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Avoiding publishing in a particular journal without bringing up politics
As part of the PhD programme I am enrolled in, we're encouraged to publish a review paper within our first two years. After talking to my advisors, a suitable topic related to the area was agreed and I set about writing.
From the beginning, we had a particular journal in mind, but toward the end of the writing process my supervisor was invited to contribute a review to a different journal for a special edition, and suggested that my paper could be submitted there as the topic was in-keeping with the topic of the special edition.
The journal in question is an Israeli journal, though has contributions from researchers worldwide.
Personally, while not entirely supporting an academic boycott of Israel (I don't see this as being productive), I don't wish to publish there – I have significant concerns over Israeli policy and their handling of the Palestine conflict and don't want my name associated with the journal.
Clearly this is a very sensitive topic, and I don't wish to bring up politics with my supervisor - he hasn't ever expressed any political opinions and isn't Jewish, so I'm not concerned about offending him (we're in the UK, so generally the mood here is far less pro-Israel than in the USA).
I have tried to suggest that I would generally just prefer the paper to go into the original journal given that we've already formatted it for that journal etc, but without much luck.
How would I best go about dealing with the situation?

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This question is now protected, so I can only add this as a comment: while I agree with user37208 answer on most cases, if you are from a community where reactions toward Israel are strongly negative and a sensitive issue, you can say that while you don't have a problem with publishing in an Israel journal, you could be bad seen by your community. This avoid to bring your political opinion to the situation - you can't be blamed for the opinion of other people.

I don't know if this is still true but in the past Israel has offered to pay students (through scholarships) to "combat anti-Semitism and calls to boycott Israel online". I do not know if that is happening here, but you should be aware that such things occur and this post may well be a target.  https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/14/israel-students-social-media/2651715/

I don't know if this will help you, but not all Israeli academics are united behind the policies of the current government. Most of those that I know are not, actually, and some actively oppose those policies.
However, if you truly don't wish to publish in an Israeli sponsored journal you should actually discuss it with your advisor, as uncomfortable as that might seem. I wouldn't present it to him as a stark refusal, just an feeling of unease about associating yourself in any way with the Israeli government or being perceived as such. If you get strong push back you will have a serious decision to make, but perhaps your fears are unfounded.
Also, the US government (mine) is, at the current moment, engaged in some terrible behavior with the concurrence of many Americans. But we don't all agree and many of us actively oppose the current regime. The same is true in Israel.
It is up to you to say whether anything similar can be said about the UK, of course.
I will also say that it is useful for anyone to make contact with academics in other places to see what common ground can be found and, more importantly, how we can work together to overcome the evil policies that we find in many places.

This is not a direct answer, but I feel that this is the kind of question where the premise needs to be challenged.
Your assumption that mentioning the true reason for not wanting to publish in that journal is safe might be overly "optimistic". I am a UK academic, neither Jewish nor with personal ties to Israel, very much not a fan of the current Israeli government and overall rather leftwing. If a PhD student of mine would bring up the desire from the question, I would be mortified, and would need to reevaluate whether I could work with that student.
Boycotting a journal with "Israeli" in the name due to disagreement with Israeli politics makes little sense to me. Such journals are published by professional societies, not by the government. This only really makes sense if the goal is to protest the existence of Israel as a whole, and I believe that this is a stance outside of the acceptable political viewpoints.
Let me briefly bring up some other boycotts, and explain the difference:
Some people refuse to buy produce from Israel. The reason given is that food produced in Israeli settlements in the Westbank is labeled the same as food produced inside the recognized Israeli borders, and that buying food produced in the settlements supports the settlement policies. Unlike in the boycott above, there is a link between the boycotted stuff and the policies critized.
In the context of the "bathroom bills" passed in North Carolina, some scientific conferences boycotted the state. Boycotting conferences held in Saudi Arabia is a common thing. In these cases, there are colleagues (trans, female, gay, etc) who could not safely attend the conference, and the boycott is an act of solidarity.

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I side with the other answerers about challenging the premise of the question, but I'll nevertheless try to answer the question that was asked.
It may depend about the country, field, and advising style, but to me, whoever is the main driving force on a paper gets the final word about where and when the paper gets submitted -- even if they are my student. Of course your advisor's duty is to guide you, and probably to encourage you to submit to the most appropriate venue, but to me this is just advice, and they shouldn't be able to force you to follow it. In other words, to me it would be clear that the choice about where to publish your review work is yours. It may make sense for you to try to understand whether this is actually the case for you -- you don't approach a negotiation the same way depending on who gets to make the decision in the end.
If you are indeed the one who will be making the decision, and you wish to raise your concerns, I would do so while insisting that this is a personal belief. I wouldn't use the term "boycott" because it often gives the impression that the boycotter is also trying to influence others to join the boycott. It may help if you can share a bit with your advisor about why you feel the way you do -- do you know people from Palestine or neighboring countries, have you been politically involved with the issue, do you have family/friends whom you feel would disapprove if your name was associated to Israel? This may help your advisor understand how you feel even if they do not themselves feel the same way. In particular, if you don't care so strongly about the issue yourself but you worry about how it might look to other people, then this can also be a good manner to present things -- your advisor may not feel it's a cause of concern to them but it may make the underlying disagreement less political. In any case, make it very clear to your advisor that you're not trying to convince them. (The way you state things in your original question looks OK to me, for instance.)
As an advisor, if my student points out that for ethical reasons they want to submit their work to venue A rather than venue B, I may argue against it if A is a worse fit, but I'd go with it. Of course, my personal relationship to the student might suffer a lot if I disagree strongly with the underlying motive (let's imagine a student who wouldn't want to submit to a journal depending on the editor's gender, or religion, nationality, sexual orientation...); but it's still the student's choice to decide what they do with their work, and it probably doesn't imply I can stop being their advisor professionally. Personal ties are crucial in academia however, so you have to decide for yourself whether it's worth taking the risk. For the specific case of not wanting to publish in an Israeli journal, I would not personally agree with it but I think I would not think especially badly about a student who asked me this -- but of course your advisor may think differently.

"I am not a mass murder, I am simply taking the lives of many people. But I wouldn't go as far as calling it murder, that implies that I'm evil somehow". :-)

Assuming the other answers didn't change your mind: just find another characteristic you don't like in that journal (and possibly all other Israeli journals) and use that as reason to not publish there. Ideally, of course, it should be a reason you actually believe in.
For instance, declare that you will only publish in a fully open access journal which uses Creative Commons Attribution and has the DOAJ seal.
According to a DOAJ search, there are only 3 OA journals in Israel, of which 3 have an unfree license and 0 have the DOAJ seal.
There are certainly other characteristics you can find, like connections to the military or some industry or some specific policy which can be condemned without supporting a specific foreign policy.

While noble, it's a huge hassle for a student to declare "OA or nothing". Students who need publications cannot limit themselves for open access.

@Inkblot however this question is about picking a second choice. If the first journal was considered ideal, the others are supposedly less so. The plan B should draw a line somewhere in picking journals.

Yes, but your suggestion as to how to excuse this choice is just wrong for a student.

+1 for suggesting an alternative. If keeping their dislike of Israeli journals secret is important to the OP, they would need to maintain the charade for a substantial amount of time though, and potentially debate and support a position they don’t actually believe.

A problem with using an unrelated excuse is that it can lead to two problematic situations, in this research or the next: a) the researcher can say "well, we can publish this on the Another Israeli Journal", which has not the problems of your excuse; b) a non-OA journal appears as a good publishing opportunity but you can't publish on it because of your restriction

@BrianHellekin indeed, which is why I suggested to pick «a reason you actually believe in», i.e. something you can stick to in the future as well. Publishing on OA only was only an example, but in my opinion a decent one because in many sectors it's possible, rather easy and even advantageous.


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Listing rudimentary language proficiency in an application in that country despite English being working language
Should a person list his/her (very basic) knowledge of a language spoken in a country he may be working in on an application for a position in that country, even if the language really isn't necessary for doing the job at all?

The actual work will be published in English
Everyone in the department/university/practically the country speaks English (cf. "Do PhD courses in engineering fields in European non-English speaking countries require knowledge of the native language?")
The resources which are partial to the work are all in English
It's a linguistic community small enough that knowing the language would probably raise more questions along the lines of: "How on Earth did you come to learn language?" than anything else
My actual abilities, since anything you list on CV is fair game during an interview:

My abilities in said language are not good enough to hold a conversation of any kind.
My actual proficiency isn't in that language but rather in a ridiculous mixture of a few closely-related languages plus a large amount of creative interpretive abilities ("ah, x from language_a sounds a bit like y from language_b!"). On the bright side, this means that my passive abilities are better than "rudimentary".

The only reason I can come up with for listing said language is that it could pique someone's interest (see question 4 above) and that it may indicate a small tendency to be able to thrive while living in the country (or rather, more accurately, the probability of the person floundering in the country may be slightly lower); So do these "soft" benefits outweigh the lack of hard ones?

I’m not confident enough in this to make it an answer.  But my expectation would be: so long as you don’t overstate your level competence, there is no risk or cost, and it could have a non-negligible benefit, so why not?  Some readers might not care at all; others might see it as either as a slight practical advantage for coming to the country (even when everyone speaks English, not knowing the local language is still a real disadvantage), or just a good sign of initiative and interest.  (But being honest + clear about your level of ability is important.)

For what it’s worth, I’m a postdoc in Sweden, and don’t yet speak much Swedish.  For most PhD/postdoc-type positions in my department, Swedish proficiency is not required, and I don’t know if committees would ever take it into account in hiring for these, but at least informally, most of the faculty do like it when international arrivals have some or are willing to learn.

In general, I'd say that listing even minor language skills can never be a downside - even if they're completely disconnected from the languages you need at the moment, it can indicate an ability and willingness to learn. But as PLL says, being honest is good, and and if honestly stating your abilities would make it seem utterly trivial, it might feel best to skip it.

@user37208: Listing the one which I'm good in is of course a no-brainer, but the other ones are just as rudimentary as the particular one I would add if I wasn't so unsure about it here... hence the posted question.

Anecdotally, attempts by native English speakers to communicate with a European in his or her own language do not succeed; the other person usually switches to English.

@user_of_math, you don't seem to have been in e.g. Spain, France, Italy, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, etc.... or have you?

I think yes, you should list it with caveats at the end of CV, using something like

Languages:
English (fluent), Arabic (basic passive)

and it the country in question is in Europe, just use the EU proficiency levels: for example,

English (C2), Portugese (A1)

Frankly, I don't think it would help. It can't hurt and it maybe gives you some points for being keen, but the time you waste thinking on this might be better spent studying something. Maybe even the language in question.

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Citing oneself in PhD application documents: Good or bad?
Some PhD applications I've gone through involved submitting a research proposal, statement of interests and/or a sample article review (e.g. of a specific, pre-determined article which has relevance to the position being applied for). Naturally, when writing proposals and critiquing people's work, I will naturally have my own (ideally similar) work as a reference to compare it to, naturally knowing my own work quite intimately. However, is explicitly referencing one's own work in such contexts a good idea or a bad one? For example:

Review: McMahon et al. 2012. "How to raise gerbils on Mars." Gerbil Fancy, vol. 14, no. 3.
Reviewer McNotyetdoctorface
Swiss Naval Academy
Bern, Switzerland
...
McMahon et al. reported poor results in estimating the nutrition requirements of gerbils in low-gravity environments. These results could have been improved by conditioning for effects of gerbil Earthsickness as witnessed by McNotyetdoctorface (2011) during his similar work on the moon.

For
One positive aspect of mentioning oneself which I could imagine is displaying the ability to create a "narrative" of one's own work over time and to relate it to other works in a constructive manner, and it also subtly "shows off" one's previous work to people who may have overlooked it or at least overlooked its relevance to the position at hand.
Against
On the other hand, I'm not sure if PhD application materials are intended to be either "anonymous", "unbiased" or both: If they are anonymous, then no one will know that I am in fact Reviewer McNotyetdoctorface, so there would be little benefit. However, I obviously think my own work is fantastic, and so citing it in an application might backfire in that the people reading it may think: "Well, he really likes tooting his own horn; Does he ever think that other people's work can be better than his?".

I expect everybody to expect you to be more familiar with your own work than with anyone else.

I find manner in which you frame your question quite interesting. To address your question, if you have published work then why not cite it? Of course it may reveal your identity but that can only work to your advantage in the long-run. If the professor doesn't like the applicant for personal reasons the applicant probably wouldn't want to do a PhD with that particular professor anyway. 4 years or even 3 can be a very long-time if PhD and supervisor are not on the same wave-length.
Moreover, if you do not cite your own published work you might be plagiarizing yourself.
If the work is not published at all then I would probably not mention it in a PhD application, because it can have the opposite effect. The reviewers may think that the applicant focusses too much on his/her own work and opinions and is not flexible enough. After 1.5 years of PhD I can safely say that flexibility is a key ingredient to a successful PhD journey. Therefore, show off your knowledge when your present your argument and ideas.
If the work is published, but not a in a peer-reviewed journal, then I guess it depends where you are applying to (university, department, professor).
Good luck with the application!

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Matching Postdoc to Graduate Research (Quantum Computing / Physics)
I defended last month, got my PhD and am about to run out of funding. I've been applying to postdocs for close to a year and have only had one near-hire (something happened with their funding) and three interviews. One thing I've heard from a few sources is that, at least in this field, graduate and postdoc research should line up very well. My advisor even said it would be "a waste of time" to apply to postdocs that don't line up with my research extremely closely. Is this true?
I know that in other fields, like bio-med, it's actually encouraged to do something totally different. It seems ineffecient to only hire close match-ups.

It might depend on the subject but my experience is that positions are have many, many applicants.  So they can afford to hire someone who fits the role ''perfectly'', if you apply to something and it's completely different (or quite different) to your experience, the chance of getting it (or even getting an interview) is pretty sli

My advisor even said it would be "a waste of time" to apply to postdocs that don't line up with my research extremely closely

I think that this statement is, in general, incorrect. As a PI, I am looking for postdocs who are skilled and motivated to contribute to the research that is going on in my group. It takes good knowledge of maths, good understanding of quantum physics (at BSc level) and excellent computational skills. As soon as these boxes are ticked, I am looking for soft skills, presentation skills, writing skills, motivation — all things which describe a good researcher, rather than an expert specialised in a specific narrow subfield of research.
So I would absolutely hire a motivated candidate from another subfield of quantum physics, if they are interested in working with me. I know colleagues who will do the same.
If you are interested in a specific PI, lab or project — do not hesitate to apply. Good luck.

Fully agree, although I'm more in a position where not many people get PhDs in what I need, so I rely on folks adjusting their course...

This might depend on the field and the level of background knowledge needed to do research. It seems to me that in pure mathematics, people who try to substantially change fields as postdocs are usually unsuccessful.

@ElizabethHenning Most people in academia are unsuccessful, only a tiny fraction is. We note this fact when it is convenient and ignore it when it is not. For instance, I am sure you observed many postdocs in pure maths who did not change field, but also did not become successful in academia (by whatever metric you applied to define success in your statement).

@DmitrySavostyanov I am familiar with survivorship bias and the problems with small samples. I mean that they seem to be much more unsuccessful at transitioning to research productivity in the new field compared with people who did not switch fields.

Very often, they do not have to switch field and they become successful because they are lucky to get support of a well-established Prof, who has a wide old boys network in academia (gender and sex may differ), so the PhD student/postdoc can propagate through the network easier than someone from outside. So both "not changing fields" and "be successful" have a common cause, but do not cause each other.

Hmmm… Although I think the comment of your supervisor is overly pessimistic, the odds are you will much more likely find something in your area of expertise, or at least in your broad area of expertise.
The odds of being hired by someone in - say - material science are small unless you have some expertise that is valuable to this PI, but it may very well happen that you do have this expertise, or at least part of the required expertise.  Maybe the ideal candidates knows “Software A” and material science very well, but no candidates with both skills are acceptable so the PI might be interested in someone with a lot of experience with Software A.
So while not a waste of time, the onus is on you in the cover letter to highlight how your skill sets will be valuable for the advertised position.

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How to overcome lack of motivation and improve focus
2 weeks ago I just started a phd abroad (Germany) and I am Brazilian. Previously I was in job that bored me to death and I chose to leave it and come to Germany to live my dream and do a PhD. However, I am feeling that I made a wrong choice. Even if in my field is not so hard to get tenured in Brazil (usually 20 people compete for a position, but only 5 are real competition), I am feeling that I will never be able to achieve my goal. Rationally, I know that I can. But emotionally, I feel incapable. These negatives feelings about my future are making me want to call my former boss back begging for a job. Even if I know that if I choose to back to this job I will be miserable forever.
All these thoughts are keeping my motivations low, because I feel that I am just wasting my time in foreign cold country. How can focus in the present and enjoy? I am already doing therapy. Another thing that bothers me, is that I feel old. I am 29, and because of some personal choices and also because the undergrad plus masters in Brazil take 7 years, I feel very old compared to my europeans colleagues.

You are not that old.  At my university, few years back, an 80+ year old received her PhD degree.  Wonderful achievement!!

In regards to age, it's not uncommon to see people at the age of 30+ doing their bachelors. So even if you feel a bit out of place, I promise you nobody thinks of you as a old man doing his phd.
As for motivation, the country can feel very lonely on the outside. But once you know where to look, things can be very different. Where I live, there are meeting places for foreigners to meet up and make friends. If you join clubs (tennis, bouldering, football, ...) you will also have a very easy time meeting people as everyone tends to be very welcoming there. Socialization is a important part of mental health so consider going out and about doing things.
Your motivation and focus should improve alongside your mood.
Edit: I know I mostly suggested physical activities but there are plenty of others as well if you aren't into that. Poetry slams, gaming communities, art clubs, etc.

You are not that old - I started a PhD at 40, and then the pandemic hit, so I do understand to some extent the feeling of isolation and being in a slightly different stage of life to others.
Germany will get warmer over the next few months.  I personally joined every training session available for PhDs when I started out, so that I could meet people - this energised me, but I know not all people are like that.
I also had small short-term goals to work on, e.g. implement a particular method from an academic paper myself so that I could understand how it worked better.  However, I was already excited to be doing a PhD, to have the freedom to set my own goals and "reading list".
I really hope you find some other folks to chat with - perhaps your uni has a good international students community; there will no doubt be other people also feeling the cold, metaphorically as well as physically, with whom you can at least share your story and encourage each other.

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First day as an independent study student
My IDS class has just started today and I am the only student. I have not received any email from the professor and no assignments or due dates. I cannot determine if he is waiting for me to show that I am independent, or if he is just very busy.
We had a 1 week break between semesters, and during that time I have solved some problems from the textbook. Now I am trying to determining whether I should type them up and email the to my professor today.
On one hand, I want to show my professor that I am motivated and can work by myself. On the other hand, it is not my intention to put pressure on him to grade my work right away; maybe he was expecting to deal with me only 1-2 weeks into the semester. What should I do?

I think you're wasting too much time psychoanalyzing your professor. If the semester has already started and he has not reached out, it's fine to e-mail your professor to set up a meeting.
I will advise hold on to the problem set answers for now. In the meeting, you can definitely mention the prep work you have done and you're enthusiastic about this opportunity. Focus on setting up a study plan, including the preferred frequency and forms of meeting, deliverables, and evaluation criteria, etc.

Would you have any tips for composing the email? So far I've asked if we can set up the meeting and offered my available times, but it seems a bit dry for my first contact with him in weeks.

Dear Prof. XX, I am excited about my independent study course.  Could I come in and talk with you about it?  Here are some times that work for me: x, y, z.


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Is it advisable to publish a paper with the same name as your thesis?
I am about to submit my MSc thesis which is written in the shape of a paper manuscript plus introduction, extended conclusions and the appendix. My research group encourages this format to streamline the publication of research results. I now have to chose an appropriate title for both the paper manuscript and the thesis itself.
Would it be ill-advised to choose the same titles here? On the one hand both works deal with exactly the same topic and I initially put the same titles, on the other hand it might be weird to end up with two publications of the same name once the paper gets published somewhere (considering search engines etc). This whole format is fairly new to me (and my supervisor) so I am interested in opinions and experiences from the community.

You also need to consider the issue of self plagiarism in as situation like this.

I was assured this is going to be fine. Generally the thesis will not be publicly available until the paper has been published.

That doesn't change the issue at all if both are available in the future.

Anything I have to look out for in particular? I thought it was fairly common nowadays to use publications to graduate. I have seen multiple PhD theses consisting of 3 (published or submitted) papers.

A thesis is not a paper. Having both with the same name is misleading and will cause difficulties in the future. Unless the paper you publish is the thesis, having both with the same title is highly problematic.

A PhD thesis is very different from a Master's thesis. I personally wouldn't care about what's in the latter or what you call it. But it would be nice to use different titles to avoid confusion if you stay in the same research area and want to cite both of them subsequently. Also Google scholar and others might only include one or the other, thinking they are different versions of the same publication (and it may not be the one you want).

@Buffy Your comment is wrong, see this answer.  https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/134053/13240

I think this is a tricky issue faced by many people today. In the past, a publication with the same name and overlapping content would be fine, since the dissertation wasn't published in any formal sense. Today it is quite different. You need to avoid two things. The first is self plagiarism. This is using your old words/materials without citation. The second is having double publication of the same ideas with the intent of getting two publications for the "price" of one. Even if that isn't the intent, it can be so charged, to your detriment.
One way to avoid the problem, I think, is to consider the paper and the dissertation to be two versions of the same work, not two independent works. This works especially well if the paper is published first and the advisor and committee agree that the dissertation is "an expanded version" of the paper. The two versions reference each other.
If that is acceptable, then the paper notes that an expanded version will appear as the dissertation. And the dissertation notes that it is an expanded version of a previous paper (published or submitted).
To make it easy for people reading the paper to find the dissertation, give a citation. I think that naming it the same is a less important issue than that the two versions point to one another. But if both wind up published, then having similar but not identical names is probably better.
The problem with self plagiarism (and double publications) is that each version contains some context that is missing from the other. A scholar will want to see all of the context, including references and citations made, and so will want to be able to find the other version reasonably easily.

Note, importantly, that I've intentionally used tentative language here. Opinions may even vary by field.
In some fields a cumulative dissertation is pretty standard. A dissertation there is a collection of a few published papers with some introductory material and conclusion. But it is clear to everyone what it is. Make it clear.

Thank you for the answer. I think choosing related but not equal names as well as obviously mentioning the relationship between paper and thesis is the way to go.

This is wrong, see here:  https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/134053/13240

It's also off-topic.  The question was about the title in particular.

I agree with Buffy that this is a bit tricky. One could argue that using two different titles (or even two different texts sharing the same thoughts) for two documents with practically the same content is an effort to give the impression that you want two "publications" for one. For this aspect, the title or the text themselves are not so important, but the ideas are. In this sense, all thesises with results published in a paper share the problem with you. But I do not recall that this was ever discussed as problematic, so I see no fundamental problem here. But the discussion here already shows that there are different opinions.
In my experience, it is extremely rare that an MSc thesis is good enough for me to publish as it is. I usually have to improve the discussion a lot to be completely happy. So you can be proud of yourself if your advisors will pass your text including the exact same title to peer-review. Have they said that they will do so without major editing?
Self plagiarism might be an issue, if your university has a policy on that, but I have not yet really understood why this term exists at all. However, you should check the copyright situation in general with the journal you select. Many journals allow to use the contents of the paper for thesises and the like, but you might have to ask for permission. Or you could go for open access.
By the way: I know many people who change titles for instance when they present the same results at different conferences, just to make it look better on the publication list. I would not call this good practice. Buffy hits a point when encouraging you to make things transparent.

Thanks! This helped a lot.


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Professor agreed for a Skype meeting and then didn't follow up. Also hasn't responded to a reminder I sent a week after. Should I move on?
A week ago, I contacted a professor regarding a PhD position in his group. He replied by saying that he is in search for a PhD student and after examining my CV, he said that he would like to organize a meeting over Skype and also asked for my transcripts. Therefore, I suggested him a date and time for the meeting and also sent him the official academic transcripts but he hasn't responded since then. I had also sent him a gentle reminder a week after my last correspondence. Still no reply from his side. How should I interpret this? Should I move on?

Therefore, I gave him the date and time for the meeting What, you just picked a date and time on your own? Is this a language issue?

No, I suggested him a date and time for the meeting. Also, I asked him to kindly let me know whether the suggested timings were suitable with respect to his schedule. My apologies for not making this clear in the question. I have edited now..

These things could happen due to a million reasons.
My advice,
Don't wait for other people, until you get a signed contract keep looking for other opportunities. This doesn't mean give this up, but it means that you shouldn't stop searching for other things.
There are too many reasons why this might be happening to list them all (ie he's ill, family commitments, travelling, etc.).
If he didn't agree on the Skype call, then technically, he hasn't left you standing.
I suggest trying to get a contact number and calling. Professors get bombard with e-mails daily and it's easy for some to get through the net. If you call and he answers, an easy way to start talking is saying something along the lines of "Hey, I'm just checking everything is OK" or "Hey, could we set a type for that Skype call".
Good luck.

Or "I was wondering if maybe you missed my email sent on  regarding a skype interview?".

Good idea Guillaume. Maybe "...regarding a skype chat" less formal, unless of course, it was an interview.

Avoid the "Hey". It's extremely informal, and used by someone one doesn't know, it is almost intrusive.

"...saying something along the lines of..." it's not supposed to be a copy paste job.

Happens all the time. "We should set up a time" is not the same as "Set a time". Nor is it polite for you to dictate time; his schedule is busier and more complex than yours--and even if not, you are the one asking for a 'favor'. If possible, get ahold of the admin assistant, whose job it is to deal with such things, and have her/him bother the professor.

Agreed, but also keep in mind that in certain fields, not all labs have an admin assistant.

I don't have enough reputation to comment on Mox's "answer". So I'll write it here.
He's right, you can't assume someone agree's to a time without them actually agreeing to it.
He's also wrong, he assumes your timetable and that of the professors. Also assuming there are assistants to deal with these issues, again pointless.
This problem (missed contact) is one that happens throughout life and you need to understand people aren't against you, it's just sometimes we mix things up and/or forget to reply to messages. I strongly suggest always giving benefit of doubt and try a different approach. If you don't get a reply, try a phone call, if you can't get through, try knocking on the door.


text:
Publishing a result that is aesthetically pleasing, but has no practical value
I am currently writing a paper that I wish to publish in a mathematics journal. During the course of my research, I have discovered a result that is aesthetically pleasing, i.e., contains a form of symmetry in its definition that can be seen by some as "elegant", and moreover connects several distant theorems together. However, this result turns out to be useless for practical use, furthermore it adds nothing to the other proofs and theorems presented in the paper. Is it worth publishing/mentioning, even as a corollary?

If this is not the main result of the paper, why not let the reviewers decide?

Could you add this as an appendix or maybe as a "final note" directly before the conclusion of the paper?

@tonysdg I could, but it has better "flow" to put it directly after a related theorem.

As a pure mathematician, I'm having trouble understanding what you mean.  If I couldn't publish results that were aesthetically pleasing but had practical value, I wouldn't have any publications.

What is practical use?  I'm serious here, I'm not sure what you mean by 'beautiful but useless'; aren't beautiful things ipso facto useful by definition?  I understand that something could be beautiful without enabling the perception of beauty in certain aesthetic paradigms (i.e. the result has intrinsic beauty but it is impossible for any being to appreciate/observe it), but I seriously doubt that's what you meant.

@AlexanderWoo Did you mean "If I couldn't publish results that were aesthetically pleasing but had no practical value"?

Your description makes the paper sound normal for a mathematics journal.    Make your contribution (esp. connections between distant theorems) clear and let the reviewers decide if that's enough for publication.  Also maybe pick a journal that publishes more theoretical work than something like a (fictional) Journal of Practical Mathematics.

@Pickle: Yes.  Typo.

@Pickle - Remember that you are already making a huge assumption: my paper is useless. Just because YOU don't see the value doesn't mean another might not. Look at gravity. Newton: "Hey, stuff falls down, probably for a reason. I mean, pretty obvious, no real use, but I'll write it down." Later Galileo: "Hey, that gravity stuff is cool! It affects everything the same way, regardless of weight!" You don't know when, or where, how, or if your work will be built off of, you do know you have a paper that you can publish.

The aesthetic pleasure, the symmetry, the elegance, the connection between several distant theorems — that is the practical value.

@EvSunWoodard while I am decidedly on the side of people who think lack of usefulness is no reason to not study or publish something, a pet peeve of mine is that people often bend over backwards (as I feel you are doing by invoking Newton and Galileo) to argue that seemingly useless research should be published because it may prove useful someday. The conclusion is correct, but the reasoning is wrong, and harmful IMO. Mathematicians should not be constantly apologizing for doing "useless" research - to do so is missing the point of why we do what we do and how we think it benefits the world.

Unless you have some way of proving that it's useless, do not underestimate it's utility. Someone, sometime, may find a use for it. If nothing else, if it gives readers a different way of thinking (e.g., by connecting disparate theorems together as you say), this can enhance the reader's understanding and may lead to new discoveries or innovations.

Connections between distant theorems is one of the most practical things!

@TT_: You should turn that into an answer so that I could make 30 fake accounts and upvote it 30 times.

@AlexanderWoo: As a pure mathematician, you should now that a missing "no" can make a pretty big difference in a sentence ;)

If it connects distant theorems together, it can be useful since proceedings in one field then can automatically have impact in other fields.

Yes, this is fine.  Math papers very often contain results just because they are interesting or instructive, even if they do not seem to be "useful".
You could mention this when introducing the result, with something like "The following theorem may help to illustrate the connection between blah blah blah..."
Authors also sometimes signal this sort of thing by describing a result as "pleasant", "amusing", etc, though "elegant" is probably a little too egotistical.
If the referee feels it's too much of a digression, they might suggest you take it out.  But I don't think this would be the difference between acceptance and rejection.

+1 ... of course include it.  (And note that it is useless for practical purposes if you wish.)

@GEdgar: I'm not a mathematician by any means, but why bother noting that "it's useless for practical purposes"? Today's useless knowledge is tomorrow's key to unbreakable cryptography (or whatnot). Shouldn't the reader be the judge of that?

@tonysdg Lol, just saw your comment. It seems like crypto is sort of the "go-to example" for seemingly useless math having practical implications... we need more examples of this I think...

@user3658307: Doesn't help that I'm a computer engineer, so my mind automatically goes in that direction ;)

@tonysdg ... Pickle was wondering whether to include it, because it is useless.  I say, include it.  And if Pickle is worried about it being useless, say so.  Or don't say so, and let the reader decide how useful it is.

@user3658307 Various neural network models were for a long time theoretically appealing but practically useless; only recently have we had enough data storage (for large data sets) and computational power to make them actually work.

In biology we just like to hedge for the future, often generically. "Could be useful for xxxxx in the future" roughly translates to "We found something interesting/unexpected and hopefully someone can make some sense of it someday." Popular press sometimes takes this as "CURE IMMINENT FOR (insert what ails you)," but I'd like to think this approach could make sense in a math paper, too.

I'm surprised nobody has brought up the old G.H. Hardy quote yet: "No one has yet discovered any warlike purpose to be served by the theory of numbers or relativity, and it seems unlikely that anyone will do so for many years". He said that in 1941 of all things. So it's really hard to judge what's useful and what isn't.

@Voo I stand by the assertion that relativity and number theory haven't been used for warlike purposes, to this very day. I guess GPS is the closest relativity has come to being martially relevant, but that's a lot more than just a system of war.

@StellaBiderman GPS was developed specifically for the US military and was initially released for civilian purposes after a Korean plane accidentally flew into Soviet airspace and was shot down (at least that's the story..it's certainly possible that civilian use was planned before that).

@BryanKrause That's really interesting! I had no idea about that history :)

@StellaBiderman Relativity is the concept behind nuclear weapons. The weaponeers said "Hey, if E=mc^2 then we can make a big boom!" Also I'm hard pressed to say that number theory wasn't the basis for things like the Enigma machine.

@Stella Number theory is at the base of all modern encryption. And encryption is one of THE most important parts of warfare ever. It's estimated that the cracking of Enigma shortened the second world war by two years - how much more applicable to war can you get?

@Shane: Relativity is not the concept behind nuclear explosives any more than it is the concept behind chemical explosives; the reactions in either a chemical explosive or a nuclear one cause a loss of mass, but it's more noticeable in nuclear reactions because so much more energy is released.

To add to Nate Eldredge's correct (and useful!) answer and to Alexander Woo's sarcastic quip highlighting the same point, one should keep in mind that pure mathematics is, by its very definition, the part of mathematics that seeks to study mathematical structures for the sake of the pure intellectual and aesthetic value of the mathematical ideas one is trying to discover. Yes, it helps that a lot of pure mathematics has turned out to be useful beyond the wildest dreams of the people who discovered it -- a totally weird phenomenon that no one seems to understand -- but that is not the primary concern (or even the secondary or tertiary concern, usually) of the pure mathematician.
Lack of (caring about) usefulness is a feature, not a bug.

If your result "moreover connects several distant theorems together." I'd like to know that. You may not find a useful application of that result, but knowing what you just stated may help me to come up with something useful.
So publish it.

Check "Langlands Program" - yes, connecting distant theorems is definitely worth publishing.

Engineer here. I marvel at all those math papers that contain nothing but "hey this looks cool!" I really like those. Some of these are even easy enough for me to understand :-) And do not fret about applications. You are doing math. You are doing theory. It's the engineers job to find an application for it.

Absolutely. Not just because, to many, the point of science and mathematics is understanding and appreciating the beauty of reality, but also because it might become practical in the future! I doubt the people who worked on number theory foresaw crytography, for instance, or the esoteric probability theory making its way into machine learning now.
Also, I think tying together distant theorems is a practical application in some sense. Or at least an educational one for practitioners who might be trying to understand something, and realize something useful based on your theorem tying it to something else.
As the other answer says, I think it makes sense as long as you make it coherent with the rest of the paper!

(pats OP on the back)
Congratulations, you're now officially a Mathematician! Publish away.
On a slightly more serious note: Spend time working on a good introduction that communicates the pleasing elegance of your results (or rather the lack of pleasing elegance without them). If for some reason the journals/conferences think it's totally useless, they'll reject.

This is perfectly fine. Academically, mathematical research is done for its own sake, not for its practical usefulness. Mathematicians are not concerned with how the information they have will be used anymore than engineers are concerned with how the information they used was discovered.


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submission review is taking too long
I have submitted an article for a journal in which it was stated that the review time was from 80 to 120 days, that is approximately 4 months at most. The submission of my article was approximately 13 months ago and I did not get any answer in the allotted time they mentioned. I sent an email to the editor after 8 months and I was told that the review process has suffered a delay, but that they soon will fix that issue.
I waited until September and sent another email and again I got another reply of an apology and nothing more. I believe that it has passed too much time, until now it is almost like one year, so I do not what to do.
Would there be any problem if I submit my article to another journal or should I send another email to the editor of this journal? Or rather just wait until I get a response?

Note that if you decide to submit elsewhere (which is your good right) you still need to first withdraw from this journal. This bad experience does not give you a card blanche to double-dip.

It may help to get in touch with the editor-in-chief. Individual editors occasionally have a hard time finding willing reviewers. And if the volunteer reviewer gets wrapped up in their real life duties (leading to a delay), the bar for looking for alternate reviewers is relatively high. Been there. Not pleasant for anyone involved.

https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1967/do-we-want-a-canonical-question-for-general-journal-workflows

It seems like a long time by any standard. Contact them. You can give them a date by which you will formally withdraw your article from consideration. Maybe a couple of weeks. If they don't jump you can submit elsewhere without worry.
The final nudge is just a courtesy. You could actually just inform them that you are withdrawing for submission elsewhere. But if the journal is reputable it might be worth the courtesy.

There is a vague possibility that something unethical is going on - purposeful delays in order to trump a publication. Though I hope not...

@YairZick I would assume that if the paper is about some critical finding. If not, it is more likely that reviewers are slow or editors have a problem finding reviewers. Generally, I personally found that reviewers have become slower, less motivated and less reliable over the last decade and half, probably because of the spate of review requests while submission quality and originality has decreased on average (from my personal observation).

Maybe important to emphasize that you indeed need to withdraw first before submitting elsewhere. I am not sure if the OP is aware of that based on their original phrasing.

Write to the editor with pointed questions. How many reviewers have been invited? How many agreed/declined? When are the review due dates?
Without knowing the answers to these questions, deciding whether to wait or to withdraw and resubmit is just a crapshoot. With the answers, it's possible to make a much more informed decision about whether the reviewers are likely to finish their reviews.
If the editors refuse to answer, you can still guess if the delay is because of them or because of the reviewers based on how long it takes to answer your question. If they take a long time to answer, I'd guess that the delay is because of them, in which case I'd be more inclined to withdraw and submit elsewhere.

Good advice here, get the editor to state what has happened &  is happening...

I agree with @Buffy's answer. A polite letter to the editors asking for clarification would be good. If you or a colleague know anyone on the editorial board - contact them. I had a case where a paper was sitting idle for close to a year after an accept with minor revisions because of a miscommunication between the reviewers and the editor in charge.
Another point to consider: perhaps I am being a bit paranoid, but if your paper was sitting there for a very long time and has not been published, it may be a good idea to have a version of it on ArXiv or some other relevant open repository. This serves the purpose of timestamping your publication.
There are (thankfully rare) horror stories of unscrupulous reviewers purposely delaying decisions in order to get the results themselves. If your review is taking so long and results in your field take a long time to come by (say, experiments need to be run), this may be a cause for concern.
Also seriously consider whether this journal is worth submitting to in the future. Journals should not be rewarded for this kind of behavior.

Submitting to the journal has already "timestamped" the work.

@DavidRicherby: ... but not if the paper is rejected.

@OlegLobachev Even if the paper is rejected, you can still ask the journal's editor to vouch for the fact that you submitted it. In reality, it seems very unlikely that one would need to prove that a paper existed in some specific date, anyway.

Maybe, but if another person just happens to release similar results, it may take a really long time to get the editor to move on this. They may even be reluctant to get into this mess altogether as it may paint them and their editorial process as unethical/incompetent. Why not just go for an independent, free, open format that’s indisputable and has zero hassle?

If all you want is a timestamp you can get that from a notary

@candied_orange Never have I ever heard of any academic preprint being notarized in order to certify its release date. In what discipline have you seen this happen?

Wasn't talking about release date. It's used in patent law to prove the date of a works creation. It's similar to mailing yourself a sealed copy.

I mention it mostly so I can understand what you're really trying to achieve. I thought some of these publications want exclusivity which your plan seems to prevent.

Three times in my (pretty long) career editors took an outrageously long time (more than a year) to decide on a submission. I was confident that the papers were correct and appropriate for those journals, so did not want to withdraw them and resubmit elsewhere. Eventually my frequent mail to the editors (snail and later e-) led to acceptance in each case. In at least one of them I think the editor gave up on nagging the referees and checked the paper herself.

Any credible and efficiently managed journal should be able to complete the review process and reach a decision in 6-8 weeks. Any period beyond that is usually the fault of Editors and Co-Editors who simply accept the prestige of the title but pay little attention to their duties. The excuse is always that they are volunteers and have other responsibilities. In my view, why accept an editorship if you will be unable to devote sufficient time to the tasks of being an editor.  Some of the fault also lies with the publishers who don't have systems in place in their electronic process to flag submissions for which reviews are missing within a given time period. The way I deal with lengthy reviews is to first contact the editor for an update after 8 weeks has elapsed. If the response is much more than a simple "we are still waiting for reviews", and it appears that some attempt will be made to get the reviews, I allow another 4 weeks at the most. Beyond that, I either withdraw the paper and offer it elsewhere or I offer it elsewhere without withdrawal. In both scenarios, as far as I am concerned, the journal to which the paper was sent to first has lost exclusive rights to my submission. Thereafter, whichever journal comes back first with an acceptance is the journal that will be given the copyright to publish.

I think it's considered unethical to duplicate submissions.


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Professor doesn't tell TAs what should be on exams until the day of the exam
As a TA I am responsible for preparing problems and solution sets for the exams.  Last time we had an exam, the professor didn't tell us which problems he wanted to select for the exam until the morning of the exam, which meant I had to write solutions for a large number of problems the night before the exam, most of which did not end up being on the exam.  Now there is another exam coming up and I fear I will have to do this again.  What should I do?

Talk to him...?

Do you mean that you don't know what's on the test and so you can't make an answer key or explanation for reviewing the test with students later, or you don't know what to put on the exam yourselves until the day of? Either way this sounds bizarre, as a TA you should not be doing work with no apparent benefit to the professor or students (terrible waste of time, it sounds like), and you'll surely need to talk with the Professor to see how you should be handling this.

@BrianDHall: The TAs have to propose problems for the exams, and the professor selects from those problems, and then I have to write the solution sets for them.  But the professor doesn't choose which problems he wants on the test until the day of the test.  Last time I actually started printing out two different copies of the test because he didn't tell us until the last minute.

@JamalS: He doesn't respond to a lot of emails, especially ones where we ask him to pick problems that should be on the test >.<

I don't think I understand the question. Why do you need to write answers for problems you're not even sure will be on the test? Shouldn't you wait till you see what the questions are?

He doesn't respond to a lot of emails — And so what happened when you asked him about this in person?  You did ask him about this in person, didn't you?

Your writing is not clear.  Assuming that the professor will not tell you what is on the exam, until after the exam begins, is perhaps to guarantee the integrity of the exam.  I.E., the TA can't possible tell the students, what is on the exam, prior to the exam.  I'm not challenging your integrity. This may be the department's policy (not the professor).

I don't understand why you were writing out all the answers and printing out two different copies of the test before he made the decisions. May be you should wait for him until he made the decision?

Tell him you'd like it if either a) he gave you the problems at least  one day before the exam or b) he gave you permission to decide what would be on the exam (within reason, of course)


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How to balance reading the literature and just solving the problem your self?
I work for a company that has several projects involving computer vision. The literature rarely has papers on the exact problems we are solving. Furthermore, the state of the art in much of computer vision is often not reproducible or not ready for actual applications. Furthermore, the rate at which new papers come out in the areas we are interested in would make it very time consuming to digest most, let alone all of them.
On the other hand, we often get stuck and would like to get answers or at least inspiration from existing work.
Our goal in the end is to get to solutions as fast as possible. Does anyone have any guidance on how to balance time spent reading vs doing?

Related: How do we know if something relevant is already published?

Actually this is even more closely related, almost a duplicate: Research before surveying the literature - is it ever a good idea?

Richard Feynman was a firm believer in both keeping current, especially by working through the finest details of new papers, and in getting his hands dirty. Given his success, you might learn a trick or two from any of his memoirs and published writings.

Previously posted on CS.SE: http://cs.stackexchange.com/q/38259/755.  See there for one previous answer.

There is a wonderful quotation by Frank Westheimer that accurately summarizes the relationship between work and reading:

A couple of months in the laboratory can frequently save a couple of hours in the library.

If you don't know what's in the literature, you can easily spend days, weeks, or even months reinventing the wheel. It's tempting to get your hands dirty, but it can be a very expensive proposition if you later find that somebody else has already done the same thing.

That's very true, but I'd say that going to the library can also save you from obtaining a really thorough understanding of the material.

@JaapEldering: True, but if you're an experimentalist, for instance, that could be a very costly understanding that your advisor might not appreciate.

If your group is large enough, hiring a new Ph.D. every few years would make sure you always had someone who was up on the current literature.

This doesn't work in most fields I would say. I, as a PhD student, have certainly a lower level of knowing the literature and previous work and context than my supervisor has. It's one of the things you have him for: to tell you "and have you seen ..." when you come with an idea.

@yo', you might find that your supervisor's knowledge comes mainly from conference presentations and networking - make careful note of any names/groups (s)he mentions and look up their work - it may or may not help in the end.  But my point is that the supervisor having this overview doesn't guarantee that they have had time to keep up with the details of the methods.

Given that Computer Vision is a fast-paced research topic these days, I'd go for a Systematic Literature Review:

A systematic review (also systematic literature review or structured literature review, SLR) is a literature review focused on a research question that tries to identify, appraise, select and synthesize all high quality research evidence relevant to that question.
  (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systematic_review)

More specifically, Guidelines for performing Systematic Literature Reviews in
Software Engineering could be helpful to you:

The stages associated with planning the review are:
  • Identification of the need for a review (See Section 5.1).
  • Commissioning a review (See Section 5.2).
  • Specifying the research question(s) (See Section 5.3).
  • Developing a review protocol (See Section 5.4).
  • Evaluating the review protocol (See Section 5.5).
  The stages associated with conducting the review are:
  • Identification of research (See Section 6.1).
  • Selection of primary studies (See Section 6.2).
  • Study quality assessment (See Section 6.3).
  • Data extraction and monitoring (See Section 6.4).
  • Data synthesis (See Section 6.5).
  The stages associated with reporting the review are:
  • Specifying dissemination mechanisms (See Section 7.1).
  • Formatting the main report (See Section 7.2).
  • Evaluating the report (See Section 7.3).

(source: http://www.elsevier.com/__data/promis_misc/525444systematicreviewsguide.pdf )
As you may not need to report the review, you could skip this part. The thing I foresee more useful to you is that this system gives you insights about what you left behind in case you have to go back to study the literature, and it also helps to share the work among your colleagues.
So, for example, once you've determined the conferences to read, the authors to follow, etc. you can start by reading the titles of the papers, that goes to a table. If the title seems promising, then read the abstract, so to another table. Finally you would have a stack of papers you have read completely, so you can write some lines about them in that very moment... and when you have a problem you didn't have before, you can re-read your previous work before searching for a new solution in the wild.

On the other hand, we often get stuck and would like to get answers or at least inspiration from existing work. Our goal in the end is to get to solutions as fast as possible. Does anyone have any guidance on how to balance time spent reading vs doing?

In addition to the other great answers here, if this problem comes up frequently for you guys, you could consider associating in some way with a near-by researcher in computer vision. Their job is essentially to know the current state of research, and even if they don't know by heart whether a solution to a concrete problem exists, they should be able to figure it out relatively quickly ("it" being checking whether there is a published solution on this problem, not necessarily solving the problem if no known solution exists).
What kind of relationship works for you guys differs from time to time - could be short-time consulting contracts, could be a longer-time joint project (if your problem is not yet solved and interesting to the researcher), could be something else entirely (I know researchers that joined the advisory board of a related company, and basically get paid for giving scientific advise on an irregular basis).

I'd look to the main conferences and focus on the most current papers, specifically the ones from researchers that have made their code available online, then you can more easily replicate their results. If it's computer vision work, you're talking deep neural networks now for most problems. In that case, you are very lucky, there are lots of open source and scaleable deep learning algorithms out there in many different languages to experiment with. I would pick a framework like Torch that has a lot of backing and is constantly getting updated with new results, that way you can download the latest research into a package you are familiar with. Caffe is also very popular. Graph Lab also has a deep learning module with a network structure pre-built for image classification problems.

If you are in the product business as opposed to the research business then you have deliverable cost-timeline constraints probably. In this vein of thought I would imagine that the path worth considering is researching the best commercial/open source solutions available and "foldable into your product". This might be a library or other resource your products can use, as opposed to studying the latest research as that portends adding the effort of writing your own from scratch once you find a promising idea or technology.
If on the other hand your business model includes complete R&D then tie your research stopping point to what offers a clear path to your deliverable.
I would still in this case look at open source and commercial offerings as you could glean some path to a previously unconsidered technology path ie you might find something you would NOT use but which reveals a possible approach you have not considered or realized exists.
HTH
Jeff


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Does providing textbook solutions benefit the student?
Often textbooks don't have solutions to problems and if they do they are often password protected for instructor use only.
Has any research been done (in peer reviewed journals) that looks at whether providing solutions to students actually benefits the student in their actual understanding of the subject?

Why do you need "research in peer reviewed journals" for something you can easily figure out experimentally yourself in a couple of semesters using exactly the setup you are interested in? The students also provide you with a lot of feedback themselves if you bother to ask them and to listen to the answers. The typical answer to this question (coming from those who have no trouble with the subject) is something along the lines "Yes, I do need to see written solutions to exercises to have a sample of exemplary argument construction and mathematical writing I can follow". I buy this 100% and do not care in the slightest what the modern education theories say after that.

Providing a solution manual ensures that students will cheat on homeworks.
But ultimately, it depends on the structure of the course. I generally think it is a good idea to include the solution for fundamental problems, and leave out the solution for the more advantaged ones. And if the solution manual is provided, perhaps allocate less grade percentage to the homeworks.
I've taken courses where the solution for even the basic results were not provided (a course done using the so-called "Moore's method"). So it became a you either get it or you don't type of class and believe me, a lot of people did not get it. The most successful students were also the most popular ones, who were able to crowd-source other students' solutions to reach a consensus. I think it is a very poor way of teaching students when no feedback is provided.

The first paragraph seems to assume that the teacher would still be taking homework problems from the set of exercises for which the solutions have been provided. That would of course be a terrible idea and easy enough to avoid.

So, what do you provide?

@TobiasKildetoft Eactly right?...you think the teachers would care enough to avoid these problems. But in reality they don't.

I have no idea what terrible teachers you have had that did not care if the textbook had included solutions when deciding which problems to set as homework. All of mine have cared, as do I.


text:
Which differences are there between Math PhD programs in the US and in the UK regarding admission, funding, and reputation?
I'm an American citizen and a Junior at a US institution and I've recently been compiling a list of graduate schools to apply to. I'm mostly interested in differential geometry and geometric analysis. In addition to domestic institutions I have been looking at institutions in the UK such as the London School of Geometry and Number Theory, Cambridge, Oxford, etc...
Are there any fundamental differences in the way UK PhD programs admit and train their students? As an international student would I also be able to obtain funding for my education the same way I would be able to in the United States? Finally, how are UK PhD's looked upon in the American Academic job market? I imagine there shouldn't be much difference but there could be some politics I'm overlooking. Thank you.

Hi, and welcome to Academia! I took the liberty of editing your question to be a bit more specific, since you apparently do not ask about anywhere outside the US, but the UK in particular.

There are many separate questions in this post. It would probably be better to split the main ones into separate questions.

This question about PhD in the US compared to Europe highlights some of the differences between US/Europe Phd including UK.

The London School of Geometry and Number Theory has a similar setup to PhD positions in the US - it has a first year of coursework, after which you choose an advisor. By comparison the coursework in a Cambridge or Oxford PhD is rather little. I imagine because of this it is easer to obtain a place in the London School without a masters, whereas this is quite rare for Oxbridge maths PhDs.

I am a first-year PhD student at Oxford, having done some graduate work (and my undergrad) in the US. My answer might be a bit institution specific as Ruadhai Dervan suggested above, but it appears there are some trends across the UK that are quite different from in the US.
"Are there any fundamental differences in the way UK PhD programs admit and train their students?" - Most students seem to enter a PhD program in the UK with a fairly specific field of study in mind. For my applications to Manchester, Warwick, and Oxford I had to write a research proposal for a fairly specific topic for each application, as well as have an idea of who might supervise this research. Many students deviate substantially from these ideas, but almost all students here work in a very similar area to what they applied for. In contrast, I know many US students who started out doing pure mathematics preliminary exams and found themselves finishing a thesis in a very different area, such as Numerical Analysis or Mathematical Biology. These things happen much more infrequently in the UK, in part because the programs are much shorter. The Oxford PhD is designed as a 3 year course, though many students take 4 or more years in practice. Some institutions are starting Doctoral Training Centres where a first year of training and project mentoring occurs. This is similar in flavour to US institutions having preliminary or qualifying exams, but these are often much more directed than in the US. I have not heard of any UK program where anything like preliminary or qualifying exams takes place, so that appears to be a US component of graduate school not present here. I would suggest looking at specific institution overviews of their PhD courses to get an idea of how they compare to US PhD programs.
Another important difference is the emphasis here on research as opposed to teaching. Most students in my program do some teaching, but it is frequently less than three hours a week. In comparison, my MS program in the States had me teaching 10+ hours a week, often with 10 or so hours of prep and grading. I also began doing research the week I arrived, whereas a US student may spend some years deciding on a specific topic to study. PhD students here also spend less time attending classes, and coursework requirements seem to be incredibly minimal compared to most programs in the US.
"As an international student would I also be able to obtain funding for my education the same way I would be able to in the United States?" - Probably not in general. Most US students in my experience are funded as Teaching Assistants, and they spend a lot of time teaching. Students are paid for their teaching services here, but the quantity is so much less that the funding from teaching is nowhere near enough to cover tuition and living expenses for most students. Exceptions probably exist, but most students here seem to be funded from grants their supervisors have, grants or scholarships they have gotten (e.g. Fullbright, Marshall scholarships), or similar things. You can apply for loans subsidized by the US government as well, just as you would for a domestic program. Many students are now funded through the Doctoral Training Centres, but at Oxford the funding for these is almost entirely for UK/EU students.
Your third question is a bit difficult for me to answer without any experience, so I will refrain from conjecturing. Most people have suggested to me that other factors, such as quantity and quality of publications, conferences and connections made, etc, are more important than where you obtained your PhD.
I would suggest finding a copy of Steven Krantz' book4, and read through it as soon as you can. It is directed almost entirely at students applying for or entering US programs, and is useful just to get an idea of what the whole enterprise of a PhD is about.

I feel like I wrote this rant somewhere else, but at the danger of repeating myself, let me just say: going to the UK (or Europe more generally) for a Ph.D. after a Bachelors in the US is not a very good idea.  The philosophy about what a Bachelors degree is is so different in the UK vs. the US that only the best US students are really ready to start a European Ph.D. program and complete it in a timely manner before their funding runs out.  Most European Ph.D. programs start from the default assumption that you will finish in 3 years (though I think in the UK especially, there's been a recognition of the flaws of this system, and move toward getting students a 4th year), and have a fairly hard deadline.  Most US programs will guarantee you 5 years of funding, with a 6th often being possible in practice (and sometimes a 7th, though this depends a lot on the university situation).  European students are starting having done much more serious coursework, which in theory makes a shorter Ph.D. with minimal coursework and starting a thesis problem instantly more reasonable (though it's still a struggle for a lot of people; theses don't necessarily come on deadline).
I think it would be more reasonable to join a European program after doing a serious masters (note that Andrew Krause who answered above already had a masters before starting at Oxford).  However, there are still other concerns: the funding situation in most EU countries is not all sunshine and rainbows for local students and usually heavily biased against non-EU students.  LSGNT (which sounds like a more reasonable option than most) says that funding for non-EU students is "limited," for example.
Of course, it would be silly to say it's never a good idea, but going anywhere outside the US and Canada is making it harder for yourself in a number of ways, without it being clear what the payoff is.  In terms of reputation, a few places in Europe have very strong reputations in the US (Oxbridge and Imperial in the UK, some of the Paris's in France) but beyond that, the situation is basically like going to a respectable but not especially prestigious school in the US: if your work stands on its own, it will take you places, but the name of the school is unlikely to even help get you a second look except through the reputation of your advisor.

I'd add to this that supervisors matter far more in the UK than in the USA, certainly outside lab-based PhDs. Your relationship with your supervisor is individual and crucial, you rely on them far more and their reputation will matter post PhD.

@ctokelly I think that's a hard thing to adjudicate, but your comment doesn't ring true to me.  I'm sure it's harder in the UK to be some what independent of your advisor because there's so much time pressure, and you have less of a chance of "shopping around" with different advisors in the department.  But the relationship is still crucial, and their reputation is still going to matter a lot.

I might well be misrepresenting American academia or extrapolating incorrectly from the social sciences and humanities in the UK, so correct me if needs be! When a doctoral student walks into my school, he or she is assigned a supervisor, say me, and then I am in effect their sole reviewer, mentor, network introducer and viva organiser for the duration of their studies. They don't have a cohort, just me and their project. Of course we try to ameliorate the risks by having 'second supervisors' and by organising training events etc, but still, it all hangs on that relationship.

@ctokelly  I guess I think of the difference as being that in the UK you start roughly where a US student would expect to be 2 years into the program.  (In my experience) at the start of your Ph.D. you're taking classes and trying on different advisors for size (in some disciplines, they even have a formal rotation system), but once you choose an advisor and get into the research, you are essentially totally dependent on your advisor (exactly how much depends on discipline, etc.).  Maybe the dependence is even greater in the UK; I can't rightly say.

Point taken @BenWebster.

Here are some points on UK PhDs:

Most Uk PhDs are 3 (up to 4 years) and applicants have completed a masters when they start.
Applications are generally directly for a particular project and done directly through your proposed supervisor.
Little or no coursework is included as part of the PhD, focus is entirely on research.
The London School of Geometry and Number Theory is a Doctoral training centre (DTC). These are more similar to the American system. They are 4 years and only require a bacholars. The first year involves taught course and results a Masters, then you choose a PhD project for the next 3 years. Admissions are generally done centrally.
Funding, if available, will generally cover tuition fees and a stipend ~£12000 per year. Some additional income can be made by teaching/marking. Although generally the time spent on this is small.
A large amount of funding comes from EPSRC and other research council grants. These are generally limited to UK/EU students. However, other sources of funding do not have these restrictions. You probably need to enquire on a case by case basis.
An additional issue is that non-EU students generally have to pay higher tuition fees. This makes them harder to fund than EU students.
There are various scholarships and funds that provide funding to international students. For US students I know of the Fullbright commision. Although I'm sure there are others.

authors: พงษ์ธวัต เกะสูงเนิน


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How to effectively write a paper of N>2 co-authors?
We are writing a manuscript with 7 people. I am not sure what is a good tool to write a paper collaboratively. Other than overleaf or sharelatex which cost money.
What do you do if you have technology inclined collaborators?

OverLeaf has a free subscription option and it includes collaboration.

This question might be more suitable for softwarerecommendations.stackexchange. Or it is not clear enough. What aspects of collaborative scientific writing specifically do you worry about?

@Trilarion I think that in many domain-specific use cases recommending softwarerecs.se is a horrible idea. It's like saying "if you need a book on linear algebra, do not ask on mathematics.se, ask on bookrecommendations.se, where experts on books can give you their opinions".

@FedericoPoloni I agree partly. It might be a border case although the argument also goes the other way around like "If you want to find out what formats are there for writing your new linear algebra book in, don't ask experts on linear algebra, ask the ones who produce the books." I think the biggest problem with the question is actually the missing context.

Git! Or more generally, version control systems, if your co-authors are technically inclined enough to know/learn how to use one.
If not, probably... write the text in google docs first and designate someone who will do the formatting in the latter stages, and decide what to cut to make the page limit.

The problem is not everyone is capable of using git. Think about the scenario of very senior PIs

I don't think git is a good answer. What format would you be writing in? If the answer is Latex, then getting everyone's environments consistent is going to be a nightmare. Even if this works, there's no facility for commenting on text. Google Docs is a far better answer.

@MJeffryes What do you mean by "getting everyone's environments consistent"? Latex is fairly well backward compatible, and unless you use bleeding-edge features in packages it is difficult to run into problems. In my experience this is a non-issue, in practice.

@FedericoPoloni That might not be the right expression, but installing Latex isn't something I'd want to walk a collaborator through, let alone 6 of them.

Also, there are several ways to include comments, ranging from \newcommand[1]{\comment}{\textcolor{blue}{#1}} to specific packages.

@MJeffryes I understand now. In my experience, using git itself is much harder than installing Latex. So the "technical bottleneck" is git, not Latex. (That said, I don't deny that there is one --- git has a very steep learning curve.)

@MJeffryes: Latex in git is how we do it. Of course, I'm in computer engineering, so the group bitbucket is all set up already and everyone knows how to use it...

@nengel Sure, if everyone is already using git and Latex then this might work for you. But I think if someone is looking for suggestions for how to do this, then they're probably not in that position.

@0x90: in my experience the very senior PIs don't have much interest in writing text any more and just want to see a mostly complete draft they can mark up with a pen. So they don't necessarily need to be included in the active writing phase.

@MJeffryes: sure, that's where the second half of the question comes in. But I've seen people not think of git when writing text instead of code often enough that I thought I'd mention it just in case.

This is the "ideal world" scenario. Probably the authors would also write in markdown. The other answer by @louic is the "real world" scenario.

@FedericoPoloni "using git itself is much harder than installing Latex" The comparison should be using git to using LaTeX, which I find have roughly equal difficulty depending on what you're trying to do (and GUIs do help in balancing the difficulty).

"git commit -a, git push. If anything goes bad, zip the folder and send it to me, I'll deal with it". Send that to the less inclined collaborators and done. Or show them how to write latex with MS Code with latex plugins, so they can do everything on the interface

How do you put math in google doc?

Short answer: it is a pain, unless you can all agree to use a single way of working, which is unlikely. I will describe my own workflow below in case it gives you ideas.
In my experience, each author wants to use their own tools. Depending on the field this is usually Word or LaTeX. In biophysics, almost nobody uses version control and most of the people I worked with are not willing to learn it.
I am not saying you should do what I do, or claiming that this is the single best way, but my workflow is as follows:

I write the paper as very basic LaTeX (almost plain text). I use version control.
I paste it into libreoffice and do some basic formatting (otherwise some co-authors will start "correcting" the formatting). I email everybody the draft of the paper.
Co-authors suggest changes, all at the same time. I ask them to highlight or track changes and, importantly, leave comments and tell me WHY they propose a change. You'd be surprised how many people make changes without letting you know why.
I manually merge the changes of all authors into my version of the paper, and deal with conflicts (if necessary by discussing via email with the co-authors in question).
Repeat from point 2 until done. For me, typically 2 or 3 iterations are enough but with difficult people this number can go up dramatically.
Convert paper to final format (decided by journal requirements). Make sure you do this only once, at the very end.

If this sounds complicated you are right. But to me this is the least complicated way unless everybody agrees to use the same software and version control (which is rare). Especially if reference management software is involved it can become a terrible mess when co-authors start to add/mess with references.
The main advantages of this method:

There is a single current version of the paper and I (as first author) always have it.
I can use version control, even if nobody else does.
Everybody can use whatever tools they want.

I found that one person being in control of the writing and merging avoids endless discussions and ending up with multiple versions of the paper.
If people take too long to reply I send them an updated version with the others' corrections: this will show them that others have done their job and hopefully incite them to reply as well. Also, some of their potential comments may already have been addressed in the new version.

Great answer, but the following part I disagree with. "You'd be surprised how many people make changes without letting you know why." Some changes are just self-evident, assuming you're tracking the changes and you can see the diff.

Of course I am not talking about those changes. Many changes are indeed for obvious reasons, but other changes are opinion based or simply unclear. Without comments no discussion about the opinion or reason for the change is possible. Also, what is clear/obvious to you may not be obvious for everyone.

Use Google Docs or a Wiki (see http://www.wikimatrix.org/ )
Agree on a detailed style guide. Agree on one voice. Decide on who should have the final say over edits. Know the requirements from your desired publisher, or journal. And decide on who should format everything. It will be more consistent if only one person does that part too.
To use the wiki matrix, start with the choice wizard, then refine your choice based on special features you might need, like MathML, file uploading, and/or a markup language that can easily be exported to LaTeX.
To track changes, make the "Recent Changes" page of your wiki your home page, or turn on email notifications assuming you don't mind the deluge of emails.
Your manuscript may not look that great on a wiki, but that can be a benefit too. There is no point in obsessing over the formatting of the content until the content has mostly been finalized.

In case you are working with LaTeX, there are two very good (free!) sites offering collaboration functionality: Overleaf and ShareLaTeX. In fact, they are in the process of merging their services. Overleaf apparently does not restrict the number of collaborators. Additionally, it features git support!
Both offer online compiling (no need for local installation). You can simultaneously edit your document with several authors at once and even track their cursor and what they type. It has a chat, comments and version history. Which one of them you are using will most likely not matter, they have a very similar feature list and will eventually become one.
Downside: One of you might have to purchase a paid subscription to have a higher number of collaborators. But usually you get a better deal when you are from a university or similar institution. Referral links (at least on ShareLaTeX) can also get you to a higher number of collaborators without paying, but you will need to send referral links to your co-authors.
I recently used ShareLaTeX to work with one co-author and it was really pleasing. I even use it for myself, just because I dislike most Tex editors.

Overleaf allows you to access the project as a git repository, which is very useful if some authors like the on-line interface and others prefer to edit the files locally. Some see this as the single best feature of the platform...

@chardmeier Thanks, I do not use Overleaf myself. I added some info about it to my answer.

From my experience and to elaborate on @buzjwa's comment:
I have used overleaf to collaboratively write papers multiple times. As mentioned above, the free version allows an unlimited number of collaborators and even contribution without an account is possible (more on that below). And while overleaf is far from perfect, I have not yet found a better option, especially when cooperating with researchers form other fields.
After you created a free overleaf project you get (long and cryptic) links to read-only and read-write version of the document that you can pass out to contributors. Please note that the free version does not support protected repositories, so everyone who gets his hand on that link can view/ edit your document.
Additionally each overleaf project has a git repo that you can check out and a rich text mode. This allows people with different preferences to work together. (I for myself prefer working offline and pushing my changes with git.) One downside of this is that git implementation used does not support branches and tags.

I routinely am a co-author on papers with 10-16 authors, as is the norm in my field (biology/molecular biology; I just counted, and in the past 12 months, about a dozen papers, I averaged 11.1 authors).  The process I use is by no means ideal, but it is very much a standard in my fields.
With more than three or four authors, it's not expected that most will be heavily involved in the writing process. A "middle" author -- that is, one other than the last author (senior) and first author (who did the bulk of the work) -- typically gets a near-final draft and is asked for input on that. They'll often find a block in the Methods and the Results section commenting something like "JESSICA - please fill in details of mouse examinations" or something like that, and we expect a detailed couple paragraphs there, but the implication is that aside from their specialty, we're looking for typos and minor changes and not much more.
(If a middle author has serious concerns, of course we pay attention. But if the draft is accurate and reasonably well written, it's not expected that a middle author will offer major revisions.)
That means that you're really doing the bulk of the manuscript prep with two, or perhaps three, main writers, which makes life a lot easier; which is important, because what just about everyone does is pass Word documents back and forth and use "Track Changes".  Sometimes we use shared folders (Dropbox equivalents); sometimes we use email. In either case we typically keep a list of drafts; one set of revisions come back, we save as "v3" and then "Accept revisions" and call that version "v4", and so on.
We never work simultaneously. One person makes all their comments, tells the next "Your turn", and waits until all those changes are made.
Eventually, usually after three or four passes, this turns into a draft that can go out to middle authors. Here, because we don't expect major changes, we typically do get simultaneous changes, and just incorporate them all together.
We often send to the couple of authors who we know are likely to make more changes first (Jessica is really good at identifying logical flow problems; James is British and has language eccentricities), incorporate changes from them, and after that send to the people who are likely to just catch typos.
Again, this is all using Word Track Changes, which I know has many problems, but it's a de facto lowest common denominator; everyone has it, everyone knows how to use it, it's easier than trying to teach one (or 11) people how to use Git or whatever. More computation-heavy fields probably use different approaches. When I'm a middle author on a paper, this is what I expect, and it's what I invariably get.  It sounds like it should be a mess, but since it's what everyone is used to it generally goes pretty smoothly.  It's been years since the logistics of working with co-authors has been an issue for me.

I can suggest a change: in my experience, this kind of workflow works better if you keep the same name for the most recent version of the main file (e.g., paper.tex and get into the habit of renaming old versions (e.g., paper_2017-11-02.tex), rather than renaming new ones (paper_v1.tex, paper_v2.tex...). It is counterintuitive, but it works.

From experience, I can confirm that this is a common way of doing things, and it “works”. But OP wants to know how to do this “effectively” and, sorry, this isn’t it. It’s an objectively terrible way of writing papers, and we only use it because people are too lazy/entrenched to put in even minimal effort in learning better tools. Of course this isn’t a commendable mindset, and it especially makes no sense from a time saving perspective. But here we are.

@FedericoPoloni If you already using latex, using git spares you of all that and easily deals with conflicts. I cringe everytime I get a new .docx with prefixes/suffixes on my dropbox.

@FábioDias Yes, I agree with you that this suggestion is a "poor man's git" (a "git's git"?). But, in a workflow where people do not use git and rename their files manually (and for many reasons they do not wish to change), I think it's good to suggest to switch from 'rename new files' to 'rename old files'.

@konrad-rudolph I absolutely agree that this is not an efficient approach. But if you factor in the time it would take to teach 11 people to use Git -- or even Google Docs! -- and then repeat that with a new group of co-authors a dozen times in a year ... sticking with what works is the best use of my time.

@iayork Well. I claim that authoring even a single paper (as a main author) pays back the time invested in learning superior tools. Admittedly I have no data to back this up but the basics of Git + LaTeX are much easier to learn than generally claimed, and the payoff is immediate. It’s just something PhD students should learn as a matter of course. Everybody is expected to know rudimentary statistics, lab notebook keeping (where relevant), etc. Yet collaborative paper authoring isn’t? Preposterous.

@konrad-rudolph perhaps the relative reward of a single new paper is different for us. In any case since I already know git, and the other tools, my time lost would not be in learning new tools, but in teaching and cajoling 50 reluctant co-authors how to learn them, which has almost no benefit to me, and which would be 100% wasted if just one author on each paper refused; and given how stubborn scientists can be, I think a 90% buy-in rate is far higher than I'd expect.