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Why was it mandatory to attend a conference in person while publishing a paper in pre-pandemic times, and how will conferences run post-pandemic?
Conferences are a great platform to exchange ideas and to learn about different research areas. Also, more importantly, conferences expedite the process of publishing as journals may take months/years.
However, my question is - "why was is it mandatory to attend a conference in person in order to publish a paper in some xyz conference in pre-pandemic times?"
There are many people constrained by factors like money/time/family and struggle to attend conferences. They do prefer publishing their results at a conference in order to expedite the process of publishing but find it extremely difficult to travel to a foreign country. Conferences are conducted in extremely extravagant venues and attending just lectures costs 500+ euros, leave aside food and stay. Conferences are often held in big cities so lodging is also tough. Travelling to remote countries is not only expensive but also has a large environmental and climate footprint.
In order to grow in academia, it is important to publish fast. But why does research publishing forces constraints like this, and why nobody talks against this? Why cannot there be choice given to authors to not visit if there are other constraints.
Will post-pandemic era be different even slightly different, and will we be inspired by the online system of conference existing in current times.

what field of study are you in? For the life sciences, many papers are never presented at meetings first.

I work in computer science field. A related post also addresses this concern - https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/147808/what-is-a-computer-science-conference-really?rq=1

In CS, conference publishing prior to the journal is more or less a standard norm in the community nowadays. The quality of research papers is often judged by the conference in which it was published.

As far as what the "post-pandemic era" will look like, it might be interesting to look back at what happened following previous pandemics.

@Aruralreader Previous pandemics with video conferencing?

lol @BryanKrause. Just the same it might be telling.

A conference is a place where people present their work by giving talks and discussing. Sometimes, a conference may collect some short abstracts into a booklet, for people who want to know a bit more about one talk or to refresh their memory later. CS has twisted that into a mess where the conference is seen as competitive publishing. If you remove the part about meeting and giving a talk, the conference has become some kind of journal? Maybe there would be a place for journals that take papers + videos. Fast publishing: either the papers are crap, or the journals could be improved.

There are many "Letters" or "Express" journals that focus on rapid publication. I do not think the motivation for publishing at conferences is to publish fast: I think it is a way to advertise your work. Your paper may be more likely to draw attention if you present it at a conference session full of people working on your field than if it just appears in a journal among the thousands of papers that appear every month in the same field. And of course, networking during the breaks is an important part of conferences.

Conferences are conducted in extremely extravagant venues and attending just lectures costs 500+ euros, leave aside food and stay.

The cynical answer is that in-person attendees pay fees that fund the conference.
Typically conferences involve people presenting the work in some fashion. Even now, video conferencing tools can be a bit unreliable. I'd say they've improved substantially since the pandemic encouraged a lot of investment in that area, and it works well with other trends in the tech industry like cloud services. That said, I think people attending a conference in person want to hear in-person presentations. If people show up at a conference where half of the presenters are remote, they might wonder why they bothered to come in person.
As @RichardErickson points out, in some fields conferences are not the norm, or at least are not the "most respected" venue for publication. So I'd say the causation is a bit upside down: you're asking "why are conferences this way" when you could possibly see it more directly the other way: "'conferences' are what we call it when work is presented this way". You could come up with alternatives, but A) Those alternatives already exist, and B) They just aren't called conferences.

The even more cynical answer is that it gives (some of) the attendees an excuse to travel to those extravagant venues, using their research grants to pay for it.

(+1) but your answer should say "The cynical (but also accurate) answer...".

"in-person attendees pay fees that fund the conference" albeit true, it is objectively self-referential and in a way, stupid. That's completely inefficient, if and that's a big if, there is only the contribution of in-person meeting. This is because often, (and I've been to conferences), you don't actually spend much time speaking with speakers, but mostly in posters presentations (if you meet phds who aren't at the catering table). Overall, this blatant overlook of the advantages of virtual AS WELL AS in-person conferences is something I didn't expect from academia...

@TheVal what advantages are those? I am very in favor of remote work in everything except conferences. The presentations are only a part of conferences, often a small one. As you correctly point out, the in-person talks around posters is where I have gotten most benefit out of the conferences I have attended. That's where the networking happens, that's where you get to discuss cool new developments. Unfortunately, this just doesn't work online. At least not in the virtual conferences I've attended. There were attempts to get people to chat and network but they failed. All we had was the talks.

@terdon The fact that networking "doesn't work" online, in 2021, after the boom of virtual meetings and shared meetings is simply unacceptable and unhearable. It pains me to see that many people are blind to the opportunity of providing both ends (virtual and in-person) by simply refusing to see that as of now it's possible to gain the same and even more networking via online conferences. There is still work to do of course, but the lack of motivation and the bland drive to "keep things as they were" is honestly a bit pathetic

@TheVal I don't think it's that people are "blind to the opportunity", it's that they have experienced virtual and non-virtual meetings, and found the virtual ones lacking.

What Bryan said @TheVal. I was really looking forward to the virtual meetings since I am a fan of all things related to working remotely and have been working from home to a greater or lesser extent for 15 years or more. However networking, the act of randomly meeting people and chatting about your field simply doesn't work well online. That might change one day, but the conferences I've been to (which include a couple of HUGE ones) were just not there. So please dial down your rhetoric, this isn't a question of principle, it is experience. I wish they did work, but they don't.

@terdon: It may or may not work well online, but what you miss is that for at least some, perhaps many, people, the random in-person networking doesn't work very well either.   You need to be a social person to be able to meet people, and a good verbal communicator to converse (as opposed to giving a pre-scripted talk) about your work.  I don't think it's a secret that a lot of people in STEM are neither of these.

@TheVal Funny, after a year+ of virtual meetings, I've come to the opposite conclusion about virtual networking.

@jamesqf that's absolutely true. But the online conferences I've attended that tried to offer some form of networking made it even harder for shy people. It is very uncomfortable (and I'm a fairly social person who finds it easy to strike up conversations with strangers) to have a natural conversation with someone you don't know in a video call. So I would say that even for the introverts, networking in online meetings is harder, not easier. If you can't network, then there's no point in conferences anyway. Just read the papers.

@AzorAhai-him- That's precisely why both options should be available, because after this year+ many have had different conclusions about virtual networking. What I don't think it's right is to keep networking with the purely "business as usual"

@BryanKrause But that's not for everybody, especially in smaller subfields, when I had to travel for thousands of km to get on a remote conference venue for meeting at best a bunch of colleagues I could've easily talked to more and better via Zoom or whatnot... As I said, I'm not against in-person meeting, but I'm against the drive to keep it business as usual "just because people find it better", as the latter is a false premise

@terdon As you said, it's experience. Just because it didn't work for you doesn't mean it won't for others. The "obstacles" and difficulties in networking have been customary to those that had to re-convert to online meetings as they have had tons of in-person meetings... it's fairly logical to find that the former doesn't work as the latter. And that's ok. But, the huge but, is that such argument is in no way able or to be used to push for a business-as-usual networking as before. (1/2)

@terdon This is because there is an emergent trend of virtual networking that works, that can connect people without any hassle of in-person conferences. Is it so unfeasible to some? Sure. Do I feel that being "shy" around a virtual meeting counts worse than being stuck in traffic/train/planes for hours and days to reach a remote hotel and venue, and then try to talk to people? It's my speculation, but as I see the trend, there's a clear set of gains from virtual networking that's met with resistance by many research communities, and that is due to the re-conversion difficulty. (2/2)

@terdon TLDR, frankly, I wish researchers could've embraced better the new virtual networking instead of preferring the long-standing tradition of conference and mandatory-in-person stuff, a heritage from the last century where it was required to do so to disseminate better your research... There are huge advantages, but too few seem to catch on

There is a series of satirical novels by David Lodge which make funs of jet-setting academics who use conferences as an excuse to get funded flights around the globe.

Having been involved with the organization of a number of conferences, I observe that this comes from the peculiar combination of computer science publication culture and venue contracts.
For most other fields, this would simply never arise as an issue, because conferences don't have "real" publications, and thus there is no point to sending a paper to a conference that you don't attend. Because conference publications "count" in computer science and a few related fields, however, there is a strong incentive to publish but a weaker one to actually show up and give the talk.
So if you didn't force people to show up and give the talk, then a significant fraction of papers might not be presented. That's embarrassing for a conference, but worse, likely to be disastrous for its finances. And that is because of the contracts conferences have to sign with the venues that host them.
Most places that will host a conference, like hotels or convention centers (and even many universities!) will require a certain minimum revenue from the conference, based on the number of days and space that is being occupied. This can be structured in a number of ways, e.g., number of rentals from the room block, total cost, etc., but the bottom line is that for a typical conference the majority of your registration fee goes straight to the venue.  And if not enough people show up, the conference still has to pay that minimum cost and will go into debt. Most conferences are thus always walking a fine line between higher registration fees (which attendees will resent) and higher risk of financial disaster (which may kill the conference). Requiring an author to attend (or at least pay a registration fee) is one way to help make finances a little more predictable.
During the pandemic, a lot of conferences have, in fact, successfully gone virtual, and I expect that some will continue that way. But people do still want and need to meet in person for a number of reasons, e.g., you can't have hallway conversations when there are no hallways!  And any conferences that meet in person will, no doubt, be right back in the same tension between venues and attendees.

Yeah, as somebody currently organising a CS conference, this is the sad truth. If you make attending optional, many of your accepted paper authors will choose not to attend, and then the finances won't work out (and you have no program). One of the many reasons why it's a bad idea to mix up publishing and conferencing / networking the way we do in CS.

@jakebeal "And if not enough people show up, the conference still has to pay that minimum cost and will go into debt." But, people paid the registration fees, so why will it go into debt? I guess the number rooms or the space that are booked is based on the number of people registered.

@FreePawn The contract is often drawn up based on expected attendance, not actual attendance. Thus, for example, a conference might reserve a block of 100 hotel rooms for 4 nights for attendees. If only 60 attendees actually book before the reservation date ends, then the remaining 40 are released for general booking. If the hotel only books 15 of them to other people, then the conference gets charged for 25 empty hotel rooms for 4 nights each! Problems can likewise happen with respect to other expenses like catering, publication charges, etc. (though the details are different)

@jakebeal wouldn't it be better if we booked the conference venue based on the number of registrations? We may announce the conference beforehand and fix a deadline for registration and then we would know how many people would be joining. I'm sorry if my questions are stupid. I haven't organized a conference before.

@FreePawn They're not stupid questions, they're just things that you don't usually see or think about until you've been the one doing the actual organizing.  In this case, the problem is that you've got to have the venue contracted long before people start registering and booking their trips. In that contract, the venue is generally in the position of power and able to put the risk on you in the contract. Thus you have to make a bet on how many people will come. If you bet too high, you end up paying for empty rooms. If you bet too low, you end up with attendees who can't book a room.

@FreePawn - indeed, conference venues are booked at least a year in advance, sometimes several years for the largest ones (think major conference centers like the Moscone in San Francisco). If you have a big conference (APS March meeting) there are really only a few places you can host it, and those places also host many other academic/industrial conferences. You meet their requirements, or they move on to the next applicant. This involves guarantee on room occupancy, conference room usage, meals, coffee breaks, A/V equipment - they want a piece of it all...

@FreePawn There's no way you could get people to submit to/register for a conference without knowing when or where it would be held!

To answer your question with a question, what would be the point of publishing a paper at a conference that you don't attend?
I suspect this question is highly dependent on field, but in the natural sciences, I struggle to imagine what would be gained by submitting a paper to a conference that you do not attend. You cannot give a talk, you cannot rope people into your poster, you cannot network, and you can't do anything fun. Basically, you'd be throwing your idea/work out into the void--albeit a void where your work is now technically public, but not published in a journal, with none of the upsides. Why not just submit a paper to a journal at that point?

I guess OPs question can indeed be rendered as "x why not just submit to a journal?". That's what researchers in most areas outside CS do anyway.

In CS the point is that conference proceedings publications count as "real" publications, and you can submit the "full" version of the work to a journal afterwards, basically allowing you to get two publications out of the same material. This is why submitting "just" to a journal is unappealing in that field.

You point out the advantages of getting together at conferences. Prior to the internet this was the most efficient way for groups of scholars to meet and interact. That has changed, of course.
But, the fact remains that publishing isn't free. There are certain costs, perhaps a bit lower for online than print, but they are still there. Someone has to cover them and usually the funds come from a variety of sources.
For example, large conferences in CS normally have corporate sponsors who contribute to the costs. But attendance fees also cover a large part of the conference and subsequent publication. Members of organizations like ACM also contribute to publication costs through membership fees.
You also point out a problem. Costs, especially travel and housing costs, can be prohibitive for some people, especially if the conference is far away or there are disparities in the economies of different places. This problem doesn't have complete solution.
One possible solution would be for governments to get more involved, though that might also have downsides. But publication fees could be supported (in theory) by taxation, spreading the costs over more people.
Grants to individuals are possible in some places to cover conference fees and travel, but this needs to be planned for. The grants might come from governments (such as the NSF in the US) or from private companies. I once had such a corporate grant that I could use for travel.
Some academic institutions will also provide funds for conference travel, usually assuming the presentation of a paper.
Some conferences, but not the big ones, are held on university campuses during vacation times, reducing costs. But a large conference needs a large venue, with a lot of support activities, and those are, as you say, somewhat extravagant.
My personal view is that education and scholarship, including publishing, is insufficiently supported by government (taxation), and that is a US view. More, in my view, needs to be done to assure a better future.

A note on the pandemic:
When the pandemic hit it was realized that things had to change and that standard practice couldn't be used. But the "compromises" made were always known to be imperfect and experimental. No one really had a very good way to carry on as in the past. But "let's do the best we can with what we have" let us stumble through the chaos. Either we eventually go back to what we had before (conferences) or we design a new way to interact remotely that doesn't have so many downsides. We don't know yet, which outcome will occur.

"perhaps a bit lower for online than print": in fact they are not of the same order of magnitude. arXiv operating costs amount to a few dollars per paper, much cheaper than what it would cost to print and ship paper copies of research articles.

@a3nm, don't forget the essentially perpetual cost of online hosting, including tech people. It isn't zero and it is a long term promise.

Yes, it isn't zero, it amounts to a few dollars per paper as arXiv illustrates.

tl;dr: Many people like in-person conferences, and mandatory attendance for authors makes it easy to justify funding of conference trips.
In-person conferences are popular. One thing that many people like about them is that they mean a context change: people leave their familiar daily environment with its many distractions and constraints. Some people say that in-person conferences are the time when they actually get some serious work done.
With the mandatory attendance model, having a paper at a particular conference is often seen as a ticket for a funded trip to that conference: funders and institutions won't ask questions why the trip is necessary.
In contrast, virtual conferences have often been regarded as an additional burden to accommodate in an already-full schedule, rather than a relief.
Should models with non-mandatory in-person attendance (hybrid conferences) become more common, people are worried that this will negatively impact the support from their funders and institutions to visit conferences in person, because funding a whole conference trip is generally more expensive than just the registration fee for virtual attendance.

"Should models with non-mandatory in-person attendance (hybrid conferences) become more common, people are worried that this will negatively impact the support from their funders and institutions to visit conferences in person, because funding a whole conference trip is generally more expensive than just the registration fee for virtual attendance." -> Citation needed

@mmeent Like most answers on this website, this is based on own experiences from conversations with many people.

This is a good answer, but it shouldn't ignore the less excusable fact that researchers like to travel to exotic places for conferences, and not necessarily to get work done.

There's many excellent answers here, which give some of the reasons why conferences were held in person before the pandemic, but one thing I'll add is that even before the pandemic it was not always mandatory to attend the conference in person.
I absolutely love this example from 2016:
At the most prestigious annual conference on Adiabatic Quantum Computing, one of the most prominent researchers in all of quantum computing (Aram Harrow, a tenured professor at MIT, who you might know as the 'H' in the HHL algorithm) gave a lecture virtually at the in-person conference. You can see the entire talk, including the speaker on Skype (not Zoom) being introduced by the famous Ed Farhi who is often credited with coining the term "Adiabatic Quantum Computing" which is the name of the conference. He gave the talk virtually because he had recently had a baby.
It also happened in completely different research fields:
In chemistry, for many years before COVID, a Director at a Max Planck Institute named Ali Alavi gave lectures through Skype at various conferences in the United States while he was in Germany. Also, Terry Rudolph famously wrote in this paper:

"This article is the extended text of a talk I planned to give a couple of places in the United States this year, but will not do so now having been denied a visa (apparently no immigration officer likes to hear the words “Iran” and “physics” in the same sentence)"

after restrictions were placed on visiting the US, for anyone who had been to Iran since 2011, like Terry Rudolph had in this case. This was even more severe when Milad Marvian (who was living and working in California, at University of Southern California) and Masoud Mohseni (who was living and working in California, as a senior researcher at Google) could not attend a conference in 2018 that took place in California (the country they were living in!) because it was held at NASA which is an "independent agency" but still an agency of the US Federal Government, and therefore didn't allow people born in Iran to attend. Mohseni ended up choosing not to give a talk, Marvian gave a talk but it wasn't made available on Youtube; but Pooyah Ronagh who was a Canadian citizen and came to the conference from Canada and was at the conference dinner held off-site, had to still give his talk "virtually" because he wasn't allowed inside of the NASA building where the conference took place: he literally gave this virtual talk from just a few meters away from the audience (you can hear at the beginning of the linked Youtube video, the session chair saying "Pooyah will now give a talk from wherever he is right now").
So it wasn't always mandatory, even before COVID
I've given examples from several conferences since 2016, across more than one research area, where people attended talks virtually because of recently having a baby, or being restricted from attending the conference because of where they were born, or in one case it was a British-born citizen who unusually was denied entry into USA essentially because he'd visited Iran since 2011.  The reasons why attending conference in-person was always preferred (before COVID) are very well spelled out in the other answers, and I agree that those are completely true, but if you could not attend the conference for some reason, it was often (though probably not always) made possible to attend virtually instead.

This may sound a bit nitpicky, but I think it would be more accurate to say that exceptions to the rule "in-person talks are mandatory" were sometimes possible, instead of saying that in-person talks were not always mandatory. As you say, the reasons for such exceptions would certainly have to be strong. Furthermore, there would usually be no upfront guarantee that the exception will be made.

I work in a company that does a full spectrum service for academic conferences starting with newsletters, paper submissions, review up to registrations and scheduling. I am the developer by my colleagues do the venue planning. Been to a few conferences in very different fields as a result.
Some observations
a) Often conferences are held at the city where a major research institute in that field is located. This means visits to the labs or other pilot projects in the area are part of the program. This is useful to the attendees and I know attendees who attend just for that reason.
b) Conferences have a big role in exposing up-and-coming researchers to other institutes, a large part of the papers are PhD students that publish the first or second time and want to make a name for themselves. Nothing beats standing in front of the room and answering questions from the world leader in the field, letting him or her get to know you. If this was online the meetings never take place.
c) Some industry associations have board meetings once a year and co-locate it with conferences for this reason.
d) Some conferences are held in exotic locales for exotic reasons to be honest. But in the end most of them are close to a major research institute.
e) The people who make the money are the venues. They are crazy. Once we had to run a conference at a venue that wanted 100$ per week to rent a MOUSE. Never mind a presentation laptop. nowadays this is not a problems, laptops have become much lighter and presenters need less tech support. Powerpoint has actually improved. In those days this was a problem, but in the end it was cheaper to upgrade all of our companies laptops than to rent them on-site for a week. The institutes and organizers make very little profit.
f) The entertainment and networking are the most expensive part. I have been at a conference in applied physics that involved dinner for about 500 people that cost more than 100000$, which is a bit ridiculous. All of those conferences fees go straight towards the room rent and food you eat, no matter how bad it is.
But in the end, in-person conferences do have a function, especially if it is located close to an institute. I know of several cases where students got to know their advisors or got post-PhD jobs because they were at the right place at the right time and got to know the right people.

I am using the present tense, as if we were in pre-pandemic times.
In the field of engineering and computer science, almost all conferences make it compulsory for one of the authors to come to the venue and present their paper.  Without this constraint, a conference would make much less sense.  The very reason for conferences to exist is that people gather together, do social networking, get to know each other, listen to authors presenting their own work and have a chance to make public and private questions to them, or have conversations and exchange ideas and possibly projects with them.  If you cannot do that, going to a conference loses half of its attractiveness.
That's the reason why I think that conferences will strive to keep working like that again, as far and as soon as possible.


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How to identify papers that cite two particular papers
Using Google scholar, we can find the citation of a paper A.
Now I want to find papers that cite both paper A and paper B.
That is, I want to find the intersection of citations of paper A  and paper B.
How can I do this?

You make two lists and look for matches between both lists.

And yet another version of the same question: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/28164/958

Thanks a lot. It works!

There is no easy way to do that in an online interface; you would at least need to code some queries, as is suggested here based on Wikidata/Scholia. (Actually, it might be possible with CitationGecko, but it currently doesn't work well in my browser, so I cannot check - - it is just too slow.)
My personal approach would be one of using the API of OpenCitations. Here is an example code in R based on two DOIs as visible in the form of https://w3id.org/oc/index/coci/api/v1/citations/[DOI]:
library(jsonlite)

work1 <- jsonlite::fromJSON("https://opencitations.net/index/coci/api/v1/citations/10.1017/s0020818313000337")

work2 <- jsonlite::fromJSON("https://opencitations.net/index/coci/api/v1/citations/10.1177/1354066106067346")

citingworks <- intersect(work1$citing, work2$citing)

Then, citingworks lists 32 DOIs that have cited both work1 and work2:
> citingworks
 [1] "10.1017/9781108644082"                 "10.1017/9781108644082.001"
 [3] "10.1017/9781108644082.002"             "10.1017/9781108644082.003"
 [5] "10.1017/9781108644082.004"             "10.1017/9781108644082.005"
 [7] "10.1017/9781108644082.006"             "10.1017/9781108644082.007"
 [9] "10.1017/9781108644082.008"             "10.1017/9781108644082.009"
[11] "10.1017/9781108644082.010"             "10.1177/1354066119889401"
[13] "10.1093/jogss/ogy021"                  "10.31338/uw.9788323542988"
[15] "10.1080/13533312.2020.1753513"         "10.1080/13569775.2020.1795372"
[17] "10.1007/978-3-030-51521-8_1"           "10.1007/978-3-030-51521-8_2"
[19] "10.1080/13600826.2020.1828298"         "10.1057/s41268-018-0147-z"
[21] "10.1146/annurev-polisci-040711-135425" "10.1111/pops.12616"
[23] "10.1093/isq/sqz055"                    "10.1093/isr/viy006"
[25] "10.1093/isr/viz002"                    "10.1017/s0260210516000176"
[27] "10.1017/s026021051600019x"             "10.3384/cu.2000.1525.1572479"
[29] "10.1177/1354066117745365"              "10.1163/24056006-12340008"
[31] "10.1177/0010836716653161"              "10.1080/09662839.2018.1497985"

But note that OpenCitation's the data sample is CrossRef, which is not the same as Google Scholar.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
How can I improve my paper with mostly original contents and only two references?
I'm collaborating with another person on a public-key cryptosystem that we intend to publish. I could only think of two references (one to the 1976 Diffie-Hellman paper, and one to SHA-3 FIPS-202), even though most of the contents are completely original.
I put my content onto Grammarly Premium and it only found 2% of so-called plagiarism - so called because the source of plagiarism is actually a low-quality prank question on a Q&A site that contains a series of digits 9 and asks its sum, that happen to collide with our experiment data.
What can I do to improve our paper?

To add to the good answers & comments here, consider that your work may(will?) be read by someone who has a working understanding of the specific field. They may require supporting references to read up and follow your ideas in a more wholesome manner.

There's never a reason to run your own work through a plagiarism checker, unless I suppose it's an assignment and you want to check it against the professor's checker for false positives.

@AzorAhai-him- But many journals use plagiarism checkers too, so the same reason of checking for false positives could apply for any publication.

@nanoman I've never heard of such a practice.

@AzorAhai-him- See here.

considering that I can guess the topic, you know where I am on crypto.se if you want extra eyes.  There's a lot of academics there that might be better proxies for originality.

@bdegnan Pardon my English volcabulary, could you explain " There's a lot of academics there that might be better proxies for originality", I can't fully comprehend it even using Google translate. Could we bring it to the chat room I created for the topic?

Citations aren't just about avoiding plagiarism. They are more about embedding your work into a scientific context. Every paper should explain in an introduction section

why this work is relevant, and
how this work differs from previous approaches.

It is extremely rare that an approach is so novel that there is no meaningful prior work that can be referenced – many papers just apply an existing concept A to an  existing problem B and analyze whether this is useful, or extend an existing approach to have some desirable properties. If you can't reference such prior work, that is usually an indication that you don't understand the state of the art in your field. Such papers are unlikely to contribute to the field, and are very likely to be rejected by journals or conferences.
Most of the citations are usually in the introduction section of a paper, which is where related work is discussed. In contrast, it is somewhat normal that there are fewer references in the section where you describe your novel approach. You would still reference existing building blocks and methods of your approach. E.g. an experimental paper in CS might reference relevant software libraries that were used.
I am not an experienced author and know how hard it is to break into a field. It's difficult to get an overview of the state of the art in your field. However, this is a crucial part of writing a good paper – otherwise, it is quite likely that you're either doing something that has already been done, or that you're flaunting the methodological conventions of the field. For example, there might be existing testing methods or benchmark problems that every serious paper in that field should use. (If those existing methods were unsuitable, a paper about that could be useful as well!)

Most of the contents are completely original.

How do you know with only two references?
Show your readers and reviewers that your work differs from what has been done before. Show them that you know what has been done.
That's what references are (also) for.

Sorry, I don't understand the question near the start. Why do you imply that they don't know? Perhaps they know perfectly well and don't see the need for more.

@Buffy It's a rhetorical question asking OP to demonstrate that they are at the cutting edge of their research problem and not reinventing the wheel. It's very unlikely, however, that there are only two publications relevant to the problem.

@Buffy in other words, how can you argue your work is original, if not relative to some other work?

As a rhetorical question, I have no issue. Some work is innovative on its own merits and will be immediately recognized as such by a pro. I haven't seen the paper in question, and don't want to judge it. Leave that for the referees who actually get to read it.

@Buffy fair enough. But even if the work is novel, strategically it's better to demonstrate that it is. Not every reviewer is equally diligent.

No reviewer wants to waste their time verifying originality from scratch, and it's unreasonable to ask them to. It's up to authors to make the argument, which reviewers then verify.

@henning : such rhetorical questions are important, because there are still examples where concepts which are relatively simple in one field, get "re-invented" in other fields. Like that infamous paper in a medical journal, whose authors seemingly never header about integration, and "developed" it for using it in their data analysis.

While you say that your work is completely original, it is unlikely that nothing you have written relates to previous work.  If this really is the case, then the paper is certainly missing vital information.
A cryptography paper is not just a description of an algorithm.  There are many important things that need to be discussed:

What is the problem that you are trying to solve?  Why is it important to other people?
What background should the reader be aware of in order to understand your contribution?  What theoretical tools will you be using to analyze your cryptosystem?
What is the algorithm?
Why is it secure?  Generally, this requires a security reduction to some well-known computationally-hard problem.
How does it perform?
How does it compare with and relate to previous work?

Almost all (if not all) of these will require reference to other work.  If you don't analyze your cryptosystem in terms that the cryptographic community are familiar with, it will be difficult to convince them that your algorithm is secure.  Even if you manage to do so, without comparison to the competition you won't be able to convince anyone that it is better than the current state of the art.
To give a more concrete example, you should analyze your cryptosystem to see whether it provides a certain kind of security under some assumptions.  What kind of security, and what assumptions?  You will find well-understood options for these in all good cryptographic textbooks, which you can then use in your subsequent analysis.  If you don't provide a convincing analysis in terms of well-understood definitions, then even if your paper is correct, then it will be difficult or impossible to validate this.
For your particular situation, though, I think it is important to set reasonable expectations if you submit your paper now.  The security community has spent decades trying to convince people not to use cryptography in ways that have not been blessed by the mainstream cryptographic community.  If you fail to build on their body of work, which your current lack of references suggests, then you will not get anywhere, for the simple reason that even modern cryptographic systems (let's say, those from the last 40 to 50 years which were clearly designed in the computer era) have failed in so many different ways, that it is simply not believable that you have built something secure without taking into account all the lessons that have been learnt during this time.

Excellent list! I would like to add one point.  After "Why problem are you trying to solve?", I would ask "Why doesn't existing (major) public key systems solve this problem?"

@StigHemmer: I wouldn't try to answer that; most likely, they do - however, alternative methods for solving the problems are always of interest.  What I would do is try to add references for literature by people who have tried to solve the hard problem (given how much mathematicians have done in the past, I find it unlikely that literally no one has considered it before)

If nothing else, if your paper gives the impression (by skimpy biblio) that you are not acquainted with the mountain of work on public-key crypto in the last 40-50 years, people will likely not even want to look at it. There are toooo many cranks who think they have a terrific idea, but are ignorant of the actual literature.
So, in this year, it would be very, very wise to demonstrate your knowledge of prior work, and state-of-the-art, by a substantial bibliography, and to place your work in that context.
I'd have to think that, if you believe that your work is somehow independent of that body of work, you are almost surely mistaken... and misguided... and will have people not take you seriously.

If the work is truly yours, and if you understand the state of the art and how we got to the present in the field and the work doesn't, in fact, plagiarize, then you should submit it. Reviewers will give you feedback on it.
But, a warning. Plagiarism won't necessarily be caught by an AI system, since it is about ideas, rather than their explicit expression. So, a paper could be completely plagiarized if it presents the ideas of others as if it were those of the authors, while using none of the phrasing and few of the words of the work plagiarized.
If you know the state of the art and who is the originator of the various ideas then it is easy to know whether what you write is original. And it is possible to unknowingly express the ideas of others as your own if you don't understand what came before. But that is just sloppy scholarship. And reviewers will catch it quickly.
But, assuming the best case, there is no reason not to submit your paper. The reviewers will give any necessary advice for improvement.

While you need to have read, and understood, the literature relevant to your work, not every paper needs to recapitulate the history. If you are writing a thesis, then you need to include much of that, but for a professional audience it isn't necessary. If you are writing for novices, then you need to say more, of course, but people in the field are, themselves, knowledgeable already about the history and the current state.

Most reviewers will be suspicious of papers with only 2 references exactly because of this reason - it is beyond the ability of individual reviewer to know EVERYTHING relevant to the paper. It is author's job to prove that their work is novel, no the reviewer's work to disprove this. Ergo, that's why paper with 2 references will be most likely rejected outright by any serious journal. Serving as a reviewer it is not my job to educate the authors, it is their supervisor's job.

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Publishing on arXiv effect online scholarly profile
This question is closely related to this:
Options to publish a paper "as is" without being able to produce "more results"
I'm curious if posting on arXiv adds to your online scholarly profile, such ason Google or CiteSeerX. I know some arXiv papers indexed by Google scholar that have quite a few citations in good peer-reviewed journals directly, but conversely I can't find an example of an arXiv paper in the publication list of any author on their scholarly profile (though I have found the subsequent peer-reviewed versions listed).
Are arXiv papers somehow excluded on such profiles? Do they not affect you h-index on such sites?
This seems relevant if you don't want a low tier publication on your CV but do want your results to be out there and visible for someone viewing your track record.

I can't find an example of an arXiv paper in the publication list of any author on their scholarly profile — I don't know what you mean by "scholarly profile".  If you mean "CV", then examples are easy—visit almost any mathematician's personal web page; for example, Terry Tao.  If you mean "Web of Science" or some other similar commercial service, then of course not; what incentive would a journal publisher have to admit that preprints exist?

Both Google Scholar and CiteSeerX can detect arXiv publications.  I know for certain on Google Scholar because it has detected mine (and it is also adding to my H-index on the site).  For CiteSeerX, if you search by publication venue, you will find many publications in arXiv.  Both systems will, however, attempt to merge versions (and Google Scholar at least allows a person to do this manually as well), so a subsequent journal publication can supersede the arXiv version, making such an arXiv version apparently invisible even if it is part of the profile and collecting citations.
Neither system makes any guarantees, however, about how quickly it will detect papers in particular venues, so it is possible that arXiv is updated less frequently or more erratically than others (particularly for CiteSeerX, which is often plagued by maintenance issues).

The short answer is yes. Google scholar and even DBLP (for computer science) do record arxiv publication. Though they might treat them as "informal" publications. As far as I checked it is also counted in your citation counts.

Nice, I did know of DBLP having used it sometmes to look up articles, but I always sort of assumed that people with profiles on DBLP were at some time employees of Uni Trier (which was odd on its own, never heard of that particular university being a hub of computer science advancements).

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Is it acceptable for a student to ask a professor to be included as a co-author on the professor's paper?
This semester I participated in an independent study with a professor and one of his/her PhD students. In this independent study, I spent a very substantial amount of time building (coding) things to facilitate the research being performed by the professor and his/her PhD student. However, I did not perform any actual research (though without my work, their research likely would not have been possible).
A few weeks ago, I asked this question: If I work on a project but don't do research, should I be included as an author on a paper?
It seems that the general consensus was, "it depends, but probably yes". Unfortunately, though the professor has told me that I did excellent work and that s/he is very pleased, s/he did not offer to include me as a co-author on the paper (the topic never came up).
My question now is, is it within the bounds of etiquette to ask this professor if I can be included on the paper? If so, what is a respectful and reasonable way to frame the question? I don't want to be imposing or assuming (especially because I did not actually conduct any research myself), but realistically I put in a very significant amount of work this semester (far more than the professor was expecting) and I think it's reasonable to at least be considered for co-authorship given that my work greatly aided in their research process.
For what it's worth, the professor is a reasonable person, i.e. this is not a case of "I'm being excluded unfairly!". Rather, the possibility of my being included as an author on the paper has not been brought up by the professor, so I'm wondering whether is it acceptable for a student to ask a professor to be included on his/her research paper?

If you did not contribute to the research, you can ask, of course, but it would be unusual to be included in the author list. However, your work should be acknowledged.

In my field, it's usual in this kind of situation (someone did a lot of work but didn't contribute to the novel ideas) to see an acknowledgement section or a footnote in the paper saying something like "The authors thank Mr. 110100101110101 for doing the measurements and providing valuable technical assistance."

It's fine to just ask.
But if you feel uncomfortable asking straight out "Can I be considered for authorship on this paper?" an alternative approach is to have a conversation about authorship that (1) makes it clear to the professor that you're interested in authoring a research paper, and (2) helps you understand the shades of "it depends" for your specific kind of research.
For example, you might bring up in conversation:

In our field, what kind of contribution are students expected to make in order to merit authorship on the paper that comes out of their work?

Then you can ask,

On this project, what additional work could I have done in order to have sufficient contribution to be considered an author?

and then, if you want very much to co-author a research paper and plan to continue working with this professor,

I'm interesting in being a co-author on a research paper. On the next project we work on, can I have a role that (if I do it well) merits co-authorship?

Ideally, if you had just asked straight out "Can I be considered for authorship on this paper?", the ensuing discussion would also cover the points above.

Your question is a fantastic example of why the best time to have these discussions is BEFORE you start to work on a project with a professor or a grad student (I'm assuming you are an undergrad).  Now, you are in an awkward situation where you did a ton of work and you feel as though you should be rewarded for it, but you don't want to jeopardize the relationship with the professor.  Chances are, if you ask for authorship, the professor will say no, and you may feel slighted, and they may feel put upon by the question (although probably not).  The point is, it's just discomfort all around on what should be a high note for what sounds like a successful project.
I am not saying this to scold you in any way.  You really could not have been expected to think of this beforehand.  But in the future, you'll know to have the talk before doing any work, so that expectations are clear.  I think that people who mentor undergraduates that participate in research should do better in preparing them for these situations so that they are neither exploited nor put in a position of feeling exploited when they were not.
As to your particular situation, I don't know what the authorship norms are in your field, but in my field (natural/behavioral sciences), your work does not constitute authorship.  You did not design the project, get funding for it, conduct analysis, etc.  You were a tech.  That doesn't mean what you did wasn't important or valuable.  Techs are often indispensable, but they don't get authorship for that.  I know that may seem unfair when sometimes people are given authorship simply for allowing the use of their lab without being involved, but...them's the perks of being the PI, kid.
Now, you should absolutely be included in the acknowledgements section of the paper.  If you're not, that's really an oversight.  If you want to give your professor a nudge to make sure you're included there, that would be perfectly fine.

Thank you for your feedback (and welcome to Academia SE), but I feel that I should point out that this doesn't really answer my question (though it does answer my last question: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/67006/if-i-work-on-a-project-but-dont-do-research-should-i-be-included-as-an-author). My current question is really getting more at the etiquette of approaching the professor with such a question, rather than whether my getting included as an author is justified.

Thank you!  I was trying to answer your question, but I'm guessing it wasn't a very satisfying answer.  Stripping away the niceties, my answer was essentially "it's too late, the work's been done, the appropriate time to raise these questions is in the beginning, and trying to have the discussion now is a recipe for awkwardsauce."  I'm assuming that you are likely to find yourself in the position of helping a senior researcher again and I'm trying to save you a headache.

No worries at all, I appreciate the input either way, I just wanted to let you know for future reference :-)

Part of the problem here was that I did work that was outside the scope of our original agreement, so for the "initial discussion" it wasn't the right time to ask. That being said, I probably should have broached the subject when I agreed to take on more work.

I appreciate your feedback as well!  As you correctly noted, I am brand new to Academia SE, and every community has its own norms and expectations, so I'd like to get up to speed quick as I can.

@110100101110101, mentioning the "change of scope" may provide a easy way to bring this up with your supervisor: "I've been working really hard on getting the X and Y to Z, so I'd be happy to contribute a few paragraphs describing this to the paper when you start writing up." Note that groups write in very different ways. Some profs take the lead, others don't want to think about it until the students/postdocs have a complete and polished draft, and others still bounce paragraphs back and forth.

Is it acceptable for a student to ask a professor to be included as a co-author on the professor's paper?
The literal answer to this is sure, it's acceptable. Though I think that typically if you have to ask, you probably shouldn't... This isn't a universal rule; just a generalization. In my experience, professors really do want the best for their students and so if a student genuinely assisted with the research, professors will rightfully include them as a coauthor. In other words, the likelihood of a professor just "forgetting" to recognize you as a coauthor or being ignorant to your research on the project is slim to none.

However, I did not perform any actual research

If this is the case, I find it quite difficult to justify why your name should be on the research paper. But, if the following is true

though without my work, their research likely would not have been possible

then I don't see it as unreasonable to be asked to be mentioned in the paper itself when they described the unique software that they used to get the research done. I highly doubt that they wouldn't mention you in the body of the document if your software is as pivotal to their research as you say- but to credit you on their research as a coauthor is a bit too generous (as well as nonacademic) if you genuinely didn't assist with the research process.
Did you push the boundaries of modern computer science in the pursuit of writing the program that they used? Did you yourself perform ground breaking research to make the program function? If so, then you deserve to take the time to draft your own research paper. (I'm being serious. Contact a CS adviser immediately.)
If not, then the idea of crediting you on their research is analogous to the programmers of LaTeX requiring their authorship by anyone who uses their software to draft research papers.

This seems like an answer to the OP's first question, If I work on a project but don't do research, should I be included as an author on a paper?, not the question of "how to ask the professor about this."

@ff524 I edited my answer to address your comment, thank you for pointing that out.

If I wrote "unique software" that was needed to "get the research done", I would insist on authorship, even if the code doesn't "push the boundaries of modern computer science." It's exactly analogous to a situation where someone trains a rat or purifies a protein, using standard techniques from those fields, but applied to an unexplored situation.
The LaTeX analogy is fatuous because LaTeX wasn't written specifically for this paper. Also note that many packages (e.g., R, scikit-learn, psychtoolbox) do ask you to acknowledge their authors.

@Matt Authorship of a research implies that you, the author, did research mentioned in the paper. For example, if your name was penned on the paper titled Beyond DVFS: A First Look at Performance Under a
Hardware-Enforced Power Bound, I have every right to ask and expect you to answer questions pertaining to every detail in your research. If you go, "Oh, I didn't know the answer to that because I just made a program so the researchers could do the research", I'd consider you a fraud. But that's just me.

@Matt You know what, that's a fantastic point. A really, really good point. So with that in mind, do you honestly think that someone who admit's to "not [having] perform[ed] any actual research" actually has "a relatively good understanding of the paper"? You yourself wrote that you'd "expect every author" to have such an understanding. You see?

@8protons
"If not, then the idea of crediting you on their research is analogous to the programmers of LaTeX requiring their authorship by anyone who uses their software to draft research papers."
That's not even relevant to the question I'm asking. It's also a completely facile analogy. Research often requires a lot of "heavy lifting", and just because you don't draw out an equation on a chalkboard doesn't mean you're nothing more than a leech on a greater man's ideas.

Please refrain from debate in comments. If you have a point to make, make it and move on; if it turns into a discussion, take it to [chat]. (And keep the tone respectful.)

If you don't ask you don't get.  I think you could ask for co-authorship but it seems to me that your work on the project, albeit necessary, is not authorship.  Rather I would expect, in this instance, to be specifically thanked for my contribution.  Something in the foreword perhaps.

"If you don't ask you don't get." Writing this as an answer to a question about a student seeking authorship seems to imply that students who don't specifically ask for authorship on academic papers never get it.  As a faculty member with many student coauthors, I can tell you that whether a student asks for coauthorship does not have anything to do with whether they get it in all but the most borderline cases.  And I must say that I somewhat resent the implication that the default state for people like me is to take advantage of our students.

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Layout for a thesis chapter describing an undergraduate course
I am writing a chapter in my degree thesis which describes a new undergraduate course I designed. I want to be as specific as possible with this course, like outlining what topic should be covered in each class. It is the main chapter of my thesis. Things that I am sure I must include are the learning objectives, the syllabus and a mention to the  instructional strategy (which in this case will be Flipped classroom).
How would you go about structuring this chapter? What things about the course should I include and in what order?
Can someone link me to a paper describing a new course in detail? It would be useful to have a reference.

The structure of theses depends very much on the standards of individual programs & institutions.  Your best bet would be to get a copy of a previous year's thesis in your program from your institution's library (they always keep them all).  Find one that has done something similar to what you are doing and use a similar structure (and, of course, if you refer to anything in it, cite & reference it appropriately).
For your reference, here's a general new course description that I developed for one of my courses.  Its format is heavily based on the standards of the university, so may not apply to your particular situation.


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Should a PhD thesis reflect the state of research at the time of writing?
I am currently writing up my PhD thesis and have the following issue. I wrote a paper during the PhD thesis, the result of which was developed further by third parties without my involvement. From the perspective of my published paper, this new result lies in the future and is of course not mentioned in the paper. However, at the time of writing the PhD thesis, this result is available and may be relevant for the readers of the PhD thesis.
Should the PhD thesis contain a reference to the third party paper?
Presumably the answer to above question is yes in one form or another. A more detailed question is then: How should it be included? I can imagine multiple options.

If the result is relevant to the general scientific scope of the thesis it probably warrants an explicit mention in the introduction, explaining that the work is based on the result in the thesis.
Let's say there is a close technical connection and the third party paper improves upon some aspects of the original result. Would it be appropriate to even summarize this progress rather than simply mentioning it?
If the result is not directly relevant to the scientific scope, it is presumably omitted in the thesis.

This question is generally about whether the PhD thesis is meant to reflect the state of research at the time of writing or at the time of the published results that are summarized in the thesis. An answer to the above examples would already give a lot of insight, but I am also interested in the general attitude towards this issue.
As a side note: In some countries, cumulative theses (also called "staple theses") are allowed, which are simply an accumulation of the published papers with an introduction added. Since this form would most likely not contain any mention of the third party paper, I started thinking about what a normal PhD thesis should be doing in this regard.

Some options:

Explanatory footnotes often work well and can be used to 'talk across time' so to speak;
Appendices can also be used for covering material that may be out of sink, if you think you need to go into more detail;
An afterword can also be an appropriate way of accounting for developments between the time of writing and the time of publication. This is fairly common practice.

Basically most examiners will view the dissertation as YOUR journey through the research, rather than as an exact snapshot of the state of play in your area.
HOWEVER - they will be looking for (and be impressed by) you demonstrating that you know what good practice looks like in your field of research, and this extends to how you handle (and acknowledge) circumstances of this kind.

It depends a bit on the school and, as you point out, some theses format will not have this.
Nevertheless, it is often a good idea to write a “background” chapter that would place your work in the context of current research.  Current here means a few years and in a case of a PhD thesis can span the lifetime of your thesis rather than the last few months.  So the answer to your 1. is yes.
It is always nice if one’s work is a starting point rather than an endpoint; such a situation would increase the value of the candidate’s thesis, and I would certainly highlight that others have followed up on some of the early work of the candidate, and explain briefly how this feeds back to the context of the thesis.  So to your 2. I would answer yes.
If the new results are only tangentially relevant, the general point of the previous paragraph applies although something more concise is appropriate: “this idea was developed in another direction by Author A.”
You don’t want to ignore the work of others: you wouldn’t in a publication.  On the other hand, authors don’t spend a lot of time talking about other’s work unless it’s directly relevant to the context of the current work.  I tend to think of a thesis as a “archival” paper (a mini-review of one’s work on the problem during the PhD period).


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How to cold email multiple faculty members to propose a collaboration?
I am currently looking at an advertised postdoctoral fellowship (in the US if that matters), where it is stated that the topic of the research proposal should be discussed with faculty members before submission. My proposal is interdisciplinary and would ideally be a collaboration between multiple faculty members, which is one of the reasons why I chose the institution in question.
Since I don't know any of the faculty members at this institution personally, I will have to cold email them in one form or another. I would know what to write if I wanted to only work with one of them. How do I approach multiple of them to propose such a collaboration?
I see three options:

"All in one": Email them all at the same time in one email. I feel this could be the most efficient option. However, I am concerned that this might seem overly forward since then they might have to coordinate a response among themselves.
"Separate": Email them all at the same time, but in separate emails with a note that I emailed the other people as well. This would be less forward, but also less efficient. In addition, it could lead to awkward situations if only a subset of them respond or are interested. On the other hand, it may also increase the chance of actually getting a response.
"Separate and sequential": Email them one at a time and wait for a response before emailing the next one. This option seems hugely inefficient, but may be the most polite.

Is there any accepted etiquette for such emails?

It sounds like you're suggesting a single joint project among all of you.  For this situation, I think email them all together makes the most sense.  (I wouldn't expect them to try to coordinate a response, they can just send individual responses saying that they'd be interested or not.)

@Kimball Thanks for the advice! I would be happy to upvote an answer based on your comment.

Side remark: you say that you don't know any of them. Are there people who could mutually introduce you to get you a "lukewarm" start?

@cbeleitesunhappywithSX unfortunately not, my introduction conference fell flat due to Covid. The fellowship seems to encourage external and interdisciplinary applications though, so I am hoping that this is not a problem as such. I also know that students from previous generations at my university have been successful with similar application approaches for similar fellowships.

I recommend contacting them separately. Professors get a lot of spam e-mails that often do not address them by name and do not illustrate how the request is related to that professor's research. Even if you want include multiple faculty members in your project, I would send individual e-mails customized to the particular researchers.

Does this answer your question? How should I phrase an important question that I need to ask a professor?

@AnonymousPhysicist I think my question is more specific. It asks about the multi-people aspect and how to set up an efficient email chain, rather than general guidelines on how to email Professors.

I was aware of that.  See the beginning of the first answer.

@AnonymousPhysicist ah, I see where you're coming from, thanks! I think my question is still not a duplicate though, since it asks concretely for which option is best in a multi-people email chain.

There is no one correct answer since it will depend a lot on the personalities of the professors and whether they already work together.
A hybrid strategy that can be efficient in some cases, is to first contact the person who is closest to your theme, and finish by asking whether they advise you to contact the other names on your list. That shows that you have thought about the project but will defer to their local knowledge.
If you don't get an immediate response, feel free to contact the others separately in parallel, but this time saying that you are also sending out feelers to the others.
The goal is that nobody thinks feels like they are being manipulated, everybody understands that you would like to build a collaborative project, and they all have something to talk about during the next coffee break.
Be brief, and don't forget to put links to your CV and Git repo in your signature

I do not see any sign in the question that OP is in a field where coding and github accounts matter.

I couldn't think of a better shorthand for “any place where they can see the kind of work you do”. Lots of young scientists keep their Jupyter notebooks in a git repo. A public repo is the first thing I look for when I get an e-mail from a potential student. But you are right that my answer is biased towards scientists. Suggestions welcome!


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Should a CV have footnotes containing links to proof of achievements?
I'm writing my resume for an internship and I was wondering if footnotes that cite proof of my achievements are necessary? For instance, I was a finalist in a programming competition last year and the results are posted online. Should I post a footnotes linking it to the site? Or will the review not care enough to read it?

Related: Is it advisable to have many clickable hyperlinks in an academic CV?

When I look at someone's CV, I don't plan to verify the details. Often, I have a printout and am not close to a computer anyway. I just want to see the information. And the typical vita does not include links or other documentation, it just lists the information.
So, adding footnotes to verify things would make your vita seem unusual, and I suspect it would make the document more cluttered as well. It could also have the unfortunate effect of making a reader wonder why you are trying so hard to give proof - perhaps you are compensating for something else?
If the person reading the vita wants documentation, they will ask for it. Until then, don't worry about it.


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Does a bad grade in one course (with otherwise OK record) affect graduate admissions?
I'm currently an M. Phil student in Math and I failed a course last semester because I was not able to hand in a home work assignment (which was worth 40% of my grade) on time (I was 30 minutes late).
Apart from that I'd say I'm a fairly decent student, I got an upper second class honours bachelors degree, I have a B+ and A's for all my other courses in my current programme and I'm almost finished with my first paper to be published.
I've however been deeply worried about this failure as it would reflect poorly on my transcript if I were to apply to a Ph.D or another Master's programme.
Will my failing grade affect my chances of getting into a competitive programme or greatly lower my chances of getting a scholarship?

Possible duplicate of A creepy C in transcript

@ff524 I don't believe so. I only have to do a hand full of courses, roughly 4. So a failure is highlighted

Presumably by the time you finish and will be applying for PhD programs you will have more than 4 courses, though.

@ff524 I just really want to know. How badly is my failure frowned upon in the academic community

I don't think this question is a duplicate of the linked question, because there are no medical issues involved here. Over there, the user was encouraged to go ahead purely because that would be a show of physical and mental strength, and would only add more weight to the application. This is a totally different situation IMO.

@New_new_newbie Furthering your point, this is also about scholarships and not just admission. It is close but I think different enough to stay here.

I feel like we've already had this question before—and not with respect to illness in the question cited above.

Perhaps I should just delete the question rather than debate whether this is a duplicate or not.

@user119264 - No. Please don't. And a useful tip for surviving on SE - don't let adversity get to you. However, this isn't adversity at all.

It's not a deal breaker. I had awful grades in many courses but I got offers with TA/RA-ship/fellowships from a couple of top 25 US PhD programs in Math. The reason, I think, was that I had very high GRE scores, I had participated in undergraduate/masters "research" projects for a few years with professors at my schools, and I had pretty good recommendations. My research statement was normal and earnest. I didn't have any extraordinary ideas nor some well defined research agenda in it. I think that, overall, the rest of my portfolio made up for my awful grades.
In your case, it's just one course. That does not signal any systematic problem. If you feel particularly insecure, you can address it in your personal statement but don't talk about the professor in question negatively, instead you can focus on how you were tardy once but it does not reflect your work usual work ethic. I cannot speak for top 10 schools. They may have a sufficiently large pool of applicants who may beat you on every metric.
Also, Math departments at large public Universities generally need lots of bodies to TA/grade their numerous remedial and baby-calc type undergraduate courses and generally do the culling at the qualifying exam stage. You may find their standards for an incoming PhD class to be more forgiving.

Will my failing grade affect my chances of getting into a competitive programme or greatly lower my chances of getting a scholarship?

Unfortunately yes, this is quite possible and, at least in certain contexts, rather likely.  Most good graduate programs in mathematics (and presumably elsewhere) see very high grades in general from their applicants.  One or two imperfect grades can be easily dismissed (still, better is better...) but a failing grade is a big red flag.  In many (American, I don't know how it is elsewhere) graduate programs, the minimum GPA required to maintain good standing is 3.0.  Thus a lackluster performance in a graduate course often results in something like a B/B+.  There is a lot of variation here and many problems make a de facto distinction between lower level / core courses in which "grades count" and higher level / optional courses in which it may well be expected that everyone gets the highest possible grade more or less automatically.  Either way, a failing grade in a graduate course looks especially bad.
The more courses you take, the more one can discount any one grade.  But if as you say you will be applying for admission and/or scholarships with one out of four grades a failing grade: well, I'm sorry to say it, but that doesn't sound good at all.
What can you do?  First I would look into the prospect of getting the grade changed (though of course it may not be possible and in certain circumstances it may not even be appropriate to ask).  If that's not possible, the matter becomes how to explain the grade in a way which makes it minimally alarming to people who are evaluating your application.  In this regard I have to be honest again and say that your given explanation is not a great one: there was one problem set that was worth 40% of your grade, you didn't turn it in on time, and there was no way for you and/or the course instructor to rectify the situation?  Not good.  Your perspective may well be that the course instructor was an extremely unreasonable, ungenerous individual.  And you may be right, but that doesn't really fix the fact that you didn't meet the course requirements.  Maybe your entire program is somehow off...which is still not great.
I would try to have at least one faculty recommendation letter explicitly address this situation and explain it in a way which somehow allays the above concerns.

Will none of the papers I publish before I graduate help them over look this? Are grades weighed more than published papers? Also, there's no GPA for my degree.

Yes, published papers will certainly help, much more so if they are solo papers or if for each coauthored paper you get a letter from a senior coauthor describing your contributions.  For most PhD programs in mathematics, applicants simply do not have significant published work, and admissions committees are skeptical that work done by undergraduate students actually represents their own work.  No GPA for your degree confuses me (you mention a transcript): do you mean that all your courses are pass/fail?  What program are you in?  Somewhere in the UK, I presume?

Also, although good grades are good everywhere, my comments about importance of research over mastery of content is, I have learned, rather particular to pure mathematics.  If you are studying applied math, your research may be a more serious part of your application.  On the pure math side, most of the people admitted to the top programs are not being admitted because of their research.  So research has to be amazingly strong to make a decisive difference.

I'm in an M.Phil programme (and it's actually in the Caribbean, but the system is UK influenced) meaning that emphasis is placed on research only. In other departments, such as Chemistry and Life Sciences, there's only a technical writing course that grad students are required to do and sometimes they allow M. Phil students to take M. Sc courses to help with their research. So there wasn't any need for a GPA system for that programme specifically.

Well, hmm.  I'm afraid I'm not really familiar enough with your situation to provide further advice.  Good luck.


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What are the pros and cons of including graphics/figures in teaching and research statements for academic job applications?
I was wondering what the prevailing opinion in the community is, with regards to the pros and cons of using images or graphics in teaching and research statements for academic job applications. I sometimes feel that schematics, or graphics can help explain information better - and hence am often tempted to use them. However, most statements have a page/word limit on them - hence creating possible formatting and content issues.
Looking forward to some perspectives here, and I believe the discussions help prospective job applicants (like me).
Thanks a lot.

Is it a question specific to US? I think it is very depend on country and research community. There are countries (e.g. Japan) where including visual is almost a must.

I had asked the question to be specific to US indeed - however the response below I believe is generic enough for a few pointers to be applicable across various communities. :)

The foundation of this decision really mirrors the one we have to make when writing a scientific article; the overarching question is: does the visual do more than words given the same amount of area on the paper? If it does, it's usually a good sign to at least try inserting the work into the text and then perhaps circulate the piece among peers as a litmus test.
As a member in a hiring committee, I seldom see visuals, but we did hire a person two years ago who used a bar graph to indicate her course evaluation scores, which was quite impressive. Looking back, I think I'd probably lay out my evaluation as follows:
Does the candidate make that visual? Among many possible visuals, I'd probably prefer those made by (or designed/inspired by) the candidate. Say, if the author has developed a new health promotion theory that was published, it'd be great to see that expressed in a graph (which is common in health promotion theory.) On the contrary, if the candidate has been working on designing promotion based on a pre-existing theory proposed by someone else, then I'd perhaps not recommend plugging that graph into the research strategy (in that case I would think a citation or mentioning of the original author's name would do the work just fine), unless the said concept is extremely new or novel.
Does the context call for a visual? Some research interests are heavily related to data visualization. For example, if the candidate has extensive experience in applying geographic information system (GIS) to solve research questions, then perhaps attaching a map that published by the candidate is a reasonable demonstration. Another example is field work photos. If you have extensive field research experience, it may also be nice to plug in a representative picture. (Be very explicit about having photo release or permission in the image caption, especially if your picture shows faces of your study participants or minors.)
Is the visual well designed? Now this is what I consider a much more severe risk than going over page limit. By attaching a visual you're also presenting another array of techniques and experiences for evaluation. Yet, criticisms targeting at visuals are, in my opinion, a lot more varying (and something conflicting), compared to those received by written words; this is probably due to acceptably clear grammatical rules for words do exist, but not for visuals. This is not to discourage you from adding a visual even the situation calls for, but to remind all of us to be cautious about the design and adherence to the principles of graphical excellence.
Volumes and volumes were written on graphical excellence, but I would suggest at the very least thumb through William Cleveland's Visualizing Data and Edward Tufte's The Visual Display of Quantitative Information and try to pick and adopt whatever applicable to your work.
More obscure things to pay attention to include: i) Does the image have enough resolution to be printed out nicely? ii) Is the resolution of the image so high that the document's size has become gigantic (e.g. more than 10 Mb)? iii) Would the image be eligible if the committee member prints out the document in black and white?
Closing remarks I don't think I can give a definite yes or no. Adding visuals can be a high risk, high return decision and the chance of success is highly contextual. As someone who is passionate about data visualization, I'd perhaps suggest to stay true to yourself and feel free to experiment a little. If you feel that the visuals really represent your idea and work much better than words, by all means plug in one or two; break the rule a little bit while having some fun expressing yourself. Solicit feedback from peers and advisers to make sure they generally get your ideas.

This is a very helpful pros-cons analysis Penguin_Knight ! Thanks !


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How to judge length of exams when teaching undergraduate engineering
I am a first-time lecturer for an American university (am a PhD student), and am giving midterm and final exams in the course, which comprises an introduction to engineering and how to work with systems in a methodological way.
I am designing the midterm exam for the course, and the students have an allotted 50 minutes to complete it. Most of the questions are brief short-answer questions (around 2-3 sentences for an answer is sufficient), followed by some multiple choice and fill-in-the-blank questions.
I took the midterm by myself and timed the length of completion, which was around 12 minutes for me. From other professors that I have taken classes from, this seems to be the standard (i.e., if the professor can complete the exam in 1/4 of the allotted time, then it is an appropriate length).
Does this seem reasonable? I'd like to hear some related experiences from other instructors.

Related in possible duplicate: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/31175/20058

Sounds like a pretty good rule-of-thumb. One thing I've found is that if I ever go, "Hey, that's an interesting problem", then it's usually too complex for my students. Iterate in future semesters; there's no substitute for running the experiment and getting experience.

The "1/4" rule of thumb is reasonable in a lot of cases, but it can be unreasonable for particular groups of students.  In a very low level course (like yours) it may take students much more than 4 times as long as you to do the test.  In an upper level course the students might be able to do the test in something less than 4 times as long you take.
As an example, my rule of thumb for lower level undergraduate math courses (calculus, intro to linear algebra, and differential equations) is 1/8 rather than 1/4.  I've been teaching mathematics for almost 30 years, so solving these kinds of problems is second nature, and I'm mostly limited by the speed of my handwriting in producing a set of solutions.  It also helps that unlike my students, I can do arithmetic and algebra in my head without having to pull out a calculator.
I would suggest that you discuss the exam with a professor or TA who has previously taught the course and see whether they think it might be too long.

Thank you, I will talk to other professors (there are other concurrent sections for the course).

To add to this excellent answer, for a class with many TAs, it is simple to make all of them do the exam. They should be able to solve it in 1/4-1/3 of the time. We often did and to check the length and also find typos / ambiguities in questions (CS).


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How to respond after co-authors revise rejected paper without informing first author?
As we all know, it is common to re-work a rejected paper to improve the shortfalls of the paper.
Suppose one is first author on a paper, and it is rejected. Following this,

the other co-authors make some modifications/updates to the paper, and don't inform the first author
one co-author claims first authorship on the revised work, as he/she has done more work after the rejection

How should the first author respond after finding out about this?

Welcome to Academia.SE, and interesting question! While I understand the situation, I'm not sure what your specific question is. Can you [edit] the post to clarify what, exactly, you want us to answer?

I guess the answer depends on the opinion of the first author about the changes and the change in authorship.

When the first author received the letter of rejection, did he talk to his co-authors to decide what to do with the rejected article? Did they agree on some line of action? If not, the co-authors might have felt a lack of responsibility on his part and decided to revise the work themselves.

In addition to the above suggestions, insofar as the first author sometimes (read: mostly) is responsible for significant research work (such as data collection and/or analysis), many ownership issues might arise if the primary researcher (again, the first author) is not in the loop. You could provide some more information to get better answers.

Definitely depends on your goals and on weather the revisions have been resubmitted.  I recommend not burning any bridges.

A lot depends on the particulars of the situation, but the principles of academic honesty are pretty straightforward here, and an answer for the particular situation can be derived from those principles.
The basic principle is that every involved author in a work has a stake in that work and the consent of all authors must be obtained before a work is submitted.  Most journals actually explicitly ask about this, and the better run ones will send email to every author to inform them so that they have a chance to object.
Somebody who was once author, however, can become uninvolved in one of several ways:

The author may object to the nature of the paper and explicitly withdraw from authorship.
The author may stop fulfilling their responsibilities for authors, in which case they should be kept as an author but might have their position in the author list change based on how the manuscript continues to evolve.
The author may have had a minor role (e.g., in a many-author biology or physics publication), and choose to give blanket consent to whatever the primary authors believe is acceptable, rather than be involved in detail.

So the first thing to determine is, did the first author effectively drop out of their responsibilities?  As the lead author, a first author needs to discuss the fate of the rejected paper with the other authors in a timely fashion.  If the first author instead vanishes (e.g., changing positions and not staying in communication about the work), then it is entirely reasonable for the others to pick up the paper again.  The first author might or might not stay first then, depending on how the paper evolves, how much new experimental work is done, etc.  If there is a decision not to proceed, however, then anyone who changes their mind and wants to revise and resubmit needs to re-involve all of the authors again.
If it is the case that the others acted inappropriately, then the action to take depends on how important the paper is to the first author relative to the relationship with the other authors.  The range of options includes (from least to most bridge-burning):

Ask to be involved in further revision and authorship discussions (assuming the paper isn't already published)
Stop collaborating with the other authors (if the first author is aiming to be a career scientist, there will be many other papers with better collaborators)
Request a correction or retraction from the publisher

Scientists are people like everybody else, and have everything from stellar working relationships to innocent miscommunications to nasty misbehaviors.  Start from the assumption that there is an innocent misunderstanding, but if there is real misconduct involved, the best thing to do is to balance protection of yourself and warning of others as best fits your situation.


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How do I tell a professor I don't find their research topic interesting?
This hasn't directly happened to me, but it's come close. Basically I meet a professor for other reasons (I attended a talk by them, I requested a recommendation from them, during a social visit to their department, etc), and we talk about their work. They are clearly very passionate about their subject, and they eventually offer further collaboration with e.g. "We have this open position and are looking to hire. Would you like to apply?"
Problem is, I don't find their work very interesting. What is a good way to say I don't intend to collaborate further because I don't find the topic interesting? What if we are already collaborating, but I intend to end the collaboration because I lost interest in the topic? Does it matter if the topics (i.e. the one I work on / would like to work on vs. the one the professor works on) are different niches in the same subject, or if they are completely disjoint? For example, if I'm a number theorist, do I respond differently to a professor in algebra or to a professor in medicine?

"Professors" aren't arcane creatures who must be talked to in ritual ways. Just tell them as you would tell anyone else you aren't interested in an offer they made you.

Tactfully...

...Flashbacks to when my semantics prof told me excitedly about his research project. It was on problems of cardinal number reference in the event of a tie. "If two people cross the line at the exact same moment, there is no first-place winner. If so, we can't name a second-place winner because we have no first. Then how can we have a third when the next person crosses the line?" he asked triumphantly. "They're both first," I said. "They tied!" He seemed dismayed by this response. I had not perceived the profundity of the problem. To be fair, though, he was a good teacher.

As a professor, you'd rather have someone say they want to focus on something else, than to agree to work with you and do a half-hearted job.

What kind of trouble/problems do you expect just honestly saying what you think? If I personally were the professor (and I have been in a situation like that), I'd just note that collaboration is not going to happen and move on. Why would I even bother at all whether somebody I probably have no dealings with in the future is interested in my work?

Be polite but direct. "Thanks for thinking of me. I'm really looking for opportunities in [area] - I think that's where my research interests lie."
But consider (depending on your career stage) if you might find the collaboration interesting or useful after all. I didn't have much interest in my PhD topic when I started it, but it led me to all sorts of fascinating places.
If you're already collaborating with someone and it isn't working out, that's trickier. It's probably worth looking for a natural stopping point if you can (a publication or the end of a grant perhaps). Again, polite but direct - "I think our interests are diverging - I'm hoping to do more work in [area] and I don't think this research is leading in that direction."

Actually, I recommend keeping such thoughts to yourself. There is really no need to say you aren't interested. It is hard to say it in such a way that isn't negative since they are highly committed  to their own path.
If offered collaboration just say, "Sorry, but I'm too busy/involved in my own research to be able to offer anything".
If breaking an existing collaboration, express it as an opportunity to pursue a new direction that will take all your efforts.
At most, "Sorry, but my interests are elsewhere" is about as far as you should go.
But to, in essence, say to someone that their research is boring isn't going to be helpful to anyone. Let them be them and you be you.

Just tell them straight-up that you don't find the topic interesting
Honestly, if I were in the position of these professors, it wouldn't bother me at all if you just told me straight-up that you don't find my topic interesting.  That is a perfectly acceptable reason to not want to do research with me.  Most academics are well aware that we work in niche areas that the vast majority of people would find boring.  Even within our general fields, there are research preferences and problems we find interesting and problems that we find uninteresting.  My expertise is in statistical theory, which I absolutely adore; I'm well aware that the average person would consider that field about as interesting as watching hair grow.  I'm also well aware that there are areas of research in statistics that I am personnally uninterested in, even though I find the field in general to be fascinating.
The best thing you can do long-term in academia ---both for yourself and your colleagues--- is to find a research field that you love, that will sustain your interest for decades of research.  Those professors know this, so if you don't find their topic interesting, you're doing them a favour by saying so and bowing out of research in that field.  They will want to hire someone who is passionate about the subject, so if that's not you, no problem --- just say so.  (Also, your present interests may change over time; you might find that in five years you start to find that field interesting.  If so, your previous candour on your lack of interest will stand you in good stead when you tell them you have now developed an interest in that field.  At least, that is how I would look at it if you were dealing with me.)

I think if OP follows this advice, it would be important to emphasize that the topic is not interesting to OP, and not that the OP thinks the topic is not interesting in an absolute sense.

Both great points --- in general, if you are going to go with the present advice, the lack of interest should be delivered in a way that is open and candid, but not insulting to the professor; so yes, OP would stress that the topic is not interesting to OP while acknowledging that it is of interest to others.

"..about as interesting as watching hair grow" -- if you play it at 10x the speed, it's quite mesmerizing.

we talk about their work

Possibly out of courtesy, even though you don't find it interesting.
Extend the same courtesy when answering this question.
They have not, after all, sought your opinion on their work; only whether you'd like to collaborate. There are numerous reasons you could turn down the offer; lack of time, lack of core competence, misalignment with long-term plans, the existence of a more suited candidate, personal choice of country/city/university to work at, etc.
This will probably be easier if the professor is from a vastly different field. Within the same area, they may be able to suggest mutually attractive projects- in which case you could either reconsider, or go with one of the personal reasons.

Be honest, be polite, keep an open mind
Do tell the professor that you’re happy with your current employment, current line of research, etc. Or tell them that the area or research is a little too far outside of your knowledge for you to delve into it right now. Thank the professor genuinely for the offer. And I’d suggest stating your position as “right now”, not in absolutes (“it’s a little outside my focus right now” vs. “I don’t like that research area—it’s boring”). And keep in mind that what sounds boring now may fascinate you in the future. Don’t burn bridges, and keep an open mind about the type of work you want to do. For my own part I’ve been surprised to find that work I thought was super boring I now find totally fascinating.

"Professors" aren't arcane creatures who must be talked to in ritual ways. Just tell them as you would tell anyone else you aren't interested in an offer made to you.