text:
PhD wanting to start another graduate degree program. Why do I need to submit undergraduate transcripts?
I have a PhD from an accreditated university, and actually am an associate professor at one, and was casually looking to apply to a masters program in an unrelated discipline at another university. Mine doesn't offer the program, but it is something I thought would be fun to learn. First question out of the box from the recruitment counselor was: "So did you get an undergraduate degree? How were your grades?"
My response was "I have a PhD. Of course I have an undergraduate degree. Why do you care?"
She replied they would need all my undergraduate transcripts because of "accreditation." This includes transcripts from a junior college I attended 40 years ago. Really? And what are they supposed to prove that can't be demonstrated from my (more recent by a couple of decades) graduate transcripts already?
I have dealt with accreditation on the major courses side, but not the admissions side (if such a thing exists.) Is there no one at these places that recognizes a PhD kind of implies I had at least a modicum of success as an undergrad?
Frankly, it's not a big deal; after all, I had to do it before when I applied to graduate schools in the past. But I am an old codger and find it rather irksome that institutions can be so mind-numbingly inflexible when faced with situations that don't easily fit the template: that of being a young, recent graduate with no post-graduate education. I actually find it hard to believe (because it IS so dumb) but can't find anything posted anywhere that directly addresses this.
So what's the word from anyone who actually serves on one of the various accreditation bodies. If I am a university, am I at risk of some sort of violation if I accept someone into a graduate program who already has a terminal degree from an accredited institution without first receiving all of their undergraduate transcripts? What is the possible justification for this?
Note: It just occurred to me our registrar might have somebody who knows about this (since we are accreditated too) but I am going to post just to have it here and will answer if I find something and no one else answers.
2nd Note: Excuse the rant. After talking to the registrar it occurred to me that a college may want to see what prior courses you took that were relevant to the degree. The line of questioning is what threw me. It makes sense that a program would want to know you are somewhat qualified to pursue a graduate line of study. I suppose your undergraduate courses, albeit from decades ago, would be a reasonable line of inquiry.

Sorry about the rant, but that isn't the question: Rather it is why doesn't a graduate, especially terminal, degree suffice in lieu of an undergraduate one?

Because somebody made a process that requires that information. Never underestimate the ability of a bureaucracy to insist on mindless rules. Now, that said, not all PhDs have a background suitable for a given Masters degree. Next, you may find that any 'required for the Masters' undergraduate courses you took are now too old to count...

Lol - well said.

I do not remember where it was (Germany? Poland?) where a member of the government decided, after having retired, to move into agriculture. In order to get a "license" of sorts, he needed to provide his record of primary education. He provided his PhD but this was not accepted (at least initially) because the rules said "primary education".

It's hard for me to say whether providing the required degree would actually be a problem (things may be hard to find after 40 years) or whether this is just opposition out of principle. Perhaps you can [edit] the question to clarify?

Just to turn things around, I asked the university I was applying to if my undergraduate transcripts would be enough given that's all they wanted from applicants who hadn't been to graduate school. She replied no, I had to submit the graduate transcripts, and when asked why, she had no answer.

"was casually looking to apply to a masters program in an unrelated discipline at another university. " Playing the devil's advocate here, having a PhD in one field (lets say mathematics) does not necesarily mean that you have the skills to do a MsC in an unrelated discipline (lets say film studies). And the graduate courses you took for your PhD are very likely streamed towards your PhD which is unrelated to the area you are applying, the undergraduate degree can give them a better picture.

Nick S - good, honest question, although turns out my PhD and other work is actually MORE related to the degree I am applying for than my undergraduate studies. The problem is trying to put me in this "box" along with everybody else. I was looking to get an MFA in creative writing. I am a published author, sold a number of short stories and a poem, written a (not published) pair of novels, a dissertation, more than a dozen research papers, and worked as a professional blogger. My undergraduate degree IS in mathematics so I find it irritating they refuse to apply any common sense here.

Look, you're in an unusual situation: a PhD holder and current professor going back for a lower degree in an unrelated field just for fun. You're going to run up against a bunch of apparently frustrating protocols, because the system was never designed to handle your case. You're just going to have to deal with some of that.
My partner is actually in a very similar situation. She has a terminal degree (Master of Fine Arts) and worked as adjunct faculty for a number of years. She decided it would be fun to pick up a Culinary Arts degree at the community college where I'm a full-time faculty member (in a different department). She's likewise had to get past a slew of aggravating complications -- mandatory advisement with people that don't know what to do with her, transcripts from higher institutions that this college doesn't know how to process, months-long delays, expectation she take a basic English course, being dropped from active registration twice, etc.
There's practically no sense in trying to reason out why any particular procedural hurdle is in place for your case; it simply isn't going to make sense (from the institution's perspective, possibly, your being there doesn't make sense, i.e., is undefined behavior). Every staffer or office you deal with is going to have a checklist of items in their workflow, and many of the boxes are incoherent in your case, but the staffers are directed to get them checked off. Most of the time they won't know why it was set up that way.
Frankly, the justification about accreditation is most likely pure bullshit made up to end that conversation. I wouldn't spend a single second trying to confirm, argue, or rationalize that. In our experience (incl. me being a faculty member at the institution in question), there's nothing you can do except get those boxes checked as per the standard process requirement. It's going to be dumb at times.

In support of the statement "There's practically no sense in trying to reason": I was once asked to perform some advising task on a Saturday as part of an outreach program at my university, where I work as a full professor. They offered a $100 honorarium (or whatever they called it). Because the pay was separate from my salary, that made me a contractor and so to get the $100 I had to submit a full employment application, including undergrad transcripts. At the same university where work as a full professor.

+1 for "possibly your being there doesn't make sense". There is nothing wrong with degree collecting per se, but people who do it need to accept that often they will be viewed as an unwanted distraction by the people who run the degree programs.

I’ve gone back to school for a second bachelor’s in an unrelated field and because of my 120+ hours of "transfer" credits, the registrar’s system thinks I’m about to graduate and sends me endless emails about applying for graduation and job searches. Upside is I get to register for classes early. But yeah, there’s a lot of stuff I have to do that doesn’t make sense but I have to do it anyway.

+1; and I would add another +1 if I could just for your " your being there doesn't make sense, i.e., is undefined behavior" (you made me ROFL). Now I can't stop visualizing nasal demons and dragons haunting the poor employees that have to process OP's application paperwork! :-D

While I agree that this is the best practical advice to move forward with an application I do wonder how much relenting in this manner perpetuates the mindless nature of so much bureaucracy. Unrelated, but yesterday I got around something that would otherwise take 10days to process by politely suggesting that the person that 'couldn't do anything about it' possibly make a phone call or two, 5minutes later... Job done, saving both parties a heap of wasted time. It can work out, you've just got to luck upon the person that was the will and ability to implement the change

@cheery.beach7701: ... so to get the $100 I had to submit a full employment application, including undergrad transcripts. At the same university where work as a full professor. -- I'm reminded of the section "Thirteen Times" in Feynman's 1985 book "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" -- see the lower portion of this web page (then go to p. 63, at top). In Feynman's case, the money wasn't from where he taught, but the number of hoops he had to jump through makes up for it.

The rebel in me bristles naturally at the idea that we are nothing more than a series of boxes to be checked. It's not having to do the work. It's being put in the same box (actually worse since I have more work to do) as every other nameless applicant when an iota of common sense would shriek that it's completely unnecessary.

@ds_practicioner: No one's saying you're a series of checkboxes. If you turn this into a dilemma of existentialist philosophy, you're just going to frustrate yourself more.

A rule that says "you must provide all academic transcripts" is far, far simpler than a rule "you sometimes must provide all academic transcripts".
We get a lot of questions here, usually by people who are unhappy with some part of their academic record, wondering if they can leave these parts off of various applications. It's very simple to tell them: well, if you're applying in the US, they're probably going to say you need to provide your entire academic record, transcripts from everywhere you've attended, so you'll need to provide them all. No, there is not a way to argue around or find some trick or gap in the language to omit that time you took a semester of coursework and flunked out, just like someone who flunked a single semester of their primary degree, you have to include that.
Now, I'm not saying that's your case at all, but I'm suggesting that rules that accommodate your special case would need to also consider all the other possible cases that would possibly allow someone to skip providing some of their transcripts. Let's say someone else has a non-traditional background, and somehow got a PhD without ever completing an undergraduate degree. That decision is up to the program granting the PhD, but it doesn't necessarily "carry over" to everyone else: they get to make their own decisions about whether an undergraduate degree is actually necessary for their own program, and whether possessing a PhD degree could somehow act as evidence in support.
The simpler rule is simpler for almost everyone. If it's necessary, rather than merely convenient, to obtain some sort of exception based on other work you've done, you could pursue that (for example: your undergraduate institution is defunct and it's not possible to obtain a transcript anymore). Otherwise, you already landed on the other good reason:

It makes sense that a program would want to know you are somewhat qualified to pursue a graduate line of study. I suppose your undergraduate courses, albeit from decades ago, would be a reasonable line of inquiry.

It's certainly possible to obtain a PhD in some field without completing the necessary coursework to prepare you for some other masters degree, especially in an unrelated discipline. I have a PhD, too, even in a quantitative field with a fair amount of math, but there's absolutely no way I could succeed in a math masters program, I haven't taken any of the upper class math courses that an undergraduate math major would be expected to take.

Because people at these institutions have an actual job to do. Making exceptions for unlikely cases that still fit the usual case is literally nothing but trouble.
If your PhD and professorship is a sign you have the required credentials because you actually have them – just hand them in. That's it, case closed, no trouble for anyone involved.
So what if you don't have these credentials? Now they have to make an exception. And that includes dealing with an entire can of worms, both before and after the fact.
Someone has to find out whether your credentials actually are sufficient. Someone has to find out how to formally recognise your credentials actually are sufficient. Someone has to find out which other credentials then too may be equivalent by this precedent. … Someone down the line in X years from now has to find out what to do with this mess when administration gets retooled formally, technically or otherwise.
So yes, they will ask you first whether you can make everyone's life easier and just hand in the standard paperwork. If you cannot, things will depend on their processes and discretion but also whether you bluntly blow them off with "Why do you care?".

(a) Some schools fear an audit by an accreditation body and want to see transcripts of all previous school work.
(b) Some other schools have automatized / partially outsourced to another internal entity the M.S. admissions process and those people are not able to deviate from the process, be that because of lack of willingness to adjust rules or because they obliged themselves to follow certain rules.
(c) There might actually be restrictions on the profile of the incoming student. (E.g. you need to have had a second course in calculus.)
(d) The program is competitive and the assessment of fitness is based on a formula that looks at the undergraduate education.
(e) Many more reasons I cannot think of at the moment.
In short, a program director might end up having to enforce mindless rules with the best of intentions. If you think that bureaucracy is bad, think about how things worked before bureaucracy was invented. But I enjoyed your rant.

But I enjoyed your rant. -- See my comments to this MSE question for another you may enjoy. Also @Daniel R. Collins.

You don't say what country are you from, but the ways and the set of prerequisites to get into a study may be well defined in law or other hard rule. For example, there are several ways to get in an undergraduate degree in Catalonia, like having completed high school and a dedicated test or having another undergraduate degree. However, none of them is having a PhD. Therefore, the admission paperwork is focused in one of the established ways, that are unrelated to your PhD. Additionally, if they need to select students, the way to select them may also be set in the books, and it may be by using the high school or undergrad grades, and it may not even be possible to make an exception o that.


text:
I was excluded from an article - what can I do?
Prior to starting my Ph.D., I initiated a project with my former boss. We both wrote proposals and secured funding from an international foundation for a two-year period. The following year, I began my Ph.D. program (continuing with the project), during which I dedicated four years to collecting data, selecting sites, managing and verifying expenses, obtaining permissions from landowners (basically all logistics), and, of course, drafting reports for donors.
We also received an additional grant from a government agency during this period. Essentially, I coordinated and executed all the fieldwork. During this time, I had the idea to gather supplementary data that could potentially be used for other publications. However, they recently published a paper utilizing this data without acknowledging my contributions and efforts.
I reached out to all the authors via email, and their response implied that I lacked interest in publishing because I still had pending papers from my dissertation (although I have already published two). It's worth noting that they submitted two papers using data derived from my project without sending me the manuscripts for review, yet I am still listed as an author.
Furthermore, one of the authors, in the current paper falsely claims to have overseen logistics and handled data collection. In reality, this individual only assisted with data collection at less than 5% of the sites and was not involved in any logistical aspects. Additionally, they omitted acknowledging funding from one of the donors in their article.
My former boss suggested that I could be included as an author in other papers as a partial resolution, but personally, I don't believe this is an ethical solution. I understand that situations like these are common in academia, and it often feels like the person with less power has more to lose (and that's me). What options do I have?
Update: They sent me an email telling me they have requested my inclusion and also the inclusion of the other funding source. However, they haven't replied to my request to send me the email that they supposedly sent to the journal. So I am kind of worried that they are trying to do the minimum possible. I was relieved for a couple of hours after their email, but then I remembered that I shouldn't be so trusting. It's only been four days since I found out and I already feel the toll on my physical and mental health
Update 2: I am now listed as an author, and I would like to express my gratitude to all of you for your insights. I also wanted to share what I have learned:
Keep evidence: Whenever you send databases or any type of information, do it via email. I searched for any evidence I had regarding my contributions and found a substantial amount, including pictures, documents, emails, and text messages. Although I did not need to use it, I knew that if I wanted to contact the journal, I had important evidence to support my case.
Journals do not typically prioritize authorship issues. However, if all authors agree to add or remove an author (including the one being added or removed), the necessary adjustments will be made. This applies even if the paper has already been published, as they can publish a note of correction. In my case, the correction was handled in a very "polite" manner.
Many journals adhere to the authorship criteria outlined by The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which consists of four criteria. In my situation, I did not meet two of these criteria. However, I discovered through other papers, such as "Authorship: Credit those who deserve it" by Ashish Kumar, that if you fulfill the first criterion: "substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work," you should have had the opportunity to meet either criterion #2 or #3. Therefore, if you find yourself in a similar situation where you are told you cannot be an author due to these criteria, remember that...

Which country?
I am not a lawyer, but please save all the efforts you did  wrt to logistics (i.e. obtaining permissions from landowners = you should have emails, ticket, refunds for the trip to visit them).
Finish your PhD, get a job or another position, then It's going to be ugly, harden up with a lawyer and start the process of making them retract or at least amend the article, by contacting your uni at the higher levels (please note: your uni is not your friend and they will try to stop you).

Seemly, the environment is unethical ... It's worth noting that they submitted two papers using data derived from my project without sending me the manuscripts for review, yet I am still listed as an author.

I am in latinoamerica. I have much evidence of everything I did, how involved I was in the project, and also how the first author wasn't. I already finished my Ph.D. even with an honorary mention, which really proves that people will respect you only until they feel they got what they needed from you. Sorry for being so negative but I am very disappointed of all.  I appreciate your comments and support.

I think the ethical answer is obvious, your name should be included on the paper if you believe that you contributed substantially enough to warrant authorship. At the very least your contributions must be acknowledged if they did not amount to authorship.
In practice, this is probably not the easy answer. You could ask the existing authors to contact the journal and request a correction. If they agree, this would be best. The situation can be called a miscommunication and everyone walks away happy (or at least unharmed). This course of action depends heavily on your relationship with your former boss and the other authors. In a perfect world, this is the solution.
If that does not pan out, it would not be unreasonable to contact the journal directly. I would expect this to sour whatever relationship remains with your former boss and would-be co-authors.
Alternatively, your university may have someone able to help mediate these sorts of disputes. Or at least may be interested in this sort of academic bad behavior and could apply needed pressure. This would also likely sour the relationship and would depend on department dynamics.
The unethical (or at least less ethical) answer is to take your former boss's offer and accept (possibly questionable) authorship on other papers. This is not necessarily something I would suggest from an ethics standpoint but practically may be the only solution.
One important point, in my experience, it is at a minimum necessary to allow all authors a chance to revise and approve a manuscript - even if their main contribution was outside of writing. Combined with your improper exclusion and the exclusion of a funding source from this paper, I suspect there are loose ethical/academic standards at play. Or at least there is a level of sloppiness. If possible, it may be in your best interest to move away from this group in the long term.

+1 ... at a minimum necessary to allow all authors a chance to revise (and approve) a manuscript ...

I appreciate your comments. I am not in that group anymore or at that university (I don't think they would be of any help; on the contrary, they would back them up). I completely agree that they should have given me an opportunity to review the paper, not only because it was the right thing to do, but also because just by seeing the abstract and acknowledgments section, I immediately spotted a couple of mistakes (like the funding source).

You should make an ethics complaint for research misconduct
Assuming your description is accurate, your omission as an author from the first paper you describe seems to me like textbook research misconduct.  In regard to this paper, it sounds like these academics intentionally misrepresented the authorship during the submission and publication process, knowing that you had made a substantial contribution to the research.  (I won't speak to the latter papers where you are listed as an author, because the issue there sounds more complex.)  You should bear in mind that logistical support and contribution to the acquisition of funding is not usually considered to be a research contribution warranting coauthorship, but fieldwork, data collection and contribution to experimental design (e.g., selecting sites for the work) are clear research contributions that are likely to warrant coauthorship.
The fact that they did not contact you prior to submission to advise you of the submission and how they were proceeding shows that they were attempting to exclude you without your knowledge and without an opportunity for you to object.  The fact that you have email evidence showing their excuse that you had chosen not to publish other papers (which is quite irrelevant) sounds like it will confirm that they knowingly excluded you without good reason.  The misconduct here is partially mitigated by the fact that they are now cooperating with you to try to correct the authorship, but this is only slight mitigation --- they tried to get away with excluding you but now are trying to correct this only after you have found out about the publication and complained.
This is highly unethical (and I would say fraudulent) behaviour.  In this circumstance, I recommend you immediately make a formal complaint of research misconduct to all the relevant universities where these academics hold positions.  You should continue to pursue a change in authorship on the paper concurrently with this, and you can note in your complaint that successful change of authorship would mitigate (though not eliminate) the research misconduct at issue.  This kind of thing happens in academia because people let it happen, by failing to pursue the ethics processes in place to prevent and punish this unethical behaviour.

Thank you for your comments. I don't believe that making a formal complaint about research misconduct to their universities is a good idea. I know how my former university has always protected its own people, even in more severe cases. Honestly, even speaking up to them was hard because I knew that it would consequently bring bad references from them that could compromise my future. But I was very disappointed and angry, and I knew that if I didn't speak up, I would eventually regret it.

If you feel that you are in a system that is sufficiently dysfunctional that raising legitimate complaints will lead to retaliation and further damage to you then I would encourage you to consider getting out of that system entirely (and I understand your username in that circumstance).  I am not in a position to judge the quality of university complaint systems in Latin America, but if your description of your university is accurate then that reflects very poorly on them.

Yes, actually, I already left. I don't need to be in that system to do research, so doing a postdoc was not even an option for me. However, the project was important to me, and I put too much effort into it to just let them walk all over me. Thanks, Ben

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Is it a problem if a professor doesn't release exam statistics?
This class is a natural science course and has 3 exams which total up to about half of the grade. Students have taken all three of the exams, and it is practically the end of the semester. There are about 20 students in total because there were some drops earlier in the term.
Students don't know the average of each test, and don't know how they're doing relative to the class. I am tempted to reach out directly to ask for exam medians and standard deviations, but am wondering what would be the reasoning. Guessing that it is either for flexibility or because the class size is small. Or it could be teaching style.
Why would a professor not release exam statistics?
Edit: Every other class in the department has been graded on a curve.

Why do you want to know the exam statistics? You already have your grade which tells you if you performed well or not, don't you? The professor might just not see much value in comparing each others' grades this way. You can still ask for the statistics, of course.

The question in the title does not match the question at end. What is it that you're asking? And if it's the question in the title - a problem for whom? You personally? The class? The professor? Or are you asking if the professor is going against some policy or custom? Please clarify.

@Snijderfrey I was under the impression that the class would still be curved.

@JW I was asking if the professor was going against some custom. I thought it was the norm to communicate standard deviation and median so students know how they are doing.

https://xkcd.com/1347/ is applicable here...

In my grad-level courses in mathematics, I pointedly do not "release statistics", because there is an essentially objective goal... which I've corroborated over decades of teaching. Further, I absolutely do NOT want students to think that their success or failure is fundamentally by comparison to their peers... both because it's not so, and because thinking in those terms is anti-intellectual!!! :)

For what it's worth, I have never been given such statistics by a professor at any point during my studies, not in school, not at the undergraduate level and not at the post graduate either. I've attended or worked at educational institutions in Greece, the UK, Spain and France.

@paulgarrett Thanks for the input. I had no idea that it was considered insulting.

I just finished the first year of my second undergraduate degree. I've taken a lot of university courses (140+ credit hours). I don't think I've ever gotten exam statistics from any professor in all of that time. I'm in the US - maybe it's a cultural thing? I also don't think any class I've taken has been curved. Especially today with learning management systems where grades are tracked through the semester in the portal. My final grades are the averages of the grades on each assignment and the registrar's grade book looks just like the one I can access in Blackboard.

Another factor: Depending on local rules about privacy and anonymity, releasing group statistics for a small class can sufficiently deanonymise the grades of other students to arguably be a violation. Say you know your exam result and that of some friends; pair it with knowledge of the mean, median, and standard deviation, and you're not too far from being able to work out the exam grade of another student.

What good does computing the statistics of exam results? When exams are graded based on objective and fair rules, that should be sufficient. Does it matter if grades are distributed normally, log-normally, bi-modaly? I have never heard of such a practice exept in a PhD-comic or some other satirical context.

@prets Good point. I tend to not ask what other people's grades are on principle.

In defense of the practice seen by the OP, we hear quite a few tales of STEM professors who always give tests with scores in the 10-30% range or something, and then scale everything at end of term so a reasonable number of students are passing. I can imagine some students getting very low grades and just assuming that was the situation (despite anything to the contrary on the syllabus), and so blithely continuing on a failing trajectory. So my instinct for years was to publicize averages as a wake-up call that what I was asking them to do was sane and being accomplished by others.

What country? .

Statistics for a small class are close to meaningless. You should reach out to your professor about how you are doing in the class, maybe disguised as a request to help you perform better. However, if the instructor provided a syllabus with grade break-down, you can calculate your overall grade as a percentage yourself.
Many university instructors do not grade on a curve, so that your relative standing in the class does not matter to you.

Yeah, I knew that statistics are close to meaningless for a small class. However, every other class in the department was on a curve, so that's why I thought it was unusual. Grade breakdown is calculated in Canvas.

@DdogBoss Two points regarding your comment: It might help people understand your question better if you edit the question to include the fact that every other class in the department has been graded on a curve. Second, one next step you could take is to e-mail the professor to ask/confirm if this class will be graded on a curve as well. If the response is "yes", then you have a reason to inquire about aggregate grade statistics.

What do you mean by close to meaningless? That no meaningful inference or observation can be drawn from a small sample size (in this case n = 20)?

'Many university instructors do not grade on a curve, so that your relative standing in the class does not matter to you.' It certainly could: it may be used internally (e.g., better students more likely to be allocated first-choice modules) and even externally (referees may ask about your performance relative to your peers).

I think your first point is misleading and somewhat irrelevant. Small samples of a population can be misleading or meaningless (even though 20 samples is in many cases sufficient to get a reasonable estimate of mean and SD), but here we're looking at the entire population. There's not really anything to be misled about when looking at all the data. It may be meaningless in general to compare yourself to other students, but I don't find it any more meaningless in a small class.

There are reasons more fundamental than this, but here's one that might be surprising:
The Blackboard LMS has a simple check-switch to turn this display on or off for students. My initial instinct was to have it on. But I found that too many of my community college students were confused by, and couldn't understand, those statistics. "I don't get it, the grade was 60% but my average on the test is 70%?" was a question I'd have to field multiple times each semester.
So I shut it off. I've never gotten an inquiry about not having those class-level statistics.

Interesting. I never thought about it that way. This professor seems to take your approach, and curves after the exam.

My other complaint with Blackboard is that it will include students who have dropped but are still listed (usually because they've not officially dropped).  So the stated average is much lower than the actual average.

@Teepeemm: Sounds like you're talking about the overall course grade in Bb. For individual test statistics (like the OP is asking about), that's not how it works.

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


text:
A PhD from a lower-ranked university or a PhD from a higher-ranked university with less-known and less cited supervisor?
Which is better, a PhD from a lower-ranked university with a well-known and highly cited supervisor, or a PhD from a higher-ranked university with less-known and less cited supervisor?
Note :My subject is Mathematics (Commutative Algebra)  .

Why do you think you're going to have enough knowledge of the quality of supervisors to base a decision on it?

@Anonymous Specifically, in my case  Most assistant professors in high ranking universities are newly appointed and do not have much research experience, while some professors in low ranking universities are older and have a lot of experience

Define ‘better’?

@user438383 I mean benefits


text:
Does the country where you do a postdoc matter (irrespectively of other aspects)?
I am looking for postdocs, and I have different postdoc offers.
I am really hesitating between different possibilities.
Some of those offers are interesting, in a dynamic group and they are in eastern Europe countries.
I was wondering if compared to a post-doc in a country such as the U.S for instance it can be badly seen on a curriculum (for an academic carreer).
I plan to do a career in Western Europe (ideally in France). Also, some answer suggested to do a postdoc in the same place where you want to find a position. Actually I did my PhD in France and for this reason I have to go outside of the country for networking purpose.

Does the move excite you?

What matters is more what you do, less where you do it.  Of course ideally it’s best to do great work in a group with high visibility, but the visibility of the group is often country-independent.  In addition, it’s likely that, if you want to remain in the same field, these high-visibility groups will be well known to prospective employers.
The tricky part is to assess if your work will get proper recognition, and this implies - in addition to the core value fo the work - opportunities to promote your work through conferences or workshops, the abiiity to interact with others through a vigorous visitor program, and such things that basically boil down to $$.
Certainly in physics there are extremely good and well recognized groups in Eastern Europe.

There are some truly fine universities in Eastern Europe. There might be some advantage, however, in doing the post doc in the same place that you want to build a career since it is easier for others to make judgments.
The exception would be for a really interesting opportunity that isn't likely to have a counterpart elsewhere. And one that won't raise questions about relevance for your career.

It's also likely that one's academic network will be strongest or largest in the country or region where one is working. So in addition for easier judgment by others in the same county, generally, it can turn out of to be of great benefit to be doing a postdoc in the same country (or in a country with strong connections or lots of professional exchange) where one would like to establish one's career.


text:
How detailed should a research proposal be (post-doc)
I am finishing my PhD which was quite multidisciplinary (in Physics, it was a theoretical PhD in connection with experiments though), and I am now looking for post-docs.
While I would have some idea of future research plan in the same interdisciplinary, I would like to get specialized in some sub-area for which my knowledge is not very high.
On some post-doc application, I have to write some research proposal (either to earn grant or because the advisor would like it).
I find (quite) challenging to write a research proposal on a topic on which you are not very familiar, and my question is the following: how detailed should a research proposal be ?
In order to "classify" the level of detail I will give a scale for which I would like all the answer based upon (to be sure we have a common language for how "detailed" the proposal should be).
I assume for any of the option below that: you have a well motivated "broad" question that you can explain in your proposal. What I mean by broad and well motivated question is that if you explain it to someone in your field he will tell you "it looks very interesting but this is a vast question!".
And in addition to that there are four scenarios depending on the level of detail of the research proposal.

Super detailed: You already have a concrete way to answer it. It means that you probably found a more focused question and you already did some "initial calculations". They look very promising to be continued (basically you almost write the proposal in order to have money to continue your already started "concrete" investigations).
Half-detailed: You have identified some possible limitations in current litterature about our understanding of this broad question. Other scientists (or yourself) provided a case study on the basis on which you can start understanding the more broad question. You have some vague strategies in order to investigate the case study but it is highly possible that they will be revealed as dead ends soon and then you wouldn't have another strategy ready (you would have to think much more).
Not very detailed: You have identified some possible limitations in current litterature about our understanding of this broad question. Other scientists (or yourself) provided a case study on the basis on which you can start understanding the more broad question. However you don't really know "right now" how to start investigating the case study, you need work already to think about how to answer those "simpler" question.
Not detailed at all: Apart from the well defined broad question, you do not really have a strategy to attack it neither (which means not even a simpler question that would help you to start)

Currently I am close to 3 (in the middle of 2 and 3 but much closer to 3). I believe this is clearly not satisfying (something at least as good as 2 would be required, 1 is the ideal but usually not possible I feel excepted if you are lucky). I am wondering if indeed, writing something close to 3 is not enough or if it can be considered as good enough (depending on extra factors).
I would be interested to know what is the status of the person answering (to have an idea of the experience in writing proposal): postdoc, professor, etc.

why you dont apply for MSCA PF?


text:
Listing declined invitation to conferences in CV (because of agenda clash)
I am currently in 3rd year of post-doc.
I have presented my work at a reasonable amount of conferences (I think my CV is sufficiently good with this aspect). Yet, while I have been invited to a good amount of seminars, I only had very few invitations to present my work at workshop or conferences.
To be specific, I have been invited to present my work at two workshops, and one international conference (to be given in a few months). I had to decline one of the two workshop invitation because it was in the middle of crucial deadlines for grant applications for which I was already late (I received the invitation to the workshop quite late).
I have recently been invited to organize and moderate a panel on a topic of which I am expert at a quite prestigious conference occuring in February.
The problem is that the event occurs at a moment when it is impossible for me to attend (wedding of a very close relative the day before, I wouldn't have time to take the plane as the conference is on the other side of the planet).
I am quite frustrated by this because the conference is prestigious and it would have been an excellent way to demonstrate my scientific visibility. Also, it is the second declined invitation in the workshop/conference category on my CV, so even more annoying. It is important that I can defend a bit more the "invitation to conferences" aspect on my CV given the fact I am applying to permanent jobs.
Hence, I would like to list this conference on my CV, still, and explain why I couldn't attend (in a footnote: I guess anyone could reasonably understand the reason). I could justify my invitation by putting a link toward a PDF that shows explicitly the invitation email I received.
I emphasize on:

This is really not "CV padding" (i.e. putting additional poorly relevant stuff on your CV to make it look longer) because this line would be among the strongest points appearing on the conference section of my CV.
I will explain directly in my CV why I could not attend and put a justification of the invitation (the link to the pdf aforedmentioned).

My question:
From the perspective of a jury recruiting permanent researchers, is it ok to list this on the CV? In particular, does it fulfill my goal of demonstrating scientific visibility/recognition (in my opinion, yes as the fact I did not present is entirely irrelevant to this aspect), but maybe it is bad practice to do so.
I have seen various contradictory explanations about this on this website, see here and here, so I am confused.
If there is an objective reason why it is bad, I would like to understand the reason why (I am not sure to understand the argument which say it is a bad idea, but maybe these arguments do not apply in my context).

This might depend on your field, so I will answer for my own field (in the environmental sciences).
No, a declined invitation to organise a panel at a conference is not something that should go on your CV. It would definitely be considered padding. Organising a panel or session at a conference is a volunteer service to the community rather than a measure of prestige — and in this case it is a service that you were not able to perform.
If you get in touch with the organisers of the next relevant conference in your field and offer to organise something similar, there’s a good chance your offer will be accepted, and you can put that on your CV once you start work on the preparations.
If you had been invited to present a keynote or plenary at a prestigious conference but weren’t able to attend, I’d see that as more of a dilemma.

I agree that presenting your own work at a prestigious conference is different, arguably, better than being invited to organize + moderate an expert panel. However why do you think that doing this is "a detail" that should not go on the CV? Doesn't it demonstrates a good international visibility? In particular because a panel is a central event of a conference, and it will be clear that I was invited purely because of scientific visibility in this case. I am saying this because I am not affiliated at all with the organizers and the conference is organized on the other side of the world, [...]

i.e. it is not like I'm helping to organize a local event (in this case I would agree that this would be a minor thing on the CV because it would be natural that I help organizing it)

In my field, even for the big international conferences, this is a matter of service to the community and is done by volunteers. It does belong in the CV if you actually do it, but not if you declined a request.

Ok. Thank you !


text:
Switching research line at 2+years in post-doc
I am 2+ years in my first postdoc. In my PhD and beginning of my post-doc, my expertise was multidisciplinary: it linked different thematics. However I am getting a bit “bored” by this research line, I would like to do something else. Also, I would also like to gain more expertise in a given field (become more specialized).
I am very interested in a “specialist” research line “A”, which uses for a part some tools I had to use in my multidisciplinary research line. However, the questions treated in “A” are very different from the ones I treated before, and I have no expertise at all in “A” right now: I clearly need to learn.
I have a bit more than 1 year remaining in my current post-doc with an advisor that has no expertise in A but knows many mathematical tools that could be useful there. I have some post-doc friends working in A I could relatively easily reach out. Of course I could find another post-doc after this one.

My question: is it risky to make such a move toward a research line I have no expertise in at this stage of my career ?

Important paragraph for context: what stresses me out is that I feel I will lose a lot of productivity by doing the move, and I’m worried about the impact on my career especially given the fact it occurs at 2+ years of post doc. I am saying this because I still feel like I am not an expert of a given topic at this stage of my career. The reason is that I worked on different topics, establishing connections between them, so it is more I know “a bit” of different fields than a lot in one field. I had some nice results (in my opinion) in this multidisciplinary research, but the big drewback of this research is that it makes it really hard to become fully autonomous: without experts complementing my own knowledge I can be stuck in my research. This is why I feel like I really need to gain some specialist expertise. Another reason behind my worry is that I am not super productive in research outputs. In my field, the most productive have ~20 papers at my carrer stage (with a few of them being strong papers) while I only have 10 (my situation is not a catastrophe -- I recall I’m comparing to the very most productive -- but it is not great, I’m quite slow). To compensate a bit for that, I had some nice results in my PhD (my community was very interested in them), and I will put a pre-print soon which I think is a nice paper (in my subjective opinion though). I also have published other papers from my post-doc (they are definitely not groundbreaking, but I would say "fine" in quality). Finally, I plan to find a faculty position: I applied this year and had good ranking after interview to get tenured, but not sufficiently high to get the job for sure unfortunately. The reason I am explaining all this is so that you have the whole context about my situation to evaluate if what I want to do is risky or is actually a natural move (perhaps it is normal to extend to new horizons and lose productivity by doing so).
I find it very hard to judge if what I want to do is a silly decision/too risky, or actually expected and a good one. I am really stressed by my current academic career and I don’t want to ruin it on a bad career move.

Related, possible duplicate: How can I switch from field X to field Y after getting my PhD?

Ultimately, it is up to you and there is no right or wrong answer a priori.
Personally, I switched research areas at several points during my career: my MS (disease ecology), PhD (ecotoxicology), my postdoc (a wind energy and disease ecology project), and then my permanent research position (invasive species management).
Throughout all the areas, I used and developed a quantitively skill set that has served me well.
What do you want to do?
Be a narrow-focused academic at a major research university?
Teach at a teaching institution?
Work at a government lab?
A narrow and highly focused research area may help you with the first area, but not the other options that often favor broad backgrounds and skill sets.

Switching at this point seems overly risky. Giving up productive lines, even if you aren't among the "most productive" seems sub-optimal.
OTOH, working on boring things isn't fun, but the time isn't that long until your next career move.
Your supervisor, assuming you have one, should be able to give valuable input.
But, if you can parlay the current situation into a permanent position you will have more freedom of action. Make your supervisor happy, I'd suggest.
However, it is possible and advisable to keep a notebook on "ideas" that come to you on other topics. Make notes there and refer to them regularly, updating as you get insights.


text:
Complicated situation with phd advisor : miscommunication
I am currently in the first 4 months of my PHD in Physics, but I already did a 5 months internship before. I have some relationship+work problems with my phd advisor.
I am here to have feedback from other phd students or phd advisor to understand if what I am facing can indeed be a big problem and would compromise my pursuit of the phd. Or if things like this can actually happen and it can just be what a normal phd is.
My questions are around miscommunication problem which strongly impact the quality of the work to make.

In the end of my internship I started to have some troubles with my phd advisor, in summary it was a mix between miscommunication (like I didn't do what he expected me to do, but for me it was what he asked me to do). And some "rude" remarks related to this : when I didn't do what he expected, and when I told him that for me it wasn't what he asked, he got annoyed quite fast and made "not cool" remarks related to this.
But in the end of the internship we both decided that it would be nice to write workplan to be sure we have the same goals in mind.
Allright, so after this I was thinking that things will get better thanks to the workplans.

Then I had vacations, the phd started, and after learning new things at the beginning of the phd we both agreed that I needed to study a given thing. We made a workplan for this.
So, I studied it for 3 weeks, and I had really put a lot of motivation in it. Then, we met, I presented him my work. And he told me that I shouldn't have used a given definition in my work because it is not how people work with today. So basically all what I did was not usable.
I was annoyed with it because he told me to use this definition in the beginning, and I had the feeling to have almost lost 3 weeks of work for a miscomunication problem. I was very worried that this thing would happen again and again. So I sent him an email telling him I was worried with this and that for me it would be a big problem if we lose a lot of time during my phd for miscommunication problems.
He took quite badly my email, but as we had the workplan he somehow agreed that he made a mistake and that he can make mistakes sometimes. And I understand that, everybody can make mistake and it is not that much of a big deal (if it doesn't come too frequently of course). And then he asked me to show him more in details what I did (which I appreciated because it changed from the basic "you took the wrong definition, it will not be usable"). But then at some point he wondered if the whole question I studied was basically a good question to ask on the topic we are researching on.
And here I was really more disappointed because for me it was like he told me to work on something he didn't really wondered if it was worth it. What if this happens again ? Will I lose months of work ?
What's more is that we had a meeting 10 days after I started to work on this and he told me to continue on it.

So, in the end I am very worried about my phd. I am afraid that I will be misguided in what I am doing and that I would lose a lot of time because of it. Also it is very hard to discuss those problem with my phd advisor because he takes it personnally. All the discussions around it happened in a quite bad way (even if at least we ended up with conclusions and things to try).
My main goal is to pursue in academia and as it is very competitive it makes me even more worried.
What do you think about this situation ? Don't hesitate to say if you think I am probably overthinking the problem or whatever, I just need an external point of view, either from professors or phd students.

Are you both Freemp3 and freemp3 ? multiple accounts are not a good idea...

@SolarMike indeed I am the same person, I made a mistake that was very frustrating because I couldn't comment my own post. It is now solved

From wherever you start, the road to a PhD is never straight. Expect many turns - even dead-ends. Four months is just getting started. Three works of "wasted" effort is, in the greater scheme of things, nearly nothing. Perhaps you learned something in any case.
You are still in learning mode in working with this advisor (and he is in working with you). Don't expect everything to be easy, but it is a poor idea to start out by complaining. What you need is to work out a better communication regime with him so that misunderstandings don't explode, though they may still occur.
In some fields it is common to spend months working on a problem, only to find that it isn't going to result in a dissertation. In my case, I worked on two problems in mathematics that proved to be dead ends. One was too easy so the results were many but trivial. One was too hard and nothing could be learned. The third one was golden. But it took the other two to get settled.
You don't say it, but I wonder whether you are communicating with your advisor frequently enough and effectively enough. An email every few weeks doesn't sound optimal to me. A personal visit every week or so would avoid much of what you fear, I think.
Also, try not to get too discouraged by the (inevitable) setbacks. Scientific progress isn't easy and the path to it is long and difficult. That is in its very nature.

Thank you for your answer. I see what you mean, I know for sure I will do mistakes and my supervisor will probably do other ones as well. But the thing that frustrated me is that I feel like he didn't really took the time to think about the problem. I felt like that at the beginning he had let me start to study this problem without really thinking about if it is important, if I had the good tools or not. Because (another thing here) is that after we feedbacked on this miscommunication thing he actually wondered if the whole question I studied on this was actually worth it

So, what I'm worried about is that he doesn't really takes the time to think if the objectives he gives me are good or not. But the thing is I will put a lot of effort into trying to solve them. I should indeed probably see him more often to present what I did so that we think more frequently about the question asked.

To be more accurate : it is like if he just thinks fastly, on the moment about the question and then give me 4 weeks worth of work related to it. Which is not the same as really having thought about the question and sometimes making a mistake on it.

Let me address one point in particular:

And here I was really more disappointed because for me it was like he
  told me to work on something he didn't really wondered if it was worth
  it. What if this happens again? Will I lose months of work?

Yes, he probably asked you to do something that now, in hindsight, informed by your weeks of work, he realizes may not be worthwhile.  Yes, this will happen again.  Yes, you will "lose" months of work.  Welcome to research.
You are attacking problems that nobody knows how to solve.  Mistakes are inevitable.
Occasional failure is inevitable.  Confusion and frustration are inevitable.  If it is possible to know in advance that a particular approach will work out, you're not doing research.
Fortunately, this is true for everyone, not just you.  Also fortunately, the months of effort that you "waste" on one problem often turn out to be useful for other problems (if only in steering you away from dead ends).

Thank you for your answer. See my comment on the above post that are linked also to what you say.

My gut feel and best advice is to move on and get a different advisor.  You are early into this thing and the guy has two strikes.  Life is a one way journey.  Cut the guy off and move on.
Grad school is hard enough and for low enough pay that you don't want to deal with conflicts with an advisor.  The ideal one is one who just leaves you alone.  "Apprenticeship" is an ideal but not a reality.  Just do your own thing.  Get some kinder, gentler soul near retirement or preoccupied with administration or the like.  Not a young Turk.
I would also advise picking a problem/area that is tractable and interesting to you.  One likely to succeed.


text:
Declining an MSCA fellowship a few months into the program for a complicated personal situation: could it impact my career
My current situation is the following:
On the positive aspects:

I am currently working in a lab "X". There, my boss is a really great person. She gives me a lot of freedom in my research and doesn't put any pressure. On the human aspect it would be hard to find someone better, this is a real chance.
I am very interested in my current work and I think it could give rise to (perhaps?) nice publications.

On the negative aspects:

I did not realize when I apply, but the research done in the group of my boss is actually a bit far from my interests. Basically I am mostly working "alone" on projects. This was hard to realize when I applied because it "looked nice" from the outside but this was likely a naïve understanding from my side.
My social life outside of the lab is really, really not great.

The points 1+2 start to have a real impact on my "mental health".
Basically from 1 I am afraid to clearly loose in competitiveness on the publication record because I don't collaborate. I am trying to mitigate this by finding collaborations abroad but no guarantee that I succeed.
The point 2 is also really annoying and participates to increase my "depressed" feeling from time to time. I basically work, sleep, work sleep and on the long run it starts to heavily impact my mental health.

At the beginning of my post-doc, I applied without much hope to get it to an MSCA post-doctoral fellowship. To my great surprise it was succesfull, and I then have the opportunity to prolongate for 2 years my contract in this current lab.
This kind of grant offers a very generous funding for visit and it is a great opportunity to take. However, while I am currently inclined to accept it, because the negative points 1+2 really start to impact my mental health (sometime at work I can really be depressed, which obviously impacts the quality of my work), I am wondering what will happen in a few months.
Maybe I will completely get depressed and will have the real need to find another place to work... But maybe my situation will improve (I could find new collaborators elsewhere, I could meet new people improving the social aspects etc). Right now my situation is still manageable but this is really the unknown about the future that annoys me.
What I am afraid of is what happens if I terminate my contract a few months into the program. By accepting it now, I remove the opportunity to some person in the waiting list to get it. It could also be really badly viewed to terminate the contract a few months after having accepted it. The thing is really that I don't know how I will feel in the next months, it really depends: my situation could either improve or get worse...
My question: Is terminating this kind of grant for "personal reasons" (that I could describe in an analog way as I am expressing here) could impact my academic career. Basically would I be seen as someone not serious that declined a grant just after having accepted it (closing the door to another candidate). How is this kind of things usually perceived by (i) people working in academia (ii) the people managing the grants.
One of the thing I am afraid of is if it could reduce my success of applying for later grant as they would consider "yeah, this person terminated a grant just after a few months work, we shouldn't fund him, he is not trustable at all".
[edit]: I found that there is a "terminated improperly" category for terminating a contract (article 50), in case the justification provided is not considered as "good". What are the concrete consequences of this?

Weighing up a good career opportunity against your deep unhappiness with your lack of social life is something that makes sense and requires serious consideration on your part. Weighing up either of those against some vague speculation about "how this kind of things [is] usually perceived by [...] people working in academia" is, in my frank opinion, non-sense.

@AdamPřenosil thanks for your comment. If resigning from a contract only a few months after being employed can have serious consequence on your future employability, I think this is a very important information to get as it could influence my choice to make.

Sure. Let me also add that you seem to be treating your mental health as a random variable whose outcome is beyond your ability to influence or predict ("Maybe I will completely get depressed [...] But maybe my situation will improve"), which it very much is not. At the risk of saying something obvious that you're already perfectly aware of, if you do decide to stay, hoping that maybe things will just get better on their own does not seem like a good strategy. Unless you actively change something, it's a pretty safe bet that things will continue along their current trajectory.

@AdamPřenosil I am not saying I am not trying to change things. I am trying to, this is why I don't know if I will feel the same in a few months (things could definitely improve). Also I could decide to decline the grant and go in another place where it could be equal or worse as well, declining doesn't guarantee that it would get better either. Anyway, my question is strictly speaking about how the fact to decline a grant a few months after using it is perceived by academics or grant institutions. This is important to know for my decision.

To clarify, perhaps. Of course if my life is going bad while I am involved in the grant, I would terminate it. My question is the decision I have to take now. If it happens that it is "really bad" to terminate a grant once you are already paid by it since, only, a few months, I prefer to know it now, as maybe I wouldn't sign the contract (I still have a short time window to decide). I probably used a bad english which confused my question.

Your question comes from your personal situation. Even one of your concerns (am I taking this grant away from someone else?) is at a very personal level, and I think it is really great that you are thinking about this - you know how competitive these fellowships are and you are considering that another candidate could benefit if you decline the fellowship now.
Yet you ask for how the system as a whole (academics, grant institutions) will perceive this. At this level, things are far less personal. I doubt that at the EU grant office someone is thinking hmmm let's remember him for later.
I don't think giving back the fellowship will affect your future funding opportunities. Your next applications will be reviewed by different referees and a different committee.
In that case, you could put the grant down on your CV as 'MSCA (declined)' in this case - this can happen for multiple reasons and is not uncommon. Of course you should then be prepare to ask questions when they come up.
But this is far far into the future. Right now, take the decision that is best for you, your mental health and your life as a whole at this moment in time.
So I would take this question back to the personal level - you cannot predict how others (let alone a whole system) will respond. You also have no direct obligations to another anonymous applicant.
Sketch out your options: Say you reject the grant now. What would that mean for you in your current lab? Would it be logical for you to then continue there without the fellowship?
Most importantly: Did you already talk to your supervisor? You sound pretty positive about them, do they know you are struggling? If they do not know they also cannot think along about possible solutions!
Maybe you can accept the fellowship and visit a collaborator for a few months, or find a lab close by where you can sit in on lab meetings closer to your interests, maybe you can defer accepting the fellowship until you know whether you want to continue in this lab or in academia?
Maybe you need to take sick leave? Or just a break/holiday?
Maybe you need to meet new people outside of work?
If you cannot talk to your supervisor about this, find someone else to talk to or ask if you can take a professional development course/training - this can help with discovering/finding back what you really like about your work in the first place or make you realize you need to switch labs or leave academia, who knows.

Thanks a lot for your answer. So you seem to believe that it is unlikely that terminating my contract early could have any serious consequences on the future (I mostly need to be ready for questions that people might ask on this). About your suggestions: yes my advisor knows about this issue and she is very supportive. There are still potential ways of improvements like the ones in your suggestions (visiting other groups, meeting new peoples): this is the main reason why this is clearly possible that my situation improves (and why I would be annoyed to reject the funding now).


text:
Should I have social media profile? Is it truly useful to create networking?
I don't have social apps since the pandemic because I considered it disturbing to my mind and a way where to I was wasting too much time.
Now, I'm starting master degree. I attended a conference and some people asked to me for my instagram/facebook accounts, I just can share my email and phone number, like the seniors researchers, but people looked upset.
Are social media a true way to create networking? It's hard to me to imagine asking for a project or collaboration by this way, haha.

Please avoid posting answers in the comments. Short answers posted as answers are okay, but if your answer isn't worthy of being put in the answer box, it's definitely not worthy of being in the comments where it will leapfrog all the other answers and be immune to downvotes.

@cag51 wait, are you saying that leapfrogging other answers and being immune to downvotes is bad? It sure sounds desirable ;). Maybe that's the problem.

@DonQuiKong: haha, yeah. The SE model is that a lot of stuff (including exchanges like this one) should go in "chat," but chat is not very visible and it's not easy to create a chat room, so it's natural to abuse comments. And some stacks are stricter than others about policing the comments, which adds to the confusion. Anyway...I'll delete this exchange in a few hours, let's take the rest of this conversation to [chat] or meta.

I think it's a problem by design, not by abuse. But yes, the model is that you shouldn't use comments to comment on something, which in HNQ never works.

Unfortunately in my field (ecology) twitter is a primary means for communicating: Conference announcements, new publications, interesting workshops, etc.  At some point you will need to be on there.  If not, you will miss a lot.  I begrudgingly reopened my twitter account after i missed some very important conference announcements...
That being said, i treat social media like work emails.  I keep a small list of researchers/organizations i follow, then only check my feed every few days for important announcements.  I feel no pressure to be "daily active" on these platforms or let it invade my personal life.
Lastly, you can view social media as a archive of your work that is accessible to the general public.  If you put out an announcement for each paper you publish, journalists or organizations may find you in a google search.
Added note:  Most colleagues i know treat it the same as I do.  We're all on social media because its necessary, but most of us hate social media... So almost all posts from people i follow are infrequently made and are work-related.

Is it really that important? Don't all relevant institutes also offer mailing lists? The only social media tool I ever used was FaceBook and I deleted my account there more than a decade ago. I've never felt the need since. I get announcements by email or word of mouth. My field is biology/bioinformatics.

@terdon disciplines differ. If your discipline no longer uses ancient technology like smoke signals, snail mail, or email, then there is nothing you can do...

@terdon As another ecologist, Twitter/X has consistently been my most efficient resource for keeping up with things going on in my field and growing the number of people who see my work. A very useful aspect is that I follow people who will generally retweet/share useful things from other people that I never would have seen otherwise. But I'm very restrictive in who I follow, and I have plugins to eliminate most ads, trending stuff, etc, so I mostly see just what I want to see and manage to avoid most of the negative stuff.

That said, ecology might be one of the most interdisciplinary and collaborative fields, so there's a very high value to networking that might not exist to the same degree in other fields. Plus, many ecologists like to have a public social media presence for conservation outreach and education purposes with non-ecologists

@terdon from what i see... Social media is far more prioritized over email newsletters.  I missed a well known conference because they never made a mailing list, and i never saw their important twitter announcements (which they did not post on their website).  After this... I decided i had to get back on twitter.

I want to leave a glimmer of optimism here...   In my field, many researchers have started using bluesky and many european institutes are active on mastodon.  Still social media... But i find these federated alternatives far less intrusive (no ads, suggested posts, algorithm timelines) and they are easier to treat as a professional communication tool.

@terdon I'm not sure what you mean by "institutes," but how could you learn of a new conference ifyou're not on its mailing list?

I am sure answers will reflect a range of opinions. Clearly, it is perfectly possible to have a successful career and stay off social media. It's also possible to harm your career by being on social media, either because it harms your mental health, or it becomes a time sink, or you post things that cause others to think less of you. In an extreme case, a professor could even lose tenure over a foolish social media post.
In some fields, there is a strong twitter culture for disseminating results (and sometimes stimulating discussion). I know people in economics, statistics, and data science who used twitter this way. I have never done anything on twitter and I don't know if those folks are still doing the same now that it's X.
I am unaware of any scientific fields where instagram is used to disseminate results or host discussions. But one could imagine it would be valuable in the arts.
My social media of choice is Facebook. I have used it to disseminate research and for sure it has led to collaborations, to people citing me, and to people teaching me things. For example, I recently posted about a talk I was scheduled to give, and that post led more people to show up, who otherwise wouldn't have known about it. It also led to a researcher in Germany responding to my post to make me aware of a paper I didn't know about, which was very relevant to the talk and to the research I was presenting. Overall, it seems to me that the pros outweigh the cons. But, I'm speaking as someone who already has strong safeguards in place regarding my mental health (e.g., daily meditation practice) and who frequently blocks Facebook during certain hours of the day, so that I am not tempted to check it. If my only reason for being on it was to disseminate research, then it's not clear that the pros would outweigh the cons. I like it for other reasons, like staying in touch with friends in far flung places, and sharing my photos and stories when I travel. Facebook has also led to speaking invitations, when friends realize I'm nearby and invite me to speak in their local seminar.
Another form of networking that you might prefer is LinkedIn. That's another way to disseminate your work, learn about jobs, and lightly keep up with others in a professional way (e.g., someone you met at a conference finished her PhD at Harvard and is now a postdoc at Yale). But it's probably less addictive, less of a time sink, and less culture of people sharing things that are entirely unrelated to their jobs, or sharing things that can get them in trouble.

Yes, if getting only one for professional reasons, I would recommend Linkedin.  IMO Linkedin looks more serious than Facebook or Instagram, although since they too make a business of selling your personal information, be cautious of what you share there.

In a nutshell: LinkedIn, yes; Twitter (X), maybe; Instagram, that's completely personal.
Now, needless to say, LinkedIn is a professional networking platform by design, so you just should be on it. You don't need to actually engage much or even check it often, but it's good to maintain an up-to-date profile and connect with people you know. In case that you are not 100% sure you're going into academia full time, many corporate recruiters discover talent on LinkedIn, and not being on LinkedIn is sort of just giving up free professional publicity. It's low engagement and relatively high reward, so highly recommended and sort of necessary.
Twitter (now X) is a text-based microblogging platform where people can share their recent papers, conference calls, even advertise for jobs, etc. It's basically a more lightweight version of blogs, which many academics maintain professionally. Now, in many areas, these things are often shared on mailing lists, so Twitter is not strictly necessary, but if they aren't then maybe you'll need it. Just check it once in a while. If you keep a personal Twitter (X) account, then of course it is generally a good idea to keep it separate from your work account (and I'd recommend that you don't use your real name or easily identifiable identity for a strictly personal account).
But I have never heard of anyone using Instagram in a professional context (unless they are an musician, artist, model, etc., of course). First, it's a very smartphone-centric platform, and as such not really suited for professional environments. Also, it is very image- rather than text-based, and is a horrible platform for circulating conference calls or new papers, etc.
Finally I'd like to mention Discord and Zulip. They are interest-based forums, so each Zulip space or Discord server is created for a specific purpose, and discussion is separated by topic, so they're closer to modernized and streamlined versions of mailing lists than general SNS sites. Many academic Zulip spaces/Discord servers exist, and I highly recommend joining those that lie in your areas of interest.

The variety of answers should reflect the variety of relevant cultures across different fields.
In my field (math) social media is essentially unused and you would have no need of it professionally.
I have friends in statistics and so on where most major results are announced in twitter first, and then in more professional venues sometime later, and discoverability is hard. You may miss things if you're not on twitter; you may have trouble getting the word out about your results; you may find out too late about interesting conferences or whatever. I have colleagues in genetics and they absolutely publicize their new methods and algorithms and so on on twitter first. I find it strange, but the system works.
I have seen LinkedIn used to further your career but it's mostly a sort of interactive resume; while it is more "professional" in a sense, I've actually never heard of anyone successfully using it for serious professional work that isn't related to finding a job. I might just not run in the right circles, though.
Since this is so field -- and perhaps microculture -- dependent, the simple answer is to talk to other people in your field. Ask them if they use social media for work, and if so, how. Twitter? Facebook? Instagram? I have trouble imagining people using TikTok professionally, but maybe they do. What safeguards do they use to avoid it becoming a drain on their time and mental health? Who do they follow? How do they present themselves?
Start cautiously by imitating someone who is already successful, then find your own path.
(And, perhaps, you will discover your field doesn't use it in a serious way, and you can skip the whole ordeal, which would be lovely)

Now, I'm starting master degree. I attended a conference and some people asked to me for my instagram/facebook accounts, I just can share my email and phone number, like the seniors reseachers, but people looked upset.

Instagram and Facebook are fine for personal social media to follow up on people you know, but in all my years doing conferences, you should only be worried about linkedin. On the one hand, if you are adverse to it you can simply use it during conference season, and for the rest of the time disable notifications or disable the app altogether. When conference is around the corner, if you have work to present, make a quick post, people interested will see it and try to connect, and at the end just delete. Rinse and repeat.
It will depend strongly on what you prefer for communications, but if people are really interested about your work, e-mail is sufficient, and they will follow-up by e-mail if there is actual interest.
For other, more personal social media, some people keep a "professional" instagram accounts to share their work, but in my opinion it is so tasking to show what you are doing, on top of doing what you actually do, that I strongly disavow it, if you are already not keen of social media.


text:
I have designed a course activity, how can I turn this into a publication?
I am a biologist I have only published in biology journals.
This time I would like to publish a more education centered paper if I can.
This is an undergraduate course activity that should take a few weeks.
I have looked online for education journals but haven't seen a "course activity" published per se.
Wondering if this sort of thing is publishable and if so in which journals.

If you're prepared to make the course activity material open source, then you could consider the Journal of Open Source Education https://jose.theoj.org

That really depends.

Is your course activity novel (from a pedagogical point of view, not just a new topic)? It doesn't have to be earth-shatteringly different, but do your research - just because a course has not been taught in a certain way at your university does not mean it's not common practice in other places.
Are there lessons learned that others may be interested in hearing about?
Do you have data (at least qualitative, ideally qualitative and quantitative) that suggests your new way of teaching brings tangible benefits?

If those are true, then you can certainly write an education-focused paper. But, like with any paper, you do actually need to do your research and provide a scholarly view on your proposal, you cannot just write down what you do and call it a day.

Which databases are suitable for my literature search?   Regards

Don't see why Google Scholar wouldn't be fine for a lit search (perhaps someone who works in education/pedagogy can correct me if I'm wrong)

One of the things that makes teaching Biology so challenging is that you have to be constantly redesigning your labs to keep up with the field. Some of the changes we make are part of what is often called the "pedagogical approach", i.e. where do you place the needle in the spectra of experimentation vs. demonstration, free-flow vs. structured protocols, hands-on vs. lecture/instruction-based, narrative-based vs. not, etc. (for example) All of these issues are actively published in educational journals, and if you have data showing that your new lab activity supports better learning outcomes, well, yes, you should try to publish those results.
However, what it seems you have is just a new lab activity for which you want to get the type of publication credit that goes into a CV. There are many alternatives, some of them peer-reviewed. For example, look at this from Genetics Society of America. Other possibilities, albeit not peer-reviewed, include lab sharing sites such as Lab Exchange. There are also many organizations with repositories of lab activities, with varying levels of curation, for example https://most.oercommons.org/ . Most university libraries also manage repositories of Open Educational Resources (OER), which can "officially" publish your lab activity ("publish" as opposed to say, you just putting a PDF of it on your faculty profile page.)
If you think that your new lab activity is that good, I would get IRB approval, test some hypothesis related to learning outcomes and submit to a peer-reviewed journal. This is just based on my experience, but the peer-reviewed activities published by professional societies tend to become obsolete quickly and they are rarely updated. I prefer OER repositories both to place my own lab activities, and when I'm looking for ideas.


text:
What is the actual date of PhD award (in India)
I have been awarded my PhD long back and I have my official award certificate from the university given in the annual degree convocation. However, often a question comes to my mind - What is my actual date of award of PhD?
Is it the date I submitted the final version of thesis or the date I defended my thesis or the date of degree convocation on which I received my degree (the date of convocation is mentioned in the certificate, too)?
In all State-run organizations in India, it is often required to fill in the details about the date of PhD. However, I am not able to find an clear explanation anywhere.
PS: In India, unlike UK where you are often conferred with an award before the graduation ceremony, the degree is awarded only at the ceremony. However, the candidate can apply for a provisional degree certificate if the data of the ceremony is very far.
Thanks.

It's a bit informative, however, I am looking the answer which would come from someone who has had an experience in India in this matter especially in State run organizations.

It is awarded in the ceremony. That is what the ceremony is for!

"I am looking the answer which would come from someone who has had an experience in India in this matter especially in State run organizations" Please ask this question to the State run organization. We are not them, we don't have the official answer.

Thanks @Nobody, and you right when you say, "We are not them,...". However, I have faith that some of the "We"s are out there who have had such experience(s).

@BrianTompsett-汤莱恩, I feel the same, too.

If a State-run organization requires you to fill in the details about the date of PhD, it is their job to answer your question. Personal experience may not count.

Seems like a reasonable question to me: It is on-topic, specific, and probably answerable by any experienced academic in the Indian system.

Meanwhile, I got this page: https://www.grad.ubc.ca/faq/11095. It makes a clarification, though not from India.

Please read this comment. This is why you must ask this question to the State-run organization. I am talking about UGC or other government agencies.

@Nobody, this is the same link as provided by Brian up there.

Please do not count on somebody else's experience. If somebody says one way, a State run organization says another way, you'll fail to get a job offer because of incorrect PhD degree award date.


text:
Corona virus's effect on graduate admissions
A great many top US physics PhD programs have canceled their open houses with no plan to reschedule.
Some are intended on running "virtual open houses." Other's are just sending links to information that could be found on the internet regarding their program.
Is the April 15th requirement of a decision regarding accepting grad school offers of admission still ethical?
Is it reasonable to propose that April 15th be moved a month or two later?
A STEM PhD could take anywhere from 4-7 years in the US. That is a non-trivial amount of your life.

Hopefully many of these programs will find some alternative. But you aren't forced to make a decision. Or would you rather see it spread faster?

At the same time, delaying the deadline for that decision would impact not only students who got offered admission in the 1st round, but also those who are on a waitlist. I think one would have to weigh the potential effect that could have on both type of students to see whether it could be considered as unethical.

My advisor had his education disrupted by both WWII and by the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia. Things happen.

@Buffy how are we not forced to make a decision? We must accept an offer by April 15th. Some of us are fortunate enough to have multiple offers.

What are you asking? If it would be reasonable to contact individual programs and ask them to accept you later, after a visit? Do you want every graduate school in the nation to jointly push back their acceptance deadline?

It does not seem ethical to require students to make this decision without meeting (in person) the PIs at these institutions they intend to work under. One of the programs I was accepted to had no visit weekend or in-person interview

Why do you think ethics has anything to do with it? Are you planning to sue the virus for causing this? The departments for putting health & safety before your education? The planner for keeping the deadline? The PIs for not seeing you? Do you want to name and shame them for being 'unethical'? What's your point?

It's definitely not "paranoia". Check this article for more stats and facts: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca

You presumably did some research before deciding on where to apply to in the first place. That research is still valid. Any other contact with the institution(s) and faculty add to that basis of judgement.
You seem to presume that there is one uniquely right answer on your choice, and that getting to that one answer requires attending an open house. Likely, almost any choice could turn out well, or turn out badly, all depending on factors totally divorced from the open house.
Note that many people accept without having been to an open house. So, the decision can be made without going to one.
You seem to presume that actions to reduce the spread of the virus are unethical, something that I would hotly contest.

1 &2) Good point. On paper I know all the PIs whom I would like to work with.
However, this is only the primary factor. What about city, the personality of the PIs and potential future peers?

This is very true. My biased domestic status totally took me out of knowledge about international students not being able to get into the country for VISA issues which I've learned this year as I'm abroad at the moment.

I do not say the action of canceling the open house is unethical. I say keeping the April 15th deadline is.

If you care greatly about meeting the PIs, you can perhaps visit the institutions without an official open house, and coordinate meetings with faculty there with a few emails, for those programs who do not forbid such personal visits. For others, you could schedule video chat interviews with the PIs you are interested in meeting. It won’t teach you about what life looks like in the town where the university is located and other things that you want to know, but it’s something.
So yes, it is ethical. Not to mention that holding the open house and contributing to the public health crisis has its own (likely much more serious) ethical implications.
Asking for an extension on the deadline also sounds reasonable, and certainly cannot hurt. I advise you not to impugn people’s ethics when making such a request though.

Campuses are certainly closing

@AzorAhai then OP can request a skype conversation with the PIs they are interested in meeting. Also, for now my understanding that some campuses have canceled classes, but that does not mean the campus is closed and no one is showing up to work in their offices. You do make a good point that a complete campus closure may occur and will make a physical campus/department visit impractical.

As @AzorAhai says, the coordinators explicitly forbid  personal visits.

@LopeyTall understood - edited the answer.

Actually an open house will tell you less than you think. Everyone is on their best behavior with all the skeletons locked up in the closet.

Is it reasonable...
It does not seem ethical

I'd ask you to consider this from the perspective of graduate admissions director. Nothing like the COVID-19 situation has happened before, at least in the US within the careers of most faculty. None of us know exactly how bad the situation will get or what exactly will happen. The worries could turn out to be overblown, but they could also turn out to not be overblown.
From their point of view, every possible course of action comes with substantial disadvantages.
I would recommend, first of all, that you try to see this from the perspective of the graduate director. Then, figure out what you want. Do you want to set up Skype meetings with potential PIs, or current grad students? Would you like to ask if the deadline can be postponed, in case visiting first is important to you?
The graduate director might or might not say yes, but it's okay to ask.


text:
Teaching at local community college in order to work with PI of choice
US public school physics PhD

There is a PI at my institute who is amazing. She doesn't have funds for more than her 2 current students.

My program is huge, and thus does not have the funds to support any PhD who doesn't get $$$ from their PI for research in the form of indefinite TA stipends. You are only ALLOWED to TA for your first 2 years. This is a huge point of concern for me: the only thing that kept me sane in my first year was teaching. I love it so much.

Given 2) would approaching her again with the following preposition be a legitimate way to work with her?
Working with her as her student but also working as an adjunct at a local community college?
concerns I have:

this would make my PhD take longer than if I were doing research full time (although arguably more enjoyable for me given 2), not that I haven't loved my research experiences in the past, but 2-4 years without teaching sounds awful)
would I be able to (reliably, there are only a few colleges in our area/not a city) make $20-30k as an adjunct to stay on par with what I would make as a TA now?

Edit after Buffy's points:
Regrading tuition the department says:
"If properly handled, PhD students do not pay tuitions, instead it is either waived, or paid by a research grant."
"Tuition costs for 6 credits at the in-state rate will be charged to the research grants as students move on to research appointments "
From the offer letter to the program:
"In addition to the offer of admission, we are offering you a position as a Teaching Assistant, for a maximum of four semesters. Thereafter, research grants are expected to provide research assistantships with a full stipend. We also will provide you with a full-tuition scholarship for the duration of your studies."
This is 2 year limit on TAing is actually rather common in larger departments nowadays.

Being an adjunct is not a way to earn a living.  Seek fellowship funding or seek a PhD position at a better university that will fund you properly.

As always, things vary by location widely. I supported myself entirely by adjunct teaching in NYC for about a decade, came with full medical benefits, etc.

Given 2) would approaching her again with the following preposition be a legitimate way to work with her?

Well, sure, it’s “legitimate”, and you are (by the sound of it) a grown-up and capable of deciding what’s good for you. But what you are suggesting sounds pretty exploitative to me (in the sense that you are offering yourself up to be exploited). Trying to put myself in the shoes of the professor, I don’t think I would feel very comfortable about being a party to such a scheme, knowing that that makes me a beneficiary of this type of exploitation, even if it was clear that you are entering into it willingly, and even if I did find the idea of working with you appealing in general. What I would end up actually doing in such a situation, I have no idea. Probably have a stern talk with my department chair and complain about how we are treating our grad students, and ask for their help in figuring out a more sensible solution, at the very least.

would I be able to (reliably, there are only a few colleges in our area/not a city) make $20-30k as an adjunct to stay on par with what I would make as a TA now?

I don’t know a whole lot about these sorts of things. But going on what I do know and the general stereotypes about adjunct work (which are certainly based on some kernels of truth at least), “reliably” and “adjunct” do not belong in the same sentence.
A couple more things that come to mind:

Maybe one idea that comes to mind is to try to setup a co-advising arrangement where you work under this professor but also find a second professor interested in working with you and willing/able to provide the funding. The first professor herself might be able to help set this up if she wants to work with you, so you can ask her about it.

I’m in a math department and we occasionally allow graduate students from the physics department to TA for math classes. Ask around if that’s an option where you are.

“reliably” and “adjunct” do not belong in the same sentence --- Do pass go, and do collect +1.

Great points at the bottom of this answer! thank you :)

This would be difficult. It would be easier and more profitable to do a work study position in your school, most likely. Most Adjuncts make low wages per course. You would likely need to take on 7-10 courses during the year to make the salary you described. This is not trivial.

Ack, this is a not-so-good situation. As in other answers and comments: no you will not be able to make a reasonable income from piecework teaching. It's not viable.

Some things surprise me. A time limit on serving as a TA seems odd. If the program is "huge" they probably need a lot of TAs. A lot of undergrads take physics, for example.
Also, if you aren't a TA (or RA, or such) then you will have to pay tuition. Even at State universities it isn't cheap anymore for residents of the state.
Then, there is the question of how much you can earn as an adjunct. I think you are overestimating it unless you do it full time - with no time or energy left over for your studies and research. Then subtract the tuition. Many adjunct positions don't come with benefits such as health care. A full time position at a community college would pay more and possibly make it feasible, though difficult.
As you present it, it doesn't seem feasible to me, but you may be wrong about the TA limitations. Most places will let you TA throughout your studies and will even make it more "interesting" later on, with responsibility for a course.
To make the same as an adjunct as you do as a TA is feasible, but the commitment is vastly different. Teaching 10-15 courses per year vs helping out or teaching two or three. Think of the time (and travel) issues.
I suggest that you look at other options and consider the trade-offs.

In thinking about why a university would impose a two year limit on TA positions, the only thing I can think of is that they have accepted far too many graduate students for the size of the institution. That seems like a red herring if it is the case. When I was a doctoral student (math - long long ago) the ratio of doctoral students to regular faculty was about 2-1.

I'll add that accepting a position as an adjunct might well be outside of the university's regs for PhD students.

one thing to add that I should have clarified is that this is a STEM phd in the US, so I don't pay tuition

that is a good point Scott, I had not thought of that, I figured how you are paid AFTER the department has fufilled its obligatory 2 years is between you and your PI

I think you are mistaken about tuition. TAs (&RAs) don't pay tuition. But otherwise you almost certainly do. Grants may pay it, but you aren't getting a grant, it seems. Make sure you understand what you are getting in to. I think you have some misconceptions.

Oh I see you're point. Indeed, I am "billed" for tuition, however it is immediately deducted in the form of "graduate tuition scholarships" for all stem PhDs.
I think it is because I am a TA it is handled very internally, whereas when I am on a PI's grant it requires some more steps.
I will add the department's wording to the post.

I hope you are right, but doubt it. Yes, for TAs. Doctoral education is expensive. State legislators are cheap. The money needs to come from somewhere. For TAs it is from the contribution they make to the overall educational process. You probably don't want to specify the university, but I've never heard of this. I strongly suggest that you ask the specific question about tuition after you don't have a TA anymore.

My experience does not match your, Buffy. Our university provides the tuition scholarships and benefits for our PhD students and the TA or RA ship provides the stipend. So that is not a concern, particularly given the update that the OP made to his post.

@danielhatton, yes, thanks. But an interesting typo.