swagatopablo

I am a freshman PhD student at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore doing research on Computer Networking. My question might appear a bit out of track in this forum, still I felt like putting it. My point is a lot of people say that I should have done my PhD somewhere in the US, as if doing PhD in a country itself will make you a great researcher. Albeit my university provides excellent infrastructaral facilities, my supervisor is very friendly (and sincere at the same time), the above issues depress me at times. Do they mean that I could get more value after my PhD from a US university (I am not talking about MIT, Stanford grade, there are plenty of not so good ones.) even if I do good research here in NTU, specifically when I apply for a postdoc/assistant professorship (which may be in the US?)

Hi everybody,
                      I will attend a conference in Vancouver, British Columbia for a week in the middle of September. This post is not about moving to Vancouver as a grad student (like most others). But still I thought some pointers from the natives of that area can be of help, especially the grad students' viewpoint. As everybody knows, grad nerds think alike. I have a few specific questions.
 
I guess the weather will be pleasant. Does it rain in September? Is it advisable to take a prepaid sim from the airport just for voice calls? (Who wants to pay for international roaming?) I want to know the usual sim activation charge in Canada. If that is too high, probably it's not worth the money. Any suggestion for accommodation? All I need is a clean room with a bed for myself and in a safe locality. (My department budget is not very generous, as grad students will understand.) If you know Vancouver or travelled there, recommendation of any specific hotel, lodge or some locality will be great. In the daytime, I will be attending talks, which will go on till almost 5 pm. Any suggestions about nearby local attractions which I can visit in the evening-the dining, the entertainment districts etc.? Anything else you think I should know about?  
Be as specific or generic in your suggestions as you want. Thanks in advance. Cheers!

Thanks a lot Takeruk for the detailed reply. You gave me more than I expected. I think I will carry a printout of your reply with me.
 
The conference venue is hotel Westin Bayshore at Bayshore drive, which, I guess, is a pretty expensive district. I will like to stay somewhere near from where I can travel easily. As for the budget, I want something within 70-80 CAD per day, maybe I have to stretch a bit if necessary. Since I have never been there, it is difficult to decide the budget beforehand.
 
For the SIM, I will consider options from the carriers. Of course I don't want to land in a new country at an awkward hour and will book my flights accordingly. I hope there will be some outlets in the airport and will check the site.

There are a few hostels downtown if you're comfortable with shared rooms. I don't recall any of them being around Westin Bayshore (I used to work right across the street) but downtown Vancouver is very walkable and has great transit, especially in the city.
 
I'd second all the suggestions made earlier. The hotel is pretty much next to Stanley Park: depending on the weather and your interests, going from the hotel around the seawall (you can rent various modes of transportation, check out: http://www.bayshorebikerentals.ca/) to English Bay is always amazing. Granville St has a lot of bars and clubs and gets pretty crazy weekend nights: not my thing but if you're into it. What else might be of interest depends on the kinds of things you like to do. 
 
Man, I miss Vancouver.

1. It can rain at any time in Vancouver. One joke is that the "Vancouver Rain Festival" runs from Sept 1 to Aug 31 every year. In fact, at many conferences in Vancouver, the "conference swag" you might get is an umbrella with the conference logo on it.
 
2. A sim card is about $10 and most pay as you go type plans in Canada will charge about 40 cents per minute and 25 cents per text message. Alternatively, if you plan on using your phone a lot during your visit, you can get a single month plan. Here is an example from one single company, but they are all going to be similarly priced: http://www.fido.ca/web/page/portal/Fido/PrepaidPlans?forwardTo=prepaidPlans&service=addons&lang=en. I am not certain if you can get these at the airport though, especially if you arrive at a time where the shops are closed. You can check the YVR (Vancouver Airport) website to see what retail stores they have.
 
3. This depends on where the conference actually is and what your budget is. I don't know if I can really say anything useful without more information! 
 
4. In the evenings, I think downtown Vancouver is quite fun. There are a lot of restaurants and shopping along Robson Street downtown. I like to take visitors on a walk to English Bay and there are good places for ice cream near the beach. You can sit in the sand, eat ice cream and watch the sunset! There is also a great cupcakes bakery called "Cupcakes" (http://cupcakesonline.com/) near English Bay. Another fun walk is to walk along Davies St (from English Bay). It's the "gay/pride neighbourhood" in Vancouver and I think it really captures the spirit of what Vancouver is about. 
 
Other places that are nice are: Lonsdale Quay (at the Waterfront subway station, take the seabus across the water), Stanley Park/Coal Harbour (Cardero's is one of my favourites but it's pricey), Gastown, and Granville Island. If you have time on the weekends, there are mountains just north of Vancouver that you can hike. Capilano Suspension bridge is the famous and expensive one but you can also visit Lynn Canyon for a much smaller but free suspension bridge and hiking area.
 
5. You can take the "Canada Line" light rail train (built for the Olympics) from the Airport to downtown Vancouver pretty cheap / quick, and there are a lot of connections you can take along the way if your hotel is somewhere in Vancouver close to a train station.

I'm not sure if it's really possible to say which places are accessible at the entire campus level. Environments can vary a lot between a single department/program. For example, my program is only one floor and not very large. The most anyone has to walk from one office/classroom to another is probably something like 100m and that's only if you are going from one end to another. The classrooms in our building are conference room style--no giant lecture halls. There are chairs (with and without armrests) and several rows of long tables (no annoying flip-desk thing that is attached to a seat). 
 
But I have no idea what other classrooms on campus look like because I rarely see them. Grad school is very different from undergrad. You don't have to rush between buildings to make it to class etc. We mostly stay in one building all day and never see anyone else from other departments on campus! I think a common experience for grad students is to be stopped by random people on campus looking for a certain building and we would have no idea what's on campus other than the few buildings we work in or visit. Our general strategy is to direct these people to an undergrad who actually knows what's going on. On many days, I go from home to my office and never even leave the building I work in until it's time to go back home--so I interact very little with the people outside of my program on these days. 
 
As for the culture, I think this also really depends on the individual programs, not the whole campus. And this will change over time as new students enter and old students graduate. Again, graduate students are generally much less involved in the whole "campus culture". In my program, there are a pretty wide range of "active" levels, just like any group of people in the world. Some people are very active and basically work out or do a sport more than once a day. Some people do a few things a few times a week. Some people mostly just do recreational stuff like play tennis, go hiking on some weekends etc. And some people don't do anything at all! 
 
I think the best way for you to judge what environments you feel comfortable in is by visiting the programs. I think you should apply to programs that you are interested in academically and worry less about what the culture is like unless you actually know people in the program and/or have visited the specific program. Otherwise, for people that are not you, it's hard for us to say where you would be comfortable or not!
 
Good luck!

I'm in my third year of grad school but this is what has been my experience so far, in regards to your questions:
 
1. Signing something like that is common and sometimes even individual collaborations (especially those spanning multiple institutions) have their own agreements and contracts. Sometimes these agreements are university-wide and written in very general terms to accomodate all the differences in field. For example, I know that in the humanities, it is much more common for supervisors to not be included on the papers. I know some people in the humanities who only meet their supervisor something like once or twice a year, and the supervisor just provides very general guidance in the PhD program while the student is solely responsible for coming up with their own research topic and writing their own papers.
 
In my field, in the sciences, the supervisor and student work together a lot more. Often, the student talks with several professors about their research interests and maybe the two of them come up with an idea together, or the student works on a project that was originally the idea of the professor. In this case, it is clear from the agreement/contract that the supervisor should be a coauthor on the paper, since they have at least contributed to the "idea". Often, in the sciences, we would meet with our advisors regularly and brainstorm ideas together -- either one on one, or in a group meeting. The advisor might tell us to perform the analysis a certain way, or provide code from previous work etc. This obviously makes it even more clear that the advisor should be on the authorship list. Finally, there is a lot of edits and rewriting during the paper writing stage, and especially for new researchers, the advisor might actually rewrite a large chunk of the paper.
 
Overall, what I'm saying is that it's perfectly fine for supervisors to appear on all of their students papers and still keep academic integrity / keep that agreement valid. Supervisors provide more than just funding! They might not be in the lab performing the experiments or the analysis, but chances are, the research problem was their idea, or the technique was theirs, or they trained a post-doc / senior student who is now supervising you more directly. Basically, if the project would not have been possible without the ideas or work of the supervisor, then the supervisor should appear on the authorship list. Thus I wouldn't say it's your "duty" to "give" papers to your supervisor. Instead, I would say it's your job (i.e. you were hired) to work in your supervisor's lab, on your supervisor's projects. If you wanted, you could argue that graduate students are simply a tool to carry out the supervisor's plans. This is true, and some supervisors will treat their students as simply machinery to get work done. That's why it's important to find a good match in supervisor/program so that you get something you want out of your work.
 
To answer the last part -- usually the requirement for counting the paper towards your PhD (i.e. to include it as part of the thesis) is that the student be the first author (or primary contributor), for the work to be done at the school as part of the PhD program, and for the work to be published in a peer-reviewed journal.
 
2. First authorship is usually seen as the most important position. Coauthorship is not bad, it shows that you have done work, but at the PhD level and beyond, the real "currency" is first authorship. This could depend on the field/journal, but I think pretty much no one reads a paper with 4 authors and expect that all 4 authors contributed equally. The difference between first/second/third/etc author's contribution varies a lot and it's not always clear. Some journals now require authors to write a paragraph at the end stating who actually did what. In one collaboration I was part of, the contract was that the main PI for that analysis (usually a post-doc) would be first author and then the rest of the collaboration would be listed in alphabetical order. So, in this case, only the first position has meaning. When you read the academic webpages of people looking for jobs, they usually write things like "X papers, Y first authored". So, I would say that being first author is valued a lot more than another authorship position, but it's NOT the case that you should solely do things that get your first authorship. 
 
3. Doing things purely for science/research and not for authorship is, in my opinion, a little idealistic and naive. It's also more common for people who are in established positions (e.g. tenured professors) to have more idealistic views on their field. However, your supervisor makes a good point because the opposite is also not a good idea. You don't want to be so publication driven that you publish for the sake of publishing/producing and generate bad papers. Publications follow you around forever, so you don't want your name attached to work you aren't proud of.
 
Your supervisor is right in the sense that you should strive to do good science and good work. Papers will come naturally out of the process. You should do your due diligence by selecting projects/science to work on that you think people will be interested in. You should plan for the future by picking a PhD topic that you think would get you hired in the position you want in the future. I think it's a mistake to simply follow your passions and try to find a PhD thesis that fulfills all of your research desires. Instead, you should pick one that other people (i.e. those who will hire you) are interested in. You don't have to be in love with your PhD topic and after working for years on a topic, most topics, no matter how interesting to start with, will probably become very tedious!
 
Your measure of your worth after graduation is going to be a combination of your papers, your advisors' letters of recommendation, and any impact/influence you've made (e.g. at conferences and seminars -- many senior students will try to attend as many conferences as possible and use their connections to give seminar talks at schools they're interested in so that they market themselves and their skills).
 
I don't think a prospective employer will be reading your PhD thesis. Instead, the hiring process at most North American schools involves first making a shortlist out of all the applicants (never seen this part but not sure how it's done), and then the short-listed candidates are invited to be interviewed by a large number of professors and students (usually the students "interview" is a group discussion) at the school. They will also give some talks about their research as well. Through this process, the department can hire the person that is the best fit (in terms of research interest as well as interpersonal relationships).

That a PI or advisor is listed as a last author doesn't affect how your contribution as first author is viewed. Most fields have clear customs about what first means, what the middle authorship means and what last means. If you are first and your PI is last, these contributions do not contradict each other and each is associated with a completely different role. This really depends on the conventions of individual fields but for PIs (especially untenured ones, but others too) the number of papers on which they last author is essentially the most direct measure of the productivity of their lab. This helps them obtain funds both within the university and without and in a sense if you are working in that lab and enjoy the funding, it is in your best interest to have your PI be a co-author on your work, because productive labs do better at obtaining funding than unproductive ones.
 
Consider what happens if the advisor is not a co-author on your papers; I work on an interface between two subfields, one theoretical and one experimental. In the experimental subfield, the professors who I work with are always co-authors on all my papers and in the theoretical subfield they never are. Mind you, they may be some of the same people, and their contribution to my work is more or less the same, but depending on the type of work and the resulting paper they may or may not end up being co-authors. Now, these professors are measured against others from fields where it is customary to have professors as co-authors on all student papers. These fields may be very closely related and the distinctions may be obscure. Deans and other Higher-Ups use the number of publications as a direct measure of productivity. It's not easy to explain why Prof X publishes 1-2 papers a year while Prof Y has 6-7, never mind that many are actually students' papers and in terms of direct productivity the two professors produce quite similar amounts of work, and they also do a similar amount of advising. The advising that goes into our sole-authored papers doesn't count, or counts for less. There is no good way to prove that a certain professor contributed some amount to a student's paper, especially since we don't have just one advisor and instead work with several people on each project. Anyway, the bottom line is that their last-authorship is just not in competition with your first. 
 
As for second- and third- authorship, this obviously counts for less than first, unless it's a field where authors are ordered alphabetically, but I wouldn't be so quick to discount the work done by others that goes into your paper. Writing, in particular, is very hard and in my field it's a chore that is left to the first author, not relegated to someone else. Doing time-intensive analyses and coding is also not something to dismiss. At the end of the day, unless there is a paragraph stating who did what on a paper, there will be some amount of guessing as to who did what (therefore, if the contributions are very uneven I recommend insisting on writing such a paragraph). Normally people will guess that the first author did most of the work and others contributed to certain aspects. But what really matters for jobs is how your advisor describes your contribution to each paper in their letter of recommendation. You will also describe your contribution in your research statement, so potential employers will have a better understanding of what you did. I don't think there is any reason to prefer sole papers to first authored ones, but this depends on the field. In some it's highly unlikely that one person can complete a project alone from beginning to end, but in others this can be done. If so, it's probably good to have sole-authored work to show that you can do that, but also co-authored work. Ask your professors about your field and also check the CVs of recent graduates who got jobs like the ones you'd like to have when you graduate--what is the ratio of sole:co-authored works on their CV? Aim for a similar mix. 
 
Finally, I think your advisor has a point about doing good work that is interesting to the community, because that's the kind of researcher that will get hired later. You want to work on problems that are attractive and you want to develop skills that are normally sought after in job searches. Ideally you want to find a topic that you are interested in, but you don't want to get sucked up into doing something that only you are interested in. If you work on something others like, you will get attention and hopefully also publications. You'll also have an easier time creating a research program and describing a future for such a project that others will be excited about, once you're looking for jobs. A dissertation is not the end of a project, it's merely the beginning. As TakeruK says, you don't have to be in love with the project, just find it reasonably interesting and with a reasonable future. Those kinds of projects also tend to produce publications, if successful, so that's another plus. But from where (I think) you are in the process, being too publication-driven is not the best idea - publications should not be forgotten but before then you actually need to sit down and do good work for a while, and preferably on something on that interface between what the community values and what you find personally exciting. 

If I understand you correctly, this is something that is true for most journals -- you need a subscription in order to access materials from the journal/proceedings/etc. Some people might have personal subscriptions, but like you, most people will have access through their institution's subscription. IEEE is a big name, so I would be confident the majority of schools will subscribe to most of their publications.
 
Usually, in a bibliography (at least in my field), we don't include the URL even if we accessed the article online, and even if the journal is online only. So, you might want to just delete the URL from your bibliography (or edit your reference management software to disable the URLs) since they won't be useful to someone outside of your school. If you must include a URL in whatever document you are submitting, I second PsychGirl1's suggestion to include the DOI. You can write the DOI as a URL like this: http://dx.doi.org/10.1000/182  (where you replace the numbers with your actual DOI, of course). The DOI is a short and also permanent link to the paper and it will be up to the reader to ensure they have proper access to the publication!

I think most of the US vs. elsewhere debate is based upon the assumption that an American PhD confers more prestige & quality than a PhD from anywhere else. I doubt that is true (hey, in 10-20 years we might all be publishing journal articles in Mandarin and doing our postdocs in the Far East, given the economic growth in China & India compared to the West), but perceived opinion is a powerful thing.
 
Some specific advantages to doing a PhD in the USA that I can think of include:
(a) It is probably easier to get your paper published in a high-impact American journal if you are studying at a well-known, American university.
( Because of that "do your PhD in the USA" mentality a lot of high-flying researchers end up in American universities for their PhDs & postdocs. If you want to network with future academic stars from around the world it will be easy to do so in the States.
© The work-culture in grad school is a lot more vigorous in the USA than it is in a lot of other countries. I can't speak for Singapore, but compared to the UK you'd be working much longer hours in the States. Longer hours --> more research done --> more publications/experience/data, at least in theory.
 
I

Not sure... but are you sure that you can't easily turn on/off what is shown in the bibliography? I think it's normal to be able to do that.
 
In psych, we list dois, which should be listed. I'm not sure about other fields or what other types of URLs it is listing.

If the reference is a printed journal, even if you somehow have online access to it, you do not have to put the URL, especially if it cannot be used to verify the source by an outsider reading your paper. Reference it like a journal article or whatever it is. I wouldn't worry about the URL unless it is a webpage with potential to change content (and include access date in reference)... Especially n your circumstance, the URL is only accessible by people at your specific library or program.

One of the reasons I know many students are told to come to the USA is the large presence of English in the business and academic world. A great deal of science literature in all countries is being published in English, and sometimes it is easier to get those papers that aren't in your native language translated to English. Being bilingual in English and your native tongue is thought to be a major benefit. That plus the huge number of institutions helps to make the US a good place to study for foreign students. I'm guessing the sole fact that there are so many institutions here in the US is still why it is more commonly suggested as the English option? I'm not sure. There also seems to be a good deal more funding though different governments to send students here than for some other countries. I don't see why studying in Singapore would be a bad thing; as an American, that is a place that I'd love to go, even just for a few weeks. As far as electronics go, you're in a great place to learn. However, since I am not bilingual and because I know there are exceptional programs in my field here in the US, I'm staying here for PhD.
 
I would highly recommend applying for a post-doc in the US if you're feeling okay with being far from home a bit longer. There are places here doing some pretty cool things.

I am a freshman PhD student at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore doing research on Computer Networking. My question might appear a bit out of track in this forum, still I felt like putting it. My point is a lot of people say that I should have done my PhD somewhere in the US, as if doing PhD in a country itself will make you a great researcher. Albeit my university provides excellent infrastructaral facilities, my supervisor is very friendly (and sincere at the same time), the above issues depress me at times. Do they mean that I could get more value after my PhD from a US university (I am not talking about MIT, Stanford grade, there are plenty of not so good ones.) even if I do good research here in NTU, specifically when I apply for a postdoc/assistant professorship (which may be in the US?)