All Questions
492 questions
76
votes
7
answers
51k
views
Is it acceptable to write a reference letter for yourself?
If a student needs a reference letter for graduate admissions or that sort of thing, some profs will ask the student to write a reference letter for themself before sending it off to the prof for ...
- 1,052
56
votes
4
answers
4k
views
Attributing contributions to academic work that occur in Stack Exchange
Sometimes we may ask questions on stack exchange or online forums wherein the response is helpful or even essential to a piece of work that gets published in an academic journal. If this occurs, how ...
- 673
65
votes
11
answers
14k
views
Are there instances where citing Wikipedia is allowed?
For example, suppose you're writing an article about triangles, and you want to include a short proof of Pythagoras' theorem, but you can't quite remember how to derive it, so you pop over to: https://...
- 761
257
votes
8
answers
385k
views
How do you cite a Github repository?
I am working on a honours thesis and have developed a Fortran library that I would like to cite in it.
In some places they suggest to quote the documentation of the project but this is something I ...
- 2,673
15
votes
5
answers
7k
views
How should I cite a website URL?
I am currently writing a report and I have been compiling a list of references (from IEEE mostly) and I also have a number of websites.
My question is, what is the best way to note a website URL? ...
- 317
128
votes
17
answers
147k
views
Software to draw illustrative figures in papers
I would like to have suggestions of good software for drawing illustrations in research papers. I already know about Xfig, but this works only on Linux and is at times, clunky when it comes to text. ...
176
votes
14
answers
36k
views
Why do many talented scientists write horrible software?
I am a software engineer and I have been working with people with academic backgrounds for several years. Many times, I've noticed that (even otherwise brilliant scientists) produce code of extremely ...
- 1,949
53
votes
5
answers
9k
views
Should I cite author names as they appear in the journal or as I know them to be complete?
Since I've been using Mendeley to manage and extract metadata from my PDFs, I've come to notice that authors are sometimes denoted with all their initials and sometimes with just one. I assume this ...
- 633
28
votes
5
answers
4k
views
Citing sources of problems in assignments
This question was raised by Dave Clarke here.
When a textbook author approaches a topic in a novel way or presents a particularly interesting example, I believe that a teacher who creates lecture ...
- 12.1k
20
votes
4
answers
2k
views
Referencing the reference?
Suppose I have a paper with the following text:
Roses are red, violets are blue, sugar is sweet, and so are you [3],[4].
As one can see, the author got the information from two other references.
...
- 399
26
votes
0
answers
2k
views
What do you do when you find yourselves with an unreadable/inaccessible paper? [duplicate]
Since I started my life in Academia, I sometimes found that there are some seminal papers to which I cannot get any access.
Either they are very old, and the journal that published them charges for ...
- 12k
26
votes
5
answers
3k
views
How to react to your work being cited incorrectly or in a misleading way?
This morning when I opened my email I was very excited to find a Google Scholar update telling me of two new citations from two different sets of authors each to a different paper of mine. As usual, I ...
- 7,957
12
votes
1
answer
2k
views
Adding a citation after paper is accepted
I am a junior researcher in mathematics.
I worked simultaneously on proving Theorem A and Theorem B. They both generalize Theorem X in two different directions. Theorem X was proved several years ago (...
- 123
89
votes
15
answers
28k
views
Is there any efficient non-linear note-taking software?
I'd be interested in tools helping to organize thoughts and ideas, especially in a non-linear way (i.e. not as most existing note taking tools, working with lists and bullets, but rather as a post-it ...
user102
86
votes
3
answers
221k
views
Are citations in abstracts considered bad style?
I'd like to know your opinion on citations in abstracts.
At my university, there is no rule on that matter so it's basically a
question of preference.
Do you think it's okay to have citations in an ...
- 963
77
votes
11
answers
31k
views
Is it unethical to cite a paper or book that you have never looked at?
Suppose I see that Book X is cited by several papers with reference to some particular Fact Y. I wish to cite Fact Y. As far as I know, Book X is the only reference for Fact Y.
I have never looked ...
user10885
72
votes
7
answers
15k
views
Why use version control systems for writing a paper?
I am following the advice of @Piotr Migdal in Is there an internet Git-like repository for collaboration on a paper?, and I want to ask about version controls: how beneficial are they (specially under ...
- 13.9k
24
votes
3
answers
21k
views
How to cite lecture notes? (and should I even do this?)
When learning a new subject, I would frequently use lecture notes found somewhere in the Internet. When writing a paper (or a master thesis, as in my case, but the rules should be similar, I believe) ...
- 7,182
20
votes
5
answers
2k
views
On citing "common knowledge" statements
I am an undergraduate student with no experience at all.
If you are writing a research paper, that you are planning to submit for publication, how do you state that a particular statement/fact is ...
user557
83
votes
13
answers
19k
views
Why is it bad to judge a paper by citation count?
I hear a lot from the experts that citation count is a bad idea as a measure of judging a paper. This seems simply counter-intuitive to me. I would like to know if any study has been done in this ...
- 990
60
votes
4
answers
5k
views
How to discourage irrelevant self-citation?
I once reviewed a manuscript whose authors cited many of their own published papers, which were not relevant to the subject of the manuscript. This kind of practice is evidently frowned upon by the ...
- 8,578
50
votes
5
answers
7k
views
Will self-citation be viewed as self-promotion in academia?
As we know, citation counts are important to judge one's research activity. Is it good to cite one's previous works? Will it be viewed as an act of advertisement or self-promotion?
- 4,669
33
votes
7
answers
11k
views
What is the easiest way to check for plagiarism in student essay papers?
I've had to grade quite a few essay papers in the classes I've taught, and I've suspected some may have plagiarized but I never really pursued check on them because it would be too time consuming to ...
- 11.5k
30
votes
3
answers
6k
views
What software to cite in a manuscript, and how?
When writing a manuscript for a scientific article, I often wonder what software I should cite or acknowledge, and how.
The first problem is to make a choice which software to cite. On the one hand, ...
- 541
30
votes
2
answers
12k
views
How should references in non-Latin script language be treated in English paper?
Let's say I want to cite a Russian text in my own paper which is written in English. Should I:
reference it as is, in the original Cyrillic alphabet, although the readers won't be able even to ...
- 835
15
votes
4
answers
94k
views
How to cite sources written in a different language than English?
Assume one wants to cite a paper written in a different language than the article citing said paper (e.g., ones own article is written in English, but the source is French).
How to properly handle ...
- 1,810
13
votes
4
answers
4k
views
Is it okay to incorporate a block of citations from a review paper into my own paper?
I'm currently writing a paper on a certain topic for which a review article was recently published. Of course, I want to contrast my new approach to existing techniques. For that purpose, I have ...
- 1,872
319
votes
18
answers
40k
views
Should I share my horrible software?
After I had published my paper, some people asked me to share the software that I developed. At first, I was very happy that my paper attracted some attention, and I was happy to share not only the ...
- 17.7k
177
votes
12
answers
30k
views
Why are papers without code but with results accepted?
I just started reading some papers (Computer Science, specifically Computer Vision) and thought "now let's look at the source code" and was quite astonished that most of the papers don't have any ...
- 1,839
94
votes
4
answers
121k
views
How do I reference the Python programming language in a thesis or a paper?
I'm writing a scientific article and a dissertation in biology, for which I used Python for simulations. Some people in our department, especially the "non-computer-people", don't know what Python is, ...
- 2,202
85
votes
8
answers
31k
views
Free, open-source substitutes for Mendeley?
Mendeley is (mainly) a proprietary social network to share basic citation data and research papers. see also
Are there any free and open source substitutes for this service?
A technical possibility:...
- 1,669
40
votes
11
answers
12k
views
Tool to manage and/or make available a list of my publications on the web?
This some kind of follow up question to How to prevent plagiarism of my papers?, since I've been clearly convinced that it was in my best interest to put my own papers on my webpage.
Now, since I ...
user102
39
votes
4
answers
11k
views
How to deal with an unreasonable reviewer asking to cite irrelevant articles?
Two years ago, when I was doing my master’s degree, I was working on a computational project. My supervisor was well-known in the field and a highly reputed person. We were doing a great job, trying ...
- 1,405
38
votes
6
answers
5k
views
Is it ethical to obtain journal articles from places other than the publisher's official sites?
When I am at home and looking for journal articles I often find article PDFs through google that have been uploaded to various websites (e.g., universities, institutions, arbitrary websites, etc...). ...
- 713
37
votes
7
answers
11k
views
Why is it acceptable to cite unpublished works?
If an article, theorem, etc. is unpublished, presumably the work is only available to people who track down the author and get a draft copy. Today we have arXiv and can find many preprints on the ...
- 515
32
votes
2
answers
16k
views
How to display your own name in publications list when you are a middle-author on a publication with a large number of authors?
My Name is among tens of authors of a paper on global health.
For the purpose of my CV update, I need to show my name without showing the names of all authors of the paper.
My preferred style ...
- 321
27
votes
1
answer
1k
views
Getting secondary citations right
I have some questions regarding secondary citations (in an computer-science research paper that should be published in a journal). I know that they should be avoided when possible, but it is not ...
- 372
26
votes
6
answers
9k
views
Recently published paper does not cite my very relevant work
Before I start my PhD I worked in a group that researched on the application of a particular area to a particular domain. No other research group published work in this area+domain. So I can safely ...
- 4,423
26
votes
3
answers
3k
views
Is it a good idea to cite paper from publisher listed in Beall’s list
While writing the literature review for my paper, I found another paper which is closely related to my research. Unfortunately, the paper’s publisher is on Beall’s List. Hence, I wonder if citing the ...
- 1,052
21
votes
9
answers
63k
views
Should student or supervisor be corresponding author for publications based on student research?
Papers published from an academic project (MSc or PhD) usually have two authors; the first author is the student who mainly conducted the research, and the second author is the professor who ...
- 7,673
19
votes
2
answers
744
views
How to search for list of papers citing both papers A and B?
For given papers A and B, I would like to search for all papers that cite both A and B. I guess one can generalize to papers {A,B,C,...} and find all papers that cite all of them.
A quick Google ...
- 323
18
votes
4
answers
6k
views
Is there a problem with citing the original source instead of the source where the information was first found?
I'm writing a Bachelor's Thesis.
I found a seemingly convenient way of making my research paper successful, but I'm not sure if it counts as plagiarism.
This is mainly concerned with the methods ...
- 1,593
10
votes
4
answers
39k
views
How to reference studies mentioned in a paper without having to read the original papers?
I'm review the literature at the moment. Now I'm reading a paper that mention other studies. How can I reference them without reading the original papers?
- 385
78
votes
20
answers
30k
views
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 ...
- 1,630
71
votes
6
answers
78k
views
Is there such thing as too many references for one paper?
I'm currently reviewing a paper that has an uncommonly large number of references compared to the average number for that particular venue (more than 60 versus around 30). This is a regular paper, not ...
user102
65
votes
5
answers
18k
views
Should I cite all R packages I used?
Intro: R is a open-source software tool for statistical analyses and graphics, which is heavily used in different science disciplines and which is becoming more and more popular (although it is ...
- 775
56
votes
6
answers
44k
views
Software for extracting data from a graph without having to click on every single point?
There are many times when I am faced with the task of extracting data from a published graph (usually a bitmap image in an paper). For example, a scatter plot from which I would like to get a list of ...
- 74.1k
46
votes
6
answers
57k
views
Is it mandatory to include the registered trademark symbol ® next to the name of a computer program?
Suppose you write a paper and you use Wolfram Mathematica to do calculations. In the article, should the program be mentioned with the registered-trademark symbol immediately following the name and in ...
- 1,119
45
votes
6
answers
6k
views
Should I write a paper on open-source software I've built?
I have been fairly active in the open-source software community with a few projects that have gotten some attention. However, my reputation in the academic/publications world is a little bit low and I'...
- 1,167
35
votes
5
answers
104k
views
Is there a difference between "forthcoming" and "in press"?
Once a paper of mine has definitively been accepted for publication, I typically list it on my CV and in citations as "forthcoming". Other people seem to use "in press" for the same category, and an ...
- 1,106