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1500 questions
95
votes
18 answers

How should a faculty deal with the problem of Artificial Intelligence (AI) generated texts?

For many years one of the main problems for academic essays and BA/MA/PhD theses was plagiarism. However with the recent advent of artificial intelligence (AI) that can write high quality texts (e.g. ChatGPT) a fresh concern has risen: was a text…
lordy
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12 answers

Why are many obviously pointless papers published, or worse studied?

In the field I specialize in (I'm currently a moderator of crypto-SE), I see many obviously pointless papers published, often in publications where that costs money. I imagine that's the same in many fields. Why are such papers published, or worse,…
fgrieu
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95
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8 answers

How do I talk about my abusive former advisor if people ask?

I was just at a conference where I met another grad student who - upon learning about my specialization and university affiliation - excitedly asked me if I knew Dr. -- and if he was my advisor (she's a fan). Deer in the headlights moment for me, as…
Ace
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95
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15 answers

Should I report a PhD student’s incompetence to their supervisor?

I had a short exchange of mails with a PhD student who wished to ask some questions about a paper of mine, which was troublesome in many respects: The student had a blatant lack of basic knowledge and techniques of their field. (Imagine a computer…
Wrzlprmft
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94
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6 answers

My supervisor doesn't believe in depression

This is perhaps less a question and more of a cautionary tale, but I've seen a few people asking how best to talk to their supervisor about mental health and I wanted to share my experience with this and perhaps get some advice for if I find myself…
K.Grayson
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94
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8 answers

Where do bad papers go to die?

After a paper is rejected several times by several journals it begins to become clear that the research was off the mark no matter how much editing, fixing, and revisions are done. Therefore, What do scholars do with unpublishable papers? Do they…
Darrin Thomas
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94
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13 answers

Is it OK to refuse to cite paywalled papers?

I wonder how reviewers would react if authors of a submitted paper refuse to cite paywalled papers. Is it a valid reason to refuse citing some papers? I am mostly interested in the field of computer science, and English-speaking venues.
Franck Dernoncourt
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94
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7 answers

Use of first person in a PhD Thesis

Is there a non written rule to which person to use in the PhD thesis, 5 years of using "We" in the papers have brought me to the innate necessity to do it every time I describe something. Recently, though, one of my lab-mates told me that I should…
Leon palafox
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94
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9 answers

PhD student, issued contract at year 3 which will sign over intellectual property. Is it legal?

I'm EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Science Research Council, the biggest UK funding source in the sciences and engineering) funded. Several months into my PhD an industrial sponsor came along. In exchange for additional funds they wanted me and the…
user2350366
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9 answers

Walk up and talk to random people at academic conferences - is that appropriate?

As a graduate student, I am relatively new to my community. From my point of view, the best approach to get to know new people is randomly walking around and start conversations (with anyone, no matter what age or known/unknown). But is that…
user2212461
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94
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12 answers

Two-thirds of my class colluded. Should I report them to the academic offences committee?

I teach a module in an electrical engineering MSc programme in the UK for which the students are given a technical project that carries 25% of the total marks. The project is a group assignment and the students work in teams of 3-4 members. This…
John McSimon
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94
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10 answers

What makes academic failure different from failure in another career?

It is my understanding that academia as a nebulous whole has its own culture and speaks its own language that makes it a very different environment to work in compared to other so-called "industry" jobs. Indeed, my own supervisor once referred to a…
astronat supports the strike
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93
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4 answers

How do I reference the Python programming language in a thesis or a paper?

I'm writing a scientific article and a dissertation in biology, for which I used Python for simulations. Some people in our department, especially the "non-computer-people", don't know what Python is, so I want to reference something helpful.…
Eekhoorn
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93
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22 answers

What is the point of a lecture when you have a textbook?

I never really understood the point of having a course with lectures when the course has a textbook. Sometimes the subject is so high-level or specialized or so modern that the contents are changing rapidly that there is no textbook (for example at…
math_lover
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3 answers

Editor asks for π to be written in roman

My paper is accepted at MNRAS and in the stage of editing. There is a section where I wrote an equation using the Greek letter π as to indicate the mathematical constant π. The editor wrote: Author: When used to mean the numerical value 3.14, the…
Antonio Ragagnin
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