text:
Is this OK that I use "doctor (or doctorate) candidate" as appellation on my business card?
Is this correct to call my self "Doctor of engineering CANDIDATE" on my business card?
If it's not improper, what should I use instead of doctorate candidate?
Background:
I'm a college student in master's course and will graduate this summer, then go on to a doctoral course.
So, I'll become the student who has master's degree and also become the student who tries to work toward a doctorate's degree.
I will have business cards available after entering the doctorate course.

*This is my first time to have business cards available.
*I was looking for many same questions, but anything didn't fit my background.

I do believe that the term "candidate" is reserved for students who've passed the candidacy exam, or qualifying exam, which is usually held in the second year in the US.

@Drecate Not so straightforward, according to this.

Strongly related: Business cards for graduate students.

@GoodDeeds The OP is not even in PhD program yet.

Thank you for your comment, Drecate. You mean it's not suitable to use word "candidate" for 1st or 2nd grade student (or student before qualifying exam) in the doctorate course, right? I wonder I misunderstand the meaning of candidate.

I think one should use the title achieved.

@Emma That's correct - and it's certainly not suitable to use "student" or "candidate" before you've started.

You do sometimes see prople called "doctoral candidate".  But (as mentioned) this is not used before they start their doctoral studies.

Before graduating with an MA (and assuming the BE is a requirement for your current program):

Emma, B.E.
graduate student at University X, program Y

After graduating:

Emma, M.E.

After acceptance into the PhD program:

Emma, M.E.
PhD student at University X, program Y

The exact titles (e.g. M.E. or MA) depend on country and institution.
By the way, I've maybe used four business cards in the last ten years, and I probably might as well not have. (It's nice to read your name on a piece of high-quality cardboard, though.)

I've used more business cards (in academic context, e.g. by leaving them with my poster when away, even if there is a QR code with the content of the business card on the poster ;-) - in business context: many more, I guess that's why they're called business cards). One institution had cardboard sheets with the institute logo pre-printed, on which we'd print our contact data in small batches of 10 pieces. IMHO, that was a good compromise.  Personally, I would rather put my group/department on the card than PhD program. Personally, I don't see the point of specifying whether one is PhD student

... or works in that group as professional with no intention to go for a PhD. Professional is professional. But that may be quite culture-dependent (where I am, one can enlist for a PhD rather short notice, basically even just before handing in the thesis, so you'd anyways have a certain amount of people whom one would call PhD students but who are officially researchers working in their profession).

@cbeleitesunhappywithSX That's a good point. When I was a PhD student, my position would read "wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter" (roughly "research associate") rather than "Doktorand" (PhD student). I guess I would have left out the "Doktorand" even if I hadn't been employed as "wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter".

@henning -- reinstate Monica, thank you for your kind and clear answer. I'm not sure about the meaning of "after acceptance into the PhD program." Do you mean students who passed an exam for entering the PhD program? I will use my business cards after entering the program, so I think I should use the 3rd one.

@Emma for me, acceptance just meant a successful application with a research proposal, we didn't have entry exams. What acceptance means in your case might be different.

Do not put anything relating to the PhD until you have started studying for it. Do not put anything for the masters until you have been awarded it.
Once you have started studying for the PhD you could reasonably put "PhD student" or (in my view, a few disagree) "PhD researcher". "Doctoral candidate" can mean different things in different places, and may imply that you're about to finish.

I suggest not bothering with business cards, they seem rather antiquated to me. (Unless your culture, or your country of residence's culture, uses them as common practise.)
I've observed, and personally experienced, (potential) recipients declining cards in favour of a LinkedIn/Twitter connection, which seems far more valuable. I can't think of a scenario where a PhD student would benefit from business cards over a digital connection. (Post-PhD scenarios may arise.)
Nonetheless, if you do decide to have business cards, you can list your highest degree and your job title, e.g.,

Emma, MSc
Doctorate candidate, Department, University

(Where Doctorate candidate is the title used by your university.)

They are important because sometimes you meet people from cultures where they are important.  This happens all over the world.

@AnonymousPhysicist Indeed, they are important to some cultures, as noted.


text:
Caught students cheating in an exam, and the master director minimises
In a French master course, I has been "forced" to offer the exam online, and without proctoring software.
The students hand-wrote their answers during a camera-on and microphone-on  MS Teams call, showed quickly their text in front of the camera when they finished, and then they had some time to scan and upload it on the university Moodle-based web site.
The exam was closed books.
Now, I have found that during the time they were still sitting the exam, two students went on the course site to download the PDFs, thanks to the Moodle logs.
Another student uploaded an heavily "amended" version of his exam compared to the one he showed at the end of the exam...
The problem is that when I reported this to the master director, he minimised and said that it is ok, if I set a non passing grade they will go to next session... and that it was my fault to have set an online exam closed book..
What to do? Which are the "rules" for these cases in your university?
EDIT
Want to know how it ended up ? The exam has been called off for all the students (all automatically passed) because, while I did declare the exam to be recorder, I didn't specify the "reason" why it was recorded (!!).
And I don't teach any more in that master.

How would rules at other universities help here? This is a local issue.

Like most universities that don't have much of a reputation for the quality of its graduates, an ordinary French university has much more incentive to have more graduating students than incentives to make sure its graduates have learned anything.  As a result, unless the incident threatens to become a known scandal, the incentives are to just look the other way.  Furthermore, they are bureaucratic obstacles (almost everywhere) that make it harder to give a failing grade to students than to give a passing grade.  Do you really want to fight this when it will make your life harder for no gain?

"and said that it is ok, if I set a non passing grade they will go to next session..." I don't understand this. Can't you just let the involved students fail your course?

@ChristianHennig Maybe I am completely misunderstanding that, but I think the director suggests that failing students in this case will just result in them retaking the exam, with no obligation to retake the classes, and at no risk of dropping out. So effectively OP can fail them in their course, but the administration effectively does not care and would put pressure on them for passing these students at one point in time or another.

This depends on how your institution works, but most Universities have some sort of academic misconduct committee. This committee is independent of your regular chain of command, and basically anyone can directly report any misconduct (academic) to them and they will then do their investigations.
In your case, if such committee exist, I would imagine the chain of command would be for you to report to your master director, and then he/she will report in turn to the misconduct committee. Now, obviously the master director  doesn't care, and in most institutions you can straight up skip the master director and report directly to the committee.
This would be your best course of action

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Pure maths "dropout" wanting to finish MSc thesis
Personal background
I'm currently in my thirties. I began my math path with self studying some of the university courses while in high school thanks to the guidance of a prolific mentor at the university ( he passed away a few years ago in a tragic accident). Then it continued a bit backwards and by the time when I entered university I started out with PhD and masters level courses in pure mathematics. Mainly because those were the interesting courses that kept my motivation high. I took the more mantatory courses towards the last years as "fillers".
I was in the process of starting out with my 4th year thesis in my third year of studies (older type of Master degree) when my PhD programe application that I had good letters of recommendations for got rejected. This rejection together with becoming a bit burned out and feeling a bit of general social abstinence from the solitary nature of my self studies led me to abandon pure maths. Instead I started to study applied maths. I got into finance/insurance without a thesis where I'm working ever since with mainly mathematical modeling.
Current situation
Maths has always been my passion. I generally feel motivated by my work but there's a longing for some more of an intellectual challenge. I opened some of my old books in Algebraic Geometry during the COVID-19 quarantine and noticed how much I actually remembered from back then. This lit my spark in a way I have not experienced with my otherwise mundane work. My motivation other than the pure interest I have in the subject is that I feel that not having a thesis is a failure that I want to remedy. It will also be useful for future work prospects I believe. I don't think I will become a researcher because I don't have the time and dexterity with two kids or the brain plasticity at this age. It's a long road after all.
I'm currently self studying algebraic geometry from the "bible" Hartshorne amongst other books. I have a past PhD course in algebraic geometry but since it was so long ago I'm attending a masters level course in the subject. I'm also thinking that completing it will help convince potential advisors that I'm serious and that I'm not just talking.
I have enough credits from my past studies for a masters in pure mathematics. The things I lack is a thesis. Two actually, one B.Sc which is a prerequisite for a M.Sc these days.
Questions

Given my perhaps a bit unorthodox experience with mathematics and the fact that I don't have any degree. How do I approach professors and ask them to take me on to write a B.Sc thesis? I feel like my age and long hiatus might put many of them off. Normally I would probably visit them in the office and talk, but these COVID-19 times when everyone's working from home that's not possible. I don't want "anyone" as a supervisor because I'm not doing this only for a degree but because I see it now as my hobby. So I want to write it about a subject that I will enjoy.

When I was in the process of thinking what I want and how I asked a few professors about  supervising a M.Sc thesis (even though I don't have an actual B.Sc degree yet, I didn't know this was required) through mail. Everyone of them replied that they didn't have the time in the coming period but that I should ask professor X. Did I burn my bridges with them?

Taking a semester off from work for the B.Sc (I will take time off once I get to the M.Sc, however), is not an option and I do fine currently with studying on the side of my other obligations. I want to combine my work and writing the B.Sc thesis by planning to write most of it during the summer and some as I am on parental leave with my our newborn next year. This seems very specific and might put off many potential advisors. How do I touch on this subject in my contact?

I'm quite confused, but this may be due to cultural differences. Do you have a B.Sc degree and/or an M.Sc degree? If so, then I don't see the point of trying to formally write one (as opposed to just writing a lengthy exposition on something you're interested in and then posting and/or circulating it as you see fit), this assuming a university would let you enroll for that purpose and the logistics of two same-level degrees in the same subject were overcome. If not, then there is the issue of transfer credits and residency requirement, unless you went back to the same university.

I don’t have a degree, I’m lacking the final thesis for both. But I have the necessary courses, for both. I was planning to write the thesis at the same university/institution.

I don't have any degree --- I missed this. By the way, I happened to complete essentially an undergraduate degree (math only, not electives) while in high school at one university, attended another university for 4 years, then transferred to another university (completing 30 credit hours of minimal residency, and many of my courses didn't transfer, but it didn't matter because I had more than enough that did), then attended graduate programs at 4 different universities in 11 years, so I know a bit about leaving and starting again (in my case they were different universities).

Can you add a country tag to this question? I think your main hurdle will be administrative, rather than technical, and require you to re-enroll in a University for a semester.

You have a lot of advantages, actually. First, though, ignore the age issue. It isn't something you can change and time moves on no matter what you do.
You seem to have contact with appropriate academics in your field. You can probably exploit that. But, since you are a bit non-traditional, for someone to take you on they might be concerned about whether you would be a burden or not.
Let me suggest a path, though there are others, certainly. Find a project that you think has merit in your field. Write up an outline of a thesis and fill in some parts of it, such as the literature search. Include a few ideas that might be developed into theorems, but which aren't currently known (yes, hard, I know). If you can't do that much, at least name one or two "threads" that might be pulled.
Take that to some professor that you have contact with and ask whether they think this has promise, first, as a bachelor's thesis. If yes, then ask whether they will guide it and get you over that first hurdle. It might be that a second thesis can follow the first along the same lines. Spell out your academic needs and background as you have here. A period of burnout after intense study is pretty common and many of us will understand that and have possibly experienced it.
But the outline will show someone that you are serious and the existing personal relationship will assure someone that working with you will be relatively easy and not a waste of time.

Even if the professor doesn't normally teach at the B.Sc level, they might be willing to work with you if you make their task easy. Note that I'm assuming that the bachelors thesis is an absolute requirement that can't be avoided. If so, tackle it first, even if your paper is more advanced than would normally be required.

Everyone of them replied that they didn't have the time in the coming period but that I should ask professor X. Did I burn my bridges with them?
No, not at all, but... Can I be perfectly frank with you? You come across as a worrywart who could easily soak up massively quantities of time without anything to show for it in the end, and given the non-standard circumstances, this perceived personality type is a big factor.
I sincerely and deeply apologise if you are nothing like that in real life. But I am building a picture of you in my mind based on what you write here.
So, what to do?
If you can, just write that thesis, or your best stab at a first draft, and attach it to future correspondence with putative supervisors. Then as a recipient, I would definitely have a look and decide either: This person has potential, I'll see if I can take them on or guide them through my institutions programme / guidelines for such cases, or else: This needs more supervision and correction than I have time for.

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text:
Is it ethical to use already existing material to complement teaching?
As background, I have a MSc in Chemical Engineering, and I am currently teaching in one of the first Fachhochschule-type institutes that have been established in my country. This institute stands as the middle ground between high school and university or industry, and I have been appointed as a teacher for one of the mandatory courses.
Due to COVID-19, all lectures are being performed online, and I have prepared the course material, such as slides for lectures and practicals. The lectures I have prepared cover about 80% of all course material.
I have found that one of my former professors' research group has published in their webpage the slides of a university course which comprises the missing 20% material of my course. Moreover, their slides are really well done, and it would take me lots of time (1-2 months) to prepare the same material from scratch. I have the idea of using said material directly in my lectures, by citing very explicitly the source, since it is very well made and clear.
Is it therefore ethical to do it?

If you cite the work you avoid plagiarism, other questions aside.
But the really ethical way to do this is to ask permission first and explain how and why you will use the material. If they have published it online there will probably be no reason to refuse you.
But another issue is how it will be perceived by your own students. Other questions here have revealed that some students feel cheated when this happens. So, make sure that you add value to the slides you borrow and that the value added is clear to your students. You may want to explain the borrowing to your own students as well.
In general, students want to know that you are spending effort on them.

A "side benefit" from asking permission is that this way your former professor knows that external people appreciate their slides. You never know when the argument "our slides are used at x other universities" comes in handy for your the former prof. A 2nd consideration is that you can at the same time ask whether they'd be interested in feedback in case you have an idea how to improve some slide.

@cbeleitesunhappywithSX, excellent catch. And keeping communication lines open with former professors can also pay benefits in the future.

More as a food for thought, than an answer: You state that you (are going to) teach mandatory classes which reads equivalent to providing lectures about topics generally known in your scientific community.  Say, as an example, after your classes each attendee shall know about how to compute the mean residence time in flow reactors.
It is late, you soon complete the lecture materials about something which is well known and understood, the equations won't change if the topic is taught in school A or B.  And you use materials by your colleague, altogether with proper attribution of credit as s/he prepared it this well that you estimate this as better as you -- given time and plausible effort at your disposition -- could yield.
Now the Provocation: Put the your material together with him/her, identify others to join forces in a collaboration, this time under the perspective to improve lecturing material.  Distribute the load to prepare the material on multiple shoulders, gradually improve them in a collaborative effort like wikipedia.  What is the benefit if each instructor has to do this work on his/her own if these hours of work could be used instead for discussions with the students?  Here I agree with Greg Wilson's argument around minute 26 at his talk at SciPy 2014 and his contributions to the computer-oriented initiative of software-carpentry.org.  With courses given around the globe, material is openly shared (example) and improved over multiple years by many (example).  But this pattern equally may be used in academia (example).


text:
How shall I report an error in a given paper?
I am currently at my last MSc year in Chemical and Process Engineering (Italy), and our last course on Industrial Chemistry has a mandatory pre-exam exercise which reads:

Find an existing, published research paper in the field of Chemical Engineering and try to autonomously replicate its results (plots, data, equations et similia).

My chosen paper X was published in the Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research journal, and I suppose it passed peer-review. X shows the application of a new algorithm to a chemical reactor with a given physical model.
However, after my revision and replication trial, I found that using their same model, I do not obtain the paper results. There is no presence of replication error by me, since I checked every passage with the TA.
The same TA pointed out flaws (of fundamental nature, for example F = mv instead of F = ma) in the model, and once corrected allowed me to obtain the results shown in the paper.
I do not think it was a overlook error, since the same reactor model was used in X and two cited sources of X. I want to inform of this error, but I do not know what to do now.

"flaws (of fundamental nature, for example F = mv instead of F = ma) in the model, and once corrected allowed me to obtain the results shown in the paper". Just to be sure, by corrected you mean writing F=ma in the code instead of F=mv, and then obtained the same result ? Because by "corrected" one can understand "wrote it in the same way as they did, i.e. F=mv. I guess the important point is: do their results come from a correct "F=ma" code, or from a flawed "F=mv" one ? In the former case the issue is not that big, as pointed ou by louic.

@David Yes, it is the former case. By analogy, after noticing that I needed to plug in "a" rather than "v" in the code, the same results were obtained. I may add that my TA (who has more experience than me) was the one to notice the flaw. The thing is, my analogy explains the meaning of the flaw, not its functional form. Only an expert eye would have noticed it right away, so I'm prompted to say that it was a copy/pasted equation with an outlook error.

Ok, then it is less "serious" than the other case. Then I agree with Danny Ruijters answer's, contact them.

The same TA pointed out flaws (of fundamental nature, for example F = mv instead of F = ma) in the model, and once corrected allowed me to obtain the results shown in the paper.

The fact that after correcting the model you can actually reproduce the reported results seems to suggest that the authors did implement their model correctly, but made a mistake when writing the paper.
I think that it is best to first contact the authors, politely explain what you found, and give them the chance to take an appropriate action, e.g. publish an errata in the journal where they published their article (or on their website, if the mistake was really minor).
If they do not react at all, you might contact the journal directly. The editor will typically take care that an errata is published.
When nobody is responsive (I do not expect that in this case, but with a conference article or a fishy journal that might happen), and you consider it important that the scientific community is aware of the mistakes, you could decide to publish your correction somewhere (journal, conference, website, ...).

I disagree. The error seems to be minor and the authors are probably already aware of it. Everybody knows F=ma and not mv, it is just a typo. If the error you found is indeed similar, you do not need to do anything. You even managed to reproduce the results in a few days or so, which is great and indicates that this is a good paper.

@louic: "flaws" meaning several of them - I would say that at least informing the authors would be the minimum. Also kindly informing the authors or even the editor still gives them the chance to decide what to do (or not to do). I, at least, would like to know when there are flaws in the formulas or method description in one of my papers.

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text:
How to reconnect a relationship with a professor
Today
I'm currently in my final MSc year, and I have finished working for my thesis. I am under supervision of professor X, which I find myself at ease and actually enjoy what I do. My field is Chemical Engineering.
Background
Before starting my thesis, during the "thesis choice" period, I was contacted by professor Y, which I was in very good relations (we did some external projects before the thesis, with good results). One of the major aspects of working with Y was the possibility to go abroad, as he sent out his students quite often for thesis work. The drawback was the lack of direct supervision. Professor X on the other hand contacted me, but he was not in favour of the abroad experience, since he only works as a direct supervisor with thesis students.
Issue (first mistake)
I had two initial proposals from both professors. At first Y's proposal was way more interesting than X. I got a week to confirm Y, but after the third day, Y's initial proposal was changed (in a uninteresting project).
I thus contacted X, and after a week arranged for a thesis meeting. X's offer was also changed, but now very being intriguing, and Y remaining proposals were not as interesting as X. I said yes to prof. X and went personally to Y's office to tell my decision.
When I entered Y's office (without notice, as MSc students - per Y rule - are free to pass by his office freely), he welcomed me with a project that "was sure I would love", and there were also external profs and industry reps (for which I had not been notified) and quickly explained to me the thesis, all taking like I was in from the start. This "meeting" with me was not programmed, as I expected only Y being in his office.
Right after this meeting I made a big mistake. From all that was said in the meeting, and the confusion that was created, I said (verbally) yes to Y.
Issue's Aftermath (second mistake)
I continued working with X, and received NO news or advices or any message from Y. My suspect is that Y's project came to nothing, but seeing that no messages came from Y, I made the second mistake as I continued working with X not alerting Y. I know that a single e-mail could have resolved the issue, but since that period was also characterized by a grave family issue, that e-mail was never sent.
Question
As the months passed and considering my today situation, and (fortunately) all the personal issues have subsided, what could be the best course of action of regaining contact with Y? After all, he did nothing wrong to me and I know I made some terrible mistakes, I want to apologize such to not truncate our 4 year relationship.

I think you have gotten yourself into a pretty deep mess if it is really as bad as you suggest and not just a sense you have of the situation. But, the only way to proceed is to go visit the professor in person and steel yourself for whatever occurs. I'd make an appointment first, to give the other person a chance to think about their own response.
You may well owe an apology, so prepare to give it. But, as long as the prof isn't a monster, it may well turn out better than you fear. But it may also take a while to completely dispel any bad feelings if they exist so a single meeting may not turn things around like flipping a switch. But a face to face meeting will give both of you a sense whether a continued professional relationship is possible and desirable.
It may be the professor was disappointed when you left, but also possible that he/she is so busy generally that it didn't register too much.
The past is what it is and can't be changed. The future is up you you. But expect that the transition may be uncomfortable.


text:
What is an "international equivalent" in the sentence
I am applying for college in the state, one of the question in the application is "Will you have graduated from high school, earned a GED, or received and international equivalent prior to enrolling at the University of Oregon?".
My question is

What is "international equivalent" refer to? For example, is my high school diploma in Taiwan count as an international equivalent?

I'm confusing about the or list, whether the question is asking
A. (have graduated from high school and earned a GED) or (international equivalent)
B. have graduated from high school or earned a GED or international equivalent

Thanks.

Regarding your second question, and given that you plan on studying in the U.S., as written it is clear that option B is the case (if your source writes good English in any case). You can google “Oxford comma” to see why.

Please ask one question only.  The second question might be better directed to the English Language Learners site.

What does "international equivalent" to high school refer to?

The typical American university is not going to know if your local school is "good enough" to be equivalent to US high school.  If you have completed whatever schooling is customary before enrolling in a university in your country, then if you claim it is equivalent to US high school you will very likely be believed.  Do plan to provide a document showing you completed whatever schooling, translated as necessary, in case someone asks for it.
While the vast majority of US university students have graduated from high school, plenty of people get university degrees without graduating from high school.  So this is not a question that needs careful thought.

The wording is there to account for the fact that things that are approximately the same have different names in different countries and cultures. A HS diploma from Taiwan is probably very similar to a HS diploma from the US in that you have studied fundamental things at an appropriate level for someone about 17 years old, give or take a bit.
A list of "equivalents" would be long indeed.
When you apply, someone will look at your transcripts and target any missing pieces, though I doubt they will find any. Good luck.

A GED in the US is a "diploma" given to students who have taken some non standard path to achieve what most students learn in secondary school. One can, for example, earn a GED through a set of tests. But that isn't likely to apply to you.

To be extra clear about OP's question 2, this is B: you need one of 3 possibilities: US high school, US GED, non-US equivalent to US high school.

For the non-US reader, "secondary school" is the same thing as high school. Usually, people get GEDs when they drop out for some reason but want to finish.


text:
Should you go for computer science if you aren’t interested in it?
I am from India and am preparing for the JEE exam for admission to engineering colleges in India.
I am very much interested in physics, chemistry, biology, and maths. I am not interested much in computer science. But my family says you can only get a job with BTech in computer science but will not get from BSc in basic sciences. I have done C++ and Java as well before. I just don’t find them as interesting as basic sciences. How should I choose my career in engineering and need to get a job after BTech?
I am very much interested in behaviour of light, cells, electricity, and time.
They also say that from electrical engineering, you can’t get a good job after BTech.
Also, if I understand a concept clearly, I am very good at relating it to real-life examples.

I am not sure that this site is the right place to answer this question for two reasons: 1) Here we try to answer general, objectively answerable questions. Yours is very subjective. 2) There are few here who can give you career advice outside of academia. Maybe you want to reformulate the question, for example, if one can follow a science career after doing a BSc in IT etc Also, what is BTech?

@Greg bachelors of technology

As it stands it is like asking my parents do not like my girlfriend. Shall I stop the relation with her? Nobody can or is even willing to answer.

I also talked about earning ? What you wrote does not match my question @Alchimista

Note that C++ & Java != CS, which encompasses much more than (and is most cases not actually) programming.

You need serious personal advice, but this isn't the place for it. Talk to a counselor at your school or a trusted teacher or other adult advisor. Consider both family and professional things. Think long term about what you want and need.

@user102532 my meaning is that you are the only one who knows how much things value for your. Other would be asking which discipline offers more job opportunities and the likes.

Thank you everyone for your kind answers.I have interest in mechanical , electrical engineering for now. But in India , you just don’t get a good Job here . You can say as I have seen the salaries of students who under-graduated from top institutes like IIT in India.Salary in hand is like 1000 dollars. And these branches , most of the times, even the major companies do not come to appoint them.

You shouldn't do a course you're not interested in. You might find it difficult to fully commit to but if you do something you enjoy you'll do well at it and have greater satisfaction with your life.

Sorry, but this is facile advice. Overly optimistic about the possibilities. It assumes an ideal world. Not this world.

Marvinated_mia Please expand upon your answer. You could probably start by saying why you disagree with Dr @buffy

@TejasShetty, instead let me explain further. The advice here is actually what I believe is the correct action, but it may not be able to actually do and may cause problems. One of the issues here is that in some cultures and in some families it may not be feasible to go against your parent's advice. For both financial and personal reasons. We need to respect that. The other, which the OP doesn't explain is whether they just want "a job" or "a career" or "something life fulfilling". The "job" part may be necessary, not optional. If they were looking for a career in academia I'd have (cont)

some different advice, since it is possible to start on one path (making mom & dad happy) and changing later when you are more independent. But that requires a long term view and the ability to follow it. That isn't open to everyone depending on basic requirement and cultural norms. That is why I suggest to the OP that they find someone they trust with whom they can be completely open and explore all of the options. Unfortunately this site isn't designed to give such advice.


text:
Can I copy (verbatim) my own arxiv paper into my thesis?
I wrote an arxiv paper during PhD, first author. I have a major chapter in my thesis on that paper and I would like to use the arxiv paper verbatim. Is it OK, to do that? I'm quite unclear about how copyright works with arxiv.
Basically, I want to know if arxiv holds rights to my work. If so, how much.

Does this answer your question? Can I include my ArXiv pre-print as a part of the Thesis? Copyright isn't the relevant issue here: you own the work. It's more about what thesis expectations are in your field.

(see also other Q&A here about "sandwich thesis" and "stapler thesis")

The question is same as mine. But doesn't have a proper answer, whether it is doable for arxiv or not. Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with copyright of arxiv papers and couldn't find it.

There's no "proper answer" because the "proper answer" is it depends on the expectations of your thesis committee. But copyright is not the correct issue to be concerned about. See also https://arxiv.org/help/license

The thesis committee doesn't care about copyright. It is the journal (in this case, arxiv) that cares about copyright. The thesis committee usually has no knowledge of copyright.

Arxiv is not a journal. And you're right, the thesis committee doesn't care about copyright in this context, which is why copyright is not the part to worry about.

Basically, I want to know if arxiv holds rights to my work ?

IIRC, arXiv only holds a perpetual license to distribute what you gave them. You retain copyright. But you need to explore self-plagiarism also. And, you may have other authors to consider as well if you weren't sole author. See: https://arxiv.org/help/submit

@ProtyushSahu Are you asking how to interpret the license you used (if so, please specify which one you chose) when submitting your work to arXiv? Because you have read it, right?


text:
Contact programs about wrong dates for part-time research assistantship in college?
So I am submitting applications for this cycle (Fall 2021). I graduated from school a few years ago and did occasional part-time work as a research assistant in college. In my application, I recorded September 2014 to September 2017 as a research assistant. Though I just realized, I was a research assistant from January 2015 to September 2017. So I was one semester off. This was an honest mistake, and since this was 5 years ago and part-time, I was a little fuzzy on the dates to be honest.
Should I reach out to programs pre-emptively? I don't want them to think this was intentional.
EDIT: Fwiw, the application was submitted about a month ago.
EDIT2: I ended up writing a brief email like the one in the comments section. Will update on outcome

While it is unlikely to be a big deal for most purposes, it is best to be honest and clear. Send a note and update the CV.
Mistakes happen. We are human and are generally recognized as such. There might be a rare exception in which a correction is necessary, but not for most. Still, it is courteous, clean, and neat.

"Hello, in the interest of transparency, I realized that one of my undergraduate research experiences from several years ago started 1 semester later than what is in my CV. I updated a corrected CV. My sincerest apologies for the oversight."
How would that sound?

Sounds about right, but you may not need to send the CV, just the note, with an offer to send the corrected version. But if you haven't gotten feedback in a month, it may be moot, I'm afraid.

Interview invitations did not go out yet (nor rejections) so I don't think I am already de facto rejected -- though it is somewhat of a reach school so I might be! Thank you for your confirmation. Do you think there would be any harm in sending the CV?

Can't say, actually. If you have a contact person, perhaps it would be fine, but things might get lost if it is office staff handling such things.

I see no harm in including the updated CV in the email. A small attachment isn't realistically a burden on anyone, and you skip an unnecessary email loop.

Alright, I just sent the email with updated CV. My intuition is that nobody will read and/or forward it, but at least (a) I will not feel guilty and (b) I can show I flagged the discrepancy if it comes up.

@Buffy At this time of year there is no reason to assume a 1 month delay means anything, at least in my field. Many positions won't even have closing dates until round about now, and the first responses usually come out in the new year. By the time the rejections come in the summer it's pretty obvious, although not necessarily correct if you're applying for fixed-term positions that could come up at shorter notice.

@JessicaB, true enough. I was overly pessimistic. But you should at least get an acknowledgement.


text:
A short research conference paper benefits
My paper has been accepted as a short research paper to be published as a conference paper. My question is, what is the best benefit for such a publication?
Edit:
It will be published at the IEEE conference.

It depends heavily on what field you are in. In a small number of fields (mostly ones adjacent to theoretical computer science), the majority of new work is presented at conferences. Having a paper published at a good conference in those fields is just as good as having it published in a good journal. If you are in one of these fields, the thing you should find out is whether or not it’s been accepted for an “archival track,” “archival conference,” or similar (the word “archival” is very important). If the answer is yes, congrats! You have a full fledged research article that’s been reviewed by your peers and judged worthy of publication.
If your paper was accepted to a non-archival track or if you are not in one of those fields, then presenting your paper at the conference is primarily a learning experience. You are going to meet more established researchers in your field, and have a chance to present your research and ideas to them. This is a great experience to get (virtual) face-time with other people in your field and share ideas. Coming away from the conference, you’ll hopefully have received by praise and criticism, and can use what you learn to extend your conference paper into a full paper.

It will be published at the IEEE conference. I have no idea about the archival conference, all that I know will be presented as a short research paper.

If you do not know if the conference is archival, you should ask.

Three remarks here: 1. It's unclear whether the conference in this case is good; the fact that it's IEEE doesn't mean much in this respect. 2. A short paper is usually less valuable than a full-length paper (which might be comparable to a journal paper or even better). Still better than nothing for sure. 3. In many fields (especially those associated with IEEE) the word "archival" would not be mentioned explicitly.

@lighthouse I haven’t taken any position about the quality of the conference. You can scale the excitement of my remarks according to the prestige but I think what I said is true for any level of prestige (at least, non-predatory). A short paper may be less exciting than a “full length” paper, but anything we say about that would be highly speculative without further info so I opted to not do so. I’m not sure what fields you have in mind, but every computer science conference I have ever looked at clearly indicates if it’s archival or not using that word.


text:
How hard is it to get into a good Postdoc position (or advance in Academia generally) after coming from a generally mediocre place?
I am a young theoretical physicist who's currently enrolled in his final year of masters studies and I've started searching for doctoral programs.
I've started applying to PhD programs which have a starting date after my graduation date. So far, I've gotten zero positive feedback which is disheartening to say the least - during the entire course of my studies, I've only ever had one grade which wasn't an "A" and I also participated in several workshops and even held two talks at different occasions.
I can't help shake the feeling that it's due to me coming from a relatively poor European country where there's five serious researchers in theoretical physics in total, one of them being my thesis advisor. As much as I love working with him, I am "afraid" that I'll get stuck in this country (not an issue) doing bad and irrelevant work (definitely an issue). I don't see anyone pushing any boundaries.
I wouldn't be asking this question if I didn't hear multiple stories of and by people who decided to pursue a PhD here and either abandoned academia or are now just treating it as any old job, with zero interest or motivation.
I live for this. I want to pursue, explore and uncover.
Can I hope that if I don't find a PhD within a year or two somewhere else, that I'll be able to do so with a Postdoc some 5 years from now? Are the criteria for post doctoral study even "stricter", or are PhD students "filtered out" and it becomes easier to end up somewhere prestigious?
Please refrain from motivational talk about how I can definitely find a PhD in a prestigious university if I push hard enough - I know this to be not true from almost first hand experience (unless you're an absolute born-once-every-1000-years-genius, but then one wouldn't even be asking this question).
How hard is it to get a "prestigious" Postdoc after a "mediocre" PhD?

I think you are currently in a Master’s program, and are looking at PhD programs right now. But it sounds like your question is about the transition from PhD to Post-Doc. Is this correct? It is a bit unclear in the text.

Sorry for the misunderstandings!
@BryanKrause Final year of graduate studies means "final year of masters program" - probably a mistake on my part, the two mean the same in my mother tongue. It is perfectly normal to not publish a thing during this time, as far as I'm aware.

@Dawn Yes - I am trying to find a PhD, but since my fate seems to be predetermined somewhat, I am also trying my hardest to think ahead and prepare myself for a Post-Doc. Naive and ambitious? Maybe. But I know I want it.

Do you have a specific country in mind for your PhD? Europe is quite diverse as to how PhD students are "handled", so you might get a better answer if you were more specific. Are you aiming at European countries at all?

@Snijderfrey The countries I've tried to apply for PhDs so far (with zero luck) are Germany, Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark, Switzerland, Sweden, Finland and Russia.
I'd say there were 20-ish applications I sent during this year. The closest I got was getting to the "next part of the elimination process" in one of the lower ranking Universities but got notified of not passing further along the chain a week later. At least five places notified me that "regretfully, they won't be accepting my application" after less than a week. Some never answered.

@AnxiousTortoise Thanks; I've clarified in your question and added some paragraph breaks to hopefully make it easier to read.

How hard is it to get a "prestigious" Postdoc after a "great" PhD? Hard. Very hard.

Please clarify the first sentence of paragraph 4

Possible duplicate: University rank/stature - How much does it affect one's career post-Ph.D?

@Buffy I disagree.

@AnxiousTortoise After a mediocre PhD, or after a PhD in a mediocre place?

@user151413 After a PhD in a mediocre place. I intend to pour every fiber of my being into writing my thesis, whatever it may be.

@Dawn What I meant was, if I don't manage to get a PhD in a foreign country and do end up where I've been for the last couple of years, how difficult will it be to get a Post-Doc in some foreign country/institute? A random example from the top of my head, but will I be able to successfully apply to somewhere like Lomonosov Moscow State University?

@AnxiousTortoise The thesis does not matter so much (though it does to some extent).  What matters much more is that you have written good publications (the quality matters much more than the number) during that time, ideally on topics which the people you apply with can judge.  Note that if you have written a very good paper on topic X together with your supervisor, who is not known to be an expert on X (or not known to be a top scientist), this might well count in your favor, since it very much suggests that this is both your idea and work.

The most important is not really where you do your PhD but rather if you can publish some quality research papers during your PhD. I have a few post-doctoral researchers in my team, and I have hired them because they are somewhat close to my research area but mostly because they have shown that they can write and publish good papers during their PhD. This give me confidence that they will also do good research in my team as post-doctoral researcher.  Thus, my recommendation is that if you choose to stay in your country, work hard to publish in top journals/conferences in your field, and also have international collaborations.  If you have good papers, then people will recognize your research ability.

I think it would be wise to take one step at a time, and the next would be to secure a satisfying position as a PhD student. You seem to be willing to move and are also open for different countries. That is definitely a plus and your general approach makes sense as far as I can tell.
I am not sure what you mean by "PhD program". To me that sounds as if you were not contacting researchers directly. In my experience (from the natural sciences mainly, and in Germany) it is not uncommon that PhD students are hired after some personal contact with a potential supervisor without passing any official selection process. Often, positions are not even advertised and supervisors use their personal network to find PhD students. I do not doubt that you face some bias concerning your home country, but if you manage to find a way to some personal correspondence with a potential supervisor the bias might be less of an issue. Your supervisor might be able and willing to support you. Is he/she on a friendly basis with a potential supervisor? Then he/she could facilitate contact.

While this might be good advice, it does not answer the question.

The reason why I specified "PhD programs" is because contacting professors directly has resulted in constant failure so far and it hits even harder when you know that the rejection was written personally by someone rather than an automated machine that sent out 200 rejection mails, all of which start with "Dear applicant".
The reason why I think that I will not be contacting them individually anymore and why I fear I'll get stuck in my country is because my friend went through the exact same (with the exact grade average) and all he got for 2 years straight were rejection letters.

Sorry to hear that. Did you get help from your supervisor or anybody else with a good network in the field? I can imagine it is rather hopeless to write to professors yourself. And @user151413 is right, I wasn't strictly answering your question...

"take it one step at a time" is really bad advice.  Do not get a PhD without a plan for after your PhD.

I think you absolutely have to get better advice about your materials and approach to faculty. If you are a promising candidate you might still be getting a terrible response if your materials are not good. I have good students who write terrible PhD applications because they have no idea what faculty are looking for. How many people (preferably faculty) have you gone over your materials with?

Are the criteria for post doctoral study even "stricter"

The criteria for getting a postdoctoral position are not important.  People who hire postdocs generally have to spend the money by a deadline.  If they do not hire someone, they might have to return the money.  They hire the best person they can, not every person who is qualified.  The number of qualified people is always larger than the number of positions.

How hard is it?

There is stiff competition for jobs.  Most physics PhDs do not get postdoc jobs.  Many get industry jobs, which are often higher paying.
https://www.aip.org/statistics/reports/employment-and-careers-physics
Other fields have even more competition.
Competition is based on how many papers you have published that are relevant to the job.  Generally jobs are easier to find if your research is in experiment or in a topic currently popular with industry.


text:
Distinction between Article writings and Academic writings?
How is writing an article for publications different from writing a thesis or dissertation in terms of ethics and language usage. How does the background to the study look in the case of an article or dissertation?

Do you mean a Master's thesis or a PhD thesis? The quality expected for those two can be quite different.

An article for publication is a manuscript formatted according to a particular journal's formatting standards, whose content is judged acceptable by the editors, following the advice of referees.*
A thesis or dissertation is a manuscript formatted according to a particular university's formatting standards, whose content is judged acceptable by your advisor, following the advice of a committee.
In both cases, the expectations for ethics, language, length, novelty, rigor, formality, background exposition, typesetting, submission processes, approval processes, and so on strongly depend on the specific people who judge whether the manuscript is acceptable, and more broadly on the institutions and research communities to which those people belong.
You should ask them.

*In computer science, substitute "conference", "program committee", and "reviewers" for "journal", "editors", and "referees", respectively.


text:
What to buy for my British phd supervisor for christmas?
I want to buy a gift for my lovely Ph.D. supervisor for Christmas. But as I am a foreigner and we don't celebrate Christmas in our country, I  have no idea. Could somebody please help me?

It would be more appropriate to do something like bring in a plate of biscuits for the entire group to share (assuming your group is more than you and your supervisor, and assuming you have some sort of shared workspace) rather than getting anything for your supervisor. From my own experience, I've also seen for example a student who brought in some of their favorite Chinese treats to share - it was a fun cultural exchange and didn't have to relate to the local holiday traditions, just the general custom of celebration.

Don't bring anything valuable. In the UK, gifts have to be declared (rightly so!), and it can create some headaches. Homemade biscuits for the group as in previous comment may be ok.

You could ask if the department is planning on running a “Secret Santa” event where everyone brings a gift worth about a certain value and they’re given out to random people that have participated.

A card will be sufficient - presents are more common for personal friends.
However, perhaps you might consider a bottle of wine (only if it does not offend on any level)...

British wine? ;-)

@NateEldredge and why not? It’s getting very good if you know where to look... and back in the 17th C. The French were looking to ban British wine ´cos it was too good then the clinate changed a bit and the French had it easy...

Give him a gift from your country; he can already easily get British wine if he wants it.


text:
How to say goodbye to your supervisor before the new year
I am meeting my supervisor tomorrow and it is the last time I see her this year. I am not a native English speaker and don't know how to say goodbye and wish happy things.I am wondering if somebody can help .e in this regard.?

How this is related to academia?

See you next year, and happy holidays!

You could also say "Merry Christmas" if your supervisor is Christian, but if your supervisor is not Christian it's possible (unlikely, but possible) that she's offended by that (example). "Happy holidays" sidesteps the issue.

Just wish her a merry Christmas and tell her that you will see her after the new year.

Have a happy and safe Holidays.


text:
How do we get our Journal indexed?
We are publishing a Journal titled Chettinad Health City Medical Journal. It is a Quarterly double blind peer reviewed international journal. How do we get it indexed?

Indexed by what?

For example, are you trying to get indexed by SCI? SSCI? Scopus? Pubmed? Google Scholar? ... etc. Without knowing these there's no way to answer.


text:
How to write a objectives section in undergraduate thesis?
I'm writting my undergraduate statistical thesis proposal. I wrote directly and clearly what I intend to do in my project. However the objectives section was very small, only 6 lines. It would be appropriate to give details of the objectives, even though they already being clear from the introduction?

There is a difference between what you intend to do and what you hope to achieve or learn. The doing part is about the procedure you expect to follow.  The objectives part is about what you hope to achieve or learn from it.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
How do I reference/cite a figure created specially for me by someone else?
A friend of mine helped to created figures shown in my thesis. I know that you do not need te reference figures created yourself. (How) am I supposed to give credits to my friend?
Is there a special Latex record or field?

Are you specifically focused on citation style only or do you want more general advice on how to acknowledge the figures you use?

Generally this goes in an acknowledgments section, unless the figure warrants coauthorship.

All figures from official sources (papers, webpages, books, articles) are correctly referrences. I only wanted advice with regard to creditting my friend for creating the figures. I think the acknowledgement section will suffice.


text:
Publishing figures in conference abstracts - will this constitute formal “publication” that will preclude our publication of this figure in journal?
I have a manuscript in final stages of editing to submit it for publication, most likely to an ACS journal.  My advisor would also like me to present this research in the upcoming ACS conference.  I need to submit an abstract and they give the option of including a figure.  I'd like to include my graphical abstract if this won't preclude submitting the same graphic later as part of the manuscript.  So does a conference abstract count as "published"?

Would you later want to publish it as a stand-alone work or as a figure in another publication?

As a figure for the table of contents for the journal article, so in another publication

In practice you can do a lot with your own figures. And it depends on how much of art and design is into it. Changing labels or replotting etc all are possibilities. One should see it to give an advice.

There are several questions hidden within this one. The first is whether you retain copyright after the abstract appears. If not, and if the figure is fairly substantial (in the information conveyed and in design elements) then you may need to seek permission from the copyright holder to reuse it. And you will also, then, need to cite the abstract. This is the same as if you want to use a long quote from an article, yours or that of another. Short quotes and standard figures don't usually require permission, but do require citation. However, TOC isn't clear to me. I assume it is more that "Table of Contents".
If you do hold copyright then reusing it, with citation, is fine. But the citation is required to avoid the issue of self plagiarism.
However, if the figure is to be reused on its own as a complete work, not part of another paper, then publishers would probably consider it as already published and therefor not now innovative. I doubt that is what you intend, but note that it is up to the publisher to make determinations about such things.
My best guess, with limited information, is that you will be permitted to reuse it even if you don't hold copyright. But you will need to ask and you will need to cite. One can, of course, make reference to ones own work and even quote from it, but there are limits on how much you can use in copyrighted work.

Regarding the copyright question  I found this language in the FAQs: "You and ACS agree that you and/or third parties with copyrights shall retain copyright in and to the abstract."

Good. But publishers still have a voice in what they publish. I think you'll be fine.


text:
(Potentially) Politically Motivated Manuscript rejection from a journal director
Update
It was informally confirmed to me that the reason for rejection is affiliation with a sanctioned institution. The publisher complies with international sanctions, and the journal follows the publisher's rules. Working with editors and reviewers from sanctioned entities does not interfere with the publisher's policies.
The restrictions are not mentioned on the journal's website, nor were the reason for rejection explicitly stated in email. This was my source of confusion.

My paper was 'found not suitable' by a journal director. I suspect this decision might be based on one of my affiliations, which is currently sanctioned by the US (not sure about EU), although the journal itself is EU/CERN-based. There is no mention of any submission restrictions on the journal’s website, and they even have a non-discrimination statement. Here are some reasons for my suspicions:

Fast Rejection: The rejection letter was on the same day, which didn't allow enough time to process it.

Source of Rejection: The rejection was issued by a director, not a topical editor.

Relevant Publications: The journal has previously published papers on related topics.

Previous Rejection History: My paper was previously rejected by another (more reputable) journal after the third round of review.

Undisclosed Source Information: I have information from a source I can't disclose that the rejection is based on my affiliation.

It also seems that the journal has no issue with editors and reviewers from my organization.
My question is: should I reply to the journal expressing my concerns?

You might be interested: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/144063/does-irans-sanction-play-a-pivotal-role-in-rejecting-papers-from-a-journal

What kind of response would you hope to get from expressing your concern?

@MaartenBuis, some kind of statement that hopefully opposes my points.

Why do you want to publish in a EU-based journal while being affiliated with an institution that is associated with a government that is hostile towards the EU?

@FrauHitt science has played a role in keeping the lines of communication open between societies whose governments are hostile towards one another.

@I.M. it is hard argue with a undisclosed source of information. So in your communication with the journal you would either have to disclose it or not mention it at all.

@MaartenBuis, right, I was not going to mention this point in communication with the journal

I realize no affiliation was stated, and I don't know what a "CERN based" journal would be, but e.g. CERN's agreement with Russia has been terminated and there are quite firm rules in place on how Russian institute affiliated authors are to be listed (for ongoing publications). There is a custom in large HEP collaborations that authorship is retained for a set period after a person leaves for practical reasons, but outside these very narrow definitions, there are no "new" collaborations between CERN and Russia.
There might be other states this applies to.

What exactly is a "journal director"?

@Allure, [journal name] director was in the email, scientific director is the role on the website

@I.M. so he/she is an employee of the publisher?

@I.M. can you confirm that (e.g. by Googling for the person and checking their LinkedIn profile)? It could have a major impact on the answer.

@Allure, director is listed as journal staff, whether this implies financial relationships with publisher is unknown, editors are listed separately

Thank you, OP, for updating your situation.

First of all, sorry that your paper was rejected. This kind of thing literally happens to every academic but it does sting and it can be demoralizing.
It is extremely unlikely to have been a result of sanctions against your country. I serve as both a journal editor and a referee for dozens of journals. In math, the review process is single blind, meaning the referee knows the identities of the authors when they write a referee report. I have seen hundreds of papers from people in countries under sanctions, still have their work published in math journals in the sanctioning countries. Most editors probably have no idea there even are sanctions and no desire to be part of them.
I remember when I traveled to Iran in 2022. Despite the deep divisions between the US government and the Iranian government, what struck me what that the people were extremely welcoming and kind. Divisions between two governments does not imply bad feelings between the citizens of those governments. Even if your country is under sanctions, a large majority of researchers in your area (even in the sanctioning countries) would still be welcoming and supportive of you. I advise you to try to avoid the mindset that people are out to get you. That mindset will not make you happy long term.
That said, desk rejections of good papers do still happen. Publishing is very random. Most academics can tell stories of papers rejected by lower journals then published in better journals. It does get easier as you get more established. It is very unwise to accuse the editor of discrimination or unfair treatment. Believe me, they reject plenty of good papers even from people in their own countries. The best thing to do is to accept that article publishing is fairly random, build up an expectation of rejections so they don't sting as much, resubmit elsewhere, and move on. Antagonizing senior people in your field is unwise, regardless of what country you are from. You will probably be connected to this editor again sometime, either as an editor, or as a referee of one of your papers/grants, or through a conference, etc. There is no reason to go out of your way to create negative feelings. Relatedly, I would not go around telling others that you think your paper is being rejected because of your affiliation. Instead, submit it elsewhere and while you are waiting for a response, write another paper. Let your body of work speak for itself.

Thank you for your answer, I do agree with your take. This doesn't looks like a desk rejection (or is it?), it is coming from the director, how is not in my field, not the editor.

@I.M. I think what the answer is saying towards that question is that you can always find something suspicious somewhere. I yesterday met someone who was not nice, it surely must have to do with me wearing a leather jacket and that person being a militant vegan (totally made up story). Or maybe, that person had a bad day and it has nothing to do with me. We humans are notoriously bad at not taking something personally and at spotting randomness. Everything needs a cause, be it Zeus, a rigged game or discrimination. Whether it was or not, you'll never know, let it go.

@I.M. Sometimes when I receive a paper I think is borderline, I ask the lead editor / director and he decides whether or not to desk reject the paper. In those cases, he writes back to the author, and I'm grateful for that because I hate being the bad guy who has to tell someone "no". I would not read anything into the message coming from the director. If there's a paper management system that might even be the default. Or maybe the editor said "I just can't handle any more papers right now" and the director therefore rejected it.

@I.M. manuscripts are typically sent to editors most aligned with the topic. When their queue becomes too long, they can be picked up by other managing editors. Similarly, when a paper is deemed borderline or unsuitable by an editor, but they want a second opinion, they will send it up to their manager/director for an opinion/decision. Not everything is a conspiracy. Sometimes we just write not-so-great papers (everyone does it), but we aren't ready to accept that.

"It is extremely unlikely to have been a result of sanctions against your country." True in the case of Iran, not so much in the case of Russia. Well, not literally sanctions as such, but, unlike in the case of Iran, it is entirely possible that some people are rejecting submissions from Russian-affiliated authors for political reasons. I have seen people first-hand suggest that this should be done.

On the other hand, reading Marianne013's comment under the question seems to indicate that it may indeed have been a case of politics (if the assumptions being made are valid). It would still most likely not be a decision against the OP on a personal basis, but one of institutional politics.

In some cases, dealing with someone under sanctions may mean trouble or loss of funding. While the people themselves may not have a problem or may not care about the underlying issue, when it comes to the money...

@jcaron I don't think that's true. Can you give any example at all where an academic researcher has lost funding as a result of accepting for publication a paper submitted by someone living in a sanctioned country?

@DavidWhite even the (perceived) threat of a problem may be an issue for them, even if it doesn't come to fruition. Also some will not take the time to get into the details of whether they are or are not effectively at risk, and will err on the side of caution. But see the link to the Elsevier policy in Allure's post for an example of situation where they may flat out reject the submission (and we can see there that they did actually do their homework in great detail — many will just stop at "sanctions" and not go further).

@jcaron Did you read the Elsevier policy? "Under EU and UK law, distributing content and providing publishing-related services to authors are not prohibited under Geographic Sanctions." For US sanctions: "As a result, Elsevier can provide publishing services to authors in these countries, so long as the authors are: not designated as an SDN themselves" (i.e., not under personal sanctions) and are "publishing in their personal capacity." The policy precisely says that papers should NOT be rejected for the reason of sanctions on the government.

@DavidWhite "The IM exception, however, does not permit Elsevier to provide publishing services such as peer review, book editing, and marketing services to authors in these countries or regions" (...) "The Geographic Sanctions imposed on North Korea and Crimea, and recently on the DNR and LNR regions, do not yet include PGLs explicitly permitting publishing services.  Therefore, Elsevier currently cannot provide peer review, editing, and other services to authors in these locations, because it can only publish “journal/book-ready” works by prospective authors there"

@DavidWhite in your quote, "these countries" applies to Iran, Cuba, and Syria, but not to the other countries under sanctions.

Oh, I see, it was lower on the page. Still, they CAN publish journal-ready works from authors in those countries.

@DavidWhite ...without peer review (!). But again, it looks like they spent quite a bit of time finding out where exactly the line is. Others could not want to spend that time, err on the side of caution and just reject anything which may, possibly, raise issues.

Let's assume for the moment that a journal wanted to immediately reject your paper because of sanctions against your country. I have no doubt that in this case they would reject your paper, explaining that this is a result of sanctions. A la Dr Strangelove,

Of course, the whole point of [sanctions] is lost, if you keep [them] a secret!

There are other reasons why a journal is unlikely to do this in general, but I think you can be confident that they didn't do it to your paper in particular.

This is difficult to interpret from the outside. There are two basic possibilities:
If "journal director" is an employee of the publisher, then there's not much to say. The publisher is presumably prohibited by sanctions from publishing your paper (see example, example), which is "the end". Even if the editorial board choose to accept the paper, the publisher cannot publish it without risking government action, so they will overrule the editorial board. There is no point writing to the journal, unless you are looking to confirm that you are indeed prohibited from publishing with them.
If "journal director" is a member of the editorial board, then this is a desk rejection, probably for quality reasons. Editorial board members generally do not care about your affiliation, and likely consider doing so highly unethical (see David Ketcheson's answer here). If you're going to dispute a desk rejection from EBMs, you need academic reasons.
Note some of the things you write about - fast rejection, relevant publications and especially previous rejection history - are meaningless because the first simply implies that they had time to consider the manuscript today (some editorial board members are genuinely able to do this), the second implies that the rejection was for reasons other than scope, and the last they likely don't even know about (it's not public knowledge).

Try another journal and move on.

Welcome to Academia.SE. For future, please note that we usually require more substantial answers than this (i.e., why do you recommend this course of action?). Remember that many of our site visitors do not speak English natively and are not so familiar with academia, so "implied" answers are less useful than very explicit answers.


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I printed my PhD thesis and one of the image graphics came out as a black square and I sent copies yesterday to the reviewrs
I don't understand how this happened I sent the printing service a pdf. And in the pdf the image is completely normal.
And two other graphics lost their labels. I don't know how this happened.
Will this be looked down upon?

Is it a png with a transparent background? The same thing happened to me once with that type of image (turning into a black square when printed).

@astronat I don't know what type of file it is, because one is a screenshot and the other ones are graphic plots I made in Origin just like the rest of the graphs in my thesis, only these two have lost their labels.

This is unclear because print versions are unlikely to be viewed by anyone.

@AnonymousPhysicist You think? I got an impression that physical copies are more preffered.

These things can happen with printing services. This is why you always get a test print, which you check thoroughly. You did get that, right? And you did check it, right? If so, then you probably have a good case against the printing service, to get them to print replacement copies free of charge.
But this does not help you right now. Yes, it will be an issue for the committee if several figures in your thesis are not legible. What you can do is to write an email to your committee members explaining the situation. Attach a pdf of your thesis - which you have double checked to be correct - and promise to send them replacement copies once they arrive.
And before you send the replacement copies, you make damn sure that all the graphics display as it should.

Yeah, I'll do that the next time. There is one figure that is just a black square and two figures that lost their labels. I have like 65 of them. I hope it won't be a big deal. Thanks for the advice!

I add that for practical purpose you can send just the pages where errors occurred. They can easily print them and insert them in the book. Most likely they will use a hard copy for reviewing, and as such it will be faster and easy. A kind of EC like in "professional" books. @marietiara

@Alchimista I managed to stop the recommended mail, luckily it didn't leave the lab yet. I will make new copies.


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Switch license between arxiv preprint and accepted manuscript for Elsevier publication
I want to submit a paper to Elsevier (yes, I know, evil me - there are specific reasons). Elsevier allows sharing preprints "anywhere at any time". Later, one is allowed to "update a preprint with the accepted manuscript", provided the accepted manuscript is under a CC-BY-NC-ND license. There is no discussion of which license the preprint should be under. (https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies/sharing)
My questions is this: is it 1) technically possible on arxiv, 2) legally valid and 3) reasonable to submit a preprint with a more permissible license - say, CC-BY - and then switch the license to CC-BY-NC-ND upon updating the preprint with the accepted manuscript?
Previous questions on similar topics include [1], [2], but they do not discuss this specific issue.

Generally speaking, a permissive license needs to be honored going forward. You can't take away rights you previously granted. Not an answer since IANAL.

And "ND" for a license for scientific work seems weird to me. How can you claim to prevent extensions of a scientific work? Mickey Mouse, fine. Mathematics, not fine.

@Buffy Hmm... but I am not really taking away any rights, am I? The preprint would still be available under CC-BY; it's only the accepted version that would be under the more restrictive license. Sorry if that doesn't make sense at all, I find this whole topic spectacularly confusing.

You said "update" which seems to imply "replace". IANAL, but it seems wise to me to retain rights until you get published, since some publishers are fussy about it. And, moreover, I don't use arXiv myself (retired) so don't know the ins and outs there.

@Buffy Concerning the "ND": obviously totally not an expert, but the CC-BY-NC-ND license seems to be somewhat standard with publishers. PNAS, IOP, OUP all have it. One explanation I found was this: "What does CC BY allow that CC BY-ND does not? Allowing derivative works, as CC BY does, opens up new ways of representing scholarly articles through text-mining and visualization techniques." I guess "intellectual derivatives" like future articles building on a paper do not count as "derivatives", whereas, e.g., a modified reproduction of a figure would.

I don't know the answer to your question, but looking at the "Quick Definitions" section in your Elsevier link suggests that the existing arXiv version is a "Preprint" and the one you update after review would be an "Accepted Manuscript", so Elsevier will probably be fine with what you propose. Whether it would comply with the license of the existing version is an interesting question.

I see, sorry for the confusion. On arxiv, previous versions always stay available. So the earlier preprint would still be accessible.

@GoodDeeds, it might be wise to ask Elsevier. I think they are a bit fussy.

Hmmm, answers here aren't normally an emergent property of comments.

I contacted Elsevier with this question a few days ago, but they have not yet replied. I also just asked a specific question on law.SX concerning the "license downgrading", see here: https://law.stackexchange.com/q/67771/34162

@Buffy Here's an answer on law.SX concerning the non-derivative question. Apparently, the license really forbids the usual way of working with an article, but copyright law may allow it nevertheless as "fair use": https://law.stackexchange.com/q/51333/34162.

@jhin I am not an expert, but I don't think you, the author, are bound by the terms of the license, since you retain the copyright when uploading on arXiv. It is arXiv and people who download it from there who would have to follow its terms.

@Buffy The ND part is about the work itself, not the ideas in it. An example of a derivative work might be taking the paper and editing the grammar and then posting this to your "Better Papers By Buffy" website. Without the -ND, someone could do this to your paper, even if they end up changing the meaning, as long as they acknowledge the authors and source of the original version.

@BryanKrause, that makes sense, but I think the actual situation is different: https://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/. In particular "NoDerivatives — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material.". But as the OP says in a comment, taking that literally would "break" fair use.

@Buffy I interpret it a bit differently, though the result is the same...basically, the license doesn't apply and can't apply to anything that isn't copyrightable. So, for example, a mathematical theorem that someone might build on isn't something you can copyright. You can copyright the manuscript that describes it, sure, but not the theorem itself, nor the conceptual ideas behind a proof. So the ND part just doesn't apply to the academic process on building on prior work at all, because the parts of prior work that academics build on are not subject to copyright.

@BryanKrause, bingo. Thanks.

(Disclaimer: IANAL. Well, in the UK, lawyer isn't a regulated profession, only solicitor and barrister are, so I can claim I'm a lawyer all I want.)
Short answer: You can do whatever you want with later versions of the manuscript, but previous versions will stay with the licence you gave them.
This is seen a lot with open-source computer programs. To change the licence they need to contact all of the people responsible for the code, to request the change in licence. In your case, there is only one person to ask---you---and you presumably agree. You are the copyright holder, so you can decide.
So later versions of the article can be under a more restrictive licence, or in the case of the typeset versions of the article with the journal's markup, no CC licence at all. But v1 that you posted on the arXiv will forever be CC-BY. Notice that the descriptions on the arXiv website talk about reusers. Since you are not assigning copyright to someone else, you still hold the copyright, you just allow (depending on licence) others to do stuff with your work.
I personally always choose arXiv perpetual non-exclusive licence at the v1 stage, to keep my options open, as it's easier to free a paper than to enclose it.

Interesting. So you choose the arXiv perpetual non-exclusive license and then, later on, switch to a different license for that very same document? That might actually be a good idea. This way I can wait to see what Elsevier makes me sign and then, later on, switch to a more permissive license for the preprint, if there's nothing that prevents me from doing so.

@jhin I rarely need to switch, to be honest. It's not often that journals require a different licence, you can licence the same work differently to the arXiv and the journal, and in mathematics there's not much to gain for others from going from standard copyright terms and CC-BY.

Ah right, for pure maths I can imagine it's not super relevant. I'm mostly concerned about the figures in the paper, which I would like people to be able to reuse freely. (Especially after I recently contacted several journals for permissions to reuse figures, and most did not even respond...)

I've not needed to worry about this, true. Images could be released into the public domain separately from the rest of the paper, and that might even be a good idea. Some journals are a bit snippy about the text being CCed, but images are generally not that much of an issue, because often the author does not hold the copyright for them anyway.


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Will journals that do not explicitly require it reject an author contribution statement?
CRediT statements and other author contribution statements are becoming increasingly common ([1], [2]), but are not required by all journals. To prevent authorship disputes and foster transparency, it might be a good idea to include such a statement nevertheless. Hence my question: will a journal that does not explicitly require a contribution statement still accept and publish it if I add one voluntarily? Or will they remove it from the paper to ensure uniform style across their journal?
(Of course, one can simply try this with every journal and see what happens, but sorting out all the contributions in a long paper with many authors might involve significant work and discussions. So one would likely only want to do this if chances are high that the statement is actually published in the end.)

No one here can answer for all journals. But I doubt that a journal would just remove it without agreement.

There are journals that explicitly make such statements optional.


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Applying for tenure track position in mechanical engineering with lack of relevant coursework experience?
My undergrad and masters degree was in materials engineering. All my coursework and lab experience is in materials engineering. During my PhD, I had taken just two courses which did not directly help with my PhD research. My undergrad and masters courses were also not aligned with my PhD research.
My PhD thesis was on using finite element analysis and smoothed particle hydrodynamics to study mechanical damage under extreme conditions. As for credentials: I have 5 publications in applied journals (IF~4).
Now, I was applying for tenure track positions in mechanical engineering department where they want my academic transcripts to be submitted.
My question is in two parts:

How do I justify my ability to teach and contribute to the mechanical engineering department if my degree and coursework experience was not in that field? My research is however in that field.
Since my colleagues in the department would be from mechanical engineering background with dedicated coursework experience, would my application be considered seriously for a position in the department? I have been asked to submit my transcripts with my application package. They would know that I lack the coursework.

I understand that noone have been in my peculiar position before. Usually people take necessary courses during their PhD. I got away with not taking them as I could self learn the required basics and was able to apply them successfully to my research work. However that doesn't make me technically thorough and strong in the topics.
Hoping for some insights on how to go about with my faculty position applications in my case.

Many mechanical engineering departments have various bits of materials science in them. I bet they teach properties of materials, as well as have finite element courses.

This is not necessarily a big problem, or an unusual one. Not every professor in a department is expected to be able to teach every course. I trained as a physicist, but I'm now in a nuclear engineering department.
As part of your application, you may be asked to write a teaching statement. In this, you should identify i) a few existing courses within the department which you can teach and ii) some brief ideas for new courses you could teach. These new courses could easily be tailored to your expertise. It is also entirely possible to learn new material and to teach it.


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Submission requirements for tables and figures in separate files
I am considering a submission to The European Journal of Finance. The manuscript is written in LaTeX and according to the Guide for Authors some changes have to be made. Yet, the instructions do not provide enough detail for what needs to be done. I am not sure what is the best way to handle the following requirements:
(1) Tables: Each table should be uploaded as a separate file. They must be consecutively numbered and should have a brief informative title. Tables should be understandable without reference to the text. Explanatory footnotes should be brief, placed beneath the table and indicated by lower case letters.
Currently, all tables are in the main manuscript within \begin{table}...\end{table} blocks.
Questions:

How should these tables be moved to other "secondary" files, and what should be the file extensions?
How can I keep my references (with \ref(..)) to tables in the main manuscript after moving the tables to separate files?
Should the actual tables also appear in the final manuscript's pdf? If yes, how is this achieved.
Should the secondary files also be able to compile on their own and produce pdfs? If yes, how is this achieved?

(2) Figures: All graphs, charts and illustrations of any kind must be submitted one to a page. They must be consecutively numbered and should have a brief informative title. Figures should be understandable without reference to the text.
Questions:

If external files are provided as .eps, do they also need to appear in the main manuscript (and where)?
Do I need to embed the figures in separate tex files?

I think you should contact the journal for clarification.  My best guess at the tables is that you would move their source to a separate .tex file which you then \input{}. In that case references don't have to change, and the separate files would not be individually compilable.  But it is not really clear from their instructions; they may be thinking of tables generated with other software and included as eps/pdf like graphics.

Often journals are not so strict about format details for the initial submission, provided that you upload something that their software can successfully compile into output that the referees can read. The details become more important after the paper is accepted, when you need to provide files that the production staff can use to typeset the actual journal pages.

So if it's too much trouble to clarify the exact details for now, you could just try and fudge it. Worst case is that they bounce it back and ask you to fix it before they will review it.  They wouldn't reject your paper solely for not being in the correct source format.  And if their requirements are this complicated, it's a fair bet that a lot of other authors get it wrong too.

Not my field, but often the requirement to have tables in separate files does not apply to LaTeX submissions. And reading under "Files" in the instructions here it seems likely it is the case for this journal as well: "1) Editable Files. Submitted files must be editable; that is they should be WORD or LaTeX files and not PDF files. 2) Figures and Tables. Figures and tables should not be embedded in Word documents." Note how the last sentence only mentions Word.

This is entirely between you and the journal. If the submission requirements are not spelled out sufficiently clearly you must contact the journal before submitting.
When you contact them I'd suggest to ask whether it's okay to just upload the compiled pdf for the review purpose. Any typesetting issues can in principle be settled at a later stage later. Some journals are moving explicitly in that direction to make the submission and reviewing process less onerous for authors. It's worth asking! Although the reality is that many journals only care about their workflow and discount additional work for the authors entirely.


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Writing a six-year individual (group leader) research proposal (in machine learning)
I am planning to apply for a young research group leader grant. (Specifically: the DFG Emmy Noether program.) This is for a six-year funding period, including funding for myself as a group leader and one or several Ph.D. students. The key part of the application is, of course, the research proposal, which is limited to 17 pages in length including background, objective, research plan and methods, and references.
Which brings me to my question: how on earth do you write a research plan for six years in a rapidly evolving theoretical field that is both interestingly ambitious and sufficiently concrete and grounded in reality?
Some more (possibly unnecessary) details:
I work in (a subfield of) machine learning, which may be a little bit of a special case due to the current speed of developments. I am quite certain that nobody could have usefully predicted what would be the topics and methods of current research interest six years ago. Heck, I'd like to claim that nobody could have predicted reliably what would be useful for a grad student to work on right now even 2 years ago.
Now, of course, I have some ideas for what would be useful and interesting to work on over maybe the next 2 years. With some stretch, I could probably work out an attractive, concrete, and reasonably grounded-in-reality proposal for the next three years and 2-3 full-time researchers. But six years? How do people deal with this? Are there useful strategies to follow? I could easily write down a long list of problems of interest that I'd like to work on, but there is no way I can foresee what will turn out to be the most useful methods to use for solving those? I assume reviewers will want to see a bit more than "this is an important problem that I plan to spend the last three years of the grant working on"... and of course, for a grant that covers more than a dozen full-time researcher-years, you also have to promise quite a lot.

As a fellow ML scientist, I would point out that there are many topics that are open problems for a long time, and still are even in the time of LLMs, like uncertainty, out of distribution detection/generalization, ethics, model biases, incorrect predictions, generalization, etc. These have been open problems for decades, so if you propose something in these lines, it easy to plan for 6 years.

@Snoopy Thanks for the comment, that is certainly true! My plans were also going in that direction, but still... I worked a bit on e.g. ood detection, and even there it seems like the field is developing quickly enough that (while certainly not solved!) any sufficiently specific plans you made 3 years ago are likely moot by now. Wouldn't you agree? I mean, there are also thousands of other ML researchers working on the exact same topic at the same time; you would hope that they would solve some problems...

Like I wrote, I find it easy to come up with interesting open problems to work on, but detailing specifically how I'm going to work on them over such a long time frame seems wild to me.

I've nothing specifically ML to offer. As a general strategy for a six year proposal I'd recommend writing about several current ideas you've already started on, with hopes/plans to have publishable work in the next year or two(*), then thoughts/speculations on how you might continue depending on how those results turn out. I doubt that the grantors actually expect a detailed six year plan.
(*) You might even propose to do work you have already (mostly) done but not yet published. That would guarantee a good interim report to the granting authority.


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Should I mention in my SOP for PhD that I was accepted for an MS in the same university earlier?
I was accepted into an MS program at Stanford university two years ago and although it was my dream university, I decided to forgo it in favour of a fully funded MS in an Erasmus Mundus program simply because I could not afford the former. I will soon be applying for PhD again and was wondering whether I should mention that I was accepted into the MS program earlier. Will that help or harm my application in any way? Also, any suggestions on how to stand out among the large pool of applicants vying for a few spots?

Are you applying to the same university (Stanford) for a PhD? Have you already completed your fully funded MS?

It is probably irrelevant and won't be determinative. There might be some small effect provided that you make the first cut by showing your overall suitability for the program.
I can't see anyone using it against you under the circumstances and, on the other hand, you are applying for something different and your situation has changed via the other program.
Write the best application you can and mention it or not. Or save it as a talking point if you get invited to an interview.
What the applications committee are looking for is evidence that you will almost certainly be a success in the program. There can be lots of ways to demonstrate that, but it goes beyond GPA and test scores. What have you done. What can you say about your background, outlook, and goals that is interesting in your SOP?


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Incorporating results of supervised student theses in own thesis
During my PhD thesis, I supervised the creation of Bachelor's and Master's theses. The official supervisor was always my own PhD supervisor (since I am officially not yet allowed to do university-level teaching on my own), but in practice I did almost all of the supervision. Topic and technical approach were usually my ideas (and related to my own thesis topic) and I coached students closely during implementation, analysis and writing. These were research-level theses, so the students simply lacked prior knowledge and experience to come up with really useful conceptual contributions.
I am now in the process of writing up my own thesis. What is the correct way to incorporate these results - which have already been written about in student theses but not yet published - in my own thesis? Essentially, all of the relevant technical details were proposed by me, so I really don't feel like it would be fraudulent to include these in my thesis. However, I must, of course, give credit to the students. Would it be fine if I simply add an acknowledgement in the corresponding section of my thesis and cite the student's thesis? I for sure don't want to be accused of plagiarism in the future for doing this.
I'm in an engineering field at a German university, if that matters.

I suggest that you treat them like you would any  other research papers. Cite them and quote sparingly and explicitly. You might save yourself a lot of grief.

Be explicit.
Write very carefully what ideas were yours, which experiments were yours and which were not.
So for exapmle:

I observed the results of the experiment, from which I hypothesised that X might be true. Fooing that bars would reveal if this was true. Ms Jane Undergrad fooed 8 bars, revealing an expessed of buzzed widgets in some conditions (Figure Y). In a parrallel approach, 8 nature wotisits were collected and the nozzle lengths measured (experiment conducted by Mr. Bob PGT Masters). I analysed this data using the SuperWiz alogrithm and concluded that the hypothesis was true.

The nature of collaborative research is that there are always going to be those sorts of prolems whatever you do, and it is the job of the viva examiners/defense committee to worm out if it is reasonable that the candidate thought of the things for themselves. My work comes from a field where pretty much everything is collaborative, and there is really no such thing as "your" ideas and "my" ideas.