r/academia

I mean, the letters, especially in the era of large language models, are prone to be very generic. "The candidate can perform independent research while also being a team player, etc...". So, unless the letter effectively says: "This candidate sucks", does the letter even mean anything? Am I missing anything?

Two people may judge a person at the same level, but one of them can give a flowery reference letter and the other can give a more reserved "This candidate is good" kind of reference letter. How do people tell the difference?

I’m about 10 months into a postdoc in Canada with my PhD supervisor. I know - same supervisor is not great but I had a child shortly after my PhD, so it was necessary for financial and logistical reasons. Though it’s not great, the lab is very productive and I have a good publication record with many first/second author papers in good journals. Problem is, I have zero grant funding and no grant or fellowship applications in the works so I’ve failed to distinguish myself from my PhD supervisor. I just never had the bandwidth to think about any of it until now while balancing parenting duties over the past year.

Things are starting to normalize a bit on the parenting front and I am trying to plan next steps - but I am not willing to move locations. I have thought about switching supervisors at my current university but, to be honest, my current supervisor is well-known and the best at my institution for the research I want to do so I think switching for the sake of it may not be the best idea, but I am also trying to address the negative perceptions around sticking with the same supervisor.

I’m also thinking about a remote post doc, and two profs at different institutions (one within Canada and one outside Canada) have agreed to help with my fellowship applications as supervisors but where I am not able to move there is some uncertainty over whether this is possible (eg. if the other Canadian institution can host fellowship funding, should I be successful, if I am based in a different province).

As part of my post-doc contract my current supervisor and I negotiated 4 weeks of professional development time, but where I am constrained on moving institutions I don’t know if it is worth using this time to write fellowship applications. Current supervisor has also given me the option to lead the writing and submission of a grant they have in mind during this time instead. But again, if I choose to do this I once again fail to distinguish myself from my current PhD supervisor who would be PI on this grant.

In general, what would you aim for if you wanted to continue in academia but couldn’t move to a different institution for additional experiences? What would you do in my position? What would you use the 4 weeks PD time for? Any advice is appreciated

I have recently been invited to serve as a consultant to the committee of the research dean to the medical school of a top ranked university in Asia. Basically I review guidelines regarding academic promotions, money allocations, salaries, post-graduate students and many related areas.

What really stood out to me was that the university itself had a policy in considering promotions, where they considered original articles, meta-analysis, review papers, letters to editors and commentaries as 'one unit' of a research output, assuming it is published in a reputable journal. For promotion considerations, say from post doc to assistant professor, they require a minimum of 10 units as a first author/inventor. I find this to be quite silly as one candidate with 10 original papers is clearly not the same as another with 2 original papers and 8 reviews + commentaries + letters, yet alone considering the quality of the papers and where it is published.

After several discussions, the university is still insistent in using such a point system, but has allowed me to propose allocating different weights rather than treating them as one unit. I would like to propose the following, but wanted to hear feedback:

1. Original paper (IF > 10) - 1 unit

2. Original paper (IF < 10) - 0.8 units

3. Meta-review/systematic analysis - 0.8 units

4. Review paper - 0.3 units

5. Letter-to-editor/Commentary - 0.1 units

I feel so dumb… I can’t tell if this is real and/or predatory.

The university is holding a somewhat obligatory symposium. At the initial stage, I was asked to upload an extended abstract. I have never uploaded an extended abstract first; usually they ask for it for publication later. Anyway. The word limit was 2000. I kept it 1000 with references. The reviewer writes, " Keep it to a maximum of 300; 1000 is reaching the usual symposium abstract limits". Hey, your guidelines state a maximum of 2000.

I sent an email to the organising committee, they replied, in sum, "base your revision with respect to the guidelines, but not the reviewer feedback". And in reviewer feedback, there is a sentence starting 'from what I can extract from the text'. I have a strong sense that my reviewer is an AI agent.

I am not sure how to proceed. It is already unprofessional, and I am not feeling comfortable at all. But it is sort of obligatory, so I have to proceed. Professors from my department are not comfortable at all too, about how the process is handled by the organizing committee.

What is best to do? I am strongly considering letting AI revise my abstract because this whole process is absurd now.

Well.. first of all i’m an undergraduate student. In my country we have to pass strict test to get into master program. Or we can get recommendation to master program if our GPA ranking is high during the former 3 years. I almost made it, and i got a plenty of good research experience in top groups with one of the best PIs. But i got into hospital during finals last term, and i lost my good GPA because of it.

Then i realize i can publish paper to get special recommendation into master degree. But it’s extremely strict. It requires accepted before august and printed out before december. Which is basically impossible for an undergraduate. I have ongoing papers but when they finally came out, i’m already in the last year of my program and i’ll fail to have a chance.

I study plant biotechnology. But i can also do some deep learning and machine learning stuff. That’s part of my amateur work, and computer vision they are way faster than lab work.

I know they are predatory and expensive. But i really want that chance. A fast one. I don’t know, my mind is pretty.. ehhhhh. If i can’t get this recommendation, I’ll lost the chance to a facility that only accept recommended undergraduate to go straight for phd.

But you know. MDPI. And the territory that i’m not really professional at.

I can try my best. But is this really ok? I’m willing to put the scholarships i earned on MDPI. Eventually.. people would see me published a predatory publication in early years.

Maybe i’m just too young to accept failure. Though yeah, i got into hospital and i did surgery, but i failed the exam at least. My GPA is 3.6/4 but still not enough.

Im senior vet student