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Is it a good idea to send a reference letter upon contacting a potential PhD supervisor for the first time?
I'm about to contact a potential PhD supervisor which has been suggested by my current masters supervisor. They should know each other very well since they've worked on multiple joint papers before. Currently, I have a recommendation letter from my masters supervisor but I don't know if I should provide it in the first Email. I don't know if recommendation letters are something the PhD supervisor would explicitly ask for later in the process or not.
So, is it a good idea to just blindly provide a reference letter on the first contact, hoping it would impress them more?

No!! Just mention about your Master's supervisor. If he/she has recommended you to contact your expecting PhD supervisor, then write those sentences.... If not, then just mention that you have heard many good things about him/her research and his/her group from your Master's supervisor and also seen his work as he/she was a joint author in your Master's supervisor publications.. something like this,....

It depends. Some potential supervisors give specific advice on what they want from a potential PhD student to be able to decide if they are interested or not on their website. If a website states something like "If you are interested in this project for your PhD, please send me a CV, motivation letter and two reference letters." then you should probably do just that.

@skymningen That would be a "call for applications". While I agree with you, doens't seem to be the case (and that would have clear instructions). Perhaps the OP can clarify.

No!
As a PhD student, I received tons of "potential phd candidates" offers on my mail, merely because I had an institutional mail. For professors, this is way, way worse. Cold e-mailing with attachments is a bad idea.  It would end up on the spam/ignored folder.
Matter of fact, do not contact him yourself, ask your MS supervisor for an introduction e-mail, because coming from a known sender, it will have more chance of being read. Introductions are always better than cold calling...


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better to cite pre-print or thesis
When I submitted my PhD thesis, the journal article version of one of the chapters was under review. A preprint of it is up on ArXiv. It was eventually rejected, not with particular faults so much as lacking sufficient impact for the journal I submitted it to.
I left academia after, so I never really came back to that paper to submit it elsewhere.
It's now ~6 years later and I am working on an idea in collaboration with researchers at another university in a significantly different field. One idea from that paper would actually be very useful for the problem we are working on.
When it comes to writing it up should I cite the preprint, or should I cite my thesis?
I am thinking I should cite my thesis chapter, but I wanted to check.

Is the entire thesis in the preprint or only one chapter? If the latter, does the preprint cite the thesis?

only the content of one chapter.
The thesis introduction i think lists the preprint as "this chapter is currently under review at XYZ, preprint online at ..."

An accepted dissertation is expected to have undergone a level of review more rigorous than the arXiv "does it look like a scientific article"-one-glance-check. This is a reason in favour of citing a dissertation over a preprint.
On the other hand, dissertations are frequently not easily and reliably accessible. Preprints on the arXiv are probably the best we have in that category. This counts in favour of citing an arXiv preprint over a dissertation.
Beyond that you should consider which of the texts would actually be more helpful to your prospective reader. The preprint might be more self-contained than the dissertation chapter, the dissertation chapter on the other hand might benefit from having the extra context right there.
In most cases, my recommendation would be to just cite them both.

I recommend that you cite the one that contains (or references) more complete overall context. If the preprint is just a chapter and it cites the larger thesis it should be fine, provided that the thesis is obtainable in some reasonable way.
Note, however, if the thesis has been submitted for publication and you are writing something new that requires citation, you might be able to depend on the delays in publication of the newer work to delay the final choice.
Citation of formally published work (that is, neither of the choices you propose) is preferable for many reasons, the most important of which is the vetting provided by the review that reputable publishers provide.
Also note that there may be no block in citing both.
But the context is important. Don't cite in a way that hides important other context that might be needed by readers or those that intend to extend your work.

I would simply cite both if there is no limit on the number of references. Citations are there first of all to make it easier for readers to find relevant information, and arXiv is much easier to find online than someone's thesis. On the other hand, thesis is an official publication and may contain some addituonal detail, so skipping it would be strange.

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Status regarding co-authorship for a computer science research paper
I am employed as a student in a theoretical computer science research group and part of my job was to assist my supervisor with a scientific paper he has been working on.
Concretely, my job was to implement the software that was used to conduct the experimental part of the research paper and also to gather and put together a dataset in order to empirically test the theoretical framework developed by my supervisor using real-world data.
Before the first submission attempt, I was mentioned in the list of the co-authors. However, the paper was not accepted on the grounds that the empirical results only weakly reflected the theoretical claims.
My supervisor thought that the rejection was due to a bug in the code I've developed and afterwards he removed me both from the list of co-authors and from the project. I am very sure that the code didn't contain any bugs.
Afterwards, my supervisor contacted a fellow student who was already working on a different topic, and asked for his permission to use the data from this different topic in order to test the theory.
The second submission attempt of the research paper was successful and the paper was accepted. My fellow student appeared in the list of co-authors but I didn't.
The version of the paper that finally got accepted differed from the first one that got rejected, in that it contained only an extra experiment, using the data from my fellow student. However, the initial empirical experiments that I put together were still there. They have not been removed, nor modified.
Regarding this situation I have a series of questions:

Is it normal to feel that I have been treated unfairly? I feel that the only reason why I have been removed from the list of co-authors is because the dataset I have compiled simply didn't confirm the expected theoretical results and me getting fired was simply a way for my supervisor to vent his frustration about being rejected.
Is it legal to publish a paper that uses data and software that some other person developed and not mention this person as a co-author (or at least as a reference)? Are there any laws or rules of conduct regarding such situations?

I'm aware that a variation of this question may have already been answered before:
What to do when principal investigator publishes your work without putting you down as a coauthor?
My research work stolen and published as his own by the co-author without my consent
My work was published and my name was nowhere to be found: how should I handle this?
Most of the answers suggested that I should try to approach and discuss this problem in private with my supervisor or with some other member of the research group. I have tried doing exactly this and both my supervisor and 2 other senior members simply refused to discuss this issue with me. The only response I've got was: "what's done is done, let us focus on the future now".
What can I do, or what would be ethical to do in this situation?

I would like to comment on code didn't contain any bugs. During my over 30 years software development career, I have never seen any code without bugs, no matter what the project size is, small(5k lines), mid (100k lines) or large(1 million lines).

@scaaahu Of course, you are right. There is no such thing as bug-free code. But in this particular case, the fact that the published version of the paper includes the "buggy" code, sort of proves the opposite.

To answer your questions:
Based on what you say, it does sound like you were treated unfairly.
Leaving you out from the paper given the circumstances is at least unethical. I don't know about legal.
Your collaborators don't sound like nice people. Unfortunately, this is not uncommon in academia, where abuse of junior people is certainly not uncommon, though for obvious reasons statistics are hard to come by.
An obvious option is to write to the journal's editor explaining the situation. If you have contributed significantly to the paper, you certainly have a claim to be considered a co-author. Obviously, make sure you have documentation backing up your claim. If you don't, it is just your word against theirs, and you will quite likely get nowhere. If you have good documentation, it will be more difficult for the journal to ignore your claims, though it is obviously hard to predict what people will do. Given that you were on the first submission attempt, I think that first submission should count as part of the documentation, and should really help your case if you appeal to the journal. It would be easy enough to compare the two versions of the paper. In the first submission, is your contribution described? Also, were the two submissions to different journals?
It is not completely clear from your posting whether the paper has been officially published. If it has, it may be too late to add your name to the list of authors.
Bear in mind that your collaborators will quite possibly try to find a way to get back at you, for any number of reasons. People who behave in the way you described can get extremely petty and unpleasant when they perceive you as "going against them". They also have a remarkable capacity for not taking responsibility for their own actions, and in their own minds will find a way to blame you for the situation. This is not meant to discourage you from standing up for your rights, but just pointing out the reality of the situation.
Personally, I think people should stand up for their rights, but at the end of the day it is your decision.

"If it has, it may be too late to add your name to the list of authors." Isn't this kind of breach of ethics grounds for retraction or at least a correction?

@Max No idea. I think retraction is considered pretty drastic - generally used when there are major problems with the paper contents. Correction - possibly, but how does one add to the name of authors when the paper has been published, the meta-information disseminated, and the paper possibly cited?

Assuming that you are giving a totally impartial and accurate account of the facts:
To your first question: Your Supervisor has a "right-to-manage" in this project since it was his project and you functioned as his assistant. "Right-to-manage" is an euphemism for "authority to fire". Namely, he has the (moral, even) right to "fire" you from the paper, if he believes (rightly or wrongly) that it was your fault that the paper was rejected the first time. Naturally, he wouldn't want faulty work to continue to be present in his paper, now would he? So he went on and scrapped your contribution on which you have labored so hard... but wait: he didn't scrap your work from the paper, but he kept it in, without your name. This leads us to your second question: what he did can be legally characterized as "grand theft", I believe, at least in the US legal system.
What to do? The "cosmic-joke" scenario (but I am not joking here) would be to actually find a bug in your code and send a letter to the paper that published the paper, challenging the empirical results (and you will be in an excellent position to challenge them since you know all the details).
The sensible thing to do, given that you have already futilely tried to discuss the issue with the defendant (which was the civilized thing to do), is to indeed "focus on the future" -your future this time. With all that such a vague phrase may silently imply.

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Is there a mathematics journal that publishes colour diagrams for free?
I have a paper with colour diagrams that I wouldn't like to convert to grayscale for publication. I think colour greatly helps to understand some complicated patterns. I know most journals accept colour pictures upon payment, but I'm not willing to pay for letting others publish my own work and get benefit out of it. Forum Mathematicum is a nice journal which publishes colour pictures for free, but I recently published a paper there and wouldn't like to repeat. Do you know of any other nice options? The paper is on algebraic topology bordering with quantum algebra.

In all journals I know, the restriction to grayscale (or extra costs for colour) is only for the printed version – which hardly anybody reads anymore. In the digitial versions, all graphics are coloured as long as they have been submitted as such.

Let me say that -- although in general I certainly do believe that most contemporary journals practice highway robbery of one form or another -- I do in fact believe that printing things in colo(u)r is more expensive.  Someone needs to absorb this extra cost; if not the author then it must be (right?) the readers.  I don't blame you for not wanting to pay for it yourself, but framing it as you versus the journal strikes me as not necessarily being accurate.

I'm pretty sure that Quantum Topology prints diagrams in color.

Thanks for your comments, guys. @Wrzlprmft the point is that in the text I refer to the red part or the blue part of this and that picture. This is why I wouldn't like even the printed version to be without colours.

You can try with "A full colour version of Figure~1 is available online on arXiv.org in the e-print version of this paper [37]." I've gotten away with a similar sentence on a Springer journal.

@FedericoPoloni thanks, Federico, not a bad idea, still I'd like to try to get an optimal solution, at the risk of you all calling me perfectionist.

@PeteL.Clark printing colours is of course more expensive than grayscale, but the costs are absorved by far with journal prices with current prices (there will always be exceptions, but I'm certain this is the case for most journals).

You might check if AGT prints in color. It's primarily an electronic journal, but they do print out hard copies for some subscribers.

You can write in a way visible from the metadata/free sample that a full-colour preprint version available at arXiv:... That way people also get to know where they can get a free copy if they or their institution don't subscribe.

Thanks, guys, I appreciate all your comments, but explanatory sentences about where the reader can find real colour pictures is not a good alternative. There are more than 10 colour figures and references to (colours in) them are constant. I should have made this clearer. The sort of answers I'm looking for are those of Noah Snyder and David Robers, however QT is too low-dimensional for this paper and I have kind of overworked AGT during the last years, although I will think about trying to repeat, sure.

Do you insist on a journal that has a print version? There are certainly electronic journals where this would not arise.

@nateeldredge no, electronic journals are fine, you'll see above that I've considered a couple of them, but the paper doesn't fully fit for scientific reasons. Can you please suggest other journals? Thanks!

How about SIGMA (http://www.emis.de/journals/SIGMA/about.html) which is online only?

@just-learning thanks! Unfortunately the paper is not within the scope of the journal.

Regardless of how the paper is published, I think it's best to ensure it is possible to understand the pictures in greyscale. There will always be people viewing it that way - on paper or ebook reader, or because they are colour blind. I know of a paper that has a statement of the form 'when viewed in greyscale, colour X appears darker than colour Y'.

To add to @JessicaB 's comment, I have found this guide useful when thinking about how the document is seen by those with reduced sight.

@JessicaB and WillieWong you're absolutely right, thanks. I'll take into consideration your indications in order to choose the colors.

The important thing that were not covered in the comments yet is that many reviewers will print your article on their greyscale printer for the review. If Figures will be hard to understand in greyscale, your chances for rejection increase:)

I would recommend you to publish on arXiv.org (http://arxiv.org). It's a very solid online publication outlet, free, open access and especially popular in mathematics and other hard science disciplines. Liberal guidelines with no mentioning of restrictions in terms of color.

Isn't arXiv a preprint archive? OP is looking for a journal, online or printed publishing.

@EnthusiasticStudent: I wouldn't call arXiv.org a "preprint archive", even if it's considered as one by most people. Firstly, because nowadays the line between traditional publishing and self-publishing is blurring rapidly. Secondly, because one might decide to publish own work on arXiv and not anywhere else after that. In this case, the term "preprint" doesn't apply, in my opinion.

People might choose to publish only on arXiv, but they will rarely be considered serious researchers by the rest of the community.

@TobiasKildetoft: I respectfully disagree. As an example, consider Russian mathematician Grigori Perelman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman), who became famous for solving the Poincaré conjecture problem and consequently has been awarded Fields Medal (his controversial nonacceptance of it is irrelevant here). He published his work as a series of papers on arXiv and AFAIK no other publications in peer-reviewed outlets were made by him. Moreover, two of the three groups of scientists (from well-respected universities), who verified his proof, posted their work on arXiv as well.

I said rarely, not never. Perelman is not the norm, and if most people did things that way they would never get any career.

@TobiasKildetoft: I understand, but even not considering "ouliers", such as Perelman, I clearly see trend that places less emphasis on where one publishes and more on the essence and quality of the work itself. I expect this trend to be even more pronounced along with emerging movements for open data, open access and open science.

Whether it's a preprint service or not isn't really relevant; it's definitely not a journal, and that's what the question asks for.

There might be a trend that the precise journal matters less. But I have not seen any sort of trend away from peer-review.

@ff524: Sometimes you need to read between the lines. While the question formally is indeed focused on journals, the question "tone" and the word "options" indicated to me that the OP might be open to suggestions of options beyond the standard ones. Hence my answer. Despite all the negativity of some people here, the acceptance of my answer by the OP suggests that he is pretty happy with it. And, ultimately, it's all that matters. Have a nice day!

@TobiasKildetoft: Fair enough.

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Applying again for PhD abroad vs. staying at my home institution?
I'm a MS student who recently (unsuccessfully) applied to PhD programs in the US (I'm from an Asian country but was raised there). I'm in a situation where I have the option to apply again this round, or to just stay at my home institution where I received my bachelor's and will receive my master's.
Pros of applying again would be that I wouldn't have any "regrets" and in the hypothetical situation that I'm successful I'd be able to be open to more (hypothetical) experiences/networks/opportunities. Pros of staying would be that my current lab pays well, my friends and family are here, the quality of research isn't too terrible (my lab isn't one of those labs that produces 10+ publications a year, but we still do a decent job), my and my PI's overall a nice person. Not to mention that I'd probably be able to finish my degree faster and either go for a postdoc or internship/job abroad. The PhD at my home institution is pretty much a guarantee to get in, since my advisor is very keen on my staying and the school's admissions process if extremely faculty-based.
I suppose the main factor that's holding me back from applying again is the feeling that it'd be a gamble. The only things I can do to improve my application would be to get a good quality publication out and raise the quality of my letters. My undergrad GPA is bad (barely above 3.0/4.0) but there's nothing I can do about that. I'm not sure if I'd be able to get better quality letters in that time, as in my home country working with other professors/labs is usually frowned upon. Even this round I had to ask a postdoc for one of my letters.
I'm also concerned, albeit to a lesser degree, about this concept of "academic incest" where you attend the same school for your undergrad and PhD. I don't think this would be that big of an issue, but I guess I wouldn't really know better.
I guess the point of this question/post would be to seek some advice on how more seasoned people would view my situation and what they would do. Please flag if inappropriate. Thanks!

Where do you want to live and work after you finish your education?

@Buffy Preferably the US or Canada. It's been 15 years since I've went back and I kind of want to go home. I've heard that if that's the case then it may be better to apply again - even if it means going to a "lower ranked" school.


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How to cite earlier work, discovered only at the end, that claims similar results to a recently completed project?
At the end of writing up our manuscript, we discover that there has been another earlier study in a very different context (but using a physical model very similar to ours) that claims a similar result.
We were not inspired by this earlier work and we could not have found it until we had our results; so this is not a case of not having done proper literature survey a priori.
So, do we cite them within the main text's introduction and results despite not having been inspired by it at all? Or do we cite them during the concluding remarks highlighting the similarities?
In either case, our results certainly complement theirs.

In mathematics (maybe in other fields too), one would put at the end of the introduction a statement like "After obtaining the results in this paper, we learned of related work by X.  In particular, X obtained ...." Here the "..." would be a description like "a stronger form of our Theorem 7" or "a weaker form of our Theorem 7" or "a result related to our Theorem 7" or whatever it was that X actually got.
In computer science (maybe in other fields too), papers often have a separate section called "Related Work", and information of this sort would naturally go into that section.

In other fields, this approach would be a kind of risky - reviewers might complain, unless you're writing for a conference and running short of time for the deadline. If you're writing for a journal, you have all the time to modify the paper, properly putting in perspective a work which is so closely related to yours. See also peer revu's answer.

This is also risky in math and CS. On the other hand, the alternative is to be dishonest. Risky or not, if you know of earlier work that claims the same or similar results, you have to cite it.

@JeffE: What I considered risky is the idea of writing just an addedum at the end of the introduction: one should take the time to completely rewrite the introduction, if the article to be cited is so closely related to their own.

And, indeed, if necessary, also part of the other sections...

It is useful for readers if you distinguish your work from previous work early on in a paper, typically in a "related work" section. If your paper is being peer reviewed, distinguishing your work from previous work is an important aspect of demonstrating novelty.
It does not matter that you didn't find out about the previous work until after you had results. The manuscript is not a chronological record of your thought process.

Completely agree.  The manuscript should be rewritten before submission to include the fruits of recent research.  There is zero reason not to do so.

So, do we cite them within the main text despite not having been inspired by it at all?

Yes, you should surely cite it and you can do it in the introduction, where you will outline the differences between the two works and specify in which way yours complements theirs.

Could you explain why it is curious? The systems considered are really in very different contexts, but uses similar models and therefore gets similar results (the new result being a particular phenomenon); the earlier study highlights the new phenomenon in their title and abstract in the context of their totally different system. So only once we had the result could we have stumbled onto their paper. How common is this situation?

It is curious because from your question and your comment above, it seems that you have almost completed your manuscript before obtaining the main result.

We were writing the manuscript and simultaneously searching for similar previously published reports on such a phenomenon, and found this earlier work only at the end of writing.

@MaviPranav It is not curious that you found the work very late the in the process (this happens all the time, for better or for worse). What is weird is that you say that you "couldn't" have found it earlier. Why not? Abstractly, I could imagine that you only knew after getting all your results that you knew what related work you need to look for, but I cannot really imagine a practical situation where this would be the case.

@xLeitix: I suspect this is just a language issue at work here. I have seen non-native English speakers from various cultures use constructions such as "could not have found" when they mean "did not find". The "could not" is not meant to express general impossibility, it expresses failure to achieve the described result.

@xLeitix: No, I indeed meant "could not have found" but for practical purposes as described by anonymous_reviewer below. I was going to cite the work anyway as I had suggested in the post, but I was unsure whether their work and results should be alluded to right in the introduction --- which might give the disingenuous impression that our study was inspired by their work done in a very different setting ---, or a discussion of their results should be relegated to the end --- which would seem like a disingenuous downplay of the importance of their work ---, both of which I wanted to avoid.

@WetLabStudent: I continue to find the usage of "could not" curious, but maybe this is just due to my limited knowledge of English. I think that a simple "we haven't found it until we had our results" would have been a more accurate statement, and there would be nothing wrong with it: it happens. In fact, I've never implied anywhere that an author should be aware of all existing literature possibly related to her/his own work, for it would be an overwhelming task in any field, not just in applied mathematics.

@MassimoOrtolano Based on the context, "could not find such a result" means "could not [reasonably be expected to] find such a result." The bracketed piece is often deleted in informal English in my experience. Meaning, they are not physically incapable of finding such a result (they could find it by dumb luck), but that finding such a result would be improbable even with the most diligent search ever done in the history of academics.

@WetLabStudent: thanks for really spelling it out; I was rather surprised at the unnecessary focus piled on the could-not-have bit, right from the unhelpful language deconstruction initiated 2 days ago even before the OP had gotten a chance to reply, to the slightly sinister insinuation of us having cooked up our results beforehand. It's fortunate that someone else pointed this out, else it would have looked peevish of me to have brought it up.

@xLeitix: I have practical experience with your abstract possibility of "could not": basically, the solution of the problem suggested search terms that lead me to related work done in a different field (remote sensing vs. chemistry). This may actually be a "could not" in the sense that because of different terminology it was practically impossible to find the relevant literature earlier on (via problem description).

If indeed the other study deals with a completely different setting, and is only related to the present one by an analogous finding as the main result, and the only way to come across this other study is by using a description of that result as search terms, then I do not see why it should be cited in the introduction. Unless, of course, it is something to potentially attract further interest towards reading the present paper in full (the introduction is a good place to  try to attract a potentially interested reader to read the paper completely).
Otherwise, something like this can be mentioned in the "discussion" part of the paper, whether it is a separate section or a part of the conclusions.
It is not like before beginning any study, we are first going to carefully read through all the papers in the world in order to find out if similar models have possibly been used somewhere in a completely unrelated setting. If the only reasonable way to come across the other study is indeed the result itself, it is fine to leave this citation to the end of the paper.

This also very much depends on the journal you submit to. There are a growing number of journals that aren't so concerned with the novelty of the result as compared to whether the science was technically correct. For example, PLoS One would likely accept the paper even if you note the other similar result. Some rarer journals may even value that you've independently found similar results as another.


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Why are cumulative tests typically weighted so high (U.S.)?
Is there an academic justification behind most U.S. classes weighting exams at very high percentages of the overall grade in a course? So if a student does exceedingly well throughout the course in all projects, but bombs both tests, their grade is drastically skewed towards the exams rather than the coursework leading up to the exams.
Full disclosure, this happened to me this semester. I have a 97.75% on our projects throughout the course (4 major projects, each taking ~20 hours to complete). However, I admittedly bombed the final and did fairly poorly on the midterm (37% and 70%, respectively). Projects in our course are weighted 60%, but the remaining 40% is entirely midterm/final. My final grade for the class is hovering around 80% before the curve.
I want to understand the mindset behind these weights though, and where the idea of heavy cumulative exam weights came from? In other words, if I've demonstrated the understanding of the material to almost perfect standards, but I failed to represent that on a test, how does that translate to me being given a grade that doesn't really represent a strong understanding in the subject?

Just for the record, 60% for projects and 40% for midterm/final is actually a pretty fair split. I've had classes where 80% (50+30) came from the midterm/final combo, and the rest from class work. From my teaching experience, labs/assignments/projects are often not weighed as heavily because students can get external help (StackOverflow, friends, past students, etc) in order to complete the work, but that does not necessarily show great knowledge of the material.

One of my most stressful tests in college was a class that had no midterm and no homework apart from readings, so the final had a 90% weight in the overall grade. The professor also let us to switch to pass-fail grading up until you turned in your final, and I know at least one person who took him up on that offer and ended up acing the test.

Depending on the subject I would actually say this is a very low % weight for the exams. For reference, for my undergrad (Physics in the UK) almost all the courses were almost entirely marked on the final exam. The only ones I did that weren't were labs and computational physics although some of the other options had more project based stuff. The point being exams test what you actually know, while they have their flaws they are better at this than projects.

In Germany it is pretty common to have only one final test dictating the 100% of your final note. Sometimes it is even worse, I had a one-year class which had only one 100% test at the end of the second semester. Obviously the entire year of content was evaluated, easily one of the most "intense" tests I have ever had.

What are you studying? In France, for mathematics, the grade is usually 80% exams (30% first exam + 50% second exam) + 20% homework & quizzes in the first two years. Then if you do applied mathematics or take some applied course, the homework/project can go up to 60% (unless the grade is based on the project). For theoretical maths it is 100% exams most of the time.

Having spent some time in the British system, I'm surprised to see the "typical" U.S. system being regarded as weighting a final test heavily.

Cumulative tests show that you understand everything so far; they are meant to help students who perform poorly on the first exam, so they can do better on the second one, since they will have an idea of what to expect on the second one. It is uncommon when a student does worse from one test to the next.
Also, going back to projects, some professors don't value homework/projects as much because any student can copy / get help for their projects. Some professors I know would even give 100% for homework/projects just for turning them in, as they are meant for students to practice and learn by themselves. They are meant to help students prepare for tests. Because of this projects and homework are not a good (trusted) indicator of how a student is doing in a class.
By the looks on your grades, most likely you still don't know the topics of your class, if it was a more strict professor / class, just for failing the cumulative final, you would have failed the class as well, as this would be an indicator that you (maybe) cheated on your projects.
Cumulative tests are usually weighted high because in order to do the last topic you need to know the previous topics as well.

If the reason exams are weighted so heavy is because they're harder to cheat on, why not just make assignments more difficult to cheat on (or, graded more strictly)? Weighing an exam high for this reason seems like it was just deemed the easiest solution for the professor, regardless of fairness to the students.

It is the easiest solution for professors. Making projects/homework harder to cheat on require an enormous time of the professor, not all professors have that amount of time. Making the assignment(or different assignments) and also grading. Remember that grading different assignments is time consuming.

@MrDuk, well, how would you propose they regulate projects/assignments so that students don't cheat? Even out of class discussions with lab mates/colleagues/other students would constitute help, and you cannot just lock students in separate rooms for the entire semester with no access to the internet. You can use the projects/assignments to get practice with the components taught in class, but they are not a replacement (usually) for studying the actual material in depth.

Understand and/or have memorized.

At my department, the final exam is typically worth around 50% of the grade. This has two main causes:

Our department has a rule that requires at least 50% of the evaluation of the student to be done by the professor. Since assignments and midterms are typically graded by TAs, this leaves only the final exam.
It is much harder to cheat on the final exam. A determined unscrupulous student could easily cheat on most assignments and midterms. By weighting the final exam at 50%, it is much harder to pass the course without a solid understanding of the material.

Out of curiosity: why is it easier to cheat on the midterm exams than the final?

In this recently concluded semester, my midterms happened in class, where students had to sit close together (due to the number of chairs in the classroom), whereas the final took place in a larger room where I asked them to be more spread out. I expect that it was easier to cheat on the midterms than the final as a result. (Of course this can be mitigated by having midterms in larger rooms too, something I'll think about next time).

@PeteL.Clark On my department, midterms are supervised by TAs, while the final requires the professor to be in the room. Most TAs wont tell on you if you cheat, unless its very obvious that you are cheating.

this leaves only the final exam. - doesn't this imply more of a lack of effort (or motivation maybe) from the professor than a limitation in the available coursework to grade, though?

@PeteL.Clark The midterms are held in regular classrooms, with very little space between students, and are typically invigilated only by the professor. On the other hand, final exam rooms have significant spacing between students, many more invigilators, and strict regulations for what you are allowed to take into the room, bathroom breaks, etc.

@MrDuk I suppose you could see it that way, although I think the professors feel that their time is better spent focusing on the actual teaching.

What about the plethora of texts available? I don't see any justification for the assumption that the quality of a lecture of any given professor compares to a written section in a top textbook in a field.


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Are there any widely recognized world/country university rankings?
I will be applying to study mathematics in university soon, and in order to choose which universities I should apply to I am looking at university rankings among other factors.
However, many of the university rankings that I have looked at often differ significantly, eg placing a university 10th in the world in one website and placing it  30th in the world in another website.
Is there a ranking of universities that I can rely on and that is widely accepted by academics? I am particularly interested in university rankings for the UK, as that's where I live and so I'll most likely study there.
Thank you for your help.

What are you looking for specifically in a mathematical education? "Rank" might not be a terribly useful heuristic to find institutions that cater to your interests and needs. For example, is it really important how many Fields medal or Nobel prize winners an institution has hosted?

What would "official" even mean? Published by the UN?

As per @Buffy's comment and the answer below, I'm going to replace "official" by "widely recognized", although that invites the question "by whom".

You will just need to deal with the complexity. And FWIW, that is what mathematicians do, generally speaking.

@henning, unfortunately, now it reads like a shopping question.

@Buffy opinion-based, to an extent, as well. But not really. An answer could list a few well-known examples and conclude that none is sufficiently recognized. OP is free to roll back, but then the question would be unclear/lack details.

I could give useful advice to the OP, but it wouldn't qualify as an answer to the question. Alas. Tooooo many people in similar situations are looking for exactly the wrong thing.

You could look at the TEF (teaching excellence framework) scores of the universities you're interested in. As an undergraduate, you should decide based on quality of teaching, not research (e.g. how many Nobel prizes the uni has, as pointed out correctly by @henning).

The problem with all university rankings is that a concept such as 'quality of education' is almost impossible to define and measure quantitatively. Instead, rankings are based on things that 'ought to' correlate with quality (e.g. student satisfaction, measured by surveys). However, this just means that universities focus on improving their student satisfaction scores (free ice cream! bouncy castle!) and not on making their education programme more rigorous (which might actually be detrimental, as it might be seen as 'harder' and 'less fun')...

Ultimately what matters is finding the place that's best for you. That isn't just about the course, but also about atmosphere, location, size of university/city, etc, and your own personality. Thanks to Covid, most places are now running virtual open days and the like - exploit this to learn as much as you can about different courses and places, and see what appeals.

A question about what you can do to secure a slot in a "great" university in UK, given any particular circumstances, would be on topic here and probably give you more useful feedback.

@Buffy Perhaps I'm wrong, but I thought undergrad admissions is one of the things specifically listed as 'out of scope'?

@avid, ah, yes. I was thinking of a higher level, I guess. Thanks.

There are three widely-followed world university rankings: the THE, the QS, and the ARWU. You'll find discrepancies between them of course, but given they have different methodologies, it's not surprising. Make sure you know what you're looking for and what's important to you before using them. For example, the ARWU relies heavily on Nobel Laureates & Fields Medallists as staff or alumni. If you don't care about the natural sciences or mathematics, then these things are irrelevant, and the ARWU might be less applicable to you.
I am not as familiar with regional rankings, but my understanding is that the US News and World Report rankings is widely followed within the US, while in the UK, there are another three regional rankings (The Complete University Guide, The Guardian, and The Times/The Sunday Times). Once again they use different methodologies and so reach different results. To quote:

The considerable disparity in rankings has been attributed to the different methodology and purpose of global university rankings ... International university rankings primarily use criteria such as academic and employer surveys, the number of citations per faculty, the proportion of international staff and students and faculty and alumni prize winners ... The national rankings, on the other hand, give most weighting to the undergraduate student experience, taking account of teaching quality and learning resources, together with the quality of a university's intake, employment prospects, research quality and drop-out rates.

Hopefully you can see the difficulty in ranking universities, and why different people look at different rankings. You'll have to decide what is and isn't important to you.

There's no "official" rankings because who would have the authority to decide on what metrics make a university the "best"?
Only a body that was appointed by universities themselves would have this authority and given that each university has a different focus, getting them to agree on a set of universal metrics to be assessed against would be nigh impossible.
That being said, the closest thing you'll get to an "official" ranking is probably The World University Rankings collated by The Times. This is done in conjunction with Elsevier which gives it some semblance of authenticity.

A bit of advice for you specifically: university rankings don't really matter. I turned down a place at Cambridge to study part-time at Aston Uni because I preferred the lab-based approach that Aston takes to engineering degrees and I wanted to jump straight into industry. I don't regret this and I believe this hands-on experience has been far, far more useful in the long-term now I'm in industry. Furthermore, no hiring manager cares what university you went to. The days of "we only hire from Russel Group Universities" are long, long gone.
Choose your university based on where you'll be happiest and where you think the teaching style aligns most closely with your long-term goals. I'd only be concerned about ranking if they're far, far down at the wrong end. In which case look into why that's the case and decide if that matters to you.

And, for graduate work, the purported ranking of an entire institution is pretty meaningless.

+1, but in my opinion the Elsevier association makes them less credible rather than more.

@academic Could you explain the reasoning behind that?

@Persistence Elsevier (along with many other academic publishing houses) have a complicated ethical relationship with actual academics, since the publishing model effectively uses "free" labour (actually paid for out of research grants) to fulfil most of the steps to produce peer reviewed articles, while also charging readers, authors or both. They do provide real services and shouldn't be confused with unambiguous scam artists, but Elsevier in particular have many detractors to the point of boycott https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/opinion--boycotting-elsevier-is-not-enough-66617

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/54336/status-of-elsevier-boycott http://thecostofknowledge.com/

@origimbo, I can't argue with that. In the day and age of the internet, knowledge should be open by default. That being said, I'd think that they're still about as well placed as it's possible to be to help with this stuff


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Exam structure and final evaluation, corrective factors
I've in front of me a real exam. It has two questions, first one divided in two parts (second part can not be answered without first one correctly answered) rated 3 and 2 points respectively. Second question is divided in three parts, rated 2, 2, and 1. Total, 10 points.
I like to known if there are analysis (could be tables) about how the exam structure impacts on final evaluation and the necessary corrective factors.
Returning to the example, a very simplistic analysis: if I assume that the a prior probability of answer correctly a part is 50% (students that must be rated "5"):
First question:

Fails first part: 50% of students of this class, rated 0
Correct first part, fails second: 25% of students, rated 3.
Both parts ok: 25%, rated 5

Second question:

Fails first part: 50% of students, rated 0
Correct first part, fails second: 25% of students, rated 2.
Correct first and second part, fails third: 12.5% of students, rated 4.
All parts ok: 12.5%, rated 5

Students that have this hypothetical 50% of knowledge will have an average rate of 50%*0+25%*3+25%*5+50%*0+25%*2+12.5%*4+12.5%*5=3.625. It needs a corrective factor of 1.39. Only a 43.75% of these students will pass (rate>5) if no corrective factor is used.
Thus, it seems "mathematically unfair".
Improving analysis after comment of @SolarMike: the average evaluation and factors for other a prior knowledge ratios are:
10% => 0.54, x1.85; 30% => 1.9, x1.59; 50% => 3,6, x1.39; 70% => 5,8 x1.21; 100% => 10, x1.

So if a student gets all parts correct they score 11.4 out of 10?

@SolarMike: good comment, probably scale factor is not lineal.

The assumption that a 50% student will have the same probability of answering each question seems completely unreasonable to me.

@TobiasKildetoft: thanks for your interest in this question. Any suggestion or reference about how to improve the analysis ? do you mean that an exam with this structure is fair ?

To someone who vote for close the question as community-specific/out-of-scope: rationale of your decision ? I supose you do not mean that use a concrete example makes it community-specific.

It sounds like in your idealized model, the exam grade is a sum of independent Bernoulli random variables. With this assumption, as a math problem the question is trivial: if you want to achieve a pass rate of X%, the “corrective factor” is any monotone increasing function that maps the grade range of 0-10 to itself and maps the grade of Y to the minimal passing grade of 5, where Y is the X-percentile (in your example, the fiftieth percentile, or median) of the grade distribution.
The problem is that your model is hopelessly unrealistic, and, moreover, a real life class of students is not going to conform to any easy to describe (or even difficult to describe) mathematical model that can be written down in advance. There isn’t a professor on earth who can model their students’ test-taking performance at a level of accuracy that makes it a reasonable idea to determine a corrective factor ahead of time based on a theoretical analysis or (as you suggested in the question) table lookup, since each class of students and the way they will perform on each specific test after sitting in on a specific class are unique.
In practice, you give the exam, look at the actual grade distribution, and, if you believe in grading to a curve or have a reason to aim for a particular pass rate, you set the curve/corrective factor accordingly at that point based on the empirical distribution of grades. That’s about as scientific as it gets, unless maybe we’re talking about a highly standardized test like the SAT with question banks of thousands of questions that get given repeatedly over many years, a “class” of millions of students, and teams of statisticians that can perform large scale analysis to try to uniformize grade distributions across different testing cycles (even then, I think the way they do it is ultimately not too different from the empirical approach I described above; but I could be wrong).


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Associate Professors without a PhD?
The title "Associate Professor", which is commonly used in North America, is "usually connected to tenure" in that it is almost exclusively given to tenured or permanent professors who are higher in rank than Assistant Professors. This has also been explained in previous Academia.SE questions, for example:

(1) Associate Professor to Assistant Professor
(2) Assistant professor vs Associate professor

Within the last year, someone also asked here about the awarding of the Associate Professor title to people without doctorates: Is it true, that there are associate professors, full professors and University provosts without a doctorate in the Western Continental Europe?, and we learned there that in UK there are Professorships awarded in Law and Engineering (and I wouldn't be surprised if also in Medicine) to people without doctorates.
I wonder if there's any precedent for people being given this title without a PhD in Canada? I wouldn't be surprised if people have this title after getting a JD, MD, PharmD, PEng, etc., so even more specifically I am wondering about people who have only an undergrad degree  and/or Masters.
The reason for my question, is because it looks like a U15 university in Canada (I might as well just say openly that it's University of Waterloo) says that they will be re-labeling Continuing Lecturers into Associate Professors:

Continuing Lecturers (soon to become Associate Professors), often enough do not have a PhD (for example here and here). I understand that other Canadian universities (e.g. University of Toronto and McMaster University) also have the "teaching-stream Professor" positions, but advertisements for applying to those positions suggest that a PhD is required.
Since Charles Grant astutely pointed out that Freeman Dyson's full professorship at Cornell was without a PhD, I'd like to be clear that I'm not looking for "one-time exceptional cases" that lasted only 1 year and went to someone who helped Feynman get the Nobel Prize,  but more for "regular" positions that are offered frequently (e.g. there's at least one job advertisement at the university per year for a job with the "Associate Professor" title).

You are explicitly asking about not just people without PhD degrees but also people without equivalent terminal degrees in other fields like medicine and law?  So why do you keep reverting the question to say "PhD" in the title?

@Buzz My question is about people without PhDs, and I've now edited the question to say "even more specifically" I'd be interested in cases where people only have up to a Masters degree. The phrase "terminal degree" has multiple issues, and most people don't know what exactly it means (including me). I want my question to be understood by people who see it. I don't know if switching "PhD" to "terminal degree" in my question is the most productive, because a BSc or Masters could be considered a terminal degree.

What "multiple issues"?  It is standard terminology for degrees like M.D., J.D., M.F.A., etc.  And people with those kinds of degrees routinely get professorships (assistant, associate, full—the requirements are essentially the same for each of them in North America) teaching in the specific associated fields.

@Buzz Please, let's not argue. This is my question and I don't want to get into an edit war. The question is about Canada where: "The term is not generally used in the United Kingdom or Canada, for example, and its exact meaning varies somewhat between those areas and disciplines in which the term is used" plus there's higher degrees than PhD, such as Habilitation degrees. I'd appreciate if we can leave the question alone unless it's standards are below the average acceptable level on this site. I did include your edit about "there is" vs "there are".

@Buffy Wow, thanks for noticing that! I have no idea how that happened! I guess I won't be getting the spotless hat for writing a question with no edits for one week!

If this is really a question about a single university, then it is really off topic here. But the doctorate isn't necessarily the highest qualification in every field. Dance, music, law, medicine (depending on your definition), art, others perhaps.

@Buffy I know what you mean, but this question is about all universities in Canada. The motivation for it came from something I noticed at one university, but I'm wondering if there's precedent for it anywhere in Canada.

It's a US counter-example, so not strictly an answer to  your question, but Freeman Dyson was a full professor of Physics, first at Cornell, then at the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton. Dyson had only a B.A. degree from Cambridge, but already had a significant body of work. I think universities can find their way around nominal requirements for scholars of exceptional achievement.

@CharlesE.Grant That's a very good example. Until he died last year, Freeman Dyson was labeled in my research field as "the greatest living physicist" for many years. Dyson surely had a "special" position at Cornell. Perhaps I should improve my question further by restricting it to "general" positions that are part of the university's policy, meaning that they're regularly appointed (not a one-time thing like Dyson).

It sounds like Waterloo is just giving a fancy-sounding name for an existing position, likely without materially changing anything about the nature of the position, the required qualifications, or the implications for how impressive a person is for holding that position. Also, the fancy-sounding name is “Associate Professor, Teaching Stream”, not “Associate Professor”. So in other words, I don’t see why it matters whether such a thing has precedent or not in Canada, as it’s a move that would be of very little interest to anyone, perhaps including even holders of this position.

(…That being said, your question is a legitimate question, so best of luck getting an answer.)

@DanRomik Thanks! It's happened at McMaster and University of Toronto too, and maybe will soon happen to others too, so that's largely why I was asking. The conditions of the job will change slightly, but not enough for me to mention it in this question. You're right that it's called "Associate Professor - Teaching Stream" but practically they'll be addressed as "professors" and most people, especially external people, will not know to include "Teaching Stream" in the title, or understand/appreciate what it means.

Sounds like a textbook example of job title inflation.

There are many precedents, especially in the older (possibly now retired) ranks.  During the 70s and 80s, there was considerable expansion of the sector and some positions were filled by candidates without PhDs.
This is much less common now because of the oversupply of PhDs in basically every discipline.  As with anything there are exceptions so I’m sure it is still possible to get tenure without a PhD, based on the body of work.  I can imagine for instance that some departments (v.g. law, political sciences, music, art) would hire experts (former ambassadors, politicians, other public figures) as faculty members, based primarily on their professional expertise and experience rather than their academic qualifications.  However, such higher profile hires rarely get tenure by progress through the ranks: they will usually be hired with tenure.

+1. Thanks for the answer! Are you able to give specific examples of people at the Associate Professor level (not including "Adjunct Associate Professor" or "Visiting Associate Professor") without a PhD (apart from fields like law, medicine, music, art, clinical psychology etc., where work experience is considered more important for teaching)? The more recent the example the better, because if something happened in the 70s then I'm not too fussed about it today.

I do not know of a recent example, at least my field of Physics or cognate fields like Chemistry, Math or Comp.Sci.  Even teaching stream positions require a PhD.  I know of one former colleague (retired ~ 10 years ago) who only completed an MSc and was full. prof in comp.sci, but things have changed so much there it isn’t representative.


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Professor not replying to my email
Currently, I am a Master's student, and I sent an email to a professor from another department in my university. The email was about a topic which could simply be answered as yes or no. But, I have not received an answer from the Professor yet, and since I use official university email account, I have no doubt that it was not classified as spam.
It will be nearly a week, what should I do next ? Should I go directly and talk with the Professor, assuming that he did not notice my email ? Even if I was not able to arrange an appointment with him via email, should I directly knock his door, will this be considered rude ? I don't think it should be difficult to say a simple no as an answer.

Did you send a reminder? If not, why not? E-mails get forgotten about all the time.

@xLeitix: Sending an email reminder is certainly good too.  If you're not on the same campus, then obviously that would be the way to go.  But I think the implicit message of "If you don't respond within a week, I'll show up physically" is a fair one and a good precedent for future dealings with someone.

Find out when he has office hours, and visit him during that time. This is the time professors set aside to answer questions from any student.

@afaust: Often office hours are office hours for a particular course.  If a graduate student comes by when the office is full of undergraduates, that's probably an especially bad time.  However, it's a good time to make a recon mission one way or the other, and coming just as the office hours end is a good way to be sure the office is occupied.

I can tell you professors get a LOT of e-mail.  He may have just missed it.  Send a friendly reminder, as mentioned above.

Directly knocking your professor's door may result in awkward situations between the two parties, some professors really are concerned about the basic courtesy, etiquette that their students should have.

Should I go directly and talk with the Professor, assuming that he did not notice my email?

Yes.  Well, whether you believe that he read your email or not is not really the point: you didn't get an answer.  You are entitled to one (not necessarily a great or helpful one, but at least an answer in the formal sense).

Even if I was not able to arrange an appointment with him via email, should I directly knock his door[?]

Yes, exactly.

[W]ill this be considered rude?

Students are allowed to visit faculty in their offices, even without an appointment.  Again, what happens when they do this is not guaranteed: maybe you will only get a minute of the professor's time.  (Maybe he won't be there...) But you can show up.  As to whether the professor will consider it rude: not in a way that he is entitled to complain about, no.  Professors are real people, and real people usually want to talk to certain real people more than others, and when a person you don't want to talk to, or don't want to talk to now or today nevertheless appears, are you thrilled about it?  But none of this really matters: if you don't get a response, you keep trying.  That's life.


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Is it okay to ask advisor how I am doing with my research?
I have some idea of how well I'm doing with my research in PhD, but maybe it differs from what my advisor thinks. Is it okay to ask (e.g. at the end of a meeting) how well I'm doing with my research? Can I say "Oh, by the way, how am I doing with my research?"

"Okay" is putting it a bit mildly. "Mandatory" would be closer.

Yes, this is a fine question to ask, although I might phrase is slightly differently:

"How happy are you with the progress that I am making?"

which makes it a little more open-ended and focuses the question more on process and progress.

I would also agree that it's fine (even good) to ask this question, but I would suggest not throwing it out at the end of the meeting, which may lead your advisor to just give a perfunctory response - for example saying that everything is fine even if s/he has concerns because they have another meeting about to start...
Instead it might be better to bring it up at the beginning of the meeting or even before the meeting in an email, which would allow your advisor to give you a more considered (and hopefully useful) response.

I think it's fine to ask this question. It's perfectly reasonable to be interested in getting feedback from your advisor. Most advisors should be okay with this kind of question as it shows a high level of interest and willingness to improve. However, I agree that you could frame your question differently. You could ask if your advisor has any feedback on your progress or if there are any areas where you need to put in more effort.

First, I think it is very easy for PhD students to err wildly (from the viewpoint of the advisor and/or more senior professionals) in all possible directions in their self-appraisal, if for no other reason than having no perspective or prior experience (and friends and peers in similar no-perspective/experience situations).
And, then, answers to the question may vary enormously depending on the precise wording. E.g., "Are you happy with my progress?" might tend to invite reassurance rather than critique. I think it is misguided to ask "Should I be working harder?", since in too many cases over-the-top "effort" ends up being seriously misdirected and only serves to exhaust you. Perhaps "How would you appraise my progress thus far?" if you really want some constructive criticism (and asked at the beginning of your meeting, rather than end).


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Dealing with an advisor who is not interested in publishing
My advisor is a full professor nearing retirement age. Although he does not seem to be planning to retire anytime soon; he has this "been there/done that" attitude toward publications. He says that he has published enough significant work to be happy and that he only wants to publish breakthrough papers from now on. My issue is that I need publications to build a good resume. As of now, I have no publications from my PhD research.
My research project is structured in a way that any other professor would see it as an opportunity to get multiple publications out of it because each stage of the project has enough significance to be published separately. My adviser however wants only one comprehensive paper. I have several issues with this:

This reduces the number of publications appearing on my resume. I know that this really shouldn't be important, because I would still be publishing the same content. However, this is important when applying for competitive R&D positions in tech (the types of jobs I'm interested in) where during the first stages of screening applicants the number of publications would matter (since no one will actually read them at that point).
This also means that I will not be able to submit anything until close to my graduation which would mean that unless I delay my graduation until after the review process is over, I would have no publications when I graduate. Several people in industry who would be hiring for the types of jobs I'm interested in have told me that they do not consider PhD applicants who have no publications.

How would you propose I handle this situation? Today I told him that I'd like to submit an abstract to a conference but he would not permit it, saying that he is afraid that someone at the conference will steal our idea and publish it in a journal before we are able to. I really think he was just using that as an excuse though.

but he would not permit it — If your advisor is a coauthor, find a new advisor.  If your advisor is not a coauthor, submit the abstract anyway, and then find a new advisor.

He is a coauthor. I'm also a bit late in the process to change my advisor (unless I want to stay around for another 2.5 years).

Speaking from experience, a PhD without publications is better than no PhD, but barely... (at least in CS)

@FábioDias that is the impression I have as well. I mean at least all of the guys who got PhD's like that from our lab have been able to get jobs after graduation. It's just frustrating to have everything you need to publish and not do it.

Interestingly, I had the opposite case. I suggested, for safety and to keep things under control, to my student to publish a number of papers out of his work each of which would have been easily a legitimate separate paper, but he wanted to write the big one. And he did. It was in an excellent journal and he got a top job (he went to industry).  Lesson: it's not always the number of publications that counts.

I don't really mean to "salami" your publication, but I'm following a rule of thumb: one new thing per publication. If you cram too much new stuff into a single work, you raise the chance of people not understanding it... Imho

One of the first "guides" to a PhD that I ever read, mentioned the pros and cons of choosing a young advisor versus an old advisor. Certainly it isn't that black and white but your description is exactly what that article talked about.
In response to your points:

The number of publications on your resume is important. It is how you will be evaluated on the job market. Just as importantly though, submitting papers and attending conferences is a great way to get feedback, network, and find collaborators.
Not publishing until the end isn't a death sentence but you definitely need to be getting feedback from other researchers in your community years before that. Again, publishing and attending conferences is an awesome experience and could help you find jobs (it certainly has helped me find great internships!).

My suggestions would be to (A) talk to your advisor about this again, (B) find a co-advisor, or (C) switch advisors entirely. A co-advisor could potentially give you the best of both worlds. But it sounds like your current advisor has very different goals for you than what you want so you have to take some time and contemplate if you want to continue working with him.

I agree with you, but part of the issue is that I am already a PhD candidate. It is a bit late to change my adviser or add a co-adviser because my thesis committee has already been formed. All I really need to do is to collect more data to validate what I've gotten from my preliminary results and start writing a thesis. So the publication issue is my main issue. If I want to change advisors I may have to start over with a new project which I'm really not interested in at this point.

@Hadi Is there someone on your committee that you can bring this up to? If you have more than one year left, it isn't too late to find a co-advisor. If you have less, then it is rather late for this question anyway and you should continue pushing your advisor to help you publish.

I have around 9 month left. I could bring it up to someone, but I'm a bit worried about stirring things up (I've been on the wrong end of academic politics before...). I guess I'll have to sit down and explain things to him again. Maybe in a well-written email, since he never lets me finish when I talk to him in person. Thanks for the advice.

In comments, you say that you have less than a year left until graduation.  Given this fact, it would likely not be easy to get more than a couple of quality publications out during this time in any case, particularly with a perfectionist advisor and little experience in publishing yourself.
As such, I think your big goal (besides graduating) should be to get a good postdoc lined up, where you can solidly advance your career and do a lot of publication.  Having few publications but a respected advisor can be a totally reasonable combination for moving to a good postdoc.  If necessary, you may even do more than one round of postdoc.  Once you establish a solid "upward trajectory" and track record of publications, the fact that you published little in grad school will not be a problem, particularly if your one grad school publication is indeed a very good one.

Thanks. I have been considering that. However, if I could get a couple of quality publications I'd be happy. That would be good enough in my field, and I did a couple of internships in a good company in my field to complement my resume. We have a couple researcher/engineers in our research group who have worked with my advisor for some years. I talked to them and they say if I just go ahead and write the paper my advisor would probably give in to submitting it. I think I will try that first.


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What to do if a peer-reviewed journal took so much time to review your paper?
This happened many times, and following are some cases:

You submit an article to a good journal with high impact factor. Then after 6 months or sometimes more you dont receive their comments. We tried once to contact them to see the updates they replied ( it is currently under review we will reply once finished).
Many times they reply after a long period with (out of scope).

What is the best action to do in such cases?

If this has happened many times, it is an indication that you are choosing the wrong journals.

What is the discipline? Average review times vary greatly between fields.

Generally Editor takes decision on a Manuscript based on minimum two reviewers comments. So one possible reason is the required reviews are not completed yet. Followings are few points which are responsible for it.

Editor has contacted many suitable and potential reviewers, but at least two of them has not agreed to act as a reviewer of your manuscript.
Minimum two reviewers have agreed, but one or both of them are delaying to submit their comments
Sometimes, editor does not satisfy with the one or both reviewers comments, so again he/she send your manuscript to another reviewers.

So there are many things are in behind. But most of the journals generally takes 2-4 months for the first decision and some journal takes more than 6 months and some even more than 1 year depending on above situations..  So if you are in hurry to get this publication and can't wait more, then you may request to the Editor for a final decision at the earliest possible, otherwise you are going to withdraw your manuscript. Since there are number of suitable journal available, so you will definitely find another one.


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Potential advisor offering to fund visit to lab
I'm planning on travelling to another country to meet a potential PhD advisor (we're both in Europe). He has said his lab will cover the expenses.
Is this usual practice? I'm from a country where standard etiquette when offered money (or indeed, anything) in a circumstance like this is to politely refuse the offer multiple times, even when they insist, and then eventually agree while making clear you feel terrible for accepting their money. Agreeing immediately would be seen as extremely rude.
I'm aware it's almost certainly the lab's budget that will be funding my visit and not coming out of the guy's own pocket, but still, I don't really know what to say, a standard thank you still feels bad to me, but maybe that's just from my culture.

In which country is the lab?

Being offered expense reimbursement for an onsite visit is definitely normal in private industry and in "campus visits" for graduate schools and professors alike, and your potential advisor is almost certainly not offering you money out of his personal pocket, so I highly doubt you need to demure in any way. But I'll leave it to people more specifically familiar with Europe to confirm this is true there as well.

I do not think the etiquette you are talking about applies here. You need to go there in order to ensure compatibility between you and your potential future advisor. This is neither a gift nor a present; it it a business related trip and I do not see a reason for not agreeing to this.

Indeed. I have invited students for research and possible collaborations (they were known to me by their work). Such an invitation is very well covered by perfectly professional interests (unless you have strong reasons to assume ulterior motives, but it doesn't sound like it).

Be glad for the offer and accept it. The advisor's LAB will cover the expenses, not himself. It is possible that he or his team have a budget where things like this are included. He probably has money that can be spent only on research related stuff, like funding the stay of a visitor or future research collaborator.
Refusing funding is unjustified, unless you have funding of your own. But even if that's the case, he made the offer so just accept it. A polite thank you is enough.


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Courses simultaneous to an undergraduate physics degree, for a physics career
During an undergraduate physics degree, what other certificate/diploma courses can I simultaneously pursue which would be of use in a physics career?
I hear many colleges offer such optional courses along with main course.

Depends exactly which career you are looking for...

Instead of a certificate, why not add a summer internship or two?

I strongly agree with user153812's practical answer. But in addition, does your university have "liberal arts" or general education or breadth requirements? If not, consider taking some courses there.
Humanities, arts, and social science courses tend to help you understand society and what it means to be human. Practically, they help you develop skills in writing, other communication, and critical thinking. They can also develop soft skills like empathy and better communication across differences. If you want to be an academic, then improving these skills will be extremely helpful. (Writing and communication are skills that I do not think anyone can "max out" on; there's always room for practice and improvement.)
These communication and soft skills may be especially useful for physicists. I've admired many physicists--especially those dealing with concepts farther from our lived experience, like astrophysicists or particle physicists--for their ability to explain developments in physics in clear, tangible terms. ("Here's how they set up the gravitation wave detector. See how we're on an L-shaped hallway? Imagine if we were sending light down each branch of the hallway...") I suspect that especially as one is requesting funding or trying to convey the importance of one's work to non-physicist colleagues, these skills matter tremendously.

My university only allows one main degree course at a time , but allows for optional certificate courses.

Excellent answer, the point about oral/written communication can't be over-stressed.

This answer is from the opposite end; I studied engineering and took some additional physics courses on the side. Through those, I developed some idea of what undergraduate students in both disciplines might typically lack.
Physics is incredibly broad, and you may be able to choose meaningful courses only when you have some idea of what field you want to specialised in, or what kind of job you would like.
Nevertheless, one skill that will not go waste is being able to write good, efficient programs. All you need is a computer and an internet connection, there are fantastic courses online today. A lot of open course ware exists with various certification options. What's most exciting is that many programming courses are tailored towards research and data science; both of which you are certain to use at some point. I don't think ASE encourages recommendation of specific courses, so I will refrain from that; but if you look around you will certainly find interesting courses.
In addition, if you are looking at applied physics fields, I would recommend two courses from the engineering side- basic electronics and strength of materials. These two will be useful when you want to design your own experimental setup, and having prior knowledge will put you ahead of the typical undergrad student.
Finally, statistics and probability courses will certainly be part of your regular course. If you, however, feel that these aren't rigorous, you may consider doing some advanced courses. It could be very useful when dealing with large sets of experimental data.


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In canada, my 3-year degree is a bachelor or an associated?
I'm taking a 3-year college in software development. Where I live (Brazil) it's not considered a Bachelor (4 years, at least). I don't know where my course fits in Canada's classification. It's not an Associate (2 years) nor a Bachelor (4 years). What's the equivalent of my degree in Canada? (I can't apply for equivalence programs. I haven't finished my college yet).
Am I able to apply for a master in Canada with my 3-year college?

Canada is very large and province have different policies. In Québec, 3-year is the usual length of a bachelor, at the exception of "professional" bachelors (teaching, engineering...). Where do you want to apply?

@Emilie I'm very interested in Ontario, but is not the only, I would live anywhere in Canada as long as the province accepts only my english as primary language

Your degree should not be qualified as an associated. But it does not give an immediate answer on your chances of being admitted (or being qualified to enter) to the particular M.Sc. program.
The answer will depend on the regulations of the particular university (and maybe even the Faculty/Department) you are applying to and what is actually written on your transcript/diploma.
Particular things that are of the importance:

What is the official title of your degree (on your diploma) and how is it translated into English?
Total # credit hours that you have taken (3-year degrees can be very different)
The particular set of courses you've taken towards your degree and how they are related towards the expectations of the M.Sc. program you are applying to.
If you are applying for a research-based program if your potential advisor is willing to admit you.
If the intended sources of funding (if you intend to use any) have some stricter requirements than general admission ones.

You would certainly be a good candidate for so-called pre-M.Sc. program, in which for one or two terms you would take some more courses relevant to your degree - and, maybe, even start some research projects.
Also, the admission committee might conditionally admit you to the M.Sc. program with the requirement to take an extra # credit hours.
There are certainly cases when a 3-year degree holder goes for an M.Sc. program directly; however, the general expectation (from my understanding of at least Univ. of Manitoba - no official affiliation, just a former student) for software engineering is that you hold a 4-year degree (B.Sc. or even Honours).


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I recently graduated with a University Bachelor Degree in Computer Engineering, and I am thinking about becoming a Latin teacher. What should I do?
Per my previous question, I recently graduated with a University Bachelor Degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Osijek. However, I don't want to be a programmer any more. Merely getting a Bachelor degree in Computer Engineering cost me my mental health. I got a psychotic disorder while studying an undergraduate program in Computer Engineering, and I guess that working as a programmer is even more stressful than studying it.
I was thinking about getting a Bachelor degree in the Latin language from the University of Zadar, and starting a career as a Latin teacher. It's a double-major ("dvopredmetni studij"). I need to study something else with it, and I can choose to study Latin and Ancient Greek or Latin and Linguistics. While I do speak some Latin (I have published a few YouTube videos in Latin, the latest one is about the afterlife, and I am also active on Latin Language StackExchange), I don't speak a word of Ancient Greek. I find it rather awkward to enroll in a university program teaching a language that I don't speak a word of. As for linguistics, I need to study two foreign languages there, one of them being non-Indo-European, and I am a bit afraid of that. I know how bad it went to enroll in a course at a university teaching a programming language I had no previous knowledge of, and my guess is that studying a human language you have no knowledge of is even worse. Is my fear realistic?
My father suggests me to study Political Science at the University of Belgrade, because he happens to know a few people who work there. However, I am afraid that's not for me because of all those economics courses there. I took one economics courses while studying Computer Engineering (called "Ekonomika poduzeća"), and I barely got a passing score (a D) there. I am afraid that many of my courses would be like that if I study political science. Do you think my fear is realistic?
I have published a few papers about the names of places in Croatia, the latest one being "Etimologija Karašica", which I published in Valpovački Godišnjak and Regionalne Studije (an almanac for the Croatian national minority in and around Sopron). Many people in real life, including my information theory professors, have told me they think it is a rather high-quality paper, and that I should continue doing that.
What do you advise me to do?

A Latin teacher at what level: secondary school, university?

Keep in mind that the job prospects for a Latin degree are pretty slim. Generally, a fairly significant portion of people who get degrees in linguistics or languages don't end up with careers based on those concentrations. This will be especially true for Latin as it is a functionally dead language.

@Buffy I was considering a secondary school.

You are obviously passionate about Latin and teaching, and ideally, you'd follow your passion. Still, another full Bachelor's degree is a large investment of time and effort.
Have you considered other options besides the degree programs you mentioned? At least in the UK, there are 1-1.5 year conversion courses to teaching for those with a Bachelor's degree. Due to a lack of teachers, there are even shorter options with part-time teaching. I don't know what is available in your case, but it can be worth checking places not just in Croatia but in other EU countries as well.
If possible, you might want to try some teaching (maybe computer science?) before embarking upon another degree.


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How to politely communicate that you would prefer an earlier starting position to the offered one?
I had already asked a question here
Just to provide a gist, I was being chosen as a third candidate for the PhD grant and there was only single vacancy.
Now the 1st chosen candidate has been approved another grant and the position is now open again. This information is been communicated by professor, and he initiated the conversation this time.
But the position will only be available after six months. My situation is bit complex: Due to some family issues, I denied couple of other opportunities. I am in talks with one other position, for which I am almost selected (this is what I feel). This position will start from April/May 2016. I am genuinely interested in both the positions as their topics overlap with my previous work.
Now, how what should I communicate back to the professor? I would not want to write it off. It’s safe to have this position on the stack. But at the same time, I would not want to give him a word that I will definitely be his student. How do I tactically say this: “I am keeping you for an option; if I get better position than this, I will go there; if I do not get anything else, I will join you.” I would also like to ask politely: “Why don’t you try harder and create a position till March/April? I would be happy to join you.”
At present, I have two options open and I do not mind going ahead with any of them. Note that I am not asking whom to chose.

What's your question here? Obviously we can't tell you which job to choose, or what the likelihood is that you'll actually be offered any of these jobs. What do you want to know that we can actually tell you?

pl see the edited quetion..

When will you know if you have been selected for the other place? Do you have a deadline for accepting this position? You can also contact the people at the other position and ask them to give you an answer, since you have another pending offer.

It’s safe to have this position on the stack. — What "stack"?  Expecting the professor to hold their position open for six months until you hear from your other options would be completely unreasonable.  So don't do that.  Either accept the position and try to negotiate the start date (knowing that you may fail), or turn it down but indicate that you may still be interested later (knowing that the professor may have offered  it to someone else by then).  Do not under any circumstances suggest that your potential future employer "try harder".

@JeffE Can you turn your comment into an answer so that I can vote for it?

It’s safe to have this position on the stack.

What "stack"?
Expecting the professor to hold their position open for six months until you hear from your other options would be completely unreasonable. So don't do that. Either accept the position and try to negotiate the start date (knowing that you may fail), or turn it down but indicate that you may still be interested later (knowing that the professor may have offered it to someone else by then).
Do not under any circumstances suggest that your potential future employer "try harder". At least to my American ears, that comes across as incredibly condescending and entitled, and therefore likely to alienate the professor to the point of rescinding their offer.


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Is research prize from Italy taxable in the UK for a non-domicile resident?
I feel it's a complicated wording question. I am an international student studying in the UK as a PhD student. I received a research prize from an Italian academic society for training purposes (I am needed to spend a month in Italy doing research). The prize is worth €3000 and subject to 30% Italian income taxation.
The coordinator from the society indicated that I could ask for a certificate of residence from the UK tax authority to avoid double taxation. I am still very perplexed about my situation.

Would I be taxed in the UK? (I am also a recipient of a PhD tax-free studentship)

Has anyone ever required the certificate from the HMRC? Can you please share your experience and the process? I am in Italy now so I am not sure what I could do.

If the Italian side deducts the taxation, will I be able to claim it back when I return to the UK?
Thank you!

Thank you. I posted in a hope that other researchers may be in the same situation and could offer their experience. Should I move it to the money subforum?

Yes, I think it would be a much better fit for Money.SE.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's about taxation, not academia.

Ring HMRC and ask them. Contrary to what you might expect from officials, they are very, very helpful to people who ask them for help. Their web site has the helpline numbers.


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Is it considered ethical to sign yourself with name followed by PhD when in fact your doctorate was a DTech?
Is it considered ethical to sign yourself with name followed by PhD when in fact your doctorate was a DTech?

Related question: Abbreviation of Doctor of Philosophy: PhD or DPhil?

It might be helpful for you to clear up which DTech you are referring to. In UK, for example, a DTech can be a higher level degree from some institutions per Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_of_Technology.

What distinction are you making between "is it ethical" and "is it considered ethical"?

Ethically, you should portray yourself accurately. So don't say PhD unless that is your degree. It might even be considered, by some, as an attempt to defraud.
If the DTech degree stands on its own, then there is no issue with using it. But if some consider it a "lesser" degree then they would interpret saying PhD as an attempt to give yourself a promotion.
So, not only an ethical issue, but a practical one.
Note that the US NSF has definitions of which degrees it considers "research doctorates" and hence "equivalent" to a PhD. But not that they are PhDs.
Of course, for usage outside the US, there are different conventions. If the country in which the degree was earned considers the degree to be equivalent then it is, but it still is not a PhD. Be accurate. When it matters, you can, of course, explain the background.
However, DTech is a bit tricky since it can be a higher level (than PhD) degree from some UK institutions, but a lesser level degree from others. Higher-level degrees normally require a doctorate be earned previously.

In the US, the term "PhD" means any research doctorate other than medicine or theology. This is what I was taught the term meant and this is how I have always used it. Any number of organizations (including the National Science Foundation) publish tables of degrees they consider precisely equivalent. (Other countries, of course, can be very very different!)

@DavidSchwartz Please make this an answer of its own.

@DavidSchwartz You are wrong on a couple of counts, There are at least two theology doctorates on the NSF list. But if a holder of a Doctor of Canon Law degree can fairly represent himself as holding a PhD, and they are, as you say "precisely equivalent", can I, holding a PhD in Mathematics fairly represent myself as holding a Doctor of Canon Law degree. In fact, you are degrading the PhD from a specific thing to a generic placeholder for any research doctorate. The NSF doesn't actually say that. They say that such degrees are "equivalent in content and level". Not the same degree.

@Buffy My dictionary defines "PhD" as "a doctorate in any discipline except medicine, or sometimes theology" and that is in fact both how I was taught to use the title and how the title is in fact used in my country. I agree that it degrades the title, but people in the United States just don't particularly care about that and do similar things to other titles. For example, "Reverend" has pretty much lost all meaning in the United States. Whether or not you like it, it's just a fact that this is how titles work in the US.

@DavidSchwartz Your dictionary is wrong, then. And, a PhD isn't a title, it's a degree. "Doctor" is a title, which, yes is used for anyone with a doctorate (except a JD).

@DavidSchwatrz That is definitely incorrect. An ScD from my alma mater MIT, for example, may be equivalent to a PhD, but it is not the same.

Of course it’s unethical. Misrepresenting your educational credentials is always unethical. The details of why you rationalize doing it are irrelevant - if you don’t have a PhD, don’t write the letters “PhD” after your name. For example, a friend of mine has a doctorate in mathematics from Oxford. Cool, right? But guess what, he doesn’t have a “PhD”, he has a DPhil, so that’s how he signs his name when he wants people to know about his doctorate.
Edit: the comments below go into lengthy discussions concerning the precise nature of the distinction between the PhD and DPhil degrees. This may be an interesting question, but is off-topic and has no bearing on OP’s question or my answer to it, because: first of all, OP asked about a DTech degree, not a DPhil; secondly, my answer addresses the specific context of signing your name “firstname lastname, PhD” when you have a degree other than a PhD. In that context, a person signing their name that way is engaging in an obvious misrepresentation of their educational credentials. As I said, intentionally misrepresenting such information is unethical, and I would advise against it.
As for other contexts such as a casual conversation with a family member who doesn’t know or care about the minutiae of various academic degrees and their significance, my answer might have been different, but that’s not what was asked about so I see no need to discuss it.

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

In general it is a misrepresentation to list a kind of degree that you have not earned. The best way to list the degree is as it was awarded by the institution from which it was earned: if it's a "DTech," list it as a "DTech"; if it's a "DPhil" or "PhD" list it as "DPhil" or "PhD", respectively.
One other thing to consider is that in some countries—particularly in Central Europe—it is not only unethical but illegal to misrepresent one's credentials and to misuse titles one has not earned, so it is better to err on the side of caution and not claim anything for which you do not have "hard" documentation.

I am not sure how I feel about abbreviations. See https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34380/are-there-differences-between-sm-ms-msc-msci-degrees and the MIT SM degree.

I would list MIT’s degree as “SM” and add “(Master of Science)” if space allowed. But I don’t think there’s a situation where it’s wrong to use the official designation of the degree.