Should getting no response in this timespan be understood as a no? What should I do in this situation?

Question

I am starting my Ph.D. and am interested in a specific field of research which seems quite promising for the next years. Now, my masters supervisor does not work in this field, nor anyone in the department, and it seems in the country.

Nonetheless, he is interested and suggested me to find an expert in the field from another country to collaborate and said he would sign a recommendation letter¹. In the better scenario this would be a formal co-supervision, but not a requirement.

So, I sent an email to such an expert (in fact it seems one of the researches who started the field) with my masters thesis attached as well as the recommendation letter. After a week unfortunately I didn't get any response.

I asked my masters supervisor and he suggested me to reply the email resending it, because he said that usually there is an answer. He also told me to add one line asking if someone else could be suggested.

I've sent the message last week and no answer as well up to now.

To be honest I'm confused. I mean, the thesis has been quite complimented by a very famous researcher in my country who integrated the examination board. The recommendation letter speaks quite well about my work. Finally my university seems to be respected internationally. With all this, I thought at least a no as answer I would get.

Perhaps the only point is that I have not worked in that field in my masters, but that was because no one in the country knew it.

Now, is this lack of response, in the timespan I told about, effectively a no, totally dismissing the possibility, and so should I already disconsider it? Or a no would be really be said explicitly? Should I wait more before looking for some other possibility?

Edit: In trying to make the question more concise and to the point (whether or not one could expect an answer in the timespan of more or less 10 days) I left out a detail. The email was focused on asking for a collaboration. Of course, formal co-supervision would be better, but it is not required, and we briefly mentioned it. So the email was entirely focused on collaboration. The scholarship pays for just a collaboration also, where the PhD student spends one year working on the group of another researcher.

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_{1. I don't know how things are done in other places, but here it is possible to establish a collaboration with a researcher from anywhere, including other country, and have it all paid by the scholarship if you need to stay a certain time working there with him. This may or may not be a formal co-supervision, so that the researcher has the option to not sign if he cannot.}

Answer 1

Your time scale seems too short for me. Patience might be a virtue here. But sending the thesis and the request at the same time is probably a pretty heavy load to drop on a person.

Ask your advisor to follow up with a request and a recommendation. It might be more successful coming from them than from you.

But in general, making a request and offering to show related work in the initial request might be more successful than just sending it all at once. Some people get a lot of these requests and have learned to ignore them.

Answer 2

told me to add one line asking if someone else could be suggested

I would like to take a different perspective and reframe the issue as an issue about networking and also about investigating the networks present in a narrow field of endeavour.

If the field is so narrow and there is only one recognized expert in the field, ie. the person you emailed, then you have to appreciate how difficult it is for him to engage and represent such a narrow field. He would be working extensively and focused on growing the knowledge of his field rather than expanding his networks. So investigating his networks for other co-supervision would be worthwhile. What conferences has he presented in, what are the other sessions and authors in that area? Who are his collaborators? His co-authors on papers, what skill-sets or areas that make his work interesting?

There may also be institutional barriers or other structural barriers that would make co-supervision difficult that you may not have appreciated. Does his institution allow international co-supervision? Is this acknowledged in his institution? As ZeroTheHero said, most institutions require a lot of paperwork and approval before co-supervision is permitted. What are the rules around co-supervision for your institution? What are the administrative demands and expectations? Has international co-supervision been done before? What will the impact of timezone differences be? All these issues are important barriers to co-supervision that will take him a lot of time to figure out even before he emails you.

Lastly, have you thought of collaboration instead? This may be more reasonable as the administrative burden is far less and you are able to do all the work with your current supervisor. Have you also thought instead of potentially doing your postdoc with him instead? All these options are far less "heavy" as Buffy as said.

Answer 3

1. I would never answer an email from a student suggesting I co-supervise him with someone I do not know. At the very least the email should be from the supervisor.
2. I would never co-supervise with someone unknowledgeable in my field.
3. My university does not allow co-supervision by people who are not at least adjunct to the core unit of the program.
4. I would never accept remote co-supervision in a unit where I do not know the supervisor and in which I do not have some sort of appointment at least at the adjunct level.

Answer 4

First, we cannot know the precise answer obviously. In theory, the professor may have his/her own reasons for not answering. But using some common sense my answer is that it is highly probable that the answer to your question is "Yes! The professor is declining a cooperation".

Unfortunately, it is very common for academics nowadays to simply not answer emails. I find this behavior rude and unacceptable, unless the emails are spams, or the said academic simply receives thousands of emails each day in case he/she is a well known public figure. But in most cases, academics can and should answer reasonable informative questions, like yours, and they choose not to, simply because they can.

I call this unprofessional behavior "academic ghosting!".

The reason why, probably, the professor has chosen to ignore you is most probably this: he/she does not know you, and does not find your suggestion attractive enough for them, or risk free enough (that is, they don't know if your are a serious enough researcher, etc.). If you are talking about cooperation with you staying in your current university, then the professor does not view this as an attractive deal for him/her, due to many administrative and other reasons.

Answer 5

I would suggest emailing with multiple people at once for practicality. People can take a lot of time to respond or simply do not respond. Couple reasons might be,

• They might be on holiday (I have seen academics who do not even check their mails in vacation)
• It might be ignored
• It might get tagged for spam
• The recieving end might be talking their time to consider

I had similar issues when I was trying to find speakers for certain events. I might be practical to add a time limit. Something along the lines of "if you could reply within a week it would be really helpful".