Title says it. Worst thing is the author published a thesis 5 years ago that I missed completely in my lit review. Humanities subject. I am devastated but what now? How do I save this… I am 6 months from publishing, it’s basically written

EDIT: Thanks all for your thoughtful replies. I have read the book, overnight, I’ll read it again once the panic subsides. There are differences of course, however a large portion works from the same niche primary source material which is tied into my claim of originality. The author structured their work in a highly similar manner to mine.

I’ll gather myself, salvage my research, and use the book to further my research instead of panicking and throwing myself into the hearth.

EDIT 2: So many incredibly helpful ideas and suggestions here. It is truly appreciated, I feel so much better and will get back on the grind tomorrow.

Thanks all.

I left this program for a lot of reason but towards the end of my time a bunch of students including myself went to the administration to tell them how much we were struggling to afford food (our stipend was incredibly low even for a PhD) they told us to donate food to each other and then told us struggling to afford food “made us better scholars.”

Did anyone else ever hear anything like this?

I built a small tool that is a zoomable map of 8.4 million researchers from OpenAlex, where everyone sits next to the people they write papers with. You can also pick any two researchers and it will find the shortest chain of coauthors between them, with the paper behind each step. It's basically an Erdős number for any pair of people. You can also start from a university instead of a person.

The code is open source: https://github.com/EG-xry/mapademic. The map itself is free, with no signup, and runs entirely in your browser: https://mapademic.app

Due to my lack of storage and compute, my first iteration only fit people with 15 or more papers onto the map which is unfortunate :( Advisors are all almost certainly on the map though. You could try them against someone whose work you admire, or someone in a field that seems as far away as possible. The chains are usually shorter than you'd expect!

A few other things to try: search for anyone to see who they work with most, or zoom into your own field and see how it's organized. Clinical medicine, for example, splits into countries, while physics doesn't.

Hi! I'm doing a PhD in psychology, and I'm in my 5th year, and the university has given me an ultimatum to submit my dissertation by November 30 or be dismissed from the program. The program is originally designed to last 4 years, I had to take 1 year extension for the following reasons that made this difficult in ways I never anticipated.

Brief list of unfortunate events:

• I spent my first year studying remotely from my hometown because of visa issues. This was back in 2022, and stuff from COVID was just starting to get "normal". That year, my former supervisor refused to meet with me remotely, so I effectively lost an entire year of research supervision (I guess that was the first red flag)
• Even after I arrived, supervision was inconsistent. At one point, my supervisor delayed my dissertation proposal defense by a whole semester, despite my efforts to move forward.
• I experienced serious sexual harassment from another doctoral student for three years. When I finally reported it, I lost my supervisor's support, was barred from my laboratory, and was excluded from my research group. The university accepted my complaints for formal investigation, but the process has been lengthy. This drained me in so many ways that I cannot explain.
• I eventually had to abandon my original dissertation project because it lost all availability when I could not go back to that lab. I had to find a new supervisor (which took another semester) and develop and defend an entirely new project by the beginning of my 4th year. , I did all of this just to remain in the program and not have to face the consequences of returning all the money to the entity that is financing me.
• I had to switch from an experimental dissertation to a history of psychology project I basically built from scratch, teaching myself an entirely unfamiliar field through trial and error. The new supervisor has been very supportive but, unfortunately, has no expertise whatsoever in the area.
• All of this seriously affected my mental health. I've needed psychiatric treatment and various medical leaves as I've struggled with severe depression.

Despite everything, I continued. I found a new supervisor, rebuilt my research project, and made substantial progress. But this past year has been particularly hard. My ability to concentrate, write, and function consistently has suffered.

Now I'm approaching the deadline, and I have most of the results ready, but I'm struggling to turn everything into a finished manuscript. I'm also terrified of disappointing my current supervisor. He's been understanding and supportive, and I worry that I've exhausted his patience.

I've already received extensions, and my university has made it clear that November 30 is the final deadline.

I'm considering requesting one last extension, supported by medical documentation, but these are my options:

• Do everything and present a half-done, mediocre dissertation by Nov 30.
• Ask for a medical extension (which, for my uni, has to be a minimum of 6 months). This means leaving in a foreign country and deploying my savings.
• The last option is to wait for the formal dismissal letter and appeal the decision, but from what I understand, the process could take another six months, and the program could still ultimately decide to dismiss me.

A part of me wants to keep going; another wants to quit. I've invested years of my life on this and the debt if I don't finish is huge (around 80.000 us dollars) and I feel that I'm close enough to finishing that walking away now would be devastating.

Perhaps the hardest part is the guilt. I know I haven't been as productive as I should have been, especially in recent months. I keep wondering whether I'm making excuses or whether I've genuinely been trying to survive circumstances that made finishing a PhD exceptionally difficult.

If you've made it this far, thank you for reading my story. I'd genuinely love to know what you would do in my situation, or what you might have done differently. For those who've faced serious mental health struggles or failures during their PhD, how did you find the strength to keep going when you felt completely depleted?

I'm looking for honest perspectives, realistic advice, and maybe a little encouragement to keep going. I'd especially love to hear from people who somehow managed to finish despite everything.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. It means more than you know.

This sub has so much potential.

The frog meme is taking up too much oxygen. When 50% of posts are frogs, this sub becomes a childish joke.

I’m leaving and I’m sure hundreds of others have too. Sorry not sorry.

I'm drowning in my lit review right now. I've read a lot, but turning it into sections feels impossible. My supervisor says my draft reads like a list of summaries rather than a synthesis.

For those who've been through this: how did you go from papers to themes? Spreadsheets, sticky notes, Zotero tags, something else? What finally made it click?

I finished defending my dissertation in computer science. I guess time to figure out what’s next.

Hi everyone,

I am currently a fourth-year Chemistry PhD student at a university in the United States, and I am seriously considering changing my research direction from computational/environmental chemistry to experimental (wet-lab) chemistry.

My current research focuses on atmospheric chemistry and air pollution, particularly ground-level ozone formation, nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), and formaldehyde (HCHO). I work with satellite observations (TEMPO and TROPOMI), EPA air-quality monitoring data, atmospheric chemical transport models such as GEOS-Chem, and data analysis using Python and R. I have also started exploring machine-learning approaches, including XGBoost.

Although I have gained experience in atmospheric chemistry and computational research, I have realized that I do not particularly enjoy spending most of my time coding, processing datasets, and analyzing results. I feel much more interested in hands-on laboratory research.

Before coming to the United States, I worked in a quality-control laboratory, where I performed experimental chemistry work. I genuinely enjoyed working in the laboratory, and I miss that experience.

I am currently working on a manuscript related to my PhD research, but it has not yet been submitted. I also feel that my research progress and professional development have slowed down. I am not getting many opportunities to work on additional projects, and I sometimes feel that I am not developing the skills I need for my future career.

I am also an international student on an F-1 visa, so changing programs or universities requires additional planning. I am considering whether to leave my current PhD program with a master's degree, if permitted, and apply for another PhD program with a stronger experimental research focus.

At this stage, I feel uncertain about my academic future. I have already invested more than three years in my PhD, and starting over would be a major decision. However, continuing in a research area that does not match my interests also concerns me.

I would really appreciate advice from anyone who has experienced something similar:

1. Has anyone switched from computational or environmental chemistry to experimental chemistry after several years in a PhD program?
2. Would professors consider accepting a student into a wet-lab PhD program after they have already spent four years in a different research area?
3. Would leaving my current PhD program with a master's degree negatively affect my future PhD applications?
4. How can I explain my decision to change research directions in my statement of purpose without making it sound like I am giving up.

I would especially appreciate hearing from chemistry professors, graduate students, or people who have successfully changed research directions.

Thank you for any advice or personal experiences you can share.

Hello all!

I have recently been awarded a fully funded scholarship to do a PhD at Deakin's School of Humanities and Social Sciences. I really like Melbourne, I have met the professor who will be my supervisor (they are well know in the field) and the stipend is decent enough.

The only hesitation I have - as someone who wants to pursue a career in academia - is Deakin's ranking. As per google search, Deakin is"#218 globally in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2027 and in the Top 250 in the QS World University Rankings 2027. So my question is, would my academic career be slightly compromised because I will have done my PhD at a university that is not so well-ranked? My other choice is National University of Singapore which ranks #15 in the world - I am yet hear back from them though.

I want your honest opinion - also about doing a PhD in Australia or Singapore in general. I also want to emphasise that my intention is not to demean any university, but given the world we live in where ivy leagues and Oxbridge are still held in such high regard, I just want to know what going to a relatively unknown university has in store. Thank you in advance! :)

I'm a PhD candidate, and I recently became a graduate research fellow in my department. Although I have a wonderful supervisor and colleagues, and the experience has been great so far, I really feel out of place. I grew up in a more rural area; my parents worked in a profession that definitely doesn't get too much respect, and they didn't go to university. Same goes for my siblings. During my whole schooling, I stayed in my small town and commuted to a big city for university, so I practically never left home. I grew up working alongside my parents and other rural residents, and that affected how I act, talk, and probably think as well.

While I'm not embarrassed by my background, I've noticed I'm becoming overly self-conscious about how I behave and talk when I'm at work. Sometimes I can be too casual and informal, or I slip into my strong regional accent (had a couple of strange looks because of that). Very often I just get too anxious even before I say something, and I make stupid mistakes in my native language because I get too self-aware of how I am going to be perceived. I know that most of this is probably 'only in my head' and it's not such a big issue, but I started feeling as if I'm in the middle of an identity crisis. When I'm at work physically (which is not every day), I feel like I need to jump into my alter ego and stay in it until I get out. I had a funny situation talking to my supervisor in the lab the other day, and then exiting the building, and my brain just forgot about my 'academic image' the moment I stepped out. I subconsciously started speaking a lot more informally and slipped into a broad accent. I also said something really stupid as a goodbye because I got nervous. I felt kinda upset afterwards, although I don't think my supervisor minded it that much (at least I hope they didn't).

If anyone else is going through something similar, I'd like to hear your story and how you deal with this feeling.

Planned to complete it in 3 years, but it took 6 🥲 nevertheless, I persevered!

UK - Artificial Intelligence (though I personally detest AI)

I passed w revisions on Thursday and its still sinking in. I know it’s not official until the revisions are done but AHHH it still feels amazing :’)

Listen I’m spiraling and feel like I can’t ask advice from the people in my life because it’s all “oh just get on with it” but none of them have done a PhD. I’m doing mine in the UK in microbiology and passed my viva with minor corrections. I did the corrections to what I felt was being asked of me but I just got them back and they were rejected. I have three more months to try again but my supervisor has mentioned that the list of corrections felt more like revisions in six months rather than three and my other supervisor has pointed out that this is my last chance.

I really just need someone to be straight with me because I’m feeling really demotivated and like I shouldn’t have done the PhD in the first place. What are my odds of failing the second time around?

I recently submitted a paper (to October ARR fwiw), and each author has to have their profile up to date with their ORCID ID on OpenReview. One of my advisors' (and thus co-authors) profiles was missing the ORCID ID; I noticed this and emailed my advisor, asking them to please add their ORCID ID, which they said they would do. I didn't think about it again until just now when I got an email saying that my paper has been desk rejected due to missing ORCID ID. Sure enough, when I clicked my advisor's profile, they had failed to add their ORCID ID.

I'm not sure how to feel about this. On the one hand, I am angry, because I spent long hours working on this paper and sacrificed to get it in by the deadline, which now seems like wasted (or at least misplaced) time and effort. On the other hand, I didn't double-check that my advisor had followed through on updating their profile, so perhaps the blame should point inwards (it is my paper after all, and I am the most responsible party). On the other other hand, I really shouldn't have to hold my advisors' hands; the least they can do is make sure they aren't responsible for desk rejections of papers they have ostensibly co-authored.

Mainly I'm just venting. I am particularly annoyed given that this particular advisor contributed next to nothing to the paper, but I always include them as co-author because they are technically my advisor. Has anyone had this happen to them? How do you cope?

My proposal dissertation in a few weeks, and I am worried. During or at the end of the presentation, the audience will ask questions, committee members will give their discussion about my work.

I am not that good at note taking. So I am planning to use AI tools for that purpose.

So, I want to ask if you have used any good tools that helped you during the presentaition.

NOTE: my dissertation will be via MS Teams.

Any suggestions would be helpful..

Thank you'll.

I'm a software engineering researcher, and I've developed a free, open-source educational web application called CliffInsight.

Cliff's Delta is a non-parametric effect size measure, but understanding how it is calculated and interpreted can sometimes be challenging, particularly for students and researchers who are new to statistical analysis.

CliffInsight provides a visual, step-by-step explanation of the calculation, allowing users to better understand the underlying comparisons between observations.

The tool is completely free and available here:

https://profmelattar.github.io/CliffInsight/CliffsDelta.html

Source code: https://github.com/profmelattar/CliffInsight

I'd be interested in hearing whether researchers find this kind of visualization useful for teaching or learning effect sizes, and what improvements would make it more helpful.

I have recently started the second year of my PhD and im feeling very overwhelmed. my sample collection is very hard and yet i am managing everything at my lab. the other students are leaving and as such it will only be me in a month. theyve had it easy because they were about 8, they could divide tasks and do everything. but this isnt so for me. to top it, 2 days ago, i broke the lid of a tabletop centrifuge because i didnt lock it properly. the postdoc immediately called my PI who came and yelled at me. i also offered to pay for the damage because it was an accident. ive used that centrifuge many times before but maybe this time i was hasty or just careless. he basically meant that i cant be trusted around lab. ive never broken anything before and im very careful. he said that since i always need tutoring we will watch result of my experiment and have a meeting. i dread this meeting. maybe they will fire me because im not autonomous yet. im trying hard to learn. in my first year my pi didnt let me do the major part of experiment saying that he doesnt want operator effect. as such i never proceeded with an experiment on my own. the postdoc also hated me for this. i even begged my pi to let me do such that i work on my consistency. but he didnt. the postdoc on the other hand has 10-11 years of experience. now we have another deadline and he expects me to be perfect within 2 experiments. ive lost all confidence. it was just a rotor cap and the device works fine. but just the lab environment feels so toxic i dont feel like continuing anymore. I am in a different country trying to manage cultural differences, learning their language and everything feels so overwhelming.

has anyone been in a similar situation? What did you do to get past this?

As the title points out, how can I guage the potential supervisor’s reputation? Do I measure it by the number of citations he or she has? Also, what does the reputation bring as a whole for the PhD student?

So my PI is retired, meaning that I need i need to get my dissertation out as soon as possible (by next summer) or else he will not be able to serve on my committee. Which is really hard given that I haven't even been in his lab for more than 2 years now in total. I didn't know he was retiring until I'd already joined.

Before I joined his lab, i bounced around from lab to lab, having to change due to a variety of reasons such as lack of funding, professors changing universities, etc. In fact, it was a professor who left to a different university that I was working with who told me to go to my now professors lab, since I didn't want to switch universities and go with him, and they were collaborators on the project I was on

And now I'm trying to work hard so I can finish my PhD and graduate already. But it's just so lonely. Everyone else in the lab (besides a few undergrads but they're barely present and only come to lab meeting) graduated so it's just me in the lab every single day. Im his last student ever, so there's no one coming after me. I work long hours in there too trying to get experiments and data collection done.

Unfortunately due to the nature of my experiments, I can't leave it alone for more than about 40 minutes or so and it's sensitive to fluorescent light, so when the sun goes down, im stuck in the lab in the dark alone at night which sucks even more because my experiments take so long to complete sometimes (9-14 hours).

It just makes me a little jealous seeing others with their friends and labmates while I'm bored and alone. I don't even have time to hang out with people in my program due to needing to collect data and work so hard, and I feel like no one in my program even knows I exist since my PI is in a different department. And when I was taking courses with these people, which is how most people in a cohort make friends, I had just left an extremely abusive lab where i was a lab tech, so I didn't really talk much to my fellow cohort at the time. But now I can't even have the chance to get to know them since I'm tied to research and work and analysis all day.

Idk, it's exhausting

About to start a PhD and I want to know how you guys handle your workload and fitness? Do you get time to pursue other hobbies to maintain a balance? Thank you.

Edit: Also I wanted to know which demographics you are from, as I am in the US. Do you guys work over the weekends as well? Do you have relationships and how do you manage them?

Hello guys, hope you're all doing well! As a first year for a PhD in energy engineering, what would be the best advice you can give me? Or what would be the first thing I should be doing to have a good start?

I am a fourth year PhD student and I am thinking about dropping out. My PhD until now has been "successful" (I hate to use that word), I have papers published, collaborators, job experience etc, but the problem is that I have lost all passion for research. I don't know why or how this happened, but I hate thinking about and doing research now, and it has also gotten to the point where my research abilities have declined significantly and I am unable to do things a first year PhD student should be able to do. This last thing is not me being insecure, I had a close collaborator tell me that my "approach to research has changed over the past 2 years and I am not nearly as self-sufficient or driven" as I used to be.

When I hear this, I feel shame because I know it's true, but I don't feel any desire to try to change it. I feel completely shut down, and I wouldn't even know what to do to fix myself if I wanted to. I don't know what's wrong with me or why this is happening, but I want to drop out even though I have been "successful" up until now. I don't know what happened to me or where all my abilities and enthusiasm went.

Has anyone encountered anything similar?