Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with academic

I am an author; now how do I convince others of that fact?

googly — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 08:46:49 -0800

How do I best reflect my contribution to a multi-authored academic paper? I am a co-author on an academic paper in the social sciences that has a total of six authors. One author (I'll call him "Dave") and I have done the vast bulk of the writing and revising of the manuscript. This is agreed upon by all, as is the fact that Dave should be first author. The question is, how can we best reflect my contribution in the order of authors? The two common possibilities are second or last authorship, e.g.:

- Dave, Me, W, X, Y, Z, "Title." [This signifies my second authorship, but doesn't really distinguish me from anyone else].

- Dave, W, X, Y, Z, Me, "Title." [This distinguishes me, but my impression is that last author is often interpreted as a ceremonial role for a PI, and can actually imply that the person didn't contribute anything substantive at all].

I normally don't like to nit-pick about this kind of stuff, and honestly feel a bit silly even asking the question. Consultations with colleagues and Dr. Wiki haven't helped. But this is my first multiply co-authored paper, it will be placed in a very high-profile journal, and I want people to recognize that the ideas and analysis are mine and Dave's. My specific questions:

- Would second or last authorship better reflect the fact that Dave and I are the two primary authors of the article?

- We already specify the extent of my and Dave's roles in the authorship statement, but does anybody actually read these?

Brand me

b33j — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:37:49 -0800

What is that I'm doing? Tag my business. I’ve been working freelance for a couple of years while I finished my degree doing a variety of tasks for academics (4 or 5) who work in the field of Education. Some of the things I’ve done have been to create logos for various groups, diagrams and illustrations for lesson plans and books, some photography,animations, presentations, formatting of material for publishing, transcription, managing an international journal and formatting it, creating databases and entering all the data, as well as analysing it (lightly – I’m no expert in statistics) and producing all graphs and reports.

Now that I’ve finished my degree, I want to increase my clientele. I think I can make a go of this because I turned over around $30K at about 14 hours a week. I have a domain which is my own name and the word design. I hope to launch my website (with a blog -thanks metafilter for earlier advice) in January. I’m working on a design for my business card. My current clients will probably forward my details onto their mailing groups if I ask them – I just need one last thing. What do I do and what’s a good tag line? I would have thought “academic support” except that that phrase tends to mean helping students to survive university. I tested the tagline “the whole package” on one of my current clients, and she was aghast, but couldn’t exactly say why.

So, to summarise my business card, for example...

b33jdesign
~~Academic Support~~ (?)
~~The whole package~~ (?)
w: www.b33jdesign.com
e: jr@b33jdesign.com
p: xxx xxxx xxx

Related

Academic novels from student perspective

alicat — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 19:21:46 -0800

I'm looking for academic novels from the student's perspective (apparently this is a subgenre of campus novels called varsity novels). Bonus for books considered "young adult." Ideally, I want books like Tam Lin by Pamela Dean: fiction set at a university, narrated by a student, written for an adolescent audience.

But I'll also take adult fiction such as Donna Tartt's The Secret History. Novels that include students among other point-of-view characters, such as Jane Smiley's Moo, are also fair game.

Already on the list:

YA
Ivy League novels by Diana Peterfreund
Light Years by Tammar Stein

Adult
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
I am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe
On Beauty by Zadie Smith
Waking the Moon by Elizabeth Hand
Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd
Joe College by Tom Perotta
The Magicians by Lev Grossman

I'll take any genre: literary, mystery, SF/fantasy ... Thanks!

Author, Date, ISBN?

strixus — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 04:40:15 -0800

A question for those who know far more than I do about citation formats: why do none of them include ISBN numbers? So, in working on a large project, and fighting with EndNote the entire time, I found the fastest way to keep track of books, especially when using multiple editions, was to reference them by ISBN-10 (13 works well too, but 10 seemed easier) numbers. EndNote's database will record these, happily, for all works that take them.

But then I got to thinking (rather than writing, like I should have been) - why do no modern citation formats use ISBN for referencing texts that have them? I understand they wouldn't be useful for items without ISBN numbers, but those require different citation formats anyway. Why not exclude publisher, city, and year, in favor of an ISBN? Or along side one?

So, I suppose what I am asking is the following: why ISBN's are not used as a reference point for citation in modern citation formats?

At conference interview help for TT faculty?

k8t — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 07:37:34 -0800

AcademicFilter: tips/hints for at-conference interviews for TT faculty positions. I already asked the general job search question and now I've made it to the next level: conference meet'n'greets/informal interviews. (woo).

Specific help that I need:
- What are good questions to ask of the interviewer? (I have "how will this position fit in with the department as a whole? and "Where do you see the department in 5/10 years?")

- How much "stalking" is required? If the search chair is outside of my area, will skimming through a few abstracts be sufficient to chat about his/her work? Also, skimming through his/her CV will help right? ("Oh yes, you were at Purdue a few years back, working with Bob...") And yes, I've already asked faculty at my department for help with specific people.

- Wear a suit or opt for suit pants/skirt with a sweater?

- I don't normally wear makeup (allergy) but I feel like I should possibly for this. Opinions?

- Should I not mention my partner and child? What if they ask about partner/child/childbearing plans? How do I skirt around that issue?

- Any other "trick" questions to look out for?

- I have a padfolio with a *color* print out of my dissertation model, my CV, a syllabus for a class, and possibly some hypotheses from my diss. If this weekend goes well I may even have some initial results from data analysis. Anything that I should add to this padfolio?

And general advice would be greatly appreciated!

Help me make myself do my work

millipede — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 07:18:12 -0800

I am in graduate school after taking a few years off, and in those few years it seems I have lost the ability to pay attention to anything. Please help me focus. I just started my graduate program (for City and Regional Planning) in September. I mostly love it. I am not bored by the subject matter, for the most part, and after having flailed about for a few years after college, I finally know that this is what I want to do.

However, I am suffering. I have never been a very good listener in classes. I'm a big doodler of silly faces and writer of my name in fancy fonts. I pay attention somewhat, but tend to zone out when presented with mainly auditory information and when I am not being directly engaged. This has been the case for most of my life--and no, I was never diagnosed with ADD or anything--but it was never that big of a problem, because I did well in school anyway by virtue of being able to concentrate well on the reading and perform well on papers and exams. It used to be that if I were actively doing something, I could focus very well, but if I were a passive listener, I'd zone out.

Things have changed, though. I'm not sure if it's because I took a few years off and I no longer remember how to be a student, or if it's because I have aged beyond some mythical ideal-student-age-window and my brain is duller than it used to be (I am not that old. I am 28), but now, I can barely even make myself focus on my copious amounts of reading. When I had a paper due as an undergrad, I used to be able to sit there with all my research and just write it in one fell swoop. Yesterday, I tried to do that, and I couldn't get beyond four pages and I kept losing my point.

I guess I just don't understand why I used to be able to concentrate on my schoolwork and now I have a very hard time doing so. This is especially panic-inducing because I'm paying for this myself.

Things I have tried:
-coffee
-lots of coffee (coffee helps at first)
-working away from my apartment (but new environments seem to make my mind wander more--in the library, every tiny sound distracts me, whereas in my apartment, I can concentrate a little better)
-working in my apartment and turning the internet off (this helps for a little while, but eventually I will go clip my toenails or decide to clean the bathroom)
-having a study babysitter (I often do work in the company of my sir, who is in the same program. Sometimes this helps--mostly with reading-based work that we are both doing--and sometimes it distracts further).
-small increments of study time (nothing gets done and I count down until there is a break)
-large increments of study time (daunting--more gets done, but it is hard to start).

I'm worried that, because I spent four years essentially goofing off mentally, having a job that did not require any critical thinking, I have forgotten how to be smart.

So far I am doing well in school, insofar as one can do well halfway into a semester. I've gotten good grades on the small assignments we've had. But I look at my google calendar with all my upcoming work on it, and I panic and think that I'm never going to be able to make myself do it all and I'm going to fail and I never should have gone back to school in the first place. It's the spiral of doom.

Help.

Interviewing for a position providing ESL support to university students--help!

soviet sleepover — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 14:38:11 -0800

In a few days I'll be interviewing for a job providing academic support to university-level ESL students. Help me prepare! As far as I understand, the position entails attending classes with students as a non-participatory note-taker, then meeting with students after class to discuss any questions or concerns they have. I feel fairly well-attuned to this sort of thing--plus I've taught EFL to students with basic conversational skills, tutored both ESL and native speakers in academic writing at the high school and university levels, and lived/traveled abroad enough to empathize with the day-to-day struggles of living in a foreign language and culture. I don't have a TESOL certificate, but I do have an MFA in writing. I'm reasonably confident that, if I get the job, I'll do it well and enjoy it in the process.

The catch is that I'm kind of rusty at interviewing (and have only had one university-level job in the past). Also, for the past half-year I've been working outside my field (as a barista--the classic lousy post-MFA job). So I'm not quite sure how best to prepare. What kind of questions I should expect? What should I make a point to stress/downplay? Bonus: how should I dress (as a late-20s female in a liberal West Coast city).

I'd rather be the person getting the blood drawn...

rainygrl716 — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 19:14:43 -0800

How can I control my anxiety and nervousness when performing required venipunctures for my program? I hate drawing blood and experience isn't making it better! My program is awesome and I love it. It is such a great fit because I love science and lab work.

Unfortunately in order to graduate I have to leave the lab (boo) and go out on the front lines and draw blood. This causes me massive anxiety and it hasn't gone away with more experience.

A little background: before entering this program I considered becoming a phlebotomist so I took a course at my local community college. We had to perform many blood draws and my anxiety actually increased as time went on. I of course opted to not work as a phlebotomist since this anxiety was incredibly bad. This was years ago and my anxiety about drawing blood is still terrible.

Last week in my program I just finished a day of outpatient draws at the hospital. I couldn't sleep some nights because I was dreading performing this duty and even though I was complemented on my technique by the phlebotomist with me, I also got many comments that I was super nervous, couldn't stop shaking, etc and the poor patients noticed too which made me feel super bad because I don't want THEM to feel even more nervous.

I just don't know what I can do to help this. I honestly feel like it is a phobia-level amount of anxiety and I have to do a week long stint drawing blood in a few months. The thought of it makes me sick.

At the end of the day after performing the blood draws, I didn't feel any better and I ended up having to take a Xanax when I got home just to calm down enough to sleep. I am already on Celexa for my anxiety but this triggers me into unbelievable levels.

Does anyone have any advice or tips to help get me through the week of blood draws I have to do? I feel terrible for the patients who are sick and already not feeling good and now they'll have to deal with an incredibly nervous person drawing their blood. I can't fake confidence like everyone is telling me and I can't stop my hand tremors.

Is there an easy way to find free, full-length articles that contain biological contingency analysis?

steampowered — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 16:52:23 -0800

Looking for a free resource for articles in biology that contain contingency analysis. I'm a college student and I need to find an article that contains statistical contingency analysis in it to write up a summary on. I have access to JSTOR, EBSCOHost, LexisNexis, and Academic Search Elite, but searching through them is a huge pain. I need *full* articles that contain all of the necessary data of a contingency analysis, but searches result in very general abstracts with little statistical information and that won't cut it for my assignment. I may just be using poor search terms (specifically "contingency analysis" in these various resources), but otherwise I'd have to blindly go through way too many articles, and I'm convinced that I'm not just being lazy. I really need to see the chi-square test statistic, degrees freedom, specific test used, enough information to create a RxC contingency analysis table, etc. I was referred to the free resource PubMed as well, but I had the same experience with that. Any suggestions???

What to do if suspended

Anonymous — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 14:37:37 -0800

How to appeal to president on academic dishonesty accusation? What to do if I get suspended from my university? Some details:

-Last spring, I was accused of academic dishonesty
-A professor lost half of the writing portion of my midterm
-When I wanted to discuss it with her, I noticed that half was missing, so I re-wrote the missing half, thinking it was nothing
-She had scanned photocopies of the midterms the entire time
-Midterms did not match up
-She accused me of 'serious' academic dishonesty
(Even though she was the one who lost my exam and then asked ME to produce mine, when she knew that she had scanned copies of them on her computer to which we could make reference).
-She initially wanted to give me an "F" with "Academic Dishonesty" annotations on my transcript.
-I appealed to a committee who removed the "AD" annotations but wanted to give an "F" with "Two semesters of suspension"
-I appealed a second time at a hearing but the provost did not change the punishment.
-I am about to appeal a third time, to the president of my university. They wanted to suspend me Fall 2009-Spring 2010 but it's fall now and it is my third week attending classes. Since I am still in the process of appealing, I am technically allowed to attend class. I do not want to get suspended now, since this is the semester I've been most looking forward to.

Any advice on what I should say when asking the uni president to drop the 'suspension' part of the punishment? I am not sure how to go about this.

I would love to go to graduate school, and I do not want to piss anyone off in case they decide to annotate my transcripts again (suspension does not show up on transcripts).

If I am suspended, what should I do with all the time off?
I've already lived abroad/traveled extensively, etc. Any interesting "Gap Year" ideas or programs come to mind?

Thanks.

Sounds like I have been asked to Design an Online School... CMS Recommendations?

gonzo_ID — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 11:51:45 -0800

I've been asked to design a website that shows the progress of subscribers academic achievements based on what marks they get from modules posted on the site. I have no idea even how to begin this? Basically client wants to provide a service where subscribers have to pay for specific content that they will be tested on. Marks for the results are then shown on their 'academic achievement' page which can be linked to from their own site.

er... I'm pretty good with WordPress but am in the dark about a plug-in combination that could do the academic achievement bit. wp-commerce for PDF download, some sort of trivia quiz plugin for the question, but showing the results in a pretty way on their author's page?

or am i going down the wrong track? I'm guessing I shouldn't be using WordPress.

What should I be using? Is there any specific Content management system that does exactly this?

Help me revolutionize academic publishing!

juliewhite — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 17:07:22 -0800

I have a friend who is launching a new peer-reviewed, all online, no-subscription academic journal. We have been kicking around ideas to make it awesome and I thought what better place to get great ideas... For example, one idea we had was a Netflix-like rating system. You could rate the content of papers, and we could recommend papers to you based on similar users. Users interested in ferromagnetic thin film tunnel junctions also liked...

Author karma? Tag clouds? Online discussion (and rebuttal!)? Think outside the dead-tree journal box! What features make online journals great? What novel features would make online academic journals great?

[And again, let me emphasize that this is for peer-reviewed academic journals, e.g., http://apl.aip.org/ not... LiveJournal!]

What are the chances of becoming a Quantitative Analyst in the UK with a PhD in Electronic Engineering?

noztran — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 04:49:42 -0800

What are my chances in becoming a Quantitative Analyst in UK, and if they are not too bleak, how to improve them? I realise this is a rather significant career path change, however, as I have been given to understand, many banks and financial institutions in UK do employ PhDs from a wide variety of backgrounds. I am about to finish my PhD in Electronic Engineering (specifically, Optoelectronics - lasers, fibre optics, etc.) I have been doing in a British university. As much as I enjoy my subject, I do not plan to continue my career in academia.

To conclude, my question is not totally hypothetical. After googling a bit, I have compiled a brief list of what I have been exposed to, and what I believe banks/financial institutions might find of interest:
- chaos theory
- ordinary differential equations
- wrote a simulation of semiconductor laser dynamics in FORTRAN
- analysed gigabytes of data (not kidding!), both in time-domain and frequency-domain
- visualised the aforementioned data in numerous ways
- stared at the graphs and figures until the point when I wanted to rip my eyes out :)

Thanks in advance

How do I email an academic?

hannahlambda — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 07:06:31 -0800

What is the etiquette for young grad students emailing seniour researchers? I've been doing graduate research in a scientific/economic area, and there's one very important topic in the area on which I've found virtually no studies done; this is a hindrance. I'm watching an online talk by a seniour researcher in the area, a guy whose research I'm citing a lot, he refers to the above-mentioned topic knowingly, it occurs to me to email him to ask him about it.

What kind of tone should I strike in this email to get this (presumably busy) guy to respond? Grovelly? Blunt/to the point? Is it the 'done thing' for young grad students to email seniour people in their field out of the blue?

Looking for light sociological holiday reading material

FuckingAwesome — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 03:55:46 -0800

Looking for light, sociological holiday reading material... I am a second year Sociology degree student, currently on summer break. I'd like to read something relatively easy-going over summer with some level of relevance to my course. It doesn't have to be totally dumbed-down, just not extremely challenging! Any suggestions would be highly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

How can I get a non-TT research gig?

Anonymous — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 18:36:23 -0800

What can I do to get a researcher position? I am almost done with a quantitative social science PhD program with a focus on technology adoption antecedents, globally. I am 95% sure that I don't want to go TT. I'd love to work at Google Research, Microsoft Research, etc. But how do I get a job at a place like that? What sort of publications should I be trying for? What else can I do to beef up my CV and get noticed?

Canadian job application help

biffa — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 11:59:31 -0800

Canadian academic position, what goes in each of the cover letter, CV, research and teaching statements? I'm thinking in terms of content, level of detail in each, especially teaching and research statements, which are pretty foreign to me. Is it just detail or do they want stuff on top (e.g. mission statement style stuff)? Any advice appreciated.

Name that citation please!

Mrs Mutant — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 03:01:43 -0800

Original citation for the quote "What gets measured gets managed?" This is often attributed to Peter Drucker, but we've seen it attributed to other names informally (Welch, et al).

Can anyone provide an academic citation; e.g., book or journal title, date, etc for this quote? Lots of web sites present the quote, but none (that we've looked at) cite the source. Its just one of those things that "everyone knows".

Not convinced Drucker originally said it. And even if he did, we can't find a citation.

Surprisingly, "system and method for automatic partitioning applied to network protocols" isn't very catchy

qxntpqbbbqxl — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:42:47 -0800

Name-my-research-project-filter: Looking for a clever word or play on words that somehow evokes the idea of a friendly conversation between two people or a group. Sort of like "dialectic", but more cooperative and constructive. My brain is burnt out... vocabulary virtuosos, please hope me!

Micro-sociologist hunt

elationfoundation — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 06:35:14 -0800

Where do i find some of the top professors and researchers (in universities) doing Micro-Sociology (interaction or social mechanism based). This is the level of research that I wish to focus my research on, I just cant seem to find the researchers using that level of analysis. Also, are there some seminal texts in the micro sociology fields. I want to start contacting researchers soon so I know where I want to apply in 5 or so months when apps are open. So, before then I want to get a better understanding of the micro-sociology field... and I don'twant to miss a great fit because I don't know the soch field that well yet.

Teaching the Teachers

Holly — Tue, 26 May 2009 14:00:58 -0800

I'm in Spain and have been asked to give summer courses in English for academic purposes to university researchers and teachers of engineering. Apart from "English Academic Vocabulary in Use" (CUP), which I used last year - it's good - do any MeFites have any tried and tested recommendations for books and other materials that might be suitable? Amazon is great, but too often you can't get a feel for the book.

What is the best free online document management for academic use?

Outis — Wed, 13 May 2009 08:54:20 -0800

What is the best free online document management solution with the intended use by a few individuals for academic purposes? A few of my friends and I trade academic papers via USB drives right now, but we'd like to move to an online solution. More precisely, a private (user:password) CMS driven solution run on a personal webhost.

In some ways something like a private version of Scribd is what we're looking for. We want it to be able to search all the PDF files (they're already OCR) that we upload from within the site, if possible.

Automated organization is a must, and simple upload also. Currently I've got three gigabytes of just text PDFs and don't want to spend much time uploading them. They're already organized systematically according to file name.

Leaving comments on them and such is hoped for and it will eventually have a wiki to share updated information. Also, it has to be open-source/freeware.

Thanks for the assistance.

How can we PPT that satisfies us and the students as well?

k8t — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 09:40:41 -0800

Undergrad teaching and PowerPoints. What to do? Instructors, please give some feedback. The undergrads DEMAND copies of the PowerPoint slides to be posted on the course management site before class. (We've collected data on this. It is the Number 1 request.)

- We have tried to offer slightly modified ones as to encourage attendance. This usually means 2 layers deep of a 3 layered/bulleted slide. Students, on course evals, ask for the entire slide.

- We have tried giving the entire slide set but then testing on concepts discussed outside of what the slide said. Then a lot of people do poorly on the exam.

- I've seen other professors give out the PPTs after the lecture, but that makes it harder for note taking, I'd guess.

- PPTs that basically outline the readings? This seems popular but still students want more.

- IMHO the most bare bones PPT and lots of discussion would be good, but the students want more.

- Everyone in our department does something different including not giving out the PPTs at all and not using PPT. I'm not sure where this student expectation came from.

So, my question is - what do you do? What works best for you? I'm more interested in instructors' POVs than students. I know the student POV quite well.

Publish or perish?

angiep — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:41:06 -0800

How often are academics expected to publish? I realize that the discipline and the quality/type of publication are major factors. But I'm guessing that publishing in a peer-reviewed journal annually would be expected of most academics, two such publications annually would not be unusual, three would be considered prolific. In addition, a book every 5 years? conference presentation/paper once or twice a year? Just looking for some very broad estimates.

You say you're an academic technologist? Tell me more!

mrmojoflying — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 18:06:23 -0800

Circumstances have led me to apply for university instructional technologist positions even though this is not what I have specifically trained to do. Now that I am getting interviews, I need perspective/resources. So, here's the story. My wife has accepted a can't-not-take-it graduate study opportunity as I finish my Ph.D. dissertation in literacy and new media. Because I'm limited by location for the next few years, even after I graduate at the end of the year, I've decided to apply for instructional technologist positions at local universities. Most of these positions are looking for people with B.A.s and M.A.s in the field of academic technology, but apparently what I do is close enough to warrant some interviews. The positions fit very well with my skills and abilities, my university work experience, my research and publishing credentials, and would benefit my interests, but I was never trained as an "instructional technologist." What I really need are information resources like professional organizations, list-servs, blogs, journals and so forth that allow me a glimpse into the disciplinary and professional culture (the intangibles) that more mainstream "academic technology" applicants will be familiar with. I'll take anything that helps me be just a little more conversant with the zeitgeist of what it's like to be a member of this profession.