that goes. You don't have to go to Harvard to get a good education, nor do you have to go to Harvard to have a productive career and a job you're happy in. There are plenty of places that will give you a shot at all of these, and that are less selective.


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What can a person who hasn't enough time do about the unpredictable nature of the publication process?
I'm talking about a narrow sub-field of Computer Science - algorithm execution high-level simulations. However, I guess, this applies to many fields to some extent.
When you are submitting an article to a journal (peer-reviewed, indexed, with a track, not from a ranking bottom), you can't send the same article to other publishers. After submitting, editors often do not update anything in Elsevier's or Springer's systems about the status of your submission. The first move from the editorial board usually takes 2-8 weeks. 2-8 at best, if you sending them emails to track this, at worst they can just lose your paper and/or ignore emails. Usually, the next stop is a desk rejection (the shortest and the way causing least headache, just isn't leading to the goal) or sending it to the reviewers. The reviewing process in this narrow research area takes 3-12 months. A reviewer may say something not really relevant and short (or something you can use to improve your text, but this doesn't matter in this case) after a year and the article gets rejected. This can take longer if you aren't keeping an eye on it.
Then you have to repeat the process. This is not a short story process either, reformatting the article, pictures, editing (for the next journal's unique rules while you still remember that they can just ignore it or responding once a month to emails) etc. You can't speed this up, you can't even predict the time it will take. Seems like a kind of strangely convoluted hell just for presenting your results in some peer-reviewed (not high tier) journal if you're outside academia.
Disclaimer: the author is outside academia currently, but he has publications, teaching and research experience. 3-month tool development and output analysis results sometimes need 1-2 years to be published (just accepted, to be more specific). Maybe, the situation isn't as rough inside academia, but for one has no proper business relations, and paying all fees as an author and without an ability to focus on this process because it isn't one's main activity - it is.
Any advice?

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

Since you are in CS, the solution is easy: Submit your results to a conference first (at least as an extended abstract, if the full paper is too long for the conference). For conferences, there are fixed deadlines for the review process, so you are guaranteed to get a decision within two or three months (even though it need not be the desired decision). After the first version has appeared in some conference proceedings, you can still submit an extended version to some journal. Then: be patient. There is no guaranteed way to speed up the reviewing process. Live with it.

In addition to @Uwe's suggestion about conference publication, most computer science venues allow preprints to be circulated, e g., via arXiv.org.
You can thus publish and distribute a version of your manuscript before submission, then update as you improve it and link to the final version upon publication.
This pattern is particularly common in the more theoretical portions of the field, which it sounds like you are in, and where review times are often particularly long, as you note.


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My friends wanted to kick out our lecturer
At my university, there is a lecturer that my friends dislike. I think he is a genius and really knows algorithms and programming. He is easily accessible and will talk with everyone. However, some of my friends dislike him because his teaching method. He often gives difficult questions and we had troubles on his exam. They created a petition to remove him. I hope he is not kicked out by them. What should I do?

I understand your question as that you would like to support your instructor. If that is the case, you could consider leaving positive feedback with those higher up - his direct boss, say -, as well as mentioning it in the course evaluation. If you feel strongly enough about this, you could of course start a counter petition signed by people who agree with you.

I would go to the lecturer and tell him you support him. And be ready to support him if his case is brought up to the faculty.

If the instructor has issues with teaching then hopefully this will be brought up to the department and they can work with him to improve his teaching.
As far as your question about what you should do, just continue through the course as you would any other. If at any time you feel like the instructor isn't providing you an adequate education, then try to have a meeting with him before politely bringing it up with the department.

OP should comment, but I read the question as OP wanting the exact opposite (see comment above).

@gnometorule In that case, my advice is the same. Continue as usual. If he isn't an adequate teacher for the other students then the department should hopefully intervene.

I will investigate again about my lecturer's doing. I think that he is a good lecturer.

@OliviaOlgaClarissa While you may think so, multiple students disagree so they should seek intervention from the department if they feel that is needed.

Should I ask department to intervene? I don't want my junior later do the same thing with him.

@OliviaOlgaClarissa I would not since there is nothing for you to do or say (since you are fine with the instructor). If the other students have an issue, it is their business and will sort it out.

@AustinHenley I disagree. Proactive praising of the lecturer's teaching (possibly without link to the petition) may create a counterbalance to make clear that not everybody agrees once the petition comes through. Otherwise, only the negative voices will be heard. I know of a course where a single (but very negative) comment seriously damaged the relation between a lecturer and her class. I have reasons to suspect it would not have happened if proactive support had been demonstrated. Let the upper echelons know your praises.

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Possible to accept GRE score and view it, but not report it to a university?
From what I've read from the ETS and other sources, after finishing a GRE exam the system will give you the option to keep your scores, before you actually know the score.
If you decide to accept the score and then view it and realize it's bad, do you still have the option to not send it to any school, or is the step in which you select the schools to send it to before the step in which you view your score?
I'm wondering if I will be in either of the following situations:

I think I did well, but I have to select the universities before I actually see my score. I select the universities, and then see my actual score and see I didn't do so well.
I think I did poorly so I choose to not send my scores, but then I see my actual scores and find I did well, but now I have to pay extra to send my scores.

Ideally:

I accept my scores, then I'm able to view them. If I did well, I select my universities. If I did poorly, I don't select any university and just redo the GRE on a later date.

Thanks!

You always "keep" your scores - they're not deleted from the system. This page goes over which scores, if any, are reported to schools you apply to.

Am I able to view the scores before selecting which universities to send them to? My question is, if I get a bad score can I NOT send them to the universities, but instead try to take the GRE again?

See the ETS FAQ.  In your additional score report, you can ask for "All" scores, "Most Recent" score, or "Any" specific date's scores to be sent.  https://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/scores/send/asr

Yes.
You get to see your unofficial test scores on test day. Then you have the option to send these scores or not.
Also, you can always change your mind by sending additional score reports after the test day for a fee. If you provide the schools the day of the test, they are free.

Hi Austin. I've updated my question with 2 scenarios to clear up what I mean. I'm already aware that I can order additional score reports after the test.

@sandy Updated. You really should read their FAQ. All of this information is there.

authors: Александр Волков


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MHRA: citing texts from foreign language - original in footnotes?
I often insert quotes from foreign languages in my undergraduate essays. I translate them in English in the main text, but do I have to put the original text in the footnotes? It will make them long and unpleasant.
I'm currently working with the MHRA referencing style, but I wasn't able to find any information online. Any suggestion also from other referencing styles (MLA, Chicago, APA) will be appreciated.
Thanks
EDIT: I'm asking here because my teacher has not replied to this question and I cannot go to see her.

Who is your audience? If this is a journal article, consult the journal, but if it's a professor grading your essay for a class, consult the professor. There's not enough information about your situation in your question for us to tell.

Thank you for your reply. It's one of my undergraduate essays - not an important piece, but it relies heavily on foreign language sources.

I have already asked the professor without receiving any reply, and the deadline is approaching, so here's why I am here.

Go to office hours if there are any between now and the due date.

Unfortunately, I'm now in another country and this is impossible, considering that the due date in in ten days. Anyway, thanks for the suggestions, I'll edit my post to make it clearer.

Here a few solutions, all of which should be fine unless your professor explicitly rejects one of them.  Since the MHRA (from what I can tell glancing over it) doesn't include explicit recommendations, as long as you indicate the source of your translated text and the original, I can't imagine them being so unreasonable to count off.

Option 1: Find a translation
This might not be possible, but if you can, just cite it instead.  Life made easy for everyone, unless it's a terrible translation.
Option 2: If short, include both
I would only do this if the handful of foreign words are pertinent to the discussion (perhaps due to ambiguity or double entendre), or are relatively famous.  You would probably want to quote Julius Caesar as …"Veni, vidi, vici" (p. 38), which is to say "I came, I saw, I conquered"….  For such short translations, if you did them yourself or they are well known, there's no real need to indicate the source of the translation.
Option 3: Original/translation in text, translation/original in footnote/endnote.
This prevents your main text from being too cluttered but could quickly turn into an abuse of footnotes/endnotes, especially if you have a lot of relatively short quotes.  If you just have two or three long block quotes, this might be best, though.
Option 4: Translate to English and clarify.
This is my preferred approach.  Just cite in English, but in your citation, add a little extra saying "translation mine" not unlike the common "emphasis mine" to indicate italicization not present in the original.  From what I can tell, in MHRA you actually put "emphasis added" in parentheses inside the quotation marks, so you may just put at the beginning or end "(translated from the French)" or similar.  Or, since MHRA appears to use footnotes for first citations, just include the text after the reference entry "I have translated all citations from this source to English" (or similar), and never worry about it again.

Thanks, your reply was really useful. It's just frustrating because most of my quotes are script dialogues or critical pieces which always lose something in translation. In addition, the essay will be marked just by my teacher, who knows these languages, so translations are basically useless (unless it reaches a wider audience). Thanks again!

@kjabflweanbf if you know your teacher knows the languages, I don't see any need to translate. If you were to publish, the journal would let you know if translations were necessary


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Leave of Absence from PHD
What are the benefits and harm of taking a leave of absence after the first year of PhD?
......My situation is as follows.... I just completed the first year of PhD in Epidemiology at one of the top 5 programs in the nation and failed all my classes both semesters. All year long I'd battled with PSTD, Separation Anxiety, and Depression brought on by psychological and physical abuse experienced after moving back in with my parents for a few months while I applied to PhD program. This was exacerbated by the subsequent 3 months stint of homelessness I experienced in order to flee the real risk of physical harm.  Unfortunately, this all occurred immediately before the start of classes in September. When the academic year started, I moved into academic housing and dissimulated my problems but could not hide it very long as my performance was less than optimal. My depression was so severe that I forgot how to speak, I experienced memory loss, could not write comprehensive essays, and even forgot how to spell simple words on tests.
When my professors became worried that I was not cut out for the program, my chair and academic advisor were made aware of the situation. Since then, they have worked with me to link me up to services on campus, meet with me regularly to check in and advise me on how to manage several situations.
The issue now is that although I am getting better and my grades have improved, they are not competitive to keep me in the program. Luckily, I have been given a temporary academic disability status to allow the university to make accommodations for my situation.  Provided that my improvement is a work in progress, my chair is recommending a year's leave of absence to help me get back in good health before resuming studies.  This is a swell idea for if I was younger than 30, was financial stable to be able to afford the luxury of moving out of student housing or had a family to rely on,  had a job waiting for me.  I am having a hard time seeing any benefit to taking a year off, even if it means  starting fresh.
If anyone has had a similar experience, please offer some advise or anecdote to how you handled the situation.

I'm very sorry to hear about your situation. Your institution seems to be supportive of the leave; however, the main disadvantage, as you mentioned, is largely related to financial matters. Unfortunately, I'm not sure there is a solution to that problem that we'd be able to help out with. Perhaps there is some way you can obtain disability benefits (e.g., in the form of monthly payments for living expenses) for the year while you are on leave?

Thank you Mad Jack. Just to clarify, are you referring to a State-based disability benefits or  an institution-based paid leave scheme for disability and health leave?

You could check both, but I've never heard of the latter existing in the US, unfortunately.

Yes, state-based benefits is what I had in mind.

Also, while I'm sure you've done this (more for others who see your question), be sure to request a medical withdrawal for the semester(s).  At many (most?) US universities, this can be done retroactively to a point, and will mean that the failing grades will not show up on your transcript, being replaced with Ws.  At the same time, work carefully with the financial aid office.  I know our undergraduate students have to repay HOPE scholarships for withdrawals, medical included (our state is cruel).

Guifa, my situation is a bit different. I am fully funded, so thankfully when I return my funds will still be here to cover tuition and living expenses for a year or two. However your suggestion about the retroactive medical withdrawal is a good one. The registrar is going to convert one of my grades into a audit and the other I am currently working to correct.  I have asked the professor to let me makeup work over the Summer to bring up that grade but I am still waiting on a response, Hopefully something positive will materialize from this request.

Universities have procedures for that. Moreoever, universities are run by people who have lives, families, friends in such situations and who can understand and sympathize. It sounds very much as if the people in your department fall into this category and are supportive of you.
What matters is that you get your footing back and get healthy again. If that means taking a leave of absence, then that is what you should do. If there ever comes a need to explain what you did for the semester or year that you took off, you can always say "for health reasons" -- which is true, and which everyone will understand is an important and legitimate reason to take time off, and which nobody is going to count against you.
Of course, the reasons you cite against it are all very good as well. I don't think anyone here can suggest useful strategies other than finding some low-stress job that helps you pay the bills, get you back on your feet, and allow you to come back to the program in better shape and with better prospects. The alternative, however, is not all that appealing either: as you state in your post, if you keep doing what you're doing, you may fail out of the program and then you're in no better situation either. In fact, the situation may be worse since it's easier to come back after taking a year of absence than come back from being kicked out of the program.
Ultimately, what matters is that you get healthy again. Everything else should be a secondary consideration.

A friend of mine suffered through similar situation though she was in Netherlands. She went through nervous breakdown and hence she had to take a year drop.  In Netherlands such cases are dealt with special care which is also evident in your case. But usually the funding agency does not pay for these case during this year drop. But universities have provision for such situations where either the university pays for that year or the period of the PhD program is reduced by a year.
To my opinion if you continue to do this PhD with taking the year gap then there might be a chance that the process of your better soon might slow down due to the workload and pressure associated with the PhD work but if you take this break then you have the opportunity to have a more enthusiastic start in the second innings.
I suggest you to talk to your supervisor about this and explain them your financial situation and seek their advise. Probably they would be able to help and suggest you better. Good Luck!
In the end I wish you good health and speedy recovery.


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Should I give up on trying to get into a PhD program?
I majored in philosophy, Late in my undergrad career, I decided I wanted to get into linguistics instead, so I applied for PhD programs. I had a 3.95 GPA, had taken around 15 graduate-level courses as an undergrad (5 in B and 10 in A), good recommendation letters (I think) and an interesting writing sample. In linguistics, publications don't really matter much in PhD admissions. I was also at a top 10 institution for linguistics as an undergrad. I applied to 8 schools, got rejected by 6 and waitlisted by 2 top 20 programs. By strange luck (they said so in their emails), despite both schools having gone into their waitlists in previous years, they did not do so that year.
I decided to take a year off and do some research in order to write a better writing sample, which I did. Everyone told me that was the main weakness of my application. I figured I should have a better chance then. Strangely, I did even worse (better in one regard, actually): I reapplied around 6 months ago, and I got rejected by 8 and waitlisted by 1, which is ranked 2 in the world in linguistics and literally my dream school. Again, despite them having gone into their waitlists in previous years, they could not accept me because they weren't able to go into their waitlist again. I even got rejected by the university I did my undergrad in, by the professors who wrote me my recommendation letters, even though I was a perfect fit for their program and they knew how I could handle the coursework and do independent research.
I've enrolled at an unfunded (for the first year, apparently I should likely be able to work as a TA during the second year for funding) MA program since I have no other choice. I'm going to have to live on graduate PLUS loans for at least one year. My question is, should I even bother applying for PhD programs again? Maybe I'm just not good enough. Should I just look for a job instead and ditch my masters program? I know for a fact that this is the only thing I want to do for the rest of my life, but if I can't do it then I might as well give up now before going into debt. I can't even imagine doing anything else with my life though.

To be honest, I didn't read your full question. I just read the title. What I'm about to write may not be very helpful too. But, whenever I see such questions, I only remember Arnold saying that everybody told him that his accent was bad and he was a bad actor. For years, he didn't quit! If he did, he wouldn't have been the Terminator!! Nor the Governor of California!

I don't know which field this is, but your background sounds stellar. Did you discuss with a mentor what they think is happening here? You mention "writing sample" as a weak point, but how do you know?

Well, my original writing sample (the one in my first PhD application attempt) was in field A. My second one was in field B, and that's why I took a year off to write it. But it didn't work. And yes, someone told me that it was probably my writing sample not being in field B that was the problem.

You should try to figure out exactly why your application is being rejected, as it is difficult to address your question otherwise. You should talk to your letter writers about your application and perhaps ask the admissions committees that waitlisted you if there is anything you could improve.

We can't make that decision for you...I can see how this all sucks, but other than trying to find out how exactly your writing sample could be improved (I certainly can't help you with that - I'm fairly sure your English is much better than mine), and confirm with a mentor that this is it, and nothing else could be done better, I'm blanking. Doing the masters is a risk and investment, and you need to make up your mind - having talked to letter-writers, etc., to see if they think it's a good idea - if the dream of turning academic is really worth taking it. Best of luck...

I don't think the competition is too stiff because when I look at successful applicants, I feel as if their writing samples are worse, their GPAs are lower (3.5 or so) and their coursework was nowhere near as hard as mine. I took some classes with the first year field B (top 5 in the US for field B) graduate students. A couple of them seemed to be struggling with the most basic stuff and could barely even understand the material.

@Splatoon: GPA is not a key factor IMO. You really should ask the people who wrote you the letter. And you should really ask why, though you considered yourself "a perfect fit", but you are not admitted to the U you did your undergrad. There might be some non-academic reasons for example.

(1) There's little to no reason to obscure the field you're looking at here. (2) when you say you've taken 15 graduate courses, do you mean you registered for the course as a graduate student or do you mean you were in the same class with graduate students? (3) Who looked at your writing sample to give critical feedback in field B?

Ok then, field B is linguistics and field A is philosophy. And I took the courses as an undergrad with graduate students. And my professor was supposed to look at my writing sample in linguistics, he didn't end up giving me comments. I got comments from a PhD student who knew his stuff really well so that helped, and he said my sample was good.

@Splatoon: Now that you have disclosed the value of A and B, please edit the question to include them.  Trying to answer this question without knowing your academic field is bordering on being a waste of everyone's time.

Based on what you've said, there is little to no evidence that you are "just not good enough" for a PhD in linguistics, so it would be a mistake to not apply again for that reason.  Rather, you should try to become more "genre savvy",
which in this case means learning more about the application process and what PhD programs in your field are looking for.
Here are some mistakes -- or, at least, opportunities for future improvement --
that I can see based on what you've said.
1) The writing sample: To be honest, I'm not sure exactly what this is.  In my field (mathematics), we have a "personal statement", which may or may not be similar to a "writing sample": in fact, it mostly functions as a writing sample, as what is expressed is usually not as important as the clarity of the writing and the reasonableness of the sentiments expressed.  But I don't know what it means to contribute a writing sample "in philosophy" versus "in linguistics", and I really don't know what it would mean to spend a year improving the writing sample.  I hope that academics in these fields can comment and clarify this point. My best guess at the moment is that you are actually supposed to submit a piece of academic writing in the chosen field.  If so -- applying to a linguistics PhD program and submitting a writing sample from philosophy is pretty strange: given that you took five graduate courses in linguistics, you certainly didn't need to do that.  Why did you do that?
I would not take as a given that your writing sample was the main problem -- rather, you should find out; more on that later -- but I would definitely take steps to improve your writing sample the next time around.  You wrote::
"And my professor was supposed to look at my writing sample in linguistics, he didn't end up giving me comments. I got comments from a PhD student who knew his stuff really well so that helped, and he said my sample was good."
You are not getting enough help here.  A professor who looks over something like this and has no comments is not helping you at all: it doesn't mean your writing is good or bad or anything: it just means you need to find a different mentor.  Getting comments from a PhD student is much more helpful than nothing, but a PhD student will have absolutely zero direct experience with PhD admissions, so he cannot directly help you.  You need to find at least one faculty member in linguistics who is willing to give you significant feedback.
2) Programs applied to: In my field of mathematics, most students apply to about 6-12 PhD programs.  You could get away with applying to the lower end of this range if you choose carefully: almost all students should apply to at least three different tiers of programs.  The lowest tier should be such that your faculty mentors say that they expect you to get in there.  In my field, anyone who would get waitlisted at a top program could certainly get admitted to a lesser (still wholly reputable) program.
Then next year you apply again to only 9 programs including the world number two program in your field.  Having had to wait an entire year because you "almost" got into a PhD program, you should have applied to many more programs the second time around and also included a lower tier of programs than you did the first time.  While I won't say it was a mistake to apply to the world number two, it is also not so clear how close you came to being admitted.  The waitlist is still an ordered list.  Unless they said you were at the top of the waitlist, it does not necessarily mean that you were very close to being admitted, especially since they told you that they didn't go to the waitlist at all.  (Also, for PhD programs you should be making a clear distinction between admission-with-funding and mere admission.)
I would suggest that you apply again to PhD programs, to more of them, and with a larger range.  Get a faculty mentor in your current master's program to help you with this.
3) Guidance and feedback: You have not gotten good advice.  It's hard to get good advice, but it can be almost impossible if you don't stick your neck out and try to get it.  I strongly recommend that you write to each of the programs that waitlisted you, carefully (though relatively succinctly) describe your situation, and tell them how helpful it would be to get feedback about improving your application.  What is the one thing you should work most on improving?  In particular, you have a golden opportunity to do this at your own undergraduate institution.  For that, I would suggest an in person visit.  When you talk to your old professors in person, they are really going to have to open up and tell you what happened.  You don't want to be bitter or confrontational about it: rather you should make clear what you are doing, which is getting the feedback you need to improve your application.
In summary, based on what you report about your profile, I myself am surprised that you did not get into a PhD program, given that you applied to 17 of them over two years.  I think you're right that people with worse records than yours are getting admitted.  This means that something in your application is not as it should be.  It is your life, after all, so it is worth devoting some energy to the sleuthing here: really suss out the problem before you apply again.
Good luck.

+1 for "something in your application is not as it should be" and "write to each of the programs that waitlisted you." OP needs to figure out what to fix.

Thanks for this. First of all, the professor was supposed to give me comments but he never did despite my reminding him that I needed comments. Second, I was at the top of their waitlist and they just didn't go into their waitlist that year. It certainly wasn't a mistake to apply there given that they accepted people from their waitlist for the last 3 years and I came so close. Also, this was admission-with-funding. I didn't have the money to apply to more than 9.

Oh, and my writing sample during my first PhD admission season was in the philosophy of language and my honors thesis, and so my best written work, so I used that.

@Splatoon: You took a full year off to improve your application and you couldn't raise the money to apply to more than 9 schools?  And because you didn't get into a funded PhD program, you are now taking out loans to be in an unfunded master's program?   Something is not adding up here.  Also: " It certainly wasn't a mistake to apply there..." So, you say that you simply couldn't afford to apply to more than 9 programs, so you make one of those 9 the number two program in the world, and then you don't get in.  Sorry, under the circumstances that looks like a mistake.

Anyway, if we accept as given the fact that you missed the "number 2 program in the world" by one spot, then it doesn't make any sense that you didn't get into 8 more programs.  You should definitely find out what's going on.  By the way, what is the lowest ranked of the 9 programs you applied to?

First, I'm taking out federal financial aid loans which I couldn't have done to apply to schools. Second, I'm a dual US citizen, and I actually live in a country where the currency is worth very little in USD. I think the lowest ranked one is ranked like 30 in the US (Brown), they invited me to Brown and a couple weeks later rejected me because I wasn't a good fit.

@Splatoon: The fact that you are applying from outside the US is relevant information.  If your university is not a US university, then the coursework and the GPA may be viewed differently.  I am not going to try to pull further information out of you via comments, but I am left to wonder which aspects of your story you have not fully presented.  Anyway, I encourage you to find out why you didn't get into these places.  Good luck.

My undergrad is a US university ranked top 5 for linguistics. I live outside the US but I'm a US citizen and I went there for undergrad.

Does your intended field have a future? I have a friend who earned a phd from one of the top schools and yet can't find a job. Simply there are not enough jobs. Maybe you did not get in because the discipline as a whole may be languishing.
Don't assume that you are not good enough. It may not be you, but the field. Some departments are terribly under-funded. They also train students for career that does not exist. Check placement records of your dream program.
I myself have a phd from a top school and now I am a full professor. But if i could choose my major today, i would not choose this field. Me getting into a top program is a curse in disguise. I was locked into what i thought then a dream career. Only now i know sometimes it is wise to change your mind.
Not that i am unhappy or regret my choice. All i want to tell you is think this difficult time as a great opportunity for reality check. Not getting in may be the best thing that happened to you in the long run. It is still disappointing, i know. I got more than my fair share of rejection letters. But trust me, you may be spared from even bigger disappointments.

My dream program has a good placement record, like maybe 60% or so. Thanks very much for this post.

" I know for a fact that this is the only thing I want to do for the rest of my life, but if I can't do it then I might as well give up now before going into debt. I can't even imagine doing anything else with my life though." Here is your answer.
It is really not about you. A lot of the departments have funding problems and they end up admitting only 3-5 Ph.D. students out of hundreds, others accept those who could somehow secure external funding. Maybe you can try that to improve your chances.
Try again. If possible, apply to more schools (I know application fees might be an issue though). Additionally, have a combination of schools that are not necessarily in the top 20 in Linguistics. Have some mid-ranked schools as well to have a backup plan. As a computer scientist, I would argue that the field of technology, particularly CS, will need more linguists for various AI areas, particularly NLP. Don't give up.


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Research ethics and Google Forms/Survey Monkey
I am currently an MBA student in a college in Western Europe. As part of our thesis, we need to do a piece of original research (fairly standard, I would assume). I had planned on using either Google Forms or Survey Monkey to collect the data from respondents. Apparently, the college is not happy that I use these tools, and would prefer for me to use in person interviews. This is problematical as I had hoped for a few hundred responses, which is obviously not possible to do in person.
As part of a compromise with the college, they have asked for additional ethics data on security of data, as well as ethics guidelines from other 3rd level educational institutions. A Google search does not bring up any ethical guidelines on using either tool for educational research.
My two questions are:
1) Is this a standard request, or should both of these tools be standard use for this process?
2) Are there any 3rd level educational instutions that have published ethical guidelines on the use of either Google Forms or Survey Monkey?

"This is problematical as I had hoped for a few hundred responses, which is obviously not possible to do in person." If you are willing to spend a few months full-time collecting data, it could very well be possible. That depends on the time reserved for the thesis and how important the data collection is in the thesis. Another possibility is to cooperate with fellow students in the data collection phase, then do different analysis on the data and each writing their own thesis.

Thanks for the response. I should have clarified that I am a part time student, working full time. I am also the only student in the class researching this area (leadership),while most of the others are doing IT, marketing, or finance.

That still makes it an issue of how many hours the college expects you to put into the thesis. If you can't put in the hours, that isn't the problem of the college. However if the time reserved for the thesis is simply insufficient to (also) collect data in person, that makes your case a lot stronger. Is it an option to just collect less data? Note that setting up in person interviews is different than setting up an online survey and the college might specifically want you to learn/get experience with the former.

Currently do 40 hours a week in work, another 10 a week in college, plus usual time for study and other assignments. College has a strong bias towards in depth interviews with acknowledged leaders in the field of study (not really relevant for my area), or in person  research and form filling (e.g. canvassing or interviews to fill in forms). A bit archaic if you ask me. Most people doing the research focus on something specific to their company, but as I work as a contractor in my industry, that is not possible (e.g. I might do 6 weeks in 1 role, then move company for a few more weeks)

Well, the advantage of in person interviews is at least 3-fold: first it allows you to have some control of who is filling in the interview. It is difficult to check whether someone filling in an online survey is who they say they are. Secondly it allows you to weed out people who aren't serious, it is much easier to put fake or low effort answers in online surveys. Thirdly it allows you to see how people respond to the questions. Do they interpret the question as you intended and for multiple choice, have you covered all reasonable options?

Your area of study is "leadership", yet interviews with leaders in the field is irrelevant?

Leadership is a huge body of knowledge. There are many areas that can be investigated. The specific area I am looking at testing of expected outcomes within certain types of work compared to actual outcomes, without (un)intentional bias coming into play. This requires many respondents, in many geographic locations spread throughout the country. Altogether, it is very difficult, and doesn't really deal with the questions I raised initially.

An alternative to this analysis would be conducting some interviews (depending on how many, maybe 50?) and running an online survey as well. You can then, using the power of statistics, compare these two data sets for equality and similarity, as well as mention the benefits and flaws of both strategies.

When I was a student in the UK, the uni had its own website for online surveys. Security of research data is big thing nowadays, so it is quite standard to distrust 3rd party websites.


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When and why did journal article titles become descriptive, rather than creatively allusive?
In 1926, the article titled “On a certain minimal problem” was published. Nobody could guess what it was about, from the title alone.
Nowadays, one may expect something more descriptive, such as "Workspace Augmentation of Photon Impingement Through Impurities Removal".
I'd be interested when and why did the titles change, from the allusive style of the early 20th century, to the descriptive titles of today.
Was it a gradual change? Was it prompted by some notable event or influence? Was there a period when journal articles (or "letters" as it was then) did not have titles?

Of course, two examples are not evidence of a trend.  One can cherry-pick examples of descriptive and non-descriptive titles from either era.

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

We also have the slightly cryptic (at least for the layman) titles. Just as a challenge, try to guess what this very very famous paper is about: "On the electrodynamics of moving bodies". Try a little bit before googling it.

@Gerardo Furtado To be fair, at the time it was about the electrodynamics of moving bodies. The name of the theory and its more profound implications came later.

@LastStar007 yes, indeed... but it's worth mentioning that Einstein uses the term "relativity" and "relativity principle" several times in the paper... so, in a hindsight (which is normally unfair), he could have chosen a "better" title.

I think I could stab a guess at when titles started to include an element of SEO to them

@NateEldredge : They don't seem to be used as evidence, but more like as illustration.

@Gerardo Furtado spoilers ;) But if the terms in your title are only defined in your paper, that makes the title even less descriptive to prospective readers.

There's an interesting discussion of this in the introduction to Titles are "serious stuff": a historical study of academic titles by Salager-Meyer and Alcaraz Ariza (link). One point they argue is that titles (as well as abstracts) increasingly need to be more informative given the growing production of papers, in order for readers to make quick decisions on whether to read them or not. If this is the main factor, the information content would be expected to increase similarly to the size of the relevant academic community.
However, there's something I find much more interesting hidden in the introduction:

Other scholars have stressed that titles should be as informative as possible in order to facilitate the process of storing, searching and retrieving the information (Black 1962; Mitchell 1968; Tocatlian 1970; Feinberg 1973; Manten and Greenhalgh
1977; Hodges 1983; Diodato and Pearson 1985).

The paper by J. D. Black (IBM British Laboratories) is titled The Keyword: Its Use in Abstracting, Indexing and Retrieving Information and discusses how

Librarians have been accustomed to using systems, schedules, thesauri, lists of headings, etc., to define and classify the literature which comes into their keeping. They use these same methods to retrieve and disseminate this literature. However, within recent years these methods have begun to show signs of strain, and in some cases breakdown, due to the tremendous increase in the volume and complexity of technical literature.

Specifically, Black showed that a 1960s era (punch card) computer can be used to extract keywords from a title to achieve a similar efficiency as manual classification, but for significantly cheaper cost, and allowing better scalability. Black also writes

While the index may be practical and usable, we still do not know precisely how efficient it is. In its present form, the efficiency is dependent on the author's choice of title. <...> before long the engineer, scientist, or mathematician will realize that if his title is not descriptive enough his paper will not be used as much as it might be.

Of course, if this automation of title processing is the main factor, one would expect to see a significant increase in the information content of titles starting some point in the late 50s, or early 60s. A 1970 paper by Jacques J. Tocatlian called Are titles for chemical papers becoming more informative? looked at precisely this, by comparing measures of information content between papers published in 1948, 1958, and 1968. (1958 being the year the KWIC index, or Key Word in Context, was introduced.) As Fig. 1 below shows, they found no significant difference between 1948 and 1958, but very different results for 1968. Here the measure A, for example, is defined as the total number of substantive or informative words. On the other hand, Fig. 2 shows that titles with few substantive words might have started being eliminated before the introduction of the KWIC index.

I don't know if there is similar evidence from other fields that the introduction of automated indexing was an important development, but it strikes me as likely that the same mechanisms would apply elsewhere too. So, long story short, a growing number of publications and the introduction of computers may have driven a large part of the push towards more descriptive and informative titles.

Nice answer. I've wondered if making titles informative is a way of being respectful of the time of future readers and searchers (mostly those who don't want to read your paper).

Nice. Someone foresaw Search Engine Optimisation techniques in 1962.

I have no evidence for this, but I'd guess that a significant factor is that at one time, people used to subscribe to particular journals and read, or at least skim, every article in every issue.  So the title of your article wasn't necessarily a big factor in whether people read it or not.
Now that the volume of published research is much larger, and especially since the rise of computer-based searchable indexing of journals, readers will instead search for articles on a particular topic.  In a listing of search results, the article's title is the first thing you see, and people use it to decide whether to go on to read the abstract or the paper itself.  Thus, it is now more important to choose a descriptive title; if a researcher cannot tell from the title that it is (at least potentially) relevant to their interests, they are probably not going to read it at all.

Reasonable answer. The problem is, from the comments under the question, we don't even know whether there is such a trend, to be explained.

When preparing a manuscript for a conference, the "information for authors" explicitely stated to avoid titles such as "On XXX". Descriptive titles are great when reviewing the available literature on a specific topic. It just makes live easier.

I don't know that this is actually a trend, but to the extent that it is - here a few possible contributing factors:

Can't use the same pun/quip more than once per field: After somebody publishes "On a certain minimal problem", you can't publish "On a certain other minimal problem".
Less familiarity and cultural commonality in research communities: It's easier to presume people you know, or whose cultural background you share, would enjoy, accept or appreciate a more creative or whimsical title.
Relatively fewer authors who speak English natively: I believe/guess/assume that when writing in a second language, you are less likely to creatively phrase things, particularly titles.
Relatively fewer works by individual authors: A group of people is less likely to collectively have the idea to use a create or whimsical title (though not entirely unlikely I suppose).

Re your last point, a group of people surely has more chance of somebody coming up with a creative title -- but also more chance of a co-author vetoing it.

You cannot use the same pun you say? Leonard Carlitz used to publish two papers with the same meaningless title within 2 years!

Why didn't you title your question "On a certain trend in titles"? Because you wanted people to know at a glance what your question is about and click on it. In my field, there are at least a dozen new arXiv preprints a day. If the title doesn't look even slightly interesting, I pass. Giving an "allusive" (I protest at the qualifier "creative") is fine if you're a superstar, otherwise, you will just get lost in the mass of academic literature.
One thing that others have not mentioned: it's pretentious to give such a title to your article. If you write an article entitled "on a certain minimal model", it better be the definitive article on minimal models. If you don't, then you are embarrassing yourself by implicitly claiming that your text is on equal footing with other great texts entitled "On..." as was common at some point in math when authors wrote treatises.

One aspect that I don't see mentioned yet is the change from academia as an upper-middle-class middle-aged white male club to a broader, more diverse group of people (that still needs to be more diverse). Clubs have in-jokes, secret handshakes, common interests aside from their common profession. Professional groups don't.
(Since comments suggest this isn't clear, I'm talking about the 1950s, not the 19th century. If you're not familiar with the Old Boys Club that made up academia in the first half of the 20th century, look at photos and count the women, non-white members. Look up the Jewish quota, which was still officially in place until the 1960s in some places in North America - and unofficially, in many places.)
When you could assume that most people who would look at your title had a similar background to you, you could be pretty confident your clever little pun would register in the context you meant. Today, hopefully, that's not the case.

Professional groups used to have special greetings, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gl%C3%BCck_auf ;P That diversity seems to be diminishing, nowadays.

Professional groups don't — [citation needed]!!!

That's a lot of fashionable BS around a reasonable (if not well-sourced) idea. ("Upper middle class" wasn't even much of a thing in the 19th century.) Yeah, British journals from the 1800s read like a newsgroup where everyone knows everyone else and common conventions and folklore are assumed for granted; yet the switch from "On some ..." titles to ones trying to be descriptive has happened noticeably later (1960s?) than this scene disappeared, and even the venerable Edinburgh Math. Society would have profited from its proceedings being better searchable.

I see this as the result of online presence of people as we are more dependent on internet for any prior peice of informtion. So people search for results and google work starts here google bots pick most relevant and trusted content and produce as result for the users. Here comes bunch or results now users pick the most descriptive easy and picky titled post.
So there is a hunch in market to get more and more traffic resulting more descriptive or say over optimised titles

-1, this seems to be the same point that others have made above, but with considerably less evidence.


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Join a research group at a university I do not attend
I work as a data scientist and many of the problems I am presented with require a non-trivial amount of research to solve, and so, a portion of my work week consist of reading relevant literature.
I throughly enjoy doing this, and in doing so, wonder if there is a contribution I could make to a local research group.  More specifically, would it be completely out of place to write a local university and ask to join a research group or is this something that is frowned upon?
In my head I envision this as an interesting symbiotic partnership where students could be exposed to methods from the private sector and I get to scratch my academic itch, but I certainly don’t want to step on any toes or have the appearance of taking someone’s place.

EDIT:
By "join a research group" I mean finding a lab that is working on a problem I am interested in, going to said lab, meet the members, help solve a problem in anyway I can (writing code, discussing ideas, etc...).
Also for context, I am in the US.

It's not entirely clear what you mean "joining a research group" entails, and the answer will depend heavily on this. Especially, what do you mean with "scratch my academic itch"?

That being said, at least in Applied Computer Science, people from industry interested in collaborating with, or at least regularly talking to, academics are a coveted treasure :) you should not have a hard time convincing people to interact with you, at least if there is a topical match.

This will depend on the field. In my area (in computer science), research groups frequently work with external collaborators from industry. From the perspective of a research group, such collaborations can be very desirable, since practical motivations or, even better, applications can improve their research. There are even conferences with a specialized "industry" track, where perspectives of practitioners are sought explicitly.
Teaching-wise, this will depend on the country as well. In Germany, it's not unheard of that people from industry are employed on a part-time contract to give a lecture with a practical focus.
I think you should directly contact a suitable research group (professors and maybe post-docs), rather than the university, since employees of the university administration might be unaware of those specifics.


text:
Should I explain the type of a graph in my Masters thesis?
I've conducted a survey for my masters thesis and would like to show the results as a box plot:

(The x-axis lists different skill / familarity levels, ranging from "none" to "expert")
Should I mention that this graph is a box plot (in the caption or the surrounding text) so that people unfamiliar with it can look up how to interpret this type of diagram, or is it unnecessary information and I can assume everybody will understand the type of graph just by looking at it?
Context is a computer science masters thesis in German at a German university.

It has a very easy fix: make the X-axis numeric from 1-5, and explain what those numbers mean in the caption, or just simply add "1 - Keine, 2 - ..." as  captions. The only reason this plot is confusing is because boxplot are numerical plots and there are no numbers in your plot.

@AnderBiguri Thanks for the suggestion, I'll keep in mind. But I'd like to see an answer to the question "Do I need to explain that this type of graph is called 'box plot', so someone unfamiliar with it can look up what it is". Are you suggesting a "No"?

You don't need to explain what a box plot is, no. In this case, you may want to add a bit more because the axes suggest classification but the data representation suggests a continuous variable.  There is no middle point between SVN and Git, but there is between Keine and Grundkenn[too much german]. Its relatively clear that the X-axis should be continous, but clarification (adding numbers to it) would make it even better. The rest is great. Consider having a look at Violin plots, they may be a better representation of your data in this case (and they look extra awesome)

The only fully reliable answer has to come from your advisor.

@Roland Good point. I have another question later in the survey with continuous data, so I still think it's worth to ask this question.

You shouldn't just say that "this is a box plot". You should explain how to interpret it clearly and concisely, within the figure caption.

@Roland yeah. Of course one might debate whether the discrete categories make much sense here in the first place – everybody will have a different notion of what “intermediate skills” should mean.

Why don't you ask your advisor rather than random people on the internet?

@Roland: Nonsense. Boxplots are used for stock or other (discrete) financial data millions of times every day. Can you provide any authoritative undisputed citation for claiming otherwise? (I think you mean continuous independent variable, not dep. var., but even then that's dubious.

@Roland: The OP's plot is fine and much clearer than those alternatives. (You're quibbling that the levels in an ordered categorical, and distances between them, don't have much or any numerical meaning, which is a never-ending debate; it depends on how they were measured.) Please don't post absolute claims like "This is the wrong type of plot for your data" if they're not generally agreed.

In general, yes.
Most potential readers will understand simple graphs (such as box plots).
However, many visualization techniques have variants that produce visually similar graphs but may have slightly different interpretation.
Therefore, it is a better practice of research presentation to clarify what exactly the figure shows and, if needed, how it visualize the study methods or findings.
In your case, for example, in the caption I recommend to mention at least it is a box plot. It is also better to clarify whether the box width is proportional to the group size, in which case the three groups appear to have (almost) the same sizes.

I agree. It is especially important to mention any deviation from norms, i.e. the Whiskers are usually drawn at 1.5 times the interquartile range and outliers beyond this explicitly marked. If the range for the whiskers is different or outliers are supressed, this should definitely be mentioned, else the reader assumes there are no outliers.

You should use your caption to explain what the graph is supposed to be indicating. i.e. "Boxplot of survey data showing generally higher level of experience with SVN than competing technologies". This achieves both, and further supports the text of your thesis, rather than explaining to the reader something that should be completely obvious (e.g. "This is a boxplot of the survey data"). If you include the type of chart in the caption then it will help if someone is unfamiliar with that type of chart and won't take up much more room than typing "Chart of survey data showing..."
That said (and slightly off-topic), a boxplot doesn't seem to be the correct graph to use to convey this information. A boxplot should be used for continuous data. Here you have discrete (categorical/ordinal) data. Perhaps a barchart (with the different categories shown in different colours might work better)? I'm struggling to understand what the "lower quartile" between "Keine" and "Grundkenntnisse" means for google docs. Is that 25% of respondents had Keine experience of google docs? Very confusing! It seems like you've decided you want to use a boxplot and are trying to find a way to use one.
Let's say I want to know how many people have expert understanding of SVN, how do I determine that from your graph?
However with a bar chart... it's clear that (for example) 5 people who responded were experts

Answer is off-topic.  The question does not mention if the data is continuous or discrete.  No need to jump to conclusions.  This response is also not useful to people other than the asker.

@Anonymous Physicist. The data seems to be ordinal. Keine = no knowledge, Grundkenntnisse = little, Mittlere = intermediate, Fortgeschritten = advanced, Experte = expert.

@henning it will depend on how the question was asked. If the question asked was "On a scale of 1-100 how would you point yourself on this technology" then the plot might be more relevant than you think it is.

You probably don't need to mention the word 'Boxplot' in the image caption itself (because it is obvious to the reader; I would assume that most readers will recognize this even if they are not directly familiar with the interpretation of a boxplot).
However if you intend to give a completely unaware reader some hint that what they see is a boxplot, you could also mention the word just once in the paragraph where you refer to the figure (e.g. "compare the boxplot in Fig. 3.2"). I imagine that I would do it this way, but at the same time I don't think that your decision whether or not to mention it would influence the outcome (e.g. grading) in any way.

"hint that what they see is a boxplot" that's it! Just mentioning the name to facilitate the googling of unfamiliar readers.


text:
Can I include a copyright notice in my paper?
Alright, so I'm kind of curious if it breaks any sort of standard style to put in a copyright notice somewhere at the start or end of my paper. The specific context I inquire for is coursework, not general release. Yes, I get that it would be pretentious, but this question is more just a curiosity than genuine applied inquiry.
So, for example, let's say I write a paper about the role of computer science in military tactics as my final paper for some class. I put on the title page "copyright 2016 <my name here>." Would this be in direct violation of MLA, APA, or Chicago style?
Then, extending the example, let's say I feel so proud of the paper that I'm contemplating giving it a general release on my blog. In that case would I still include the copyright notice on the copy I turn in?

In the US, at least, this would be copyrighted from the moment it is created, whether or not you pour a copyright notice on it. Depending on what you have signed as a student or employee you may have signed that copyright to the school or your employer. Any normal you publish on will want at least some rights assigned to them so they can publish/reprint; read the fine print to see exactly what they are asking for before signing.  Other options include asserting a standard license for use ("copylleft" of various forms) or public domain, but talk to school/employer before selecting these.

Actually, in any country that signed the Berne convention, works are copyrighted from the moment of creation. Adding a copyright notice is not just pretentious; it's redundant.

You put a copyright notice to inform the reader how you want to act out your copyright. If that's not applicable in the given situation, it will look strange to do so.

Of the three listed I am only truly familiar with Chicago style, which if you are writing on military tactics is the style you are likely using, and that is the only style which has significant discussion of copyright notices.
There is nothing against copyright notices in the Chicago style. In fact, the University of Chicago—the publisher the Chicago Style—requires a copyright notice in their dissertations. Notably, however, dissertations are formally published, in contrast with course papers.
That said, as pointed out in the comments, it is not necessary, since it is under copyright without a notice. It is pretentious and even a little insulting, since the unnecessary copyright notice implies that you think that A) your ideas are so good and B) that your readers/advisors/colleagues are of such a low moral character that might steal them but for this little notice you put on it. It is also well outside the norm for anything not formally published, and will look weird.
The only exception to this would be if you are intending to distribute your work under a separate license, or if something you use in your paper is under a copyright or a license which requires a notification. For example, some of the Creative Commons licenses require notification if you use some of the licensed materials. It will still look a little strange, but people will understand, since it is legal stuff.


text:
How does one politely request an instrument from a researcher?
I have just discovered that the (psychological) instrument I've been reading up on for my research team has never been, itself, published, though research into its validity and reliability etc has been; one of these research papers says in a footnote that the instrument and the manual are available from the author.
In writing the author, how should I phrase my request?
Issues I am wondering include:

Should I assume that he charges money for these and ask the price he charges?  Should I simply ask if he would be willing to send them to me electronically, and allow him to indicate if there is a fee?
Is requesting soft copy vs hard copy more or less polite?
I don't know the author's title; he is not at an academic institution, but a government agency.  Should I address him as "Dear Dr. Authorname" by default?
Is there anything else I should know about the etiquette of this sort of request that it might not have occurred to me to ask about?

In case it matters: what I really want is to see the instrument itself, to start.  Some of the example items included in one of the research papers I read suggest they may be phrased in a way which, alas, makes the instrument inappropriate for our project, but I gather that since then the instrument has been revised.  Obviously, I don't want to sink money into resources that  we won't be able to use.  Is asking for a review copy a thing that is done in this field?

Edited to add: Ah, we've moved!  Hello, Academics.stackexchange.com!  This question was migrated from CogSci.stackexchange.com, which is why it was as cryptic as several of you found it.  It lacked the explanatory context you needed, because it's reasonable to assume the original audience of cognitive scientists know, e.g. what a psychological instrument is.
The answers posted here so far have been from people who have said they're  unfamiliar with psychological instruments, but proceed to answer anyways. "What's the big deal?  It's some sort of questionnaire, right?"
If you're not familiar with psychology and cognitive science – if you don't know what a psychological instrument is – you probably don't know about the intellectual property status of psychological instruments.
In research psychology, it is a reasonably common practice to commodify instruments.  That means sell them for money.  In this sense, they are less like research articles, and more like textbooks: made by academics, but sold as products.
For instance, if you want to administer the Beck Hopelessness Scale, you would need to buy the manual at $83.00, a pack of 25 forms (the actual questionnaire) at $58.00, and the scoring key at $10.50, or buy the whole package for $131.
As you can see from those prices, instruments can be big business.  Publishers can be pretty fierce about protecting their intellectual property.  In 2012, Pearson got the entirety of Edublogs shut down by serving a DMCA takedown notice to the Edublogs' host, because one of those 1.5 million bloggers posted the Beck Hopelessness Scale.
In other instruments-as-big-business news, there was the conflict-of-interest scandal, where the head of the APA’s DSM-5 task force, who had driven the adoption of dimensional scale measures in the DSM-5, was discovered not to have disclosed that he was involved in a business preparing to sell a computerized dimensional assessment instrument.
Contrariwise, very many instruments are made widely available, essentially for free.  Usually that is done by either just including the instrument as an appendix to the article when the substantiating research is published, or it's slapped on a website somewhere (e.g.).  In this era of trivial self-publishing, it struck me as a little odd that the author requires direct personal contact to source his instrument and manual, and is one of the things which makes me wonder if that is because he is selling it.
In any event, now that I've explained to you how psychological instruments are situated as intellectual property in psychology, perhaps you can see my confusion.
It may be that in asking him for a copy of the instrument and manual, I would be doing the equivalent, as I think some of the answerers to date have assumed, of asking for a copy of a research article, or data.  But it also may be that asking for a copy of the instrument and manual, I am doing something much more like asking for a digital copy of a textbook, in that it may be a product priced equivalently, and as zealously guarded.  I suspect that most academics here would not consider asking for a copy of a textbook a "reasonable request", but would consider it more reasonable to ask how one might buy one.
That was why I was hoping researchers in psychology would answer my question, based on their direct knowledge of the occupational-cultural norms around the "reasonableness" of requesting instruments.

What does it mean to "publish an instrument"?

What's a psychological instrument?

Concerning the edit: you don't need to be a researcher in psychology to know that if someone writes "X is available from Mr. Y," then it's okay to contact Mr. Y if you're interested in X.  Note that my answer did not come down on either side of the question of whether you will have to pay money for the document you're asking for.  The point being: whether and how much you'll have to pay is something that the person who has the document will tell you when you write to ask for it.  By the way, if you're confused about occupational-cultural norms in your field, talk to your advisor.

Further: you seem confident that it is okay to ask for articles and not okay to ask for textbooks, but I have not perceived such a distinction in my own academic work.  Articles are copyrighted just like textbooks, and their price per page is usually much higher.  Some people put copies of textbooks freely online, and I have been emailed copies of textbooks from fellow academics which are not available online.  I have also had academics tell me that they do not have a copy to give me...with no hard feelings whatsoever....

....Occasionally people write to ask me for things that I am not willing to give them, e.g. once I got asked for the source file for several hundred pages of lecture notes, so that the person would be able to modify my lecture notes at will without even having to retype anything.  In response, I explained why I was not willing to do that.  Bottom line: you won't get very far in academia if you're overly hesitant to communicate with other academics.  Just make the request politely and take it from there.

@PeteL.Clark Thank you for your thoughts.  I don't have an advisor; I'm not in academia, I'm in industry; I'm not a researcher myself, I'm a clinician.  Furthermore, I'm the subject-matter expert on my team for the domain that this instrument concerns, which is why I'm the one on my team doing this.  Which is why I'm asking random strangers on the internet for advice.

@PeteL.Clark This whole experience asking about this on StackExchange has been fascinating and illuminating.  One of my clinical interests (not one that pertains to this project) is how occupational culture impacts mental health treatment.  It's been interesting to me how the denizens of Academia.SE assume that naive askers are within the academic/university system.  But of course, there are people like myself interacting with academic research from outside the ivory tower: in industry, government, and NGOs, including, hugely, medicine.

@Codeswitcher: The site is academia.SE, not research.SE.  To be honest, if you had mentioned at the beginning that you were not an academic, your question might have been closed as being off-topic.  Of course you didn't come to the site either but had your question migrated here, so it's a bit of a strange situation all around.

According to this link, a "psychological instrument" is another term for a "psychological test". (So I understand now what it means to "publish the instrument".) However, usually one does not publish a test while it is being used or may be used again, and I don't see why psychological tests should be any different, so the lack of publication is not very surprising.
The rest of your question is making quite a mountain out of a molehill.  According to Mr. So-and-so, the test is available if you write to him.  So write to him and ask for the test.  Just for peace of mind, let me quickly address your concerns:
1) No, you don't need to do either of those things.  Just ask for a copy.
2) No.  If one version is preferable, you can ask for it.  Just make clear you'll be happy either way.
3) It really doesn't matter that much.  If you care, you might try googling the name to see if you can find out whether he has a doctoral degree.  If you don't know, then since you ask, for me in academic correspondence I tend to assume that the correspondent has a PhD until they tell me otherwise.  But it is no big deal.
4) Just don't be weird.  The entire request shouldn't take more than five lines.

Yeah, this: you politely ask askfor this the same way you'd politely ask for pretty much anything else. Just introduce yourself briefly and cite the paper with the offer and ask.

I do hope this psychological instrument detects how likely someone is to over-think an e-mail ;)

Don't call people Dr if you don't know they are a Dr. This goes or Mr, Mrs, Lord, Lady, Your Majesty, Mother of Dragons, etc.
A request is impolite if it is unreasonable. If you don't know what is more reasonable, a hard copy or a soft copy, just ask for "a copy".
Do not assume this person wants money. Assumptions can be offensive, even if correct. Leave it up to them to stipulate the conditions of use. If they do want money, you'll be in a better bargaining position anyway if you come from a position of not expecting to have to pay anything.

If this person is a non-academic, they will probably be excited that their work is still being put to use by academics. My advice would be to write this e-mail from an abundance philosophy rather than a scarcity philosophy which is the impression I get based on your listed concerns. Just relax!

There is a reasonable possibility that a governmental employee created something that is public domain to citizens.

One point I disagree with: "Don't call people Dr if you don't know they are a Dr". It has a good chance of coming of as impolite if you go with Mr/Ms. Going with Dr is usually a safe bet.

It's a fair point, because yes it's awkward when you write Mr. and they reply with "actually i'm a Dr." -- but it's more awkward in my experience when you say "Dr." and they reply "i'm not a Dr. i'm just a Mr". It... sets a tone of this other person not meeting your expectations, rather than being better than you thought. But you're right, it's ultimately personal preference.

Here is for your inspiration:

Dear Dr./Mr./Ms./...,
recently I was reading your paper "..." in Journal. I am very curious
  about the unpublished ... Test that you used in some of the described
  experiments, as I am currently planning a study and am looking for a
  test like that. So I was wondering if you could provide me with the
  task material and allow me use that test for an experiment on ...? In
  that experiment I plan to .... Please let me know if there is a chance
  to use that test. Looking forward to hearing from you.
Kind regards, ...

I'm no psychologist (but from another quantitative social science). But I am very sure that your request is not unreasonable at all. In fact, to the opposite: not sharing the instrument with a fellow researcher would border academic misconduct, I think. Just think of the recent scandals in the field of social-psychology (Stapel, Förster, ...): In these cases, the researchers were unable to produce their data - and were in the end declared guilty of fraud. Sharing an instrument is the least one can do.
Given the fact that an instrument is basically just a text document, and the only reason why it is not published is often a lack of space (though this is a weird argument in times of online appendices), there is no reason for the researcher not to share it with you. In fact, it is in their own interest, as it generates citations.