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Do graduate students go home for the summer?
Is it common or something usual for students to sometimes go home for the summer?

Isn't this normal? International students go home to see their family, save $ (instead of paying rent over the summer), holiday, etc.

I am a bit perplex about this question.  Maybe it is a USA thing or there is something you are not saying. I'm in Australia.  Our students can go back whenever they want.  If they leave for an extended period of time, then it could be due to family or financial issues.

Welcome to the site.  It is usually best to choose a title that gives someone an understanding of what the question is about, instead of something generic or vague.  I edited the title but please feel free to edit it further if you prefer something else.

@ProfSantaClaus: "Isn't this normal?" - depends. From convrersations with American friends, I have gathered that at (some?) U.S. universities, the concept of a "summer break" appears to be a lot more pronounced than e.g. in my place (Germany), seeing that my friends' campus partly shuts down, there's no-one around, students clear their dorm rooms and get new ones after the break, etc. Hence, there may well be regional differences for what international students do during summer.

No.  When you join academia you renounce everything you care about and sacrifice yourself on the altar of science.

It's not clear how this is a practical, answerable question based on an actual problem that you face. Why does it matter?

As some answers have pointed out, there are many variations on what grad students do in the summer. Even if you consider only those grad students who want to use the summer productively, working on their research with their advisers, it makes a big difference what field they are in. If they need to do experiments in the adviser's lab, then they have to stay put. But students in, for example, mathematics, can do their research anywhere (including at home) and set up regular meetings with their advisers via skype. (Even if students stay put, advisers might be traveling during the summer.)

It would be very unusual for an international PhD student to leave for more than a month to visit family, at least within the sciences.  Students are paid during the summer.  Leaving for the whole summer would likely entail giving up the pay, which many students cannot afford.
Some international students do not leave at all for financial reasons, or for fear they will not be able to re-enter the United States.
This is totally different from undergraduates, who usually leave the university during the summer.

Although many RA's are on year-round contracts, most TA's are on 9 month contracts and often are not offered a TA contract for the summer.

@BrianBorchers in my experience in science departments in the US all PhD students had summer RAs.  The available RA positions were never filled up.  Of course this might not be true at poorer universities.  International students without funding can usually be paid more if they work near their universities than if they work in their home countries.

My department (computer science) provides very few TA positions during the summer. A lot of students seek internships.

I have seen a wide variety of decisions about the use of the summer break from classes, both in the case of students from the US and those from abroad.  It really runs the gamut.  Examples:

One friend couldn't afford the air fare to visit his home town, during his entire PhD.  This was very stressful for him.
One friend made his good-byes in May and came back in late August married, with his wife accompanying him.
Some students visit family for part of the summer.
Me: when I needed the money I worked as a secretary in a temp agency over the summer.  Otherwise I enjoyed the break from TA'ing, which allowed me to immerse myself in my exam prep or my project.

It's a very individual decision.  I don't think one should decide about summer plans based on what other people do.

International students do visit their home country. I have seen several Ph.D. students spend their entire summer in their home country. However, it completely depends on the student. From my perspective, I think it is a bad idea to waste your three months by going back to your home country. Either you should do an internship or you should continue your research with your adviser. I explained the reasons in the following paragraph:
1) If you choose to do an internship at the industry, it will help you in various ways. The experience in the industry will help you to finalize your career goal. You will get the chance to experience the industry work culture, you will get a chance to work with some industry leaders and it will be a valuable experience for you during your degree. The experience eventually helps students to get a job after your degree in the industry. If the student performs well, they even get a return offer. I have seen multiple cases where the student landed a job after their internship. If the student decides to go to academia, even then the industry experience is valuable. Moreover, the internship helps a student significantly monetarily. Generally, the companies pay the same salaries of a full-time employee to an intern and the amount is pretty high for a graduate student.
2) If you are a PhD student and do not want to go to an internship, then it is better to work on your research with your adviser. Eventually, you have to finish your thesis, so it is better to utilize your time. Generally, the advisers have funds to support their students in summer. So, if you get paid then it is better to work on your research during summer. If you do not get paid, still it is better to research then going back home.
3) If you are a masters student and do not get an internship, then it is better to find some positions in research labs and work with a professor. Sometimes, professors look for masters students and hire them for small research. Any academic work can be added to your resume and eventually help you to get a job later.
If you are a masters student and do not get an internship/works to do in summer, then you can go back home to save some money.

@Ponponhollamon, yes I am from US. People leaving for the summer is not a common phenomenon. I have hardly seen graduate students leaving for the summer. In my four years of graduate studies, I have hardly seen four to five people who did that and that did not end up well for them. Some of them left the program after some time, others did not have any job after their graduation. It's my personal experience, you might find different perspective on that.

I think it also matters what you plan to do after graduation. If you are not planning on academia and plan to work in home country, then targeting internships in home country would allow you to both use the summer wisely and see family.

I am a Canadian working on my PhD in the US. I was able to get a job in a clinic at home that does very similar research to my lab in the US and was therefore able to go home for June - mid August. I would say if you can do something like this where you stay productive over the summer, then yes it it okay to go home for the summer. But grad students do not typically get the summer off like in undergrad... grad school is a year-round job.


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How do I request feedback on my paper?
I have written this paper and I would like to ask, via email, from some professors in other universities to give me feedback. How is the best way to write such a request? First, what should I write in the email subject box? Then, how do I write the body of email?

Related: What are the strategies for getting feedback on articles?

Professors are busy people. If you send a random professor with whom you've never had any contact a paper and ask him or her to review it and provide feedback, odds are that you will never hear back from them, because they will ignore the request.
If you want a better response, you will need to cultivate a relationship with the faculty members over a period of time.

If you are new in research career and hasn't had enough relationship to be welcomed to ask for feedback, then your manuscript will likely be perceived to have low quality by busy people. In my experience you should ask it on a forum (Stack Exchange or Reddit), because your level is perfectly suited to ask there. In general, a quality post is not a wall-length post with a question "what do you think", but a post clearly explains an entanglement you found, because who can see that are indeed serious with it.
In my observation, Stack Exchange is best to ask for solution, Reddit is best for giving solution.

Would the user who raised the Low Quality Post flag explain why this is low quality except a few typos?

I didn't flag this, though my guess would be the perception that it didn't answer the question.  The question appears to be about how to get feedback on a manuscript while this answer's more about how to get questions answered.

Was that how this answer was intended?  I mean it sounds like this answer's saying that Stack Exchange is a good place to get feedback on a manuscript.

@scaaahu can I see which posts of mine are flagged by what reasons?

@Nat yes, because your manuscript will be perceived to has low quality by the busy people?

@Ooker https://academia.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/62585

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How good do I actually have to be to get into a top graduate program from an average undergraduate program?
So, this is a question that I do not know much about. I might get called on not having done a ton of research on graduate school, but I am really curious about this. I am an undergraduate student of mathematics and I am certainly planning on pursuing a graduate degree. I have looked at the top schools of math and they are certainly what one would expect: MIT, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, etc.
My issue is this: Academically, I was a late bloomer. I did not take high school seriously because it was annoying and elementary. Where I grew up, my school did not offer much in terms of AP classes or other opportunities. So, the only thing I excelled at naturally was math classes. Of course, they were extremely easy and required almost no effort on my part, which is what made me leery in terms of taking college level classes. I figured that I was good at high school classes because they are simple, but college level will be a different story.
I was wrong. In university, the gap was wider. Once I became adjusted, I actually enjoyed mathematics because it was so much more abstract and complex. This caused me to do rather large amounts of independent research in graduate level topics (topology, analytic number theory, analysis, etc). My only issue is that I am not in a competitive environment, really. The students are not top-notch, and don't share the same drive that I have. This is why I feel like being at the top of the class is not really an accomplishment, since I am not doing anything that any undergraduate at MIT, Harvard, Yale, etc, couldn't do.
My question that I pose here is this:
How good do I really need to be?
I have a passion for mathematics and for the most part, I seem to be talented at it. In terms of GPA, I have maintained a 4.0 with little effort just because I typically have already covered the material in the class on my own. However, there is a voice in the back of my head that keeps telling me that I only stand out because I am at a school that is not top tier, ivy league.
What does a graduate student at a top tier school look like? In my mind, I see someone that has been publishing papers since their teens, and was at the level I'm at now coming out of high school (I am a rising senior at the moment). Is this true? Am I being realistic? I am concerned because I would love to apply to some of these schools (and to get in is my dream!) but I honestly don't even know what level I am at in comparison to the rest of their applicants. I would hate to get shot down almost instantly because I am a joke in their eyes.
Sorry if this was a bit of a ramble. The question boils down to the title really, the rest is just elaboration for those that are interested. Thanks!

... ivy league. — Don't worry about which athletic conference the school's sports teams play in.

Is the question how good at math I have to be, or how good does my application need to look? Either way, it is unlikely to be appropriate here. Also what is a "rather large amount of independent research in graduate level topics "? Does that mean you have papers in decent journals? Does that mean you have looked at grad level textbooks?

@PVAL No, I don't have papers, and that is what I am concerned about. I have been given the opportunity to take graduate classes offered at my university because of performance in lower level courses. In terms of reading, that is where my skill lies. I have read a huge volume of books by authors like Lanczos, Kolmogorov, Fomin, etc (older authors since their books are cheap).

And the question boils down to: HOW do I get in? What will help me more: Academics/Grades or proof of well roundedness/involvement/how good my application is.

Why not see for yourself? I guess it's too late to do an exchange semester, but you could join a summer school or go somewhere as a visiting scholar. This would give you a good idea of your peers (generally only motivated students bother with summer schools), adds to your credentials, and potentially you could meet a professor, whose lab you might be interested in. Personal contact goes a long way.

Some related questions you may find useful: 1) What does it take to get into top math PhD programs?, 2) Does rigor/thoroughness of undergraduate program matter (for graduate/PhD applications)?, 3) Path to a good grad school?, (cont'd)

What advice would you give students applying for graduate school in mathematics?, and 5) Improving my PhD application for math programs

"there is a voice in the back of my head that keeps telling me that I only stand out because I am at a school that is not top tier, ivy league."
As JeffE would say, Do not listen to the Impostor Syndrome!

For what it's worth, I'm in a very similar situation (top student at what I perceive to be a not-so-great school, didn't get serious in my studies until 2nd year of undergrad, technical field (CS), no papers published). I applied to just 7 schools (sloppy, I know) and got into a top-tier public, which is no Ivy League, but still a stellar department and school. So yes, it's definitely possible to get into a top 10 school with that profile, though I don't know how likely it is, since everyone else rejected me.

The very very rare people who have been publishing since their teens (yes, they do exist) all imagine other people winning the Putnam in elementary school. Someday a precocious fourth-grader will win the Putnam; no doubt she'll worry about someone else winning the Fields Medal while still in the womb.

From what you have said about yourself, I think you're very well prepared for graduate school at a very good institution. There are always a few incredibly bright, very young mathematicians that fit the image you have in your mind of students at top tier universities. I know of a few myself. However a very large number of math graduate students are much like you (and I).
I had a very strong affinity for math as a young child but grew up in one of the worst academic environments in the US. A highly nontrivial amount of students in my area didn't graduate high school, even fewer went to college and fewer then even went to universities that were not the crappy local universities. I lucked out because one of the best high schools in the nation was in my area yet I didn't feel very challenged and more or less coasted along and didn't try. Ended up with a GPA of about 3.0 at the time of graduation. I even spectacularly failed statistics with a 40 or so from lack of effort.
Undergrad rolled around. I flourished in the environment: took lots of math classes, took plenty of courses outside my degree to broaden my horizon, did lots of research, but like you I was a big fish in a small pond. I felt similar to you - that I only looked good in comparison to all of the others. I almost had a 4.0 in math and had a 3.8 overall with a couple of years of research under my belt. When it came time for grad school applications, I cast a bit of a wide net, but got rejected from a lot of universities. (This was largely my fault since I seemed to mess something up on every application. Having not really done undergraduate applications, I was a bit overwhelmed and scatterbrained.) I actually got into my top choice university which surprised me a lot.
When I started my master's, I did notice that there was a bit of a gulf between me and the other students once I got there. My undergraduate institution didn't have nearly the course selection or resources that the other students had. However in terms of math capability, I was at least middle of the pack; so while I had a bit of a learning curve and some growing pains, I think I ended up being one of the stronger master's students because I fully dedicated myself and didn't give up. I did spend a ridiculous amount of time in my office the first semester, though. I went to school around 9:30 in the morning and went home at midnight many days.
For all of it, I grew incredibly and am doing quite well in my PhD program. Coursework is a cinch now, research is going well and I'm writing up a couple of papers which I hope to submit in the not-too-distant future. With your background and love for mathematics, I think you'll be in a much better position than I was in terms of applications. Your GPA is better, you seem much more fluent in many areas of mathematics and are much more mathematically mature. The biggest factor in determining your success (outside of pure genius - which is incredibly uncommon, even amongst mathematicians!) is your unwillingness to give up. Even if you're slightly weaker than some of your future fellow graduate students right now, once you get there, all of those disparities will quickly melt away if you put in the time and effort. Where you came from does not have to dictate where you end up. You are more than your past if you allow yourself to be.

Here is some general off-topic advice regarding grad school since you seem to be lacking in advising: just because you want to go to a top tier university and get in to one does not mean you should necessarily go. For undergrad, this is not the case; if you get into MIT, Stanford, Harvard, etc. and have the financial means, you should definitely go as it is a great opportunity and can directly impact your future. At the graduate level, things are so much more nuanced. (For example, the reputation of the university doesn't directly dictate your future success provided that you put in 100%. In the internet age, it is much easier to do really meaningful research and network with top researchers at any respected university since you have access to all of the information you want.)
When you apply, you are not applying to the university more than you are applying to a professor (or professors) or at least this is the philosophy I think one should have. You should have an idea of what kind of things you want to pursue for research and you should look to those people who do research in that direction. I don't mean to say that you need to know exactly the project you want to do but have a rough idea of the field you are interested in, say commutative algebra or functional analysis or harmonic analysis. If you apply to a university in which no one really pursues what interests you, you're going to be without a future advisor or you'll have to settle for second best. Applying to a graduate program just because of prestige doesn't guarantee success or happiness. Granted, at the top universities, this tends not to be an issue as they have very broad reach but it is something to be wary about. Just because it is a great university or great department does not mean it is a great fit for you.
There are also other factors to consider when applying to schools: Could you deal with the super competitive atmosphere (or alternatively the extremely laid back atmosphere)? Could you stand to live there for four to six years, e.g. if you're from a very hot climate, could you survive the very harsh winters in upstate NY or if you're from upstate NY, could you handle a Texas summer? If you cannot see yourself being happy with (or tolerating) a lot of these extra-academic aspects of where you are, you might want to reconsider.
A PhD is very demanding and can be soul-crushing at times. You'll often run into really difficult road blocks in coursework or research and if everything else in your life makes you miserable as well, you're going to have a really bad time. Your mental health is very important. You will be pushed to the extreme at times and in many ways throughout your PhD and your environment shouldn't amplify this. If you're having a tough time in research, the weather is absolutely miserable and you cannot stand your fellow graduates for whatever reason, your mental wellness might take a turn for the worst. I have seen this happen first hand and it is really unfortunate. These are not things academic advisors often tell students who wish to do graduate school because they are easy to overlook, but it is something to keep in mind. Hopefully this has been helpful.

This is a great comment. I honestly did not think about the extra-academic aspects such as weather. I really do hate the cold, and it seems like all of the top 10 schools are northern! And I like your perspective on applying to schools for some professor. I have not done enough research on this, since my books are all pretty old (Dover is cheap!) and I honestly have no idea who the big shots in mathematics are nowadays. I will definitely look into this, because I think you are very right about the importance of that.

+1 for the last two paragraphs. those are certainly valid for other fields, too.

well I'm an MIT pure math PhD. I published my first paper when I was 27 : a couple of years after getting the PhD! Very few people has published anything before their PhD and their first paper generally was from their thesis.
If you have actually done some original research, write it up and get some advice from a professor at your school regarding publishing it. Being published is a massive help in grad school applications.
My general rule is only do a maths phd if you have a calling for it. It sounds like you do. I treated most of Grad School like a job -- go in around 9, take a break for lunch, go home around 6pm. Work hard during those hours. Enjoy your evenings and weekends.
High quality institutions do help your career so apply and if you get in, go and visit. If you don't like the atmosphere, go elsewhere. Certainly when I was at MIT the atmosphere was collegial rather than competitive.

_Being published is a massive help in grad school applications. _ - Would you say this applies to patents too? aren't they a kind of "publication"?. Obviously we would not be talking about mathematics (a patent in mathematics, that would be interesting), but engineering.

Thank you for commenting. It is nice to hear something from someone that is actually in a spot that I am yearning for, and this has made me feel much better about the situation.

Let me offer some perspective from an admissions point of view.  What's important, for graduate studies, is your preparation, talent, motivation and work ethic.  How will a committee assess this?  If you go through a bunch of advanced courses with all A's from a top school, unless something is really wrong with your application, you'll get into a top school because the admissions people know the quality of the program you went through.
The main problem with coming from a small/unknown school (and I also did myself, so I'm sympathetic) is that it is harder to evaluate your preparation and talent, so to get into top programs there needs to be something in your application to gauge you against other applicants.  Being able to do this is also helpful for personally knowing how you stack up with students coming out of top schools.  Here are some suggestions:

Even if you're not at a great school, you probably have some professors who got their PhDs from top schools.  They will have a sense of how you compare to students from top schools.  Consequently, they will be able to give you informed advice about what kind of schools you should apply to, and be able to write in their recommendation letters things like "Rellek is comparable to the better students I've known at at Ivy League Institute, Inc."  Note: recommendation letters are particularly important when you come from an unknown school.
If you've done things like summer programs with students from all over, your experience there can help gauge you against other students.  (So it's natural to ask someone from one of these programs for a letter.)
If you've written research papers or typed up notes on advanced topics, you can make them available (say on a personal webpage), so interested committee members have the option of taking a look.
Consider applying to some backup schools and/or master's programs as backups.  After a master's at a good school, you will be easy to compare with top students around the country.

As a final comment, it's true that to get into Harvard or Princeton, you should to be exceptional (or really lucky), but you merely need to be good and show promise to get into a top 10 school.  I remember I was surprised when I found out most grad students I met at top 10 schools weren't "superstars" (some are, of course, but that's not par for the course).

If you state on your letter of purpose what you have stated here, it will be regarded highly, because the admissions officer will see the passion that you have, and that has more relevance than anything.
Opportunity doesn’t knock.  If it knocks, it knocks on the inside.
You.... are opportunity… You create it
And...You are what you believe.
That is what sets you apart, and, that is what
you need to let these Ivy League admissions people know.
That is what I did...

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Does taking an academic job in Asia or Africa make it difficult to get a job in the US or Europe later?
Many in this community know of the struggle of finding a job in tertiary education after completing a PhD.
However, there are many options available for people who are willing to work overseas in exotic locations in Asia, Africa, and the other developing areas of the world.
I am wondering if working overseas would be detrimental to someone's career. Is it hard to get back into the States/Europe after spending a few years teaching and writing in the developing world? How do search committees view someone who has been away in order to find employment? Let's say the person asking has a PhD in education.

What kind of US/European institution are you wanting to come back to?  And what kind of overseas institution are you going to?  Some of the best unis in the world are "overseas" in Asia.

Well, I never said it was me. But let's say you just want to find a full-time job at a four year college. Let's also say that we are coming from a developing nation in Southeast Asia that is not a high ranking but a rather low ranking place for education

It really depends on the reputation of the particular institution, department, etc.  There are numerous universities with good reputations in developing countries, and presumably many more I have never heard of.

This question reads very oddly due to the assumption of a "US/Europe" reader and "other".  Suggest rewording to clarify where the asker is based at present, and where you're thinking of going (oddly enough, "rest of world" is not homogeneous).

If you go to top schools overseas, you should be fine. You can always explain your decision by saying that you needed to travel, help developing countries, explore opportunities. In my field, many Chinese schools have very high-tech requirements in their labs! My old school (not in China) has unlimited funding! So, research wise, it might be a good idea to travel for a year or two to establish a good working relationship with labs and schools.
Many of the professors (engineering) I know will go to the Gulf region and work in Dubai/Kuwait for a sabbatical year or even as a visiting professor (1-3 years) because of the good pay (can get up to 140-160k), benefits (paid housing, car, air tickets, schooling etc), no taxes, less stress (no need to write proposals or get funding).
As long as you keep your contacts in the US/Europe "happy", you should be fine. I know some professors will hold international conferences and put their colleagues on committees! I know some will hold 1-2 days seminars/workshops and invite their previous department chair as a keynote speaker or lecturer for crash-courses (they make easy money out of this).

It's not a career killer, but it can make things more difficult.  If you are looking for research-oriented jobs, and are doing high-quality research, it should not make a difference (except in cases where your area is only popular in other countries).  What the other answers fail to mention, is that it can be a significant disadvantage applying to smaller/more teaching-oriented schools (e.g., most liberal arts colleges) from overseas.  Here are a few reasons:

Flying you in for interviews is more expensive.
Being able to teach well in the US system is important, and overseas applications tend to provide less evidence for this.
Many schools want to find candidates who specifically want to be at that institution, or at least are not likely to leave.  International applicants need to convince committees not just they want to move to the US, but would be happy at that specific school.
At least in my field, we are over-saturated with good domestic candidates, so search committees can afford to throw out applications for small concerns, like ones I mentioned above.

This is not to say it's impossible, it's just a somewhat harder.  In my field, where postdocs are common, my general advice to people who want permanent jobs in the US is to try to do their last postdoc in the US (or at least apply to US postdocs as a backup when applying for tenure-track positions).

I did a PhD in philosophy and am currently working in Japan at a university. The majority of my teaching is in English -- and about English -- rather than philosophy.
I'd say there's several things to think about:
(1) How well does your discipline translate to other countries. (Your specific example of education translates well on the theory side and very poorly on the teaching methodologies side [at least in Japan]. My field on the other hand is not done in the same way in Japan as compared to the English-speaking world).
(2) Are your language skills up for the task in these exotic locations? (The claims of certain nations to English speakers in universities are exaggerated or the degree of preparedness for university level work may be exaggerated -- that's why the opportunities are sitting there for the taking. The offers aren't at Peking University of Seoul National University).
(3) Do you have the networking skills or publications to get back to your own country or target country after being abroad? (I continue to publish in English in philosophy, but my teaching time is primarily used teaching English).
(4) Will you be able to get relevant teaching reviews? While Japanese law claims that they have a teaching review system for university courses, in practice, they don't. In other words, I have no plausible teaching reviews except for the ones that I personally conduct in my classes (via google forms). I think this negatively impacts my ability to return to the US.

Exotic is not necessarily bad. You may stand out because of that, but that could be an advantage. If we talk about a low ranking place, you'll need to show that you helped that community, and that you maintained a reasonable publication record. The hard part will be maintaining your network in the region where you want to return.


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How can I keep up with all the important advances in fields related to mine?
Being updated with new ideas in many research fields is impossible, seen the diversity of research topics and the strong relations that exists between them. Most of the researchers in the world, are needing to interact with many fields and to be up to date with the trending ideas in each one of them.
Example: if one researcher is specialized in remote-sensing. Being up to date in this field is possible with some effort. But, this field is related to many other fields ( computer vision, image processing, machine learning, artificial intelligence..). Any new idea in any of these fields could directly impact remote sensing as well. The problem is that this researcher cannot cope with the high speed changes that occurs in these fields.
This example is applicable to many cases as well. And many of you are facing the same situation.
I am in the beginning of my PhD, my thesis interact with many research fields. I have to summarizes the trending ideas in many fields to conclude the state of the art of my thesis. Following the traditional method by accessing the literature of each field may out passes the goal of my thesis.
I want to know if there is a mean to know the trending research ideas in one research topic and the statistics related to them that are gaining some interest.
Is there any mean to track advancement in a research field?

First you should answer a different question: what problem are you trying to solve through trending tools? Discover what is hot so you can jump on it? Well, if it is trending, it is already too late. Find new ideas of interest to you? Well, an automated tool has no idea what will happen to catch your fancy or dovetail with what is going on in your head. Read broadly in journals in your field(s), go to conferences, brainstorm with colleagues. Automated tools can help with very focused questions, and even then there will be caveats.

There is no easy way:
First step would be to talk to your advisor.
Second step would be to look at recent issues of the main journals in your field.
Third step would be to attend some of the main conferences in your field, listen to the talks and talk to the people.
After that you make up your mind what your opinion the trending issues are, and repeat steps 1 and 2 (and maybe 3) to try to confirm that.

Some people said that there is some online visual tool that track in a visual manner the main tags that are gaining interest in any field. Is it true?

What do you think about the tools provided by elsevier: https://www.elsevier.com/research-intelligence .  Did you try them.

those tools may help, but beware what goes into those tools. e.g. is elsevier only tracking stuff hapening in its own journals or does the algorithm favor publications in its own journals... In the end there is no supstitute for doing the work yourself.

I'd hardly say it is easy, or even possible, in any field to keep up with mounds of new research.
However, I find it best to narrow down your area of research as much as possible. Find a few niches within your field, and become an expert on those; I have found that much easier to keep up with. Anything outside of that is usually useless toe anyway.


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Searching a pdf journal paper for mathematical symbols
When skimming through a long mathematical paper (in pdf format), I often find a mathematical symbol (often in greek and with subscripts/superscripts) that was defined previously somewhere else within the paper.  Of course, it's not always easy to find where the parameter was defined, so I resort to using the FIND tool.  However, simply copy and pasting the symbol to the FIND tool doesn't seem to work well, since the symbol cannot be copied exactly.
Is there a better way to perform an automated search a PDF document for a particular mathematical symbol if I don't have the original latex file?  Especially ones with subscripts and superscripts?

What PDF viewer are you using? Using Evince, searching for symbols seems to work without any problems.

@Senex:  I'm currently using Adobe Reader.  I've tried Evince, but it doesn't seem to work well to search symbols with subscripts and superscripts.  Anytime I try to copy such a symbol, it doesn't paste exactly in the FIND tool.

OK, I see the problem with superscripts AND subscripts (with only one -- either a superscript or a subscript -- Evince seems to work by copying and pasting the symbol and deleting the space between the symbol and the sub/superscript that gets added during copying and pasting).

I search for '?', papers seldom have many questions. The precision is bad, but the recall is good, in my experience.

Are the equations not numbered?

This can be a tricky one, and you can sometimes have similar issues with accented and greek letters. If you cannot find words that have been hyphenated to break a line, in my experience this is reader-dependent and Adobe Reader has never given me problems.
Some PDFs just were not generated with the proper character mappings, so they will never be searchable with the affected characters. With regards to the format of superscripts and subscripts, the PDF will be searchable with them in the same format that they appear when you copy-paste out of the document. With other special characters, if you cannot copy-paste them, you cannot search for them.
If you urge everyone using LaTeX to do \usepackage{cmap}\usepackage[T1]{fontenc},  those packages should solve most problems. Notably, cmap makes math characters (such as the integral sign) searchable.
Unfortunately, as far as I know there is no way to "repair" a PDF that is not properly searchable, unless you re-create a fixed version from the source.

If it were searchable, then simply copy-pasting from the PDF file should work, right?

@Paul Yes, it's a bi-directional thing. If you can search for it, you can copy-paste it. If you cannot search for it, you cannot copy-paste it.

It is possible to "repair" a PDF that is not properly searchable, for example by running it through OCR. Acrobat's own OCR won't run on a non-image PDF, but some other OCR packages will.

If your paper has been posted to the arXiv, go to the paper's page (here's one of mine), click on "Other formats" and "download source". Assuming the authors submitted the LaTeX Source to the arXiv, you'll get a tarball with the LaTeX source, which should be a lot more searchable. (Yes, I do this for large enough papers where I expect to do a lot of searching.)

Interesting solution

I found a trick tonight trying to search for all instances of L_ij^* in a PDF. The regular search function didn't recognize the superscript asterisk, only regular asterisks. I am using Acrobat Reader DC version 2015.20.20042...hopefully it works for other versions. Here are the instructions:
Choose a string of words immediately next to an instance of the sought-after symbol in your PDF document. Do ctrl-F. In the Find window that opens, click the arrow next to the text box and select the full reader search from the list. Enter the string of words in the search window of the full reader search. The character you will need to use for a search shows up in the results window. You can click on the bolded/underlined instance in the results and your curser will be placed on the symbol in your PDF document.
In my case, it was the Å character that represented the superscript asterisk (*). Next, I opened a blank Word document and then chose Insert – Symbol - Advanced Symbol …. I then looked for Å (regular shortcuts, keyboard strokes, etc. for this symbol didn't work for me), inserted it into my Word document then copy and pasted the Å from the Word document into the Acrobat advanced search window and hit Search.
It found all instances of superscript *! Again, you can click on the result and your curser will be taken to that symbol in your PDF document.


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Is it okay to ask and discuss about questions which come in exams which come in German univerisities?
I am partaking in some exams provided by German universities. Would it be okay if I were to discuss the questions after the exam online, e.g., by posting on the appropriate Stack Exchange? There were no rules written against it, but I heard datenschutz (data privacy law) is quite strict in Germany, hence my question.

This (Academia) would not be the forum for it in any case. And, the rules, if any, wouldn't be SE rules, but university rules. Ask them how widely you can discuss "old" questions.

I am aware of all that, I am asking this to people who study there, what their experience with this was

"There were no rules written against it" - this depends, if you intend to repost exams online, this could violate copyright (see e.g. https://www.bmbf.de/bmbf/shareddocs/kurzmeldungen/de/was-forschende-und-lehrende-wissen-sollten.html#:~:text=Ja.,in%20der%20Regel%20urheberrechtlich%20geschützt.)

Germany is a big place, and different universities might also have different policies. But you would probably need to ask whoever wrote the exam in question for permission, as with other course materials.

Note also that this has nothing to do with Datenschutz. Datenschutz best translates as data privacy and is about handling personal information about people. It doesn't say anything about university exam questions.

Adding to @coffee_into_plots answer, Germany is not only big, but education is organized on a federal level, not on country level. So there are more differences than you might think from one federal state to the other.

When I was a student in Germany, the student organization in each department had a room full of folders in which students had deposited notes about memorializing exam questions after the exam was over. At the time (1993-1998), the system required a good number of oral exams, so there were no written exam questions to rely on, but people were diligent writing out what they had been asked, and it was fantastic to prep for your own exams. It was universally done, and I see no reason why this system can not also work if these questions are put on websites.

While it is correct that ultimately the university (or department or course) rules count, I think this is a legitimate and answerable question for academia.sx: it is about German academic culture. Voted to reopen.

There are three reasons why it may not be okay:

Copyright: If you are copying the text of the question instead of just describing it, this would be a copyright violation. Same goes for posting photographs, screenshots of the question or sketches therein.

Special Rules: It could be that you agree not to share the contents of the exam by any means by enrolling or writing the exam. This should be easy to find out by checking all rules you agreed to. FWIW, we had such a rule for online exams during the pandemic, but only for three hours after the exam (this was to account for students receiving time extensions).

Even if not against any law or rule, the author may be angry anyway. My experience with the German academic system is that teachers expect all exams to be public knowledge amongst the students at their university as soon as they are written. I do not expect my students to request permission (even as a courtesy) to discuss an exam I posed, as long as they respect copyright and the exam is truly over. However, there are almost certainly some excentric professors out there who consider discussing their questions inappropriate, even if it breaks no law or rules.

but I heard datenschutz is quite strict in Germany, hence my question.

Datenschutz is the protection of personal data. It has no bearing on the tasks of an exam, as they are not personal data.

You probably mean 'eccentric', not 'excentric'.

"It could be that you agree not to share the contents of the exam by any means by enrolling or writing the exam." It would be interesting whether such a rule (beyond the very harmless three hours example you mentioned) would have any chance to stand in court. This seems to intervene with the students' constitutional right to freely choose their profession. I wouldn't bet a dime on the university winning such a case. Another question is how such a rule could actually be enforced - what if a student simply breaks the rule after the exam?

@Anyon: AFAICT, excentric is just an excentric spelling of eccentric.

@JochenGlueck: This seems to intervene with the students' constitutional right to freely choose their profession. – I don’t think see how being “forced” to agree to a non-disclosure clause would qualify as a restriction of this freedom. Essentially any job that fundamentally is about working with humans (educator, nurse, therapist) will involve some sort of training with humans, which in turn will probably come with some non-disclosure agreement. Similar, you have to accept lab rules in many experimental fields.

@Wrzlprmft In the sense of "off-center", yes. The meaning of strange and unusual, when applied to a person, is only listed under 'eccentric' in the English dictionaries I've consulted. Of course, the etymology involves the prefix 'ex', and this is preserved in many other European languages.

@JochenGlueck: Another question is how such a rule could actually be enforced - what if a student simply breaks the rule after the exam? – You would probably somehow tie this to the examination rules. Examination rules in turn are public regulations and thus interfering with the regular operation of exams is as an administrative offence (Ordnungswidrigkeit) which can lead to a fine. On top, interfering with exams can usually be punished like cheating for students in the programme. (Mind, however, that I do consider such a rule bad, but not due to unconstitutionality or unenforceability.)

@Wrzlprmft: Hmm, I spent quite a while searching but couldn't find a court judgement for a case close to the one we're discussing. There seems to be a general concensus that article 12 of the German constitution affects exam regulations, but the details seem non-trivial (at least for me). I'm having difficulties to follow your examples, though: these are cases where the restrictions have their rationale in the subject being tested (and the first example also involves conflicting basic rights of other people). That's not the case for a rule not to discuss the exam questions with anyone.

Regarding "Ordnungswidrigkeiten": it seems to be more complictated than that: according to § 3 OWiG "Ordnungswidrigkeiten" have to be defined by law. I checked for the federal state NRW: according to § 63(5) of the Hochschulgesetz NRW, cheating (more precisely: "Täuschung über Prüfungsleistungen") counts as "Ordnungswidrigkeit", but other types of interfering with exams are not listed there.

Regardless of what the law says, it is generally a bad idea to anger a person who has power over you.

@JochenGlueck: I'm having difficulties to follow your examples – I guess, my main point regarding constitutionality is this: Universities can impose all sorts of rules regarding studies and exams as long as complying with them is not a burden, restricts who can study, etc. I don’t see how a non-disclosure clause does this. Also, I think you can probably argue against students not being allowed to discuss the exam at all, since it would preclude them from taking legal actions against bad questions, but revealing the questions online is a different thing.

@JochenGlueck: cheating (more precisely: "Täuschung über Prüfungsleistungen") counts as "Ordnungswidrigkeit", but other types of interfering with exams are not listed there. – Not exactly. Violating any rule that concerns cheating can lead to fine; so it’s not only cheating per se. A typical example would be an outsider who helps a student to cheat or who interrupts an exam, forcing a repetition. As the only reason to keep exams secret is as an anti-cheating measure (no matter how that actually works out), it would be captured by this.

@Wrzlprmft: "Not exactly. Violating any rule that concerns cheating can lead to fine; so it’s not only cheating per se." Fair enough. This leaves the question whether the discussion of exam questions after the exam can be considered relevant for cheating (in future exams). I tried again to search online for such a case that was treated in court, but I could not find anything.

I'd like to add to the reasons against, that OP may talk to the professor about this and chances are that they find them quite open to this. At least my experience as student was that professors even encouraged exam question collections. Oh, and I once had an interview weekend for a scholarship, where one interviewer specifically checked (with a weird question where the answer would be easily known for those who had been talking about the interview but not to anyone who didn't expect that question) whether we were talking about what questions they asked. (If anyone wonders: talking was good)

@Wrzlprmft: I can see how restricting speech about a passed exam may be considered an undue burden to the student. And how restricting to find out what exactly to expect in an exam can also be considered an undue burden. Undue also in the sense that the German academic system has found exam procedures that are not hampered by knowledge of old exams. (And maybe also keeping in mind that for official exams such as the driver's license theory the pool of questions is publicly available and meant to be used for learning).

The health care scenarios IMHO are not good examples here, since privacy requirements there are nothing one signs like an NDA (which is a contract), they are legal requirements and thus at a thoroughly different level. I guess one has to sign that one is aware of them like one signs that one is aware of the anti-corruption laws - but they need to be kept anyways, signature or not.

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


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Patent vs Research paper for a top university admission?
I am working as software developer in a company. I had filed one patent and published one research paper. I want to apply for Master's in a top university (like NUS at Singapore or German universities) next year. I am working on some new IOT projects and deep learning ideas. What is more beneficial to get admission in Master's at a top university:
A Patent or a research paper on an idea/project?

This is not an exclusive or, but order matters: you could go for the patent first, and then publish a paper as well.

The best answer, I think, given so little information, is "it depends". But for things of equal quality (however that might be measured) a paper might hold a bit more weight, given that academia is more about ideas (papers) than products (patents). The specific university department, however, might have its own ideas about the balance.
There is also some controversy about software patents, that you are probably aware of.
But it is quality and innovation that will be the important consideration for most.

A patent won't matter to many universities or degrees, but to technical ones of course it might be quite impressive, particularly if it turns out to be a key innovation for a relevant sector. Assuming patents matter at all, there is no one answer to your question. But there are many factors to consider:

Having more than one kind of contribution, showing flexibility is often good, so well done so far. I mention this here for others who might not already have one each.
Now that you do have one of each, you should look at quality, not just quantity. How good of a paper? Where was it published? How many authors are on the patent? You might see a way to strengthen your credentials in one of those areas.
What kind of degree programme are you trying to get into? Could another paper or another patent illuminate more or different of your relevant strengths to that programme than your previous output?
Finally, don't forget that your present employer can matter a lot, not only if you don't get into the programmes you want, but also for letters of reference. So if it seems like a coin flip to you, ask your boss which they would prefer you to work on.

Both are good ways of showing your talents and productivity. However, something to keep in mind is that a patent often takes 2-4 years to get approved from the time a patent application is submitted. Until then, it is just an application, and difficult if not impossible for academic departments looking at your CV to evaluate (more so than an academic preprint, the analogous thing in the context of journal publications).


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How do I justify dropping out of a Ph.D. program in my personal statement?
I am in a Ph.D. program for the past year and a half and I am very disappointed by the level of work, the agenda, and the graduate school. I want to apply for a new Ph.D. and have told to my professor that I will drop out in May, so that he has time to replace me. My question is how can I justify my dropping out correctly to the professors I want to contact to start a Ph.D. with, or in the personal statement of the applications.

Just give them the reasons you stopped. If they think your reasons are good they might even consider your choice as positive instead of negative - but as usual everything depends on the person you are dealing with.

@louic This should be an answer.

This is actually quite common and many people change schools and even disciplines. So, it might be a good idea to be open about it.

As DotPi said, this is pretty common. If your adviser is willing to write you a letter that corroborates your version of the story (one that shows your leaving as a mutually beneficial decision, because you want to study a different topic or at a different place, etc.) then just be upfront about it. It helps to be specific and talk about how this new institution will work where the previous one didn't: is there faculty there studying the questions you want to work on, or is it at the appropriate level that you want to achieve, etc.

Just give them the reasons you stopped. If they think your reasons are good they might even consider your choice as positive instead of negative - but as usual everything depends on the person you are dealing with.


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As a PhD student, can my name be included in a research grant to protect my ideas?
My ex-colleague (let's call her C) in the Lab is now a faculty member at a university. We have collaborated before in our work. Our works are similar in the methodology but different in the topic. In other words, in her dissertation, she used method X to solve a problem in topic Y. In my work, I will use a variation of X to solve topic Z.
C is now planning to write a research grant proposal about my topic and she asked me to help her in preparing for the proposal. C and my advisor (her ex-advisor) will be the PIs in the proposal. I asked C to include my name (as PI or any other way) because this is my work and I have already a published paper about it but C said that only faculty members can be included. But I feel that if I'm not included in the proposal in any way, my work will be stolen because C tries to get her students in her university to work on my idea.
If the funding is approved, I am afraid that they might hire someone else to work on my idea and then probably I won't be the first author anymore or maybe not included in the publication at all because both of them know my idea very well.
I'm new to the funding stuff so please help me. I might be overthinking about it.

What do you mean by "include your name"?  In what capacity?  Are you saying you want to be a PI?

as PI or any other way just to save my work and idea

Where are you? What kind of grant is it? In many cases, it's true that a PhD student cannot be a PI and cannot be included in the list of participants to the grant, and that only faculties and technical staff can.

In Italy and I do not know which kind of grant it is.

Usually, at least for common grants in Italy, only permanent personnel can be listed as participant because it's only them that can contribute to the labour cost. If you ask them which grant they're applying to, you can easily find the instructions and check for yourself, but I have no reason to think that they are doing anything troublesome. When I was a PhD student I certainly participated in writing at least 4-5 grants.

You are worried that

they might hire someone else to work on my idea and then probably I won't be the first author anymore or maybe not included in the publication at all because both of them know my idea very well

But that can happen regardless of whether your name is mentioned in the proposal, and regardless of whether you even help to participate in the proposal.
You also mentioned that you already published a paper about this work. Anybody who wants to build on your published work can, including C, your advisor, and other people you don't even know.
Having your name on the proposal doesn't affect whether others can work on your idea (with or without your involvement), so it wouldn't resolve the issues you are worried about.
However, since C and your advisor asked if you would be willing to help with the proposal, you have an opening to talk to them about who would carry out the work if it is funded, and what your involvement would be. I suggest you initiate a conversation about this. Discuss with them how this proposal relates to your current and planned work, and who will be involved in carrying out the work in the proposal (if it is funded).  (As suggested in glauc's answer.)

You should only collaborate on proposals with people you trust. I don't know a definite way of protecting an idea in realities of academia, apart of some engineering disciplines, maybe. So you are right that after the proposal is written and submitted, only PI's will have control on how the project will be executed.
I never heard of people asking their PhD students to help them work on their proposals, unless these PhD students were then included as postdocs on the project. Otherwise, I can't see, what's in it for you. It is not your contractual obligation or academic duty as PhD student to help your professor write their applications. The same is true for your ex-colleagues and other members of academia.
You could politely ask your colleague to clarify in which role are you invited to collaborate on the proposal.

When I was a PhD student, I certainly helped writing grant proposals, as many other students did. I don't see anything wrong in this -- and it can be actually instructive -- if the grant is for a group project in which also the student is involved.

Like @Massimo I also help with grant proposals as a PhD student. There are benefits to me: (1) I get experience writing them, (2) it's instructive to see how to develop and "sell" a research idea for a proposal - makes a difference in how I think about research, (3) when I am on job market my letter writers can talk about how I contributed to proposals that brought in $X, and (4) now we have lots of funding for my project, to carry out my ideas.

Colleagues, feel free to downvote, but I personally disapprove an expectation that students should work for "experience" without being properly acknowledged for this. For @ff524 (1) and (2) led to (3) and (4), but for many others it did not.

@DmitrySavostyanov My contributions to the proposals I worked on were acknowledged, and I made them without any expectation that I had to. But with "I can't see what's in it for you" you suggest that there are no other benefits to working on proposals as a grad student, and with "I never heard of people asking their PhD students to help them work on their proposals" you imply that this is abnormal. I don't think either of those are true in the general case. (It might be more true in some fields than others.)

Data point: in pure math it is unheard of (by me, anyway) for students to be involved in the writing of faculty grant proposals.  But actually in pure math the student is usually not directly "contributing" to the advisor's research program.  Anyway, while Dmitry's claim is far too categorical, I think there is something to it: in some academic fields "faculty member" = "PI" and said person spends most of their time applying for grants, while the actual work is carried out by subordinates.  In such a case, it is easy to see how asking the subordinates to write the grant could be exploitative.


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Investigation of Academic Misconduct
I'm not sure what to tag this question as, and I don't know if it should be on Law.SE.
If someone is being investigated for academic misconduct:

accused of taking photos of tests and sharing it online, which is explicitly disallowed by the professor
and during that investigation, there is no evidence of the tests on the person's cell/camera,
but there is evidence of other crimes (completely unrelated to the university) on their cell/camera (e.g., video of this person bullying a child),

can the university/investigators take any action?
I think no, because the investigators were only to investigate academic misconduct and nothing else. But also yes, because they have evidence of improper behaviour.

To my legal noob sense of justice, it makes no difference at all whether they were investigating a different incident originally. If they happen over another matter, especially one that is more serious than what they actually investigated, why would they not take appropriate action? In the case of a crime this would be alerting the police.

Why would a student give you access to their cell phone?

Not giving access would lead to more suspicion (and more rigourous investigation in other aspects)

University personnel will investigate whether the rules and norms of the university are being upheld.  If an actual crime is suspected of having been committed, then in most cases they will contact the police or other authorities either in place of investigating or in parallel to their own investigation.  For certain crimes they are legally obligated to do so.

I think no because the investigators were only to investigate academic misconduct and nothing else

Just because they are only there to investigate academic misconduct does not mean that they cannot report nonacademic misconduct to someone else.  If they found evidence of a literal crime, I don't know why they couldn't report it to the police.  (I'm not sure exactly what "Bullying a child" means, but if e.g. this included physical or sexual abuse I would certainly expect them to report it to the authorities.)
I think you are asking whether there is any covenant of confidentiality when you turn over your phone to them.  That's a legal question and I'm not a lawyer, but unless explicitly agreed upon in advance I don't know why there would be.  If your partner accuses you of cheating on them, you deny it, and they say, "Well then show me your phone," and upon searching your phone they find a video of you stealing a car, then your partner can certainly report you to the police even though that was not what they were expecting to find.  To my mind, having your phone searched by university personnel is more like having it searched by your partner than by the police.  In particular, university personnel cannot compel you to turn over your phone to them.  They can ask you to, and there might be negative consequences for you if you don't (just like with your partner), but that's not the same thing at all.
Furthermore: as far as I know, university personnel may act on information they find on your phone that is unrelated to the academic honesty issue in question but otherwise violates the university's code of conduct.  For instance if they found a video of you making racial slurs at a campus event, then that's not illegal but is (I hope) against their code of conduct, and so far as I know they could act on that.  However I do not know exactly where to draw the line.  For instance, if in an internet dating app you use language that would be disrespectful and inappropriate in university discourse, then presumably that is not their concern...but if that language involved another university official it might become more their concern, perhaps.  I'm really not sure.
Let me say finally that I've heard a few times on this site from students who have had their phones searched by university officials, but as a university official (faculty member) that's something that I have never done and would not think to do in almost any situation.  For instance, if during an exam I saw a student looking at their phone, then I would call attention to it, have them put their cell phone away, and pursue an academic honesty case against them.  But I would not ask to see their phone: since I tell students before the exam starts what they can and can't have out during the exam (in particular, no phones), looking at their phone during the exam is cheating no matter what, and the implication that they are breaking the rules to gain an unfair advantage is more than plausible whether I see what's on the phone or not.  (And what am I going to do, scream at the student to drop their phone immediately and run over to apprehend it before they can close an app?  This seems silly at best.)  I wonder though whether in other parts of the world academic culture is different: in the United States (and Canada; I spent 2.5 years as a postdoc there) at least, the idea that people do not have to casually turn over their personal property is quite strong.

Exactly --- IANAL, but if you pressured a student into letting you search their phone, you may be in greater trouble yourself when the police becomes involved.

But the student who refuses to give you the phone will always claim “i was only checking the time “ or some such feeble excuse : I stick with it’s against the rules and goes to the exam board...

@Roland: That's also why most examination regulations in Germany rule cell phone use inadmissible, and you can automatically be flunked if you're caught with a cell phone during an examination.

@PeteLClark: Things get tricky if the issues are actually criminal in nature—particularly for the OP's example of bullying, since "mandated reporting" may come into play.

@aeismail: I agree, hence the "For certain crimes they are legally obligated to do so." in my answer.

@PeteL.Clark: Good answer (+1), but note that some confidentiality expectations/restrictions are often implied from circumstance, and almost certainly would be when handing over a phone for an academic investigation.  The more likely legal position is that confidentiality expectations would be implied in the absence of explicit terms overriding them.

A few basic legal points that apply in every jurisdiction I know of (within the Anglosphere countries):

University powers and expectation of confidentiality: As a student, your relationship to the university is contractual.  The university derives its investigative powers from its contractual relationship with you.  Aside from cases of campus police who have actual police powers (which exist at a few larger universities), the standard investigative powers of university staff are based solely on your contractual relationship to the university.

University personnel cannot compel you to turn over your phone or other personal property during their investigation; they may make an inference from your failure to do so, but they do not have the power to confiscate your property.

If you give your phone to the university for an investigation, there would be an implied expectation of confidentiality with respect to the material on your phone and you would have some legal rights in relation to that expectation of confidentiality.  If the university discloses information it shouldn't, you may have a cause of action for breach of confidence, breach of contract, etc.

Inadvertent discovery of alternative (non-criminal) rule breach: If the university inadvertently comes across material that shows a different type of breach of their rules (that is not a crime) than the one they are investigating, this would give rise to a complicated argument over the proper scope of expectation of confidentiality when the phone was made available to them.  You could mount an argument for breach of confidence in this circumstance; depending on the facts and circumstances it might or might not succeed.  There is a complex set of case law on the proper scope of confidentiality in cases where an investigative body obtains information and inadvertently discovers other issues.  This situation would require careful legal analysis and the result would probably depend on the specifics.

Inadvertent discovery of a crime: If the university comes across material that shows an activity that is a crime in the course of their investigation, they can certainly report this to the police.  Aside from some special cases such as lawyer-client privilege, religious-confessionals, etc., there is generally no legal recognition of any confidentiality restriction that can prevent a person from disclosing evidence of a crime to the police and other relevant government investigative bodies.  In particular, if you have possession of a person's phone then you are legally entitled to report matieral on that phone that is evidence of a crime.  This is such a broad power that it even applies even if you have possession of the phone illegally --- e.g., if a thief steals your phone and finds child-abuse material on it, there is no confidentiality restriction preventing them from reporting this to the police and then acting as a witness against you in a resulting prosecution.

Admissibility of evidence of a crime: If university personnel were to find evidence of a crime on the phone then prima facie that would be admissible evidence in a resulting criminal prosecution.  The only thing that might cause the evidence to be inadmissible is if the defendant could show that the discovery of the evidence came about through some unlawful search that can be considered to be an action of the government itself, such that it is considered to be "fruit of the poisoned tree".  This could potentially occur in cases where campus police with actual police powers unlawfully obtain evidence from a phone.

This probably depends where you are but in the U.S.:
1) You are probably obligated to report crimes involving a minor as most U.S. university employees are mandatory reporters (I don't know the ins and outs of this though and maybe there's some variation regarding procedures).
2) From a legal perspective (i.e. if you were a cop or other law official), yes. I'm not sure how not being one changes things.
In the U.S., evidence one was not searching for is still considered legal if it was encountered during the legal execution of one's duties. E.g. If a police officer has a warrant to search a house for a fugitive and that officer opens a closet door to find bricks of cocaine, the home owner can be charged with possession and the cocaine would constitute legal evidence even though it was not what the cop was looking for. (The caveat being that if said officer found evidence of illegal activity in a place it would be unreasonable to search for a fugitive - say a hatbox - that evidence would be thrown out in court. This is the landmark supreme court case Mapp v. Ohio)
3) From a moral perspective, I think the university/investigators are obligated to take some action. If the student voluntary handed over their phone I don't see how you would be in the wrong. It's one thing if you explicitly said you'd fail them if they didn't hand the phone over but I imagine they willingly handed it over to avoid more drama. It would be very weird if a U.S. college student didn't know they had the legal right to not give you their cell phone.
Why don't you just contact your university's legal department?

"It would be very weird if a U.S. college student didn't know they had the legal right to not give you their cell phone" - when someone is severely frightened, they may not think rationally.


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My name on transcript has no surname. Should I list it as a "former name" when applying for universities in U.S.A. and Canada?
I'm in the process of applying to graduate schools in U.S.A. and Canada as an international student and run into this issue:
The name displayed on my passport and national ID consists of first name, middle name, and family name. However, on my transcript, my family name is not shown. I presume that this makes a difference.
Some of the universities' registration page has fields for former name(s) listed on previous records/certificates. Should I indicate the name on my transcript in the former name fields since it lacks the family name while the one on my passport has my family name?
In addition, should I make an affidavit letter to state that the name on the passport and the transcript belong to me?
About on how I ended with only my first name and middle name on my transcript:
In my country, as far as I know, the way the name is put on every academic record must be the same as the one on those preceding them. Also, it's usual here to write the only the given name in full and either omit the surname or make an initial of it if the space permits since many ethnic groups here do not actually use family names. I have many friends at college who did not use their surnames for their records. Back to academic records, my name has been written without a surname in academic records since elementary school, when my dad did the application process.

There is a very similar question (I am not sure it's a duplicate) on our site. I have only one name shown in my ID card. How do I write my name (surname) in research paper or article?. Please read it to see if it answers your question.

The situation is almost the same regarding naming issues. However, the objective is kind of different. So, the method of solving the problem might be different as the administration process may be different as well.

Did you ask the administration/international office at one of the institutes where you are applying? They might have had this situation before, whereas here it is less likely anyone has been in the same situation, or has solved a case like this.

I did and I'm still waiting for their reply.

This just in. Their reply regarding the name is very brief and only says that I have use my name as written on ID issued by the government (e.g.: passport). Nothing else. Looks like on their end it would not be a problem. I don't know if this solves my problem. Do you think it's prudent if I still proceed with making an affidavit letter anyway in case needed?

It sounds like the forms you have been provided already give a sufficient means of clarifying, particularly you indicate the form is specifically meant to link a current full name to an alternative shown on formal records.  While the university may have been thinking about different cases, like names changing via marriage, it fits your situation as well.
I would suspect getting an affidavit or other formal attestation is not necessary: if they are not asking for it in the other cases where a name does not match, they should not expect it for your case either.


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Usefulness of prior industry experience before entering grad school?
What impact does prior industry experience (2+ years in a non-trivial functional role in any established organization) lend to the profile of someone who is entering grad school for a Ph.D.? In my case, it's Computer Science, but I expect the question to be applicable to other areas as well.

Do admission committees look upon it as a bonus point, seeing that the applicant has managed real-world responsibilities successfully in the past, thereby improving the chances of acquiring funding (in terms of TA/RA)?
More importantly, does it help the candidate during (and post Ph.D.), when looking for research internships/post-docs?

In both cases, assuming the position the applicant held is in a completely different area from their research, what other factors become important in the both the above cases? Is it the difficulty of projects the candidate undertook (which, frankly, very few people outside the organization are equipped to judge), or the level of success (promotions, accolades acquired during the stint in industry) that matter, or are there other parameters as well?
Also, in case it is deemed that such a profile offer limited/no advantage to the grad student, it would be nice to know why that may be the case - after all, most (if not all!) organizations are run for profit, and they would tend to have very little use for someone who is not productive or capable of learning.

As someone who sits on an admissions committee, this isn't idle speculation, but it is a personal perspective. I agree with the other responders that industrial experience probably isn't of much interest to an admissions committee, unless you get a strong letter of recommendation from a supervisor who can make a convincing case for admission to the graduate program.
The issue is that while you are in industry, unless you're in a position where your actively doing things related to your graduate school education, your knowledge of the "basics" is atrophying, so it will actually be somewhat more difficult to get back up to speed for the coursework typically required for a PhD program. The longer you're in industry, the harder it typically is to play catchup.
That said, industrial experience may be of interest to an individual professor within a department, and would certainly help with employment following the PhD program.

I sit on graduate admissions committees (in computer science, in the US), and I spent 4 years in industry before going to grad school.  I agree with others: Industry experience per se is not particularly attractive, unless it's directly related to your proposed area of study.  (Industry experience may be more attractive in more applied areas of CS; I'm a theoretician.)
But it depends on what you do while you're in industry.  Admissions committees are looking primarily for strong evidence of research potential — raw "wattage", intellectual maturity, independence, initiative, creativity, attention to detail, eagerness to fight with hard problems, and most importantly, real results.  Recommendation letters that specifically address those qualities, whether from academia or from industry, will increase your chances of admission.  If you just sit in your cubicle and competently produce the code that your manager asks for, not so much.
My industry experience was a point in my favor during my academic job hunt, but only a minor one.

Industry experience cannot hurt. While it may not help in every case, in many it will. One of the things PhD application committees consider is their mix of students. In my experience (in Computer Science) a typical PhD program consists of students of many ages from many backgrounds. A good program has a diverse mix, including those with "real world" experience. So I bet it helps.

Industry experience will often hinder you, because it is a signal (a reliable signal in most situations) that you are not up-to-date with the cutting edge of research; and that your academic skills have atrophied.
Expect to work much harder in the time up to application, and at interview, in getting up-to-date in the field, and demonstrating that you are up to date.
This will vary by subject: for maths, it's often going to be a deal-breaker, as the analytic skills tend to atrophy very very quickly, and also tend to diminish with age. For more engineering-type subjects, it might be easier, particularly if you have been doing cutting-edge industrial research. Nevertheless, your academic skills may be rusty, and the people deciding on your admissions will expect that they are.
You may also be going in without a (recent) publication record; that can impair the funding position of the institute to which you're applying, so you may have to offer something a little bit extra to compensate for this.
Your industrial experience may well bring value to your future department: but you may or may not get any recognition of that at the time of your application.
(I write as someone who entered academia after ~20 years industrial experience.)

I don't think that having industry experience is going to help with a PhD application unless you have actually worked on the project that you want to do your PhD in. It's certainly not going to help if you worked in a completely different area. Also note that PhD students don't usually apply for funding. I'm farily certain that the answer to your first point is "no" in almost all cases.
That said, I believe it would be more help when looking for internships or a (non-academic) job after finishing the PhD. Again it depends what exactly it is you've done and what you're applying to do.
Working at a company and doing PhD-level research are two (very) different things (unless you're doing industrial research) and being good at one doesn't imply that you're equally good at the other.


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How long should it take to read a paper?
I am wondering how long it usually takes to read a research article. I can see that the answer depends on:

The knowledge and intelligence of the reader
The field of research
The journal
The individual paper

So I am particularly interested in how long a PhD student or a young post-doc would take to get through a molecular or systems biology paper published in journals like Nature, Science, Cell, PLoS and PNAS. We can focus on papers of typical complexity for the journal, and ignore those that are exceptionally easy to read or exceptionally complex.
On multiple occasions I have been able to skim an 8 page, 5 figure paper in as little as 10-15 minutes. From this I could glean enough information to follow and even participate in a class or journal club discussion (though there would be a lot of asking question like "how exactly did they do this/explain this in the paper? I didn't read very carefully").
However, when a paper is very important (for example I want to use a variation of their methods for my own project) I feel the need to read it much more carefully. It seems worthwhile to closely look at even very trivial things, such as description of standard procedures like cell culture in the methods, exactly how much of each chemical was used for simple, routine reactions, close examination of control experiments from the supplement, what papers the paper has referenced to justify their work, and even what commercial systems were used and from which company, and whether the paper actually followed the protocol in the manual and so on. After putting this much effort, I also feel like I should take notes. This produces a heavily highlighted and annotated paper plus about 4 pages of notes.
All of this takes a lot of time. Occasionally it could take me a few days to work my way through a very important paper (for instance, if their method is unfamiliar to me and I will be adapting it for my own research, or if I want to draw conclusions by reanalyzing their data).
My question is, is this typical? How long do you usually take to read a paper? Should I start putting effort into teaching myself to read faster, or should I just accept it and make time by scheduling other activities to accomodate paper reading?

I can imagine an "incremental" strategy for reading at arbitrary depth. For instance, you could read the paper several times, each time reading more carefully, like so:

Read only the title, parts of the abstract, and look at the pictures.
Read abstract more carefully, look at title headingfs of results section.
Quickly skim the results section to look for main point of the paper.
Scan introduction and discussion, read results carefully to understand obvious limitations of their conclusions.
Carefully read all sections, including methodology, to make a comprehensive list of all assumptions made and all potential issues with the research.
Carefully go through all supplements, look at raw data if any and consult the other papers cited as justification to contextualize the research.

Logically, I see the merit of something like this, but I haven't tried it for the "dense" readings I've talked about above. The reason is that I'm not sure how I can take notes effectively when I do something like the above. It may also be harder to motivate myself to re-read a paper I've already skimmed, because I've given away the punchline to myself and the novelty factor is gone.
I've also written an answer on Mathematics@SE, which I think might be relevant to this question.
Note that I am not asking how to read a paper. This has been addressed in several previous questions already. I am only asking how long it should take a typical junior scientist to read one, so I can benchmark myself and see if I am slower or faster than is usual.

This isn't my field, but I  think there is likely to be such wide variation that it is hard to define a "typical junior scientist" or a "paper of typical complexity".   Certainly that would be the case in my field (mathematics).  There's also the question of how carefully you want to read the paper, which also has wide variation but is hard to quantify.  I can understand why you ask this question, but unfortunately I think it will be very difficult to answer.

@NateEldredge True, but it would still be helpful if I got an answer like "I usually take this much time, and it tends to vary from this much to this much most of the time, the longest I took was this much and it took that long for these reasons, if you take longer than this much for this kind of reading then you may be taking too long".

It should take as long as it takes. Some papers can be read in an hour; others take years.

@JeffE Years!? Perhaps you're referring to the 50-page review paper that's been sitting half-read in my Mendeley library for three months... ;)

Keshav wrote some note on this entitled How to Read a Paper.

You are in a multidisciplinary field, that complicates things enormously. When I read a bioinformatics paper, I usually skip the methods section because I don't have the knowledge to really understand the difference of using one buffer or the other. You may skip the more "mathy" part and retain the meat of the conclusions, that is what actually interests you.

As you have alluded to, there are many ways to "read" a paper and the first question to straighten out is for what type of information are you reading a specific paper. A beginner's mistake is to believe you need to read from the first to the last letter of everything you find. This way you never get anywhere and it is the beginning of the learning curve for undergraduates.
If you are surveying a field, you skim through by reading the titles first of all just to spot the ones of interest. This reading takes much less time than to actually find the title. Once you are past this you may take on the abstracts to weed out the ones that sounded right but were off topic. This will take a few minutes per paper. The next step is to read the parts that are of interest to you. Are your summarizing a field then conclusions and the discussion may be what you focus on. Maybe your summarizing methodology then those chapters are of interest. In any case, you will read parts of the paper that are mostly relevant to what you are trying to find out. This may take a on the order of hours, sometimes less per paper.
Sometimes you need to spend time on papers to understand the nitty gritty details. I spent 4 days reading three papers to understand the details. I needed to write down equations and try to see the missing steps between the paper equations to understand the derivations etc. This type of reading is not what you normally do but it certainly happens.
So in the end, what you will learn through your PhD is to hone your skills to be able to focus on the details you really need from any paper. It is rare that one reads one paper at a time, usually it is a collection of papers and one often has to return to check on details that you either have forgotten, or may have missed, or, in fact, the author has missed. The need to go into the smallest detail of a paper depends on what you need to get out of the paper and with time (continuing through your professional life) you will improve on these skills through additional reading.

Though not an expert in reading journals, I would like to provide my point of view. Actually the answer for the question can be made from different perspectives.
We read journal articles for multiple reasons:

Present in a journal club
Attend a journal club
Search for a protocol
Search for a reference
curiosity about some novelty in the article

In each of these situations the way you read the article would be different along with the time taken to read the article. If I am looking for a particular protocol, lets say, genotyping a polymorphism, I will scan the abstract for the polymorphism name and then I will head straight to the methods to see the genotyping procedure. So this could be as quick as a 30 second search, provided you know for what and where to look.
Lets say, I am looking for data about the prevalence of a particular disease in a specific population. So again, I will scan the abstract for the disease name and the methodology, will head straight to the tables to seen the number of participants diseased out of the total cohort, which also could be a 30 second search provided I know where to look.
Lets say I am attending a journal club and I have the article with me. I will read the abstract, then the conclusion, then glance the tables and figures, then will see the techniques they used just to make sure I know about the techniques before I attend the journal club. It will not be always feasible for the presenter to explain in detail about the techniques in the presentation. This should take around 10 minutes plus the time you spend on search unknown techniques.
Lastly, If am going to present an article in journal club, surely I will be reading the article again and again till I have a thorough understanding for my presentation. Every time I read, I will find a new information in the article.  Here the time required will be based on your familiarity with the field and the complexity of the article. It could be hours or days. So according to me its the knowledge about the structure of the journal in your field of expertise matters, than the time taken to read the article.
The time factor depends on what is your objective is from reading the article.

First of all, thank you for your excellent answer. A Scientific Journal usually does not contemplate a physical meeting, rather than a Scientific Conference. When you say "Attend a journal club", what do you mean? To be on the journal list of members?

So this IS my field, but I can obviously only answer for me.
The first thing to say is that this is going to change a lot during your career, and different people will take different amounts of time to reach various milestones.
Assuming we are not taking about a "quick skim", I'd say I now take about an hour to read you average Mol/Sys bio paper. This would be well enough to lead an informal discussion of it (which is how we do our journal clubs), if not quite present a full stand-at-the-front and deliver journal club.
When I started my PhD (17 years ago), reading to the same level would take me a full day. I guess when I started my postdoc it was somewhere in between. Maybe 2-3 hours.
Obviously, if its a paper I need to know back-to-front, inside out, and be able to disect every possible problem or highlight, then its going to take me longer, but I probably wouldn't do that all at once. I'd probably do my 1-hour read, and then come back to particular bits, as and when needed.
Because of my dylexia and dyspraxia, I've never been much of a skimmer. I think this was a benefit when I was a PhD/postdoc, as I was always more aware of the subtleties of papers, and all of the caveats, and methodological quirks of the papers in my field. Now I am faculty, its a real problem, as I just can't keep up with everything I need to be aware of. So different career stages also require different strategies.

Firstly, I agree with the first response, that , in very well written terms the question has pointed out tthe diverse ways to attack a diligently written paper. In fact I would define a typical paper to be read as a slight variation of the same.
I usually let the first read be to grasp the salient points from the paper, and also define:

whether i need it as ateast a typical paper for my future work
if the paper needs to be stored in memory and needs to be noted and annotated.

If the paper does not satisfy the above, it is as good as read.
If the paper satisfies any of these two conditions or both, I would prefer, rather than assigning a long private time for it to be read ( which I have found can absorb as much time as i have) to tackle as under

reread it on the flip side of another paper i am conversant with , in a similar area ( I always have more than one paper to tackle)
reread tougher sections, important sections separately in 20 minute capsules and be sure to carry the conversant science of the paper ( I work in the Finance area and handle complex modelling etc, but I find it also works for any complex management/strategy/organization/communication construct)
Set down a one hour-90 minute window to annotate all the sections and write out the notes for further dissemination or review

Let me know your thoughts on the strategy