Academia Stack Exchange
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1500 questions
79
votes
3 answers

Why does arxiv.org not assign DOIs?

I know that arXiv have their own identifier system, but considering how widely adopted DOI is, why do they not use DOI perhaps as a supplement to their own identifier?
Thomas Arildsen
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79
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5 answers

What does it mean if a professor asks you to draft his reference letter for you?

This question is, honestly speaking, probably somewhat opinion-based, but I still want to give a shot. A professor acceded to my invitation of writing a reference letter for me. Nevertheless, unlike the other professors who also acceded to write a…
Yes
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79
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7 answers

Can I be a good scientist if I only work in working hours?

I am doing postdoc in developmental biology. Recently I started to leave work at the lab, meaning that I don't work at home anymore. Before I spent many hours at night (at home) analyzing my data; now I spent that time on my side project not related…
Len Lab
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79
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20 answers

Is it acceptable to have a research paper with no references?

I (an undergrad) and 2 other profs from my department have been working on something and we were thinking of submitting our work to a conference (a pretty well known one) this week. The fact is there is no related work that has been done on the…
anon. computer scientist
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79
votes
10 answers

How to recruit PhD students when industry pays so much more?

I'll be starting as a tenure-track professor in a few months where I'll be doing research on software developer tools. I have seen that it is extremely difficult to recruit good PhD students in this topic area (even at elite schools), since most of…
Austin Henley
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79
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13 answers

How to get work done whilst feeling crippling shame?

In academic work, when we are writing or have written a paper for example, there might be strong feelings of shame about the work done or to be done. These feelings can get in the way of finishing or revising the paper, or sending it to colleagues.…
AnonymousScholar
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79
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15 answers

Why are academics not paid royalties on published research papers in IEEE, ACM etc.?

I understand that academics are not paid a single dime on their publications. In my field (computer science), IEEE, ACM, Springer, Elsevier are some known journals/publications and none of them pay authors any royalties but they charge the readers a…
learnerX
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79
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10 answers

How to reward students for learning from mistakes without penalizing those who didn't make mistakes in the first place?

We're thinking of implementing a policy where if a student asks a question/makes a mistake in a lab, they are required to write down what that question/mistake was and how it was resolved. These "lab notebooks" (for want of a better word) will be…
Michael Stachowsky
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79
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11 answers

Is the phrase "thanks, but no thanks" appropriate in an email sent to a supervisor?

I recently have had a discussion about my friend's tone in his email. His supervisor asked him whether he wants to attend a summer school in May. He wanted to thank him for his invitation and also wanted to keep the mail short. As a result, that is…
padawan
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78
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6 answers

Is it ethical to use a recommendation letter from a deceased professor?

She was a really nice professor and she wrote me a good recommendation letter that resulted in a lot of good results with applications. Recently, this professor died from brain cancer, which was a fast and shocking death for me. Tomorrow is the…
SSimon
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78
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1 answer

How to deal with an author who worked on an analysis that never made it into the paper?

I have come across the following situation a couple of times: After an experiment has been designed and data collected, the first author of the paper wants to ascertain whether a special analysis would work. So he asks a colleague to help/do this…
elisa
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78
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17 answers

Is it appropriate to mention that authors refused to provide code samples when asked?

I work in a sub field of computer science. There was a recent paper (2020) that was published in a reputable conference that claimed to achieve state of the art performance on a specific data set. This data set is a hot dataset, and my research…
user3508551
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78
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6 answers

Is it okay to mention we're citing an article only because a reviewer told us to?

In a recent review, one reviewer said we must rework the paper in light of two other papers. One paper was a highly valuable suggestion, and we've enthusiastically taken it on board. However, the second paper seems to be an ultra-specific paper…
Rebecca J. Stones
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78
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11 answers

Should professors pay undergraduate students doing research in their labs?

I have some undergraduate students doing research in my lab, and I pay them by the hours. I've observed that the students usually do what I tell them and don't go beyond that (as we usually expect from research) even though I encourage them to do…
Tim
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8 answers

How to explain a bad grade to a delusional student?

There is a student who attended a seminar where they were supposed to study an assigned research paper and deliver a presentation to the class. Their presentation was very low quality. Four (!) seminar tutors, from post-doc to associate professor…
walkmanyi
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