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1500 questions
44
votes
11 answers

Is it fair to give zeros to students who missed early assignments because they added the class late?

Last semester, I was teaching a class where there is a small assignment (~2% of the total course assessment) that students need to submit every week. Unfortunately, some of the students joined the class late, due to add/drop forms that needed to be…
I Like to Code
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11 answers

Reasons for an academic to need administrator rights on work computer

Questions related to this in a not specifically academic setting have been asked elsewhere, notably Should developers have administrator permissions on their PC? and Should dev be admin on their computer? My question relates to my job as an academic…
dothyphendot
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5 answers

Am I obligated to continue to work on a paper I contributed significantly to?

As an undergraduate, I did some group research a little over a year ago which is now being compiled into a paper. My advisor at the time is contacting us to request feedback and help writing it. I am especially important to the effort, because I am…
user61117
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7 answers

Why does a mathematics department want student evaluations of a famous professor?

If a professor is very famous for his research and belongs to the most prestigious academies of science for his lifetime work, I find it unusual that the math department would ask us to evaluate him. We did so anyway and submitted the evaluations…
user58865
44
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3 answers

OK to ask a professor at my institution with whom I have no previous relationship some questions relating to hobby-project?

I go to community college so our professors aren't busy with lab research. They're still busy people though and I wish to respect that. I'm pretty much just working through some neuroscience textbooks for the sheer heck of it, but I often get stuck.…
Flurpy
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8 answers

Is it fair that a PhD student should be allowed to review a research paper?

I really can't understand why an inexperienced PhD student should be allowed to review a research article written by researchers of considerably more experience and expertise. How do journals/editors select referees for submissions?
John_dydx
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2 answers

Why do academic journals usually have continuous page numbering?

In a normal magazines, page numbers restart counting from 1 at every issue. Most academic journals, however, count continuously, perhaps per year or per quarter, leading to articles covering pages 13199–13255 or similar folly. Why is this so? When…
gerrit
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5 answers

Is it ethical to give (paid) private tutorials for a student in a module I am TA'ing?

My TAing mostly involves helping students working on their programming assignments during classes. A student asked me to give him private, paid, tutorials for the module, being concerned that all 'usual' resources to which he has access for free…
Three Diag
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12 answers

PhD student hiring a LaTeX expert to typeset thesis?

I am close to finishing my PhD. Some of my peers use LaTeX. Obviously, it looks much better than Word and alike. As I wrote a few papers that go into my final thesis, I however have numerous formats depending on the journal in question. I would like…
Rachel
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7 answers

How to improve graduate student recruitment at a small, good, but non-elite department?

I am a mathematics professor in a small, good but non-elite department in the US. Several of my colleagues and I would like to work to improve our recruitment of strong prospective Ph.D. students. We do not really know how to go about this most…
Anonymous
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Asking to not present in a conference on Saturday

I am about to submit a paper to a conference. I just found out that the conference falls in Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Since I am an observant Jew, I don't want to present on Saturday. What are my options? I thought to submit the…
Erel Segal-Halevi
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5 answers

What tools make it easy to maintain (or avoid!) the N versions of your CV?

Academics need various forms of their CV, depending on what purpose it's being used for. In my case, here are reasons I've had to re-format or have a different version of my CV: promotion and tenure, research proposals (each grant program requires…
Fuhrmanator
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6 answers

What should you do if a co-author has an unethical affiliation?

A person I know was in the process of publishing her first manuscript when her supervisor told her to add his newly acquired affiliation from a university in Saudi Arabia to his name. The Saudi Arabian university hired this Supervisor as guest…
Saurabh
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5 answers

What should I do if someone is claiming my research on ResearchGate?

I've got a case where 90% of my academic publications are being claimed by a professor at another university with the same name on ResearchGate. I've sent several email requests both direct and through ResearchGate messaging to ask him to remove…
bfschott
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1 answer

How do I effectively solicit a strong letter of recommendation from a professor?

I have been asked to write many letters of recommendation over many years. In some cases, the requesters have made this task easy and enjoyable, and others, less so. I'd like to offer some guidelines that work for me, and solicit others.
Scott Seidman
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