Questions tagged [on-topic-ness]
This tag is used for posts about whether a question is on-topic for the main Academia site or not.
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Update the "What topics can I ask about here?" section?
In the help centre, there's a page giving advice on what topic to ask or not ask about :
https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic
Specifically, in the "What topics should I avoid?", ...
cag51Mod
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Questions about practices related to specific computer science subfield -- when are they on topic?
There were recently two questions about specific, different, computer science subfield.
Why do a lot of publications ignore better results from other papers // compare only to old results (example in ...
cag51Mod
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Is a trivia about a university or academic institution considered as off-topic?
I wonder if not-so-academic questions about academic institutions are allowed here.
For example, there are such questions like:
Why is the logo of DBLP (a computer science bibliography) written in ...
WrzlprmftMod
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May I ask this question or will it be closed?
I'd like to know if I can get more specific than a checklist to understand whether or not my research paper (at the graduate level for getting my M.Sc.) is good enough to publish anywhere. It's been ...
cag51Mod
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What should we do about questions asking for career advice outside of academia?
I felt like questions involving careers outside of academia have been received inconsistently in recent times.
To look more systematically, I went through the industry tag specifically over the past 9 ...
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Why was my question ("Any way to sync my Papers 2 library to my newer iPad?") closed?
My question (Any way to sync my Papers 2 library to my newer iPad?) was closed as off-topic today. To be honest, I hesitated before posting it because it felt not quite like an exact fit for this SE ...
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Would question asking about using the code of a research project be on-topic?
Here is the draft of my question:
The WE1S (WhatEvery1Says) project is so resourceful and well documented that I really want to use it. Unfortunately, I still don't know where is the repo that the ...
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New contributor to Academia, inquiring about if discussing studying methods are fair game
I am new to this site, and as such, I would like to inquire on whether questions about studying and studying methods, in general, are fair game on this website. (I cannot ask a question on Meta yet, ...
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Are questions about figures and statistics in academia (e.g. number of students, researchers, etc.) off-topic?
To give some context, I have a quite simple question (i.e. the number of international doctoral students in the US), but I have two different sources that give apparently conflicting figures. Would it ...
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Questions about old, hard to find sources
Every once in a while, questions about (very) old papers or books pop up and the inability of the OP of said question to find them, e.g. this one or this one, posted recently only a day apart. The ...
cag51Mod
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Is this question about printing an e-book on topic?
Is it legal if I print PDF files of Springer books for personal use?
cag51Mod
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Why was my question put on hold for shopping?
My question was put on hold for the following reason:
This question is what we call a shopping question. It is currently not accepting answers.
What does this mean?
Why are shopping questions not ...
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Questions on drawing software
Questions about drawing software appear periodically on this site, and get either closed as off-topic or closed as duplicate of this one, which is again closed.
I think that this state of affairs is ...
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Questions related to ADHD among students and academics
Should questions that focus on the effects of ADHD on academics and students be on or off topic? For example: Survive the postdoc stage having ADHD.
And the OP has added a new tag. I'm of mixed ...
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Are questions requesting reviews of flaws in exams on-topic?
I recently sat a statistical/machine learning exam where, I believe, the instructions and questions were clearly flawed (to the point of being logically incoherent). The problems with the instructions ...
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Is a question about the Nobel Prize committee/awardees on-topic here?
A question was recently asked about the gender distribution of the 2021 Nobel Prize laureates. I cast the deciding "close as off-topic" vote on this question. I felt this question was off-...
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Why was my question put on hold for depending on individual factors?
My question was put on hold for the following reason:
This question was closed for strongly depending on individual factors. It is currently not accepting answers.
The answer to your question ...
WrzlprmftMod
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Would asking about the rigor of the CDC fall under the "inner workings of research departments" scope of this site?
I wanted to ask a question about why this page on the CDC does not have rigorous citations (but only generic content sources) that I would expect to be part of a scientific organization:
https://www....
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Are questions about non-academic sites using research publications off-topic?
I don't understand why my question about Google knowledge panel was closed as off-topic. The only reason I can think of is that the question is about a non-academic site. I would like to understand in ...
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Looking for a general academic term on "technology trees" and related research and not sure where to ask best
I'm not sure where better to ask this, maybe Philosophy either English SE are better places than Academia?
My question:
From computer games like Civilizations, we know the concept of the
technology ...
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Is academia the right place to get help for dealing with classmates?
I have an issue with someone in my group project (a non-ESL student who writes in broken English)
Is this the right SE for this? Is there even an SE for this?
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College undergraduate advice questions [duplicate]
We've had a couple questions since the dawn of Academia.SE asking for advice about undergraduate-related topics, the most recent being this well-formulated and generally pretty solid question. In the ...
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Is a question about a situation in which a decision should or should not be made to drop a student's grade appropriate for the exchange?
This question stems from a personal situation however I will attempt to make it generalizable if I make a post. Let me make it clear that I am not the one tasked with making this decision, I am ...
CommunityBot
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Is this question about citations on-topic or off-topic?
This question was first closed as off-topic and then reopened. The edits did not change the topic of the question, they only added and removed details. So if the question was off-topic, by keeping the ...
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Can I ask about my previous employer asking me not to publish?
I want to ask the following question, but am not sure if it is appropriate for this site. Can you help me tell if it is okay to ask here? If not, can you point to a better forum?
I consider ...
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Big list question for reference managers
This recent question on reference managers and note taking has got me thinking again. I am on the record of not liking big-list questions and really not liking big-list software questions. Questions ...
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Technical support: rational vs emotion
(Just to be clear, although all of the link here are about my question, I no longer have interest in the original question and only want to generalize the problem.)
According to Are questions asking ...
CommunityBot
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What is our stance regarding questions asking for survey of institution’s regulations?
What is our stance regarding questions asking for survey of institution’s regulations? Are they on-topic or off-topic?
For example, the question When an academic researcher receives a gift funding ...
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On-topicness of the content of research when the subject of research is academia itself
This question asks about studies about peer reviewing. It was voted to close as off-topic and one of the close voters gave the argument:
This reads as if you want people here to do your research on ...
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How do I ask a good question?
I asked a few questions on this website and I think all of them got deleted. I have no idea how to ask a good question on this site. I'm not a researcher. Maybe researchers have knowledge that I don't ...
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Are questions about research administration on topic?
I think it's clear from the Help and actual questions/answers here that questions about the academic side of research are on topic. However, are questions about research administration on topic?
By "...
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Why questions about race is on topic, but about LGBTQ not?
Latino is not even race, Is this statistic about how many Latinos/Hispanics have a PhD in the USA correct?
and it was only referenced via social media,
my question Is there any relible evidence of ...
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Would this questions be on topic here?
I want to ask a question, but I'm wondering if it's on topic here. It's a question about if I should even bother writing up a paper, but the work is in Abstract Algebra, so maybe MathOverflow would be ...
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Are questions asking technical issues on academic services on-topic?
The question Is there a way to change preprint service within OSF system? is about to closed and I suspect the reason is that it's a technical question. Perhaps the close voters think that it's better ...
WrzlprmftMod
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Should this question on the OSF system be reopened?
There is a closed question on the OSF system: Is there a way to move a preprint from one service to another within the OSF system? that has spawned a number of comments as well as two meta questions:
...
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How to proceed with the lingerie–elevator question?
The question What was offensive about the "ladies lingerie department" joke, and how can I avoid offending people in a similar way? has caused a lot of controversy in comments and answers, ...
CommunityBot
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Follow on to the lingerie–elevator question
The original question about the lingerie joke made in an elevator was controversial leading to a lively meta discussion. The consensus appeared to be to ask a new, but related, question on issue. This ...
CommunityBot
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Can I ask about the research level of a certain university here?
For some reasons I need to know about the level of research conducted in a certain university (not because I want to study there: I got my Ph.D. years ago). Specifically, I'm interested in a certain ...
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On-topic-ness of questions on legal issues related to academia?
We seem to have a very inconsistent policy with respect to questions on legal issues related to academia.
I am not referring to questions asking for legal advice for a particular situation (these ...
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What to do with questions asking to evaluate commercial online services?
We have at least one old unclosed question asking to evaluate some commercial online services: Is Academia.edu useful?
This was cited in favour of questions going into the same direction: Is Peer.us ...
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Need a couple of examples of questions that are too hypothetical to keep open
I've read several questions here about whether a certain question is too hypothetical. A nice rule of thumb I read at one of these was that in a not-too-hypothetical question (i.e. an acceptable ...
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Should we create questions that ask to cover some educational system of a country comprehensively?
A recent question that, in a sense, relied crucially on some details of the general Dutch educations system, got me thinking:
Wouldn't it be nice if this community knew more about the Dutch education ...
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Reopening question about becoming a good advisor?
I recently asked a question which recieved some attention. But was closed as off-topic (Shopping question).
Basically my question is about training or which steps I can take to become a good advisor. ...
CommunityBot
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Academia questions from posters below certain age off-topic?
In a question asking How to stop sexual harassment by teacher? there was a lot of down-votes so I asked why. A comment was made that
(1) We do not handle high school problems. (2) The post contains ...
CommunityBot
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Why is this question about discrimination still open?
I ran across this questions in the Hot Network Questions: Is it discrimination to hold someone from a minority or underprivileged background to the same academic standard as regular students?
It ...
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Why is the content of my question out of scope?
What are the criteria for effective academic journal websites?
This question was put on hold yesterday, the reason being: "This question is not within the scope of this site as defined in the help ...
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Deciphering status in manuscript handling systems
We keep getting questions in which we are asked to decipher the status messages in some online submission management system (latest one).
I find it slightly annoying that we have to do the job of ...
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Has the stance on questions pertaining to legal issues changed?
On-topic-ness of questions on legal issues related to academia? seems to say questions pertaining to legal issues are on-topic.
However, the question below got closed on the grounds that it is a legal ...
CommunityBot
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