hello. would a question that sought input on which degree to pursue based on my specific goals/interests be on-topic for this site?

@swasheck almost certainly not. It would probably be closed as "depends on individual factors"

But you're free to ask about it in chat

@ff524 While we are at it: Any chance of status-completeding that one?

There are at least two ways to miss a seminar: one is to get the time wrong, the other is to get the day wrong. Today I got the day wrong.

@MassimoOrtolano One can also get the room wrong.

@gerrit I did that too today. I first went to a room to find nothing. So I checked the room again, without noticing that the day was wrong. Only when I got to the potentially right room, I checked also the day to discover that it was the wrong day. Oh, well.

I have only skimmed it, but this looks like a great resource: link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12160-011-9269-x

Came across this reference in a properly published and well respected book by Wasserman

Unpublished Ph.D. thesis? How? Why? Isn't a Ph.D. thesis supposed to be published?

@NickAlexeev depends what you mean by published...

A colleague was unable to publish some of his results because of corporate secrets (essentially the results indicated which parts of town were going to be worst affected by mining deformations, and if public those results would fuel real estate speculation)

@StrongBad I don't mean anything. The reference is taken verbatim from the back of the book.

@NickAlexeev I meant that some people consider deposited in the library archives as "unpublished"

with the idea being that "publishing" requires some sort of distribution.

@Wrzlprmft just got to find how to edit the close reasons ...

@NickAlexeev For example, according to this source (citefast.com/styleguide.php?style=APA&sec=Thesis), it seems that for the APA style an unpublished thesis is one that is not available through commercial databases or institutional repositories.

@Wrzlprmft need another mod to approve the change, then we can status complete it.

While this is only viewable by 10k+ users, I really like this opps answer

@MassimoOrtolano I'm trying to invent an example. Proprietary information was used in a thesis. The thesis was defended in private (say, everyone on the defense committee have signed an NDA). The thesis is not readily available to the public at the library of the institution (university). The thesis is archived somewhere, perhaps there is limited access to it (perhaps an NDA is required).

@NickAlexeev I think even if the defense was public and the thesis is readily available in the library (and possibly on-line) some people would still say it is unpublished.

@NickAlexeev It might not involve necessarily proprietary information. For instance, my thesis is written in Italian and at that time there was no institutional repository like now. Like any thesis in Italy it's deposited in the national library in Rome, but to access it you have to go there according to the library website. For an international audience, for all practical purposes, I'd call my thesis "unpublished".