Should professors intervene if a student is wearing offensive clothing in their classroom? A question about university dress codes reminded me of an incident that happened when I was an undergrad, in which a classmate came to school wearing a really offensive and misogynistic t-shirt.

I was extremely uncomfortable, especially since this was an engineering program and I was one of only three or four female students in a class of about fifty. I had another class with the same student later that day and he was still wearing the shirt. I remember wishing at the time that a faculty member or someone with more authority than me would do something about it.

So, my question is as follows:

Should a professor intervene if a student in their class is wearing clothing that is likely to be offensive and hostile to other students? If so, how?
If yes: are there any scenarios in which a professor should not do anything even though a student's clothes contains material that is hostile towards another student or group of students?

And finally,

If I come across this scenario as a TA, in which a student (who may be a peer in my program of study) in my class is wearing something offensive, what can I do about it? I don't feel comfortable (or safe, for that matter) as a woman confronting a male student about an item of clothing that is offensive to women. On the other hand, I feel like it is my responsibility to keep a non-hostile environment in my classroom.

Discriminatory harassment is forbidden by the university's code of conduct and includes: placing written or graphic material which demeans or shows hostility or aversion toward an individual or group because of race, color, religion, gender, national origin, age or disability.

The item of clothing in question contained a slogan and image that is indubitably demeaning and hostile towards women.

I'm a bit disappointed at the number of comments from people who say they need to know what the exact statement on this particular T-shirt was so that they can judge whether it was truly misogynistic before answering the question. The question is clear: What is the appropriate response given that a student is ``wearing clothing that is likely to be offensive and hostile to other students''? Debating exactly what constitutes misogyny (or any other form of hate speech) is not the point here. Surely a question about whether a particular slogan is offensive would be too localised for academia.se, whereas the question of how the role of professor and/or TA affects how/whether one calls out offensive speech/behaviour/etc is excellent.

A couple of the other answers express surprise/concern at the OP's comment

  I don't feel comfortable (or safe, for that matter) as a woman
  confronting a male student about an item of clothing that is offensive
  to women.

Many of the comments on this page illustrate why it can be so hard to call out misogyny as a woman. Women who call out misogyny are regularly accused of being "too sensitive" and told to "lighten up". On this page we've seen people who think they'd be a better judge of whether something is offensive than the person who actually experienced it, suggesting it may have been all in her head, refusing to trust her judgement, and claiming that no young people are misogynists. All this just from outlining a story that inspired a general question about calling out offensive behaviour. Is it any wonder that women may find it difficult to confront the person who's actually wearing the offensive T-shirt?

Finally, to actually answer the question:

Most universities should have something like a code of conduct which forbids discriminatory harassment. The one quoted in the question certainly seems to apply to a T-shirt with an offensive slogan. In this case the professor (or any student in the class) would be within their rights to object to the T-shirt. I might say something like "that T-shirt seems to be in violation of the code of conduct; please don't wear it to this class again", ideally in much the same tone as I would say "If I don't have your homework by tomorrow you will get a zero", but I'd say it loudly enough that anyone paying attention could hear. As with any instance of calling out something offensive, I would only do this if I felt safe enough: you should try to create a safe environment in your classroom, but not at the expense of your own safety.

If you don't feel safe or comfortable enough to call out your student (and I can see this happening especially if that student is also your peer), there might be other people you can talk to, for example the professor of the class you're TAing, or the head of the graduate program in your department, or the student's advisor. This might also be helpful if the student does not respond well when you first address them.

I habitually wore Black metal T-Shirts, which can have offensive lines, as an Undergrad, which never got me into trouble. But, some people asked me why I like this kind of T-shirt and I tried to explain my reasoning.
This worked very well and I formed strong friendships with some of these people.

And I, personally, tried hard not to judge people from their appearances - which was never 100% sucessfull, but I think is a worthwile attempt.

So, I think the best first step is simply asking the person WHY he is wearing this t-shirt. Every person with a provacating T-shirt gets asked now and then, so it should be no big deal.
Running to your teachers first is similar to running to your mommy and not really grown up behaviour.
Disclaimer: I come from germany, where a much wider range of clothing is deemed acceptable in academia, especially social sciences and CS.


Gift for mentor after his thesis defense? I'm attending the thesis defense of one of my undergrad mentors this week. I owe almost everything about where I am today to him. I want to get him a gift, but I'm not sure what. He owns his own business, so a gift card seems pointless when he won't be short of money. I have never seen him eat or drink anything, EVER, so I'm not sure what kind of candy or food would be appropriate. He's a guy, so flowers are out.

We did have a shared love of a certain book series, but I already got him one of those for a Christmas gift and I feel like it might be weird to get another one again.

His thesis is something pretty abstract—even the name of the project has no real-world analogue. So a "cute" gift related to his thesis would be tough to come up with.

Also I'm a girl, if that matters, and I don't want to give him anything that would be creepy/weird/over-the-top with the gender difference taken into account.

A short (1-2 paragraph) hand written note on a card or postcard would be an appropriate gift.

I have mentored about a dozen undergraduates and I still have the thank you notes they sent to me on my pin board in my office. The notes are nice reminders about the impact I had on the students.

Contact the school and find out the dimensions of the diploma. Then purchase a frame and matting so that he can hang it nicely in his office.

This is totally appropriate and specific to the occasion.


When exactly are you “promoviert” in Germany? In Germany, acquiring your doctoral degree usually involves the following steps (in that order):

You hand in your thesis.
The examiners review your thesis.
You defend your thesis and possibly take an oral exam (usually on the same day).
You publish your thesis (or provide proof that you already did so).
The diploma, certificate is prepared, signed, and given to you.

Step 3 usually is the big thing after which you are congratulated, celebrated, and get to wear the mortarboard, as there is hardly anything that can go wrong afterwards. Nonetheless, it is usually prominently made clear that only after step 5 you may call yourself Doktor (doctor) and you can get into big trouble otherwise. I am not asking about this.

However, in German, there is another prominent term for acquiring a doctoral degree or the process of doing so, namely promovieren or Promotion, respectively. I have some reason to believe that these terms refer to a slightly different thing, namely completing everything up to step 3:

Some people say this is the case.
When publishing your thesis (step 4) at my university, it is common or even required to write Tag der Promotion (day of “Promotion”) in the thesis with the day being the date of the defense (step 3).

However, apart from the above, I failed to find any evidence for this: Internet searches yield all sorts of unrelated stuff and dictionaries do not make such a fine distinction. Hence I am asking: When exactly can you call yourself promoviert in Germany? Be aware that I am looking for some information that goes beyond hearsay (I already have such).

For the search engines: Wann genau ist man promoviert?

The Promotionsordnung of my alma mater says this:

  §17(1): "Als Promotionsdatum gilt der Tag der bestandenen mündlichen
  Prüfung."

(The date of Promotion is the day of the successful oral exam.)

  §25(1): "Als vorläufigen Nachweis der Verleihung des Doktorgrades
  erhält der Bewerber vom Prüfungsamt der TUM eine Urkunde nach Anlage
  2, sofern die erforderlichen Exemplare nach § 20 fristgerecht
  eingereicht worden sind."

(You receive a preliminary certificate when you have submitted the required copies of your dissertation.)

  §25(2): "Vor Aushändigung der Urkunde nach Abs. 1 ist der Bewerber
  nicht befugt, den Doktorgrad zu führen."

(You are not allowed to call yourself a Doktor before you have received this preliminary certficate.)

  §25(3): "Der Bewerber erhält ferner eine Urkunde in deutscher und
  englischer Sprache nach Anlage 3 a oder 3 b, die mit dem Siegel der
  TUM versehen ist und das Promotionsdatum gemäß § 17 Abs. 1 trägt. ..."

(The date of Promotion is written on the final certificate.)

So, you could say you are promoviert when you have passed the oral exam. But since I'm not a lawyer I'm not qualified to give legal advice. Personally, I would avoid anything that could be seen as you saying you are a doctor before you are allowed to do so. Until then I would say "I've defended my dissertation successfully and am waiting to receive the certificate." When you have your certificate, the date of Promotion is the day of the oral exam.

In practice, you get the preliminary certificate rather quickly. I believe it was something like two weeks after the exam for me, but it depends on how quickly the head of examination and the administration works. The biggest problem was getting a Führungszeugnis in time since I hadn't considered that prior to the exam.

The general answer is (as @Rolands example of TU Munich shows):

Whatever your university faculty's regulation tells.

They grant you the title, so they also are legally enabled to decide from what point in time on you can "wear" your title. The right to grant doctoral degrees lays in the hands of university faculties or institutes*. For example in the education law of federal state Saxony (Sächsisches Hochschulfreiheitsgesetz) you find the legal notice in Paragraph  §40 "Promotion" that says that the details have to be declared by the regulations of the universities.

  § 40 Promotion [...] (5) Das Nähere [...] regelt eine Promotionsordnung. [...]

Universities are free in the handling of their process of proving the necessary qualification, as they are in their self organization. This freedom is legally granted by the freedom of teaching and research (Grundgesetz [Germany's "constitution"] article 5 paragraph (3))

(!experience based statement:) Usually any final university degree is granted from the day passing the last exam (a defense / Disputation / Rigorosum etc. or even without writing a thesis e.g. in some xyz "of arts" degrees). One should find the legal rules about the exmatriculation / certification date in either the study regulation of the program, or a general regulation for the whole institution (like at TU Munich)

Anyway the earliest time you can give proof about your title, is after receiving the final certificate (or a temporary one like in @Roland's example) of your granting institution. I'd suggest waiting these couple of days or weeks (if your staff members in the examination office are on vacation, or the dean who's signature is needed)

The publishing of the dissertation is usually an obligatorily step, that can be fulfilled after the title was granted. It depends on whatever is written in the study regulation (Prüfungsordnung / Promotionsordnung) of the institute or faculty that can decorate people with a title.

Keep in mind that there can exist great differences between faculties (e.g. doctoral degrees in arts could not require a dissertation if the federal laws allow that, another possibility is a cumulative doctorate due a number of published articles in A+ journals)

In doubt wait with the use of the degree until you have the written evidence (certificate)

*federal exceptions exist: e.g. Hessen, Baden-Württemberg in planning. These federal states have conducted laws - or plan to - that enable universities of applied sciences (earlier called "Fachhochschulen") to grant doctoral degrees.


Do IEEE transactions allow for any "co-first authors"? I, personally, have never see any authors in IEEE transactions listed as "co-first" authors, as such

John Smith†, Bill Lee†, and Boss James
...
† These two authors contribute equally to the work.

Is this allowed in IEEE transactions?

Yes, it is allowed. Google scholar is your friend in such cases.

I employed this query, which looks for publications with "IEEE Transactions" in them, the text "contributed equally to", and one in (text | paper | work | article).

The results show several papers published in IEEE Transactions, which specify multiple equal co-authorship. The way this is specified seems to be non standardized.

For example, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TNB.2006.875054 specifies that "The ﬁrst two authors contributed equally to this work." in the space reserved for details such as when the manuscript was received and revised.

In http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TED.2009.2034804, the equal contribution is specified in the ACKNOWLEDGEMENT section of the paper.

Both ways look good to me. The first case is likely achieved by communicating the authors' contribution in the cover letter / space for staff communication. The second case is achieved by simply writing the contribution in the text body.

I have never seen co-first authors either ... you can use alphabetic ordering to indicate more-or-less equal contributions, or you can use partial alphabetic ordering (the first group is alphabetically ordered and the last group is not), or non-alphabetic to indicate that the first author contributed the most.

Ultimately, the system only works when co-authors are honest to the public about their contribution.  If you're worried that co-authors will cheat you out of credit, you probably should not be working with them.


Not including student who contributed very little as coauthor of paper I am a researcher in condensed-matter physics, and I recently started a research project with another professor, for which I hired a student for a six-month undergraduate internship. The student was under my supervision. During the internship she showed good motivation, but did not make any actual contribution to the progress of the project.

Finally, she started a Ph.D. with someone else. I personally took over the project, taking care of both technical and conceptual parts, which requires a lot of time and work.

I kindly invited her multiple times to double check some of my work, but she had not done anything on the project since the end of the internship.

In the past few months she started having an attitude that I find disturbing. She replies to emails once in a while, proposing new conceptual points to explore, as if I were the student and she was the supervisor. On top of that, she ignores the invitations to double check my calculations, which would require actual work on her side.

Given that she did not make any actual contribution to the project, I am inclined to not include her as an author of any eventual publication. I think that it would be definitely fair to include her in the acknowledgments, but unfair to include her as an author.

What do you think about this? How would you inform her of this decision?

This doesn't seem like an especially unusual situation to me. You had a student for a fixed-term internship, during which time she pursued an angle that did not result in a publication. The student then moved on to other things, and so did you. You kept her informed of your work that is related to what she did as a professional courtesy, but she isn't interested in participating after the internship ends (nor does she have an obligation to). This kind of thing happens often, and nobody behaved badly here...

Do you have any indication that she expects to be a co-author on the eventual publication? (Corresponding with you about the work out of interest doesn't mean she expects to be an author.) She may not have any expectation of authorship credit.

If at some point she asks about authorship, I think you can just gently point out that her work did not lead to publication, and that you started working on the current approach (that did lead to publication) after she left.

If you do get the feeling that she expects authorship but she hasn't explicitly said so, you could say something to her like, "it has been interesting corresponding with you on this, X and I will be sure to thank you in the acknowledgement section of the eventual publication that he and I write." (If indeed you decide that you do want to do so.)

This answer assumes that the student did not perform her job duties.

she did not make any actual contribution to the project - forget her. I am extremely surprised that you even ask about it.

The fact that she showed motivation does not count. What counts is what she did. If (and only if) she does her job, she gets the money. If (and only if) she does a good publishable job, she gets scientific credit in addition.  That's how it should be. None if these seems to be the case.

So, if she ever writes an e-mail, this would mean that she still wants some of the credit. In this case, fight back, exercising a bit of pressure, getting an o.k. from the colleague first. One approach could go in the following tone:

  Thank you for your e-mail.  Please notice that you did not fulfil your job duties, but you were paid.  There have been no real contributions to the project from your side.  As for high-level ideas, these are outside of your scope.  Necessary calculations have not been done, despite my several written requests to you, namely on ... , ... , and ..., which was still before your project ended.  This lack of contribution is not how it is supposed to be.  Therefore, we would appreciate it if you return the salary you received for the internship.  Please transfer USD ... to the account ...  until ... .  If we don't see a reverse payment, we feel necessitated to undertake legal steps. Thank you for your cooperation.

Of course, adapt the text accordingly: you will get the exact wording better than me since you know the details. If your institution has a legal department, you might even delegate the exact wording right away to them. Make sure that the letter goes via snail mail and has an institution stamp.  Use the account number for that project.  Now, guess, would she ever think of claiming any academic credit after a letter in such a tone?


conflicted whether to transfer or not I am a college sophomore and I am debating transferring out of my current school, Hunter college. My GPA is 3.56 and I am a CS and psychology major, concentration of behavioral neuroscience.

Now, I have always been interested in research but the resources in my school seems very tight and my overall experience has been very unsatisfying. My ultimate goal is to try out for MD/PhD program with a background in BCI (Brain computer interface) but my school offers no program in any close proximation.

So, should I transfer out or hold on until the end of my 4 years? And also is my GPA reasonable to transfer into better schools like NYU or WakeForest University?

Should I focus on graduating from my current school or plan to transfer to a more prestigious school?

I am not an expert in neuroscience or BCI. However, I found BP-Endure program where your current school Hunter College is a major partner.

On their web page,

  During the academic year students will work with a research mentor at Hunter or NYU and during the summer in one of the partnering institutions. The BP-ENDURE program selects students from both Hunter College and NYU to participate. Hunter students will receive funding in the form of tuition remission and a stipend during the academic year and will also receive summer funding.

I am not sure why you said the resources in my school seems very tight and my school offers no program in any close proximation. Are you having difficulty getting into that program?

Transferring to another school may cost you a lot than what you'll gain. You may lose the credits you already have and retake courses you have taken plus your financial loss. However, if you have other difficulties with your current school(which you have not mentioned), then transferring may be an option for you.

My advice for you specifically, stay there and study hard, grab any opportunity to enter into the BP-Endure program.

In general, however, if your research area requires resources you don't have in your current school, it's worth considering transferring. You need to weigh on the cost vs. gain. You can either stay in the current school acquiring fundamental knowledge and apply to a graduate school where you would have better resources after you graduate, or transfer to another undergraduate school with much better resources.

Don't transfer. Try to learn to make use of the available resources. Focus on hard work and your own research. Sometimes studying a difficult book is more rewarding than having access to high-tech instruments and possibly not really understanding how they work.


A professor may have stolen an idea I discussed with him: how to proceed? I'm really not sure how to proceed from here.

I'm an undergraduate Computer Science student, planning to earn my MSc in the next couple of years.

A couple of weeks ago, I spoke with a professor (I'll call him A) on an informal setting, and, since he was my teacher on an area relevant to the subject, I discussed with him an idea I had, and about how I was trying to make it my own thesis project.

I have also previously "pitched" this idea to another professor (B). He liked it, and we agreed that once I graduated, he was willing to be my advisor, and I could work on it.

However, I was recently shown the list of thesis proposals for current students, and my idea was among them - being supervised by prof. A, and an unrelated professor, C.

The details are so close to what we have discussed that this is almost surely no coincidence.

Now, I can't say I'm 100% sure he stole my idea, but he didn't mention any of this when we talked, and this thesis list was made after our conversation.

Anything could have happened: either I'm right, or prof. C actually came up with the same idea, or prof. A had a similar idea in the past but didn't tell me about it.

I don't know how to proceed. I am already skeptical of academia - seeing my peers work on projects and write papers that didn't interest them, for the sole purpose of earning an MSc, means I'm not interested on working for it unless it's a subject I really care about. That is - I either find anything I want to work on, or I don't care about earning an MSc at all. This was the case. I found a project I wanted to work on.

My question is on the ethics of what may have happened. I have zero experience on academia or research environments, but I have always considered ideas as important as research. That is, copying an idea is as serious to me as copying research. This would fall into plagiarism.

Is this perspective shared among actual academics? Am I naive in thinking like this?
Am I right in wanting to "keep" an idea to myself, in order to work on it later?
Should I just stay quiet the next time? Shouldn't I be able to discuss these kind of things with people I consider to be honest or "bona fide", without having to be afraid of being copied?

I see multiple possible courses of action, but in the end, I don't know what I want to achieve. The thesis is already assigned, so I probably won't be able to take it away from the student who got it. I also don't know whether this is an ethics violation from prof. A or not, since this is "just an idea" that I voluntarily shared with him.

I can confront prof. A about this, either sending him an e-mail or speaking with him in person, to get his side of the story.

Or I can go to prof. B and tell him about this situation, to see what are his thoughts on it. He looked interested on working with me on this, so maybe he'll know better how to proceed.

What is the best (or "a good") course of action now? I don't feel I should forget this whole story and move on to a different subject, but I don't see what can be done now.

I think it's very clear that you should talk with (B). You had previously discussed this idea with (B) so s/he knows that it was something that you had been considering. Furthermore, (B) also presumably knows the situation within the department better than you. Maybe (A) is known for doing things like this. Maybe the overlap isn't as serious as you think and (B) can reassure you that you can still do your thesis as you wanted to. No one here can decide whether either one of these is the case.

One word of advice: in talking with (B), present this situation as something that you are concerned about, but stay unemotional and stick to the facts: (B) knows that you were interested in this similar project, you discussed it with (A), and now another student is doing this project with (A). You do not need to connect the dots and accuse (A) directly of plagiarism or dishonest conduct in an initial conversation with (B). If this is a misunderstanding or miscommunication then doing so makes you seem aggressive and prone to jumping to conclusions. If (A) did something that is as blatantly dishonest as you have suggested, then that will be obvious to (B) as well.

An idea is an important part of research, but copying an (unpublished) idea is not entirely plagiarism, I fear. Academia is dealing with a two-bladed sword here.
On the one hand, it is about plagiarism and authorship and credit; on the other hand, really good ideas have to be preserved, even in case you lose interest in the matters (or drop out or sth like that).

I guess Professor A assumed that, since you are years away from your degree, and since master thesises, unlike PhDs, are not strictly required to dig into a completely new topic, academia can cope with multiple master thesises on your topic, and decided that he cannot wait to push such an interesting topic until after you publish your initial work, should that ever be the case. I don't know about your university, but at mine, a third-semester C.S. bachelor has a less than 50% chance of actually getting a master's degree. Most dropouts here are "caused" by mathematics and/or engineering basic courses, not by CS classes, and they also befall CS students who score above average in the CS classes.

Now, if you really want to pursue that issue, there are three leverages you have. Let's call them A, B and C:

Depending on your current situation, you can state to A that the "idea" of that master thesis is what you start working on very soon, and ask him to take the topic off his list for a certain amount of time. I personally do not believe that he will take it off his list for as long as three or four years; this is a really long time in CS.
You may also talk to your to-be-supervisor B, state to him the fact that you presented your ideas to A on that matter on , and that this very idea was published on the site only afterwards. If both professors are of the same institute, he should be able to sort it out (but I don't know if he will do it, for the aforementioned reason).
And you can send an eMail to C, informing him about the very same fact, and ask him whether he can definitely say that the idea of A is older, and if not, whether he is comfortable with being part of a situation of stolen ideas. This may only have the effect that C does not do co-supervision.

I personally would recommend against any of these actions, they burn bridges without promising any positive effect. But you should consider it a valuable lesson learned for your PhD:
Mouth shut, ears open!


Can't prepare lesson material. Should I cancel class? I'm a grad student teaching assistant for a freshmen undergrad non major multivariable  calculus class.

What they didn't tell me is that the second half of the semester is not calculus but "finite math". This week's topic is game theory, which I've never learned myself.

In preparing tomorrow's material, I realized I was getting all the answers wrong from one of the sections, and have no idea how to do the problems I'm supposed to teach. Normally it only takes a day to read the textbook and prepare.

I've been up for hours struggling with the same problems and need to leave in 5 hours to get to class on time - and would still like to sleep.

My school never gave me any training or told me any rules; am I allowed to just cancel class?

I'll take any advice at this point.

Edit: I would just like to say how much I appreciate everyone's responses. I'm running on little sleep, (and extremely new to Stack Exchange so still learning how the site works) but you've all given me great ideas when I was truly stressing out.

Edit/Update: turns out I was not doing it incorrectly, just did algebraic work when I should've used a graph so I considered points that I didn't need to which is why my answers were wrong. I met up with the individual who TAd for the course last semester and that's how I figured out my mistake. I sorta winged it in presentation and got the correct answer, now just have to repeat the lesson for the rest of the sessions.

Thank you all for your input.

Edit (from comment): Game theory is just one week of the course; they have two lectures with the professor prior to one 50 minute session with me. This is the only session with me out of a year long course that has been or will be like this.

I would like to add on top of the answers of @aparente001 and @Anonymous Mathematician.

So, first thing, in 5 hours it would be very hard to come up with something solid that you would be comfortable lecturing about; thus I second the suggestion of doing some review and exercises for now.

My opinion is: you can do it.

If you have been teaching calculus so far, chances are that you are a very competent student. You can learn almost at the same time as you will be teaching. And this does not have to be a stressful experience, I would say you can be upfront with your students and let them know that you are learning at the same time as them (they already know that you are a student too).

Actually, this can be beneficial for both parts: you) are learning a new topic and because of that you better understand the difficulties that students may come upon; they) have a TA that understands their difficulties and that is able to explain things in a way that a student would learn (it may not be the best way, but I would say that is OK).

In the case they make you questions you do not know how to answer, again, be upfront: say that it is a good question, you will think and research about it, and you will explain it later, either in the class, e-mail directly to the student, whatever you prefer.

In order for this to work, like mentioned in the other answers, you have to talk to your supervisor and let him know that you were not prepared to lecture this topic. Ask him for help about learning those concepts, or a reference to whom could provide such guidance.

Sounds like you or your department is very disorganized. That "winging" mentality is what got you in this situation in the first place. I suggest you change the way you approach things, get rid of the "winging" mentality. Know your sh*t. Teaching is not theatrics, it's not a show. And for the teachers that believe it is about theatrics they're garbage.


Recently published paper deliberately not citing our very relevant work -- anything to do? Note that the difference between this question and a related question (Recently published paper does not cite my very relevant work) is that the authors in my question are fully aware of our work, whereas, in the related question, the authors were not aware of OP's work.

A recent paper did not cite our very relevant work.

There are significant overlaps among the scopes of the papers, and one of the important figures and the related conclusion are almost identical.

The leading author of the paper in question has been informed about our work even before we submitted the paper. I've asked for a reason for not mentioning it, and the answer was that our paper was noticed during the revision of the paper, and the authors do not feel obliged to mention it.

Is it OK to not mention a paper because of ``seeing it too late?''
Regarding this: does the date of submission/acceptance play a role?

Our publication date is before their submission date.

You have no real recourse. Authors can cite what they like and snub others for no reason. Plus, you can't cite everything so someone's going to get left out. But if it seems purposeful it very well may be. I would send your paper(s) to the snubbing PI and say something like 'looks like these slipped past you'.

It's in their best interest because of your work truly is that related, you'll probably review their papers eventually.

As per your post, the concerned paper which was published utilized your work but didn't cite it. There are two angles to look at this.

Plagiarism. If they really did copy-modify your figure and conclusion, then it could be considered as an act of plagiarism -- the use of a work of another without proper attribution. With sufficient evidence, you can claim against this, if you are willing to go through the trouble for this one citation.
Lack of research defense. You stated that the party in question was informed of your paper before publication. This is something you ought to avoid. If their submission date is before your publication date, then you cannot claim against them for plagiarizing your content.

Having said the above, it should be up to your responsibility to guard your research before its publication. This sort of thing happens all the time. All you have lost so far is a citation, but people have lost their opportunities for the publication of research ideas for the lack of protection of their research ideas. It would be advisable to take it to your experience and move on.


How to reply to reviewer's positive comment more naturally? I want to reply to the reviewer's comment (see below) on my paper,

  My concerns have been addressed satisfactorily and the paper is acceptable.

My own reply would be like:

  Your recognition of our work is much appreciated.

or

  Your encouraging comment is greatly appreciated.

However, it seems unnatural to read, How to give an more appropriate reply?

For this sort of reply, I personally like to keep it short and sweet:

  Thank you!

I would suggest the following response to the reviewers:

  That's great to hear! Thank you for trusting us. Have an awesome day!


How much do I have to know about a group's research before I email the PI about openings? My field of study is purely theoretical, meaning that there are a ton of equations and a bunch of numerical simulations. I am targeting groups that align with my field and I am trying to read their research. I know this question has probably been asked before, but how much of the group's research am I expected to know before I email the PI about lab openings? Three levels of abstraction are given below:

Just the title of the projects and the material given on the webpages.
Go through the abstract and conclusions of their latest papers.
Take a single paper and go through it line by line, understanding all the equations and simulations.

For me, it really depends on the stage of interaction with our group.

For the first contact, I would expect that you have at least visited our website and know what we work on, in general. Browsing the website and some paper titles should be fine for this. If none of the paper titles make sense or sound interesting to you, then why are you applying to work with us in the first place?
If we end up chatting more detailedly (e.g., if you have a phone interview with members of my lab) I would expect that you looked at all the recent papers involving the people interviewing you, and have read at least a subset of those. I don't care whether you understand the work line-by-line, and I am fully aware that some of our work can be technical and academic. However, if you can't be bothered to at least skim some of our papers and try to grasp the core ideas, it does not reflect very well on your commitment to our line of research.

What occurs to me is, I think, what @user151413 may have been thinking in their comment. You need to know enough that you believe this is a team you want to work in. Beyond that, take the tack of convincing the PI that you have research ideas that fit their interests, and which you can be productive in (i.e., publish), even if (perhaps especially if) they aren't exact topics the team is already exploring. Or that you have skills that can apply to topics the PI may be wanting to explore, outside the current team's expertise.
Just being one more of what they've already got is probably least appealing, unless you are specifically targeting a vacancy they've posted or that you know may be opening.


Is it a self plagiarism to reuse a section of my previous paper in a new paper? I am writing an article in which I need to reproduce a section of my previous paper. This section includes standard math formulations and very little text. Although I am including this section with some minor changes but overall structure of section would be same. I will include proper citation but still I am worried if this could be a case of self plagiarism ?

The Journal in which I want to submit my work have following clause on copyrights/permission:

  Authors wishing to include figures, tables, or text passages that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online format and to include evidence that such permission has been granted when submitting their papers. Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors.

The journal in which my article has been published says like this on copyrights/permission :

  Subscribers may reproduce tables of contents or prepare lists of articles including abstracts for internal
  circulation within their institutions. Permission of the Publisher is required for resale or distribution
  outside the institution and for all other derivative works, including compilations and translations. If
  excerpts from other copyrighted works are included, the author(s) must obtain written permission
  from the copyright owners and credit the source(s) in the article. Elsevier has preprinted forms for
  use by authors in these cases.

  As an author you (or your employer or institution) have certain rights to reuse your work. More information.. One more thing that this journal says on permission:

  As a general rule, written permission must be obtained from the rightsholder in order to re-use any copyrighted material. Typically the rightsholder of published material is the publisher unless it is explicitly indicated otherwise. Copyrighted material can include figures, illustrations, charts, tables, photographs, and text excerpts. Re-use of any borrowed material must be properly acknowledged, even if it is determined that written permission is not necessary.

PS. My research field is Mathematics.

Technically, it is not self-plagiarism if you were to cite the relevant material, even if it's your own. It would be advisable if to rephrase the section. If considerable amount of detail is repeated from thee pervious paper, it would be better to have consent from your publisher before hand.

I notice this many times among authors. Those who make a minor improvement over their own research tend to have major portions of their old papers rephrased (some even repeated, but again, that's not encouraged). As long the overall concept is novel this won't be a problem.

The legal issue regarding copyright is what concerns me. You need to investigate that. I don't think self-plagiarism is possible. Could there be partial-plagiarism if your past work involved a partner?


What's the correct way to cite a paper cited by another paper? The example is when you might be reading a certain paper, and the authors refer to another paper. You can't get that other paper as it's unpublished, or it's in a language that you can't read, or maybe something else.

My guess is:

  Featherstone et al 1900 (in Thomas and Cullen 2002).

And how is it to be handled in the bibliography?

In APA style, you can write, (e.g., see this APA tutorial)

  Featherstone et al 1900 (as cited in Thomas and Cullen 2002)

Of course, in general you should try your best to read the original and cite the original directly.

Someone in the comments asked:

  "In such case do I need to list original paper also in reference section or only the recent one I am referring to?"

The reference to the original article is the more important reference to include, but you should include both in your reference list.

If you cannot get that paper, you should not cite it.

What is a citation? The word citation comes from Latin verb cio (past participle: citum) that means to call somebody, to invite somebody, or preferably to demand someone to give his own testimony.

So, in your case, if you would like to cite that paper, that means that you invite that paper to give its own testimony. But if it's not available, how could it do it?

Simply, it can't.


What are the ethical implications of lying to get into a course? I attend a small liberal arts college in the US. Through the cross-registration program, we are permitted to take classes at a large state university at no extra cost to us. However, we are only allowed to enroll in one course at a time; the system will not allow us to take two during the same semester.

Next semester, I am interested in taking two courses at the university. The will both be very small; certainly under 15 students each. Both professors have told me I cannot attend their class without being officially enrolled (I asked both individually). I have been considering attending both classes and asking both professors to fill out the cross-registration form that would allow me to enroll in their class, but only turning in one professor's form. From my previous experience at this university, the registration takes 4-6 weeks to come through, but professors, of course, let you attend class before that happens, so they may forget about awaiting the registration during that time. Even if they ended up finding out that I never turned it in, I would still have received a month of instruction before that happens, which I find valuable.

I am curious about the ethical concerns about this from the standpoint of the professors. Obviously by being there I am giving them more work, but they are not paid according to the number of students attending their classes. On the other hand, I know that class enrollment is really important to directors of departments and higher-ups in the university, so they are doing the work of teaching me without getting the benefit of one more student in their enrollment numbers. And from a personal standpoint, I would feel absolutely terrible about developing a good relationship with a professor and having them find out I lied to them.

I am not asking to be told what to do (it's probably not a very good idea), I would just like to know if there are any other concerns with lying to get into this course that I am not considering.

edit/update: Wow, I was not expecting to get so many responses. I'm not going to respond to comments and answers individually but I appreciate all your feedback, even though a few of you are a bit rude. I definitely will not be attempting to take both courses. Unfortunately, the program doesn't allow audits, so I am going to choose one of the two courses and stick with it. Thanks again for sharing all of your perspectives.

If I found out I was intentionally deceived by a student after telling them they could not take my class, I would alert my dean (I would go beyond the department chair) that said student was violating the rules and spirit of the exchange program. At a minimum I would expect that student to no longer be able to take advantage of the exchange and have their grade withheld from the other class. I would hope the home university would also punish this student for academic misconduct.

If the class is limited to 15 students then there are going to be 15 chairs in the room that is alloted for the class. If you don't turn in your form you are going to show up for class and make someone have to stand. It is going to be known that you are a cheat.

Edit:

For as many down votes as I am getting some people should explain their reasoning.

The universities and colleges I have been at are broke down into schools and then into majors/departments.
Each school has control over a certain number of buildings that they then allot to each department.
Each building is not the soul use of the department. There are common areas, janitorial, maintenance, etc. Of what is left over, about 1/4 is usually dedicated to the specific department in the form of class labs, and upper level course classes seating ~25 students. 1/4 are larger classes that seat ~35-50 student. This 1/4 has to be shared with all other departments across all the schools as needed. 1/2 of the space is dedicated to each of the professors labs.

There is a certain amount of space set aside by each school for the base classes that everyone has to take. These are rooms that can hold 75 to +100. Think Cal1, Physics 1,

All of the classes that ares 50 or less seats have a cap set at the seat count level. I have never seen the cap set at a seat count level less than the seats available. Rarely are we able to move a class to a larger place. At most, if we see demand, we can add classes to be held in the smaller rooms at times they are not being used. It is cheap to have salaried professors teach another class, grad students teach, or add Grad/Undergrad TAs.

I have had many times when seat have to be brought into a class when there is a special speaker during a class and there is demand that we allow more students in for that one time.

Again, for those commenting and down voting. It would be nice for a more factual elaboration.


Why is B or B− the minimum passing grade for most graduate courses in US? I was recently told that in many schools in the US (maybe other countries too), the minimum grade for a graduate course is B or B−. Meaning that B is considered as a passing score. I would like to know whether this is true. Why should it be the case? Does this mean that grading in graduate school is easier?

In some sense grading may be "easier", but it's also just that the effective grading range is compressed, and that grades per se matter less than in undergraduate classes.

In many graduate programs, getting a grade lower than B (or even A-) is considered a warning that you need to seriously knuckle down and start doing better.  To take a random example, UIUC has a campuswide minimum GPA of 2.75 (B-), but most departments set higher minimums (as high as 3.25, or B+) Here's a relevant quote from an old grad school blog post:

  My first semester in grad school, my M.A. advisor laid it out for to me: "If you get a B in a grad school class, you should ask the professor whether you should consider dropping out of the program. If you get a C, don't bother asking."

What this means is that the range of grades in grad school is effectively compressed, going from A to C instead of A to F.  Getting a C in a grad school class is, in many cases, practically equivalent to getting an F in an undergraduate class.  This grade inflation probably has historical roots in a sort of academic politeness in which it became considered more and more insulting or embarrassing to give someone low grades.

However, it's not as significant as it may seem, because grades are typically much less important in grad school than in undergrad.  In grad school (especially PhD programs) you are working much more closely with faculty and they monitor your progress at a much finer grain.  It's not just about getting a good grade, but about conducting research, making progress on your degree milestones (e.g., writing an MA thesis or PhD dissertation), and so forth.

In grad school, your class grades are meant to be not just an evaluation of your performance in that class, but a signal as to whether you are developing the skills necessary to succeed in the program as a whole.  It would be unusual (probably unthinkable) for a grad program to suddenly give someone the boot simply because their GPA dropped too low; rather, a series of low grades will lead to increasing concern from the faculty, with meetings, emails, etc., gradually escalating from "Is everything ok?" to "You need to start working harder" to "Get your act together or else".

I've known grad students who received multiple grades in the B range, and this is what happened to them; they were subjected to increasing pressure from the faculty, with increasingly more explicit suggestions that they could be kicked out of the program if they didn't improve their performance.

That said, it is true that in some cases grading in grad school can be "easier" than in undergrad.  My personal experience has been that in some cases faculty members are willing to be somewhat more flexible on grades as related to the actual course content, as long as they are satisfied that you got what you personally needed from the class.  For instance, if you are specializing in Topic X and you take a requred class in Topic Y intended to broaden your background, the professor may give you an A even if your paper in the class is only adequate, if the professor understands that that is not your specialization and you don't need to fully master it in order to succeed.  The flip side of this is that if you take a class in Topic X (your specialty), the professor may hold you to a far more exacting standard, knowing that you really must be on top of that material.

It definitely depends on the program of study...I believe the grading system is harsher for people who study something career specific---AKA nursing, physical therapy, Occupational therapy, med school, law school, etc..These programs tend to have a lot more drop outs/people who are unable to maintain the 3.0 minimum...People who study something like a Phd in Sociology, philosophy, or an M.S in Biology usually get higher grades because these programs tend to put less emphasis on passing tests and put more emphasis on producing research... Which is very different from lets say law school, where there is a huge emphasis on grades and rankings...


Is it rude to send my professor a link with teaching advice? I know the title sounds terrible, but it's not as bad as it sounds so please hear me out.

I am an undergraduate and have set up an independent study for this fall about topic X. The professor doesn't work too much with topic X, and she has told me that she may need to review the material a little bit herself before we start.

I read the preface of the book we will be using, and I noticed there is a section dedicated to instructors. This section contains a link with advice on teaching this book.

Is the professor likely to read the preface and find this link on her own? Would it be rude of me to send this link in an email?

To show that you're an independent learner, I'd suggest don't just send the link, but read the materials in the linked page and summarize them to your professor, tell her if you think it may be useful for the directed studies. For instance, instead of:

  And here a link (URL) provided by the text on how to teach this book.

Try:

  I also found a link for teacher and read up a bit (URL). I think the
  suggested chapter sectioning for a 7-week syllabus seems suitable to
  our directed study time frame, please let me know your thought.

Or something along the line. I think you're quite lucky that the professor was being so up front about her lack of background knowledge, it should be a good directed study experience. But in turn, you'll need to bear some of the self-teaching responsibility, and don't expect that she can read some pages about how to teach the subject and then magically be able to teach you.

I do not think it would be rude to send the link to her, as long as you provide a little context. e.g. "Hello Mrs. [xxxxxxxx], I noticed a link in the preface of the book that I believe would serve as a valuable resource and I wanted to share it with you in hopes of strengthening the course material/curriculum". Perhaps you should justify to her why you believe the link provides relevant material to said course.

The goal is not to come off as condescending or supercilious but rather to appear genuinely concerned and interested in the content and direction of the course. I believe that will be a positive sign for professors and the only ones who would find offense with it (provided proper context and justification) are the ones who perhaps are too full of themselves and their own ideas to actually serve and do right by the title of "Professor".


Lack of available reviews on scientific papers It is common practice in computer science to have papers peer-reviewed, however this is often not made public and after the paper has been published it is hard to find ANY reviews on the paper. There will always be mistakes in scientific papers and if someone points out the flaws in a simple manner in a review it could save everyone a great deal of time. Some things are of course too complex or subjective, to be put into a single paragraph, but there are plenty of things that can be pointed out.

My question is why are there no reviews included on sites like ACM or IEEE? Papers sometimes have thousands of citations, but not a single comment or review has been linked. Or are there simply no reviews and comments available? Does the conversation and discussion take place somewhere else?

Usually the issues pointed out in a review have been corrected by the time the manuscript has been published, so old reviews wouldn't really be relevant to the online version.

Critiques of published articles are sometimes prepared, if one thinks the issue is significant enough; they're usually published as "Comments" or "Responses" to the article in question. However, since they're normally also peer-reviewed, they won't simply be appended to the article, but instead have their own independent status.

As for the reason why more articles don't have reviews and commentary associated with them—it takes a lot of time to do so, and that's time that can be used to make progress in one's own research. And there isn't much incentive right now for such efforts.

My personal experience is that the review comments should be accessible to the reader.

I do not think preparing such a document is time consuming for the editorials because the review process is a back and fourth process between the author and reviewers. And their could be few rounds of re-submissions before the paper is accepted (for example in IEEE journals). Therefore, it is meaningful to make it public all the previous submissions (together with review comments and author replies). And these documents can be appended on top of each other based on their time of submissions.

The other simple approach of providing more information about the paper is by revealing quantifiable review results. For instance, again in IEEE there is a question to rate the novelty, appropriateness, timeliness etc.


Course on Moodle - how to download all student interactions? My institution uses Moodle as online learning platform. I am enthusiastic at Moodle capabilities, and suspect this had a positive effect on my class. Would like to prove it (or disprove it) by looking at all possible ways students interact with the platform. My understanding is that Moodle stores internally its data through a database powered by MongoDB. Anybody knows how to access that database directly? Would like to avoid having to gather all independent data piecs from separate GUI clicks.

For those with admin privileges in moodle they can access the log features to see anybody's activity in moodle. For a teacher this feature is available to see student activity at the course level only. The activity can be  viewed by student and or by the activity selected (forum, assignment, etc). The information provided isn't very deep. Just a time stamp with the student and what they did. However aggregating this info can provide some insights.

There is a really cool way of working out in this regard.
Please check https://docs.moodle.org/37/en/Configurable_reports

Dabbling around with just a little, you will be able to do it easily.
Do let me know if you need additional help.   Initially, it is a little frustrating.  But after you get the hang of it, it is a piece of cake.

Knowledge of SQL is important.

Best Wishes,
JSP


How detailed should proofs be in a mathematical PhD thesis? I heard this suggestion from a mathematics professor:

In writing a mathematical Ph.D. thesis, it is far more tolerable to be tediously-lengthy than having a gap in the proofs.

I think what he means is that whenever in doubt, adding more details to make the argument clearer is always better, even if sometimes doing this may make the proof too wordy.

Now if I really follow his advice literally, it seems there are too many details for me to write. For example, I don't even feel safe to write "the case n=1 is trivial" when proving by induction, or "by a direct calculation we have the following result". Another example is, whenever writing a commutative diagram (some of my diagrams are 3-D), I doubt if I need to prove that every small triangle or rectangle is commutative. (Actually I have asked this question but have received no answer so far.)

Thus my question is: How detailed should be the proofs be in a mathematical Ph.D. thesis?

I usual give the advice

  If something is clear, just write it down clearly.

Of course there is a caveat: What is "clear" clearly depends on the reader, and also what is considered a "clear explanation" certainly depends.

But the message is: If you are tempted to write "The case $n=0$ is obvious." think a minute about the explanation and how to write it down. If you then think that writing down the explanation does not add anything, leave it out.

But in general, I would say, being more verbose is the better option.

Another test you could apply is: Write down "obviously…" but note down a longer explanation somewhere else. After a week or two reread that part and try to recover the result again. If you don't have any problem than you are probably fine without a longer explanation.

Some resource that may be helpful for your proof-writing skills is the talk given by Leslie Lamport on proof-writing last year at the Heidelberg Laureate Forum: Here is a blog post about it and the whole talk is here.

In general there are two aspects to this:

Overkilling It: You do not have all the time in the world. Therefore, you can't spend years on the thesis. As Long as you backed up the assumptions during the introduction and background section of your thesis; and you are able to connect the dots, during your contribution section, you should be fine. Because you did provide enough information (e.g., background material, citations, etc.) and then pointed out your contribution, so the reader can follow and do more readings on this based on your direction points.

Fault Assumptions With no Backup: In this case, you just wrote something to fill the papers; with assumptions that you didn't thought it through while writing your thesis. The experience academics look for these faulty parts of the thesis and will "grill" you during your defense, because they know you didn't thought it through; regardless how good the other parts of the thesis are.

So the rule of thumb here is as long as you know how to defend these 'gaps'; you should be fine and don't overkilling it because the clock is ticking.


Going to Industry and Keeping Publishing I'm currently a postdoc in theoretical computer science. My position will last for about 9 months. I have a good track of publications and enjoy a lot working at academia, in particular I enjoy to solve problems and write papers in my field. But I think that it would take something like 2 to 3 years to get competitive for a lector/tenure track job.

The thing is that I'm married with children, and my wife has a permanent job. So she will not be able to travel with me if I need to do another postdoc elsewhere. Therefore, I'm considering applying for industry jobs. I do believe that some types of jobs in within the industry would also be very enjoyable. But my goal would be to keep publishing and then eventually get back to academia when my CV is competitive enough.

My only problem is: Once I go to the industry, how to keep publishing? I mean I am pretty independent and good at writing papers alone or in collaborating via internet. And I'm also used to write papers in my spare time, during the night and on weekends. So I'm not worried about the time to keep doing research. But I'm afraid that without an academic affiliation, the probability that my papers would be considered for publication in conferences and journals would decrease.

Suppose I work in some enterprise in the automotive industry, or telecommunications industry, or even as a consultant.

Question 1) What affiliation should I put in my papers when submitting to conferences and journals? Should I put the name of the enterprise, even if the research is not being done there?

Question 2) Would an affiliation outside academia decrease the chances that my papers are accepted in theoretical computer science journals and conferences? Of course I know that some affiliations such as google, microsoft, etc do not harm, but I'm considering some jobs in much less well known companies.

Question 3) Is it possible to go back to academia after some years in industry if I keep my publication record high?

I am a good example of how it is quite possible to keep up a strong publication record in industry, as long as your job supports it. I submit my Google Scholar profile for evidence: I moved from postdoc to industry in 2008, and though I have contemplated (and been offered) opportunities to move back to academia, to date I have actively chosen to continue in my current position.

Likewise, no healthy scientific community will hold a prejudice against authors from industry, any more than they hold prejudice against authors from less well known universities.  Unhealthy communities do sometimes have cliques that make it difficult for anybody outside of a clique to publish.

In certain cases, you can even have an advantage in research when you come from industry, as it is often useful for academics to have "industry partners" who often have a broader perspective are capable of doing things that they are not.

You do, however, need to have a job that supports publication.  For that, I recommend looking into research consulting companies, rather than normal "product" companies, where you will typically have little time to publish.  If publication can be part of your job, you can keep up publication; if it is a "second job," it will be far harder.

To get a job in industry that allows you to keep up a high rate of publications, high enough to make a move to academia later easy, is probably much harder than getting a job in academia in the first place.

You have to decide if you want to go on doing "mostly pure research", and stay in academia, or do "mostly application", and go to industry.


How much would an outside second Ph.D. supervisor get paid in the U.S.? I have been asked to consider being a second supervisor on a Ph.D. project for a doctoral candidate at a U.S. university. As I am in the Netherlands, this does not fall under my normal employment. Does anyone know where I might find information about the normal fee for this type of supervision?

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

As far as I know nothing.

I've never heard of outside supervisors (in industry or academia) ever getting paid anything.

You should talk to your employer, if he is willing to donate some of your time for this supervision. (Depending on the research being done, there may also be some benefit for him.)

Certainly here in the UK the answer would be $0.


A social experiment. What is the worst that can happen? I am a postdoc and I have been applying for jobs in both industry and academia. My h-index is good enough for junior faculty (~7).

Along my academic CV I have an industry-oriented CV and send both of them out accordingly. I have had a handful of final stage interviews (faculty/scientist) for academia but none in the industry so far.

I suspect I am being interviewed as the "token diverse female" (I'm asian) as my area of science is white male dominated. The whole experience, along with prior job hunts, has led me to suspect that my gender and race may be hindering my earning potential. I believe I have the required qualifications and skills.

I am thinking of reapplying as a white male to these same industry jobs I got rejected  for (especially the rejections without interview) just to see if how far along I would get. Only for industry jobs because those CVs don't make it to the chief scientist's table. Maybe make a documentary or blog about this if there are significant findings. Now put your imagination to the test: what is the worst that can happen?

I like to think I have a pretty vivid imagination, so the worst thing I can reasonably imagine happening is that you would be seen as trying to perform an experiment with human participants without proper controls, questionable experimental design, possibly a lack of appropriately rigorous analysis (if this isn't your specialty), and lack of ethical review and oversight. From an ethics perspective, you propose to use deception on uninformed participants while possibly obtaining personally identifiable information on them which could lead to them facing serious social consequences if they were identified. With the mob mentality of the viral internet as it is, the consequences could be pretty darn severe - up to loss of job, death threats, actual violence, and more. Sensitive topics require sensitive handling, which is what any functioning IRB and responsible researcher would insist on.

In reporting on the results, even if informally on a blog, you could be seen as offering a pseudo-scientific view (or worse) on a controversial and important topic. If your experiment was performed poorly or your analysis done improperly, you could lend weight to an incorrect view - either providing what could be cited as evidence that discrimination does not exist where it does (thus making it harder for people discriminated against to make changes or be taken seriously), or supporting the view that discrimination does exist where it doesn't (leading to negative consequences for people who are doing nothing wrong and deflecting attention away from more pressing, extant issues). Bad science, even done with good intention, can easily make the world worse.

If some random blogger or journalist did this, most of us can gratingly dismiss it as "they don't know any better", or just the world of click-bait, etc. But if you were a qualified scientist who should know better, people might not be so willing to dismiss such activity just because it wasn't intended to be scientific and it wasn't intended for publication. Most people won't even know the difference in what is and isn't intended to be scientific when done by a scientist, and many that do know the difference might not consider it an excuse.

As Dawn pointed out in a comment, one version of this is called an audit study, and there is a pretty large body of literature that tries to do basically what you are suggesting in a systematic way. I cannot even try to count how many studies of this sort are published, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't already in the thousands, looking at everything from gender to race to the impact of varying lengths of time gaps on a resume.

Finally, the nature of this sort of field study is that even with everything going your way they are hard to do correctly. No simple analysis method works even if you did everything right and collected all the data appropriately. There is too much randomness, too much heterogeneity, too much structure, to allow any simple bit of statistics to give the correct interpretation. In short, unless this is your specialty, it would be trivially easy to get everything else right and still come to exactly the wrong conclusion.

For those who are not familiar with this kind of statistics, a classic example of how a simple analysis can go wrong is Sex Bias in Graduate Admissions: Data from Berkeley. In a simple aggregate analysis, it looked quite clearly that women were being admitted at lower rates than men, and thus bias was quite obvious to the point that the deans of the school were concerned this could be the basis for a lawsuit. It turned out it was a nice example of Simpson's Paradox, as it turned out the cause for the difference was that women were more likely to apply to departments that were crowded and competitive and thus harder to get into for everyone, while men were more likely to apply to departments that were less competitive.

If a similar condition existed in the employment sector, where you were applying to jobs in industry that turned out to vary in their selectivity in a way that you were not considering, this would mess up your analysis, and you cannot easily collect more information that would allow you to fix it. After all, I'm sure you weren't inclined to use random selection in your own employment search!

So, in summation, the worst that I could imagine happening is: you end up doing bad science that would reflect badly on you and would not be easily excused just because it wasn't intended for publication; you come to the wrong conclusions and in a way which could hurt innocent people; you casually report information that could be used in dangerous and damaging way; you end up being identified as the person responsible and it goes viral, so now the most famous thing you'll ever be known for was this thing you didn't intend as a serious study (and which could have gone horribly wrong); and, as a bonus, you could just end up wasting your time and the time of others for no benefit.

And since its the worst thing that can happen, I suppose you could also end up with a headache. Things can always be worse by adding a headache.

The worst thing which can happen is that you get the study setup or the statistics wrong, and the interpretation in the blog. The world is too full of oversimplified blogs and video documentaries on perceived gender biases.

There is a lot of research by people who devote their scientific career to this, and the statistics of "who studies what" is quite influential. For example I (as a technical team lead doing a lot of technical interviews) observe that most women who started to study engineering 10 years ago (Central Europe) did think about the study choice well before studying, while for many men it was "the default option". This alone makes it reasonable to select them for the interviews with a higher percentage. I cant quantify this -> read research on it.

In the worst case (i assume that you are in a STEM field) it could cost you job opportunities to present a flawed analysis without peer-review.


What is the backup strategy of online-only journals/repositories on the very long term? Disseminating printed documents in many places on the planet is a very robust "backup" strategy for scientific literature. Printed documents (and other forms of ink-on-paper documents), or fragments of them, are known to last for millennia and with a high redundancy (many copies spread in many geographic locations), the chances of being able to reconstruct the original content is high.

All current electronic data storage require continuous catering (electrical power and servers maintenance) or frequent re-copying (i.e. of laser discs, magnetic hard drives, etc.) to last more than a few decades.

How do online-only journals and articles repositories intend to ensure very long-term archival of their content?

Most publishers use a preservation network such as Portico or LOCKSS. The principle is that numerous electronic copies are saved, and released in case of certain events (e.g. the publisher stops permanently giving access to the works).

Currently lib.gen/sci-hub build an archive of all papers and textbooks. Publishers fight the legal battle to stop the project but it's highly unlikely that they will stop lib.gen/sci-hub and it's various mirrors in every country of the world. Elsevier might win the suit in the US but they probably know why they don't pick the fight in Russia where the lib.gen/sci-hub servers reside.

There are applications like IBM's Watson that work better if they have access to more data. That means that companies like IBM, Google, Baidu and Facebook have an interest to have all the data of all scientific papers.

Isn't it expensive to store all that data? No, it isn't. In 2014 Facebook added 4 petabyte of data per day to it's database. That's likely more data than all scientific papers together. All the arxiv PDF's together are 270 GB.


How to handle someone propositioning me to collude/cheat with them on an assignment? I am doing my final year of undergraduate.
Mostly I am working on my Honours project
but I have a few units from earlier years that I am still doing
 as I did some out of order.

Another student, call him John, sent me a message on Facebook (via the message people who are not your friends feature.), saying basically:

  "Can you send me the solutions to the Assignment from unit X, that you
  took last year. In exchange, I will tell you what the future minitest
  questions are for unit Y that we are both doing this year."

Attempted Collusion is not explicitly mentioned in the Universities Academic misconduct guide.

Unit Y has weekly minitests, that are worth in total something like 15% of our final grade.
The minitests happen during tutorials.
There are 3 tutorials each week, on different days, with roughly a third of the class in each.
Each minitest is the same, across all streams.
They are mostly a way to check up and see that you understand the content.

They have at the top of each page:

  IT IS NOT PERMITTED TO TAKE THIS PAPER AWAY FROM THE TUTORIAL SESSION OR TO DIVULGE ITS CONTENT

John is in the first tutorial of the week.
So he would find out the questions first,
then could tell me them so I could study for them, for when my tutorial is.

What he apparently doesn't realize is that I too am in the first tutorial group (with him).

I guess Unit X is using the same assignment as last year. Or a similar one.
Or that John thinks it is.

A complicating factor is that I really dislike John. He doesn't seem to have realised this.
I find him personally annoying, and consider him a poor student.
I don't understand how he has managed to pass enough units to have not been suspended for poor performance.
It may be he is very good at exams, or it may be that he has been cheating all along.

I have a number of options, and could do one or more of them:

Ignore it, and block him on Facebook.
Tell him no, and refer him to the universities plagiarism/cheating policy
Speak to the Professor of Unit Y about it (that we are both studying).
Speak to the Professor of Unit X about it.
Speak to the Head of School (sub-department), who is above both units
Speak to the University Dean. Who is in charge of enforcing the Academic Misconduct policy. (Will probably mean going though channels)

In my case, by coincidence, Unit X is being taught by the Head of School (who I have never studied under). But in the General Case both options exist, and I can approach him, either as the Head of School or as the Professor of the unit, I guess.

I think that ignoring is probably a bad option, if someone sees that I have been asked about this, and left it without response, they might think this is normal behaviour for me.

If I go to faculty, he may be suspended.
I worry that I am a bit too willing for that possibility as I don't like him.
On the other hand it isn't my job to decide the consequences of his actions.

Update:
I have spoken to the coordinator of Unit Y.
Who said if I wanted he would take it to the Dean
but that it would involve me having to do stuff.
He also said to contact the coordinator of Unit X (who happens to he head of school).
He is out of the country for a week so I sent him an email (CCed to the coordinator of Unit Y).
I also responded to John, saying No, and referring him to the Academic Misconduct policy.

Update2:
I got a response from the Coordinator of Unit X, saying he would look into it.
Unit X coordinator is on long-service leave (Not sure how that is going with him still coordinating the unit. He may be doing only light administrative tasks. Or it may be he forwarded it to the new coordinator).

Putting such a request in a written, verifiable manner as this student has done is incredibly dumb, and frankly merits whatever punishment is associated with this.

Although in principle you could simply ignore the request, I think this is one of those cases where you're better off reporting it. Otherwise, there's still the possibility that "John" could bring you down with him (he wrote you a note, after all!). So I would write to him declining the offer, and then report it.

I finished a good university which helped me find a wonderful job. Cheating in the university is not the best thing to be done, but sometimes people have to do it in order to win - if you don't understand me I doubt you understand life - watch Arnold Schwarzenegger six rules of success. And I would like to tell you that reporting your colleague is very stupid in my opinion - why you need to do such a bad thing to him? Did he do something bad to you - no... Maybe it's best that you ignore it, but for sure you don't need to report him - you will make him unhappy, and if you ignore it nobody'll be unhappy, right? If you obey all the rules (I'm talking about the rules, not the law) you won't go far in your life... If you don't believe me check the most successful guys in the planet - what do you think, they obeyed all the rules and never cheated on anything??? Think out of the box. I know intelligent guys with great academic experience and at the same time guys who only graduated school and are 100 more successful than the first. Be cool, don't take things so seriously - it's not a robbery or a rape, as I said - take action when somebody's been made unhappy, this is not the case. And now you're about to make someone unhappy, why?


I am an editor for a lousy paper and I found a better algorithm than theirs. Must I share it with them? I am handling a paper as an associate editor that proposed an algorithm that I find to be weak.  In fact, I was able to show that a very simple, brute-force approach actually has a better running time than their algorithm.  Therefore, I will recommend rejecting this paper.  Do I have an obligation to share my proof that the brute-force running time is better?  I want the higher-level editors to have confidence in the rejection, but it also occurs to me that I might be able to improve my own result and publish it independently.  Is this a violation of ethics?

UPDATE:  Well this certainly took off!  I would like to add the following:

The overwhelming consensus is that it would be unethical for me to "scoop" the other authors, so I will not do that. The advice from all is greatly appreciated.
The journal is the top in its field, so we have to be extremely selective. The problem proposed is fairly interesting, but overall the paper does not meet our threshold.
When I say that brute force is better than their method, I mean it in a provable, big O sense.
The authors' proposed scheme is not only inefficient, it is written in a very confusing way. In fact, I asked them to compare their approach to brute-force as a way of helping them clarify their argument, and they did a bad job of it, which is what led me to look into it in the first place.
The fact that brute force performs better than their scheme is not totally trivial because it relies on a combinatorial argument that is not amazing, but not completely obvious either.
I will share my proof with the Editor in chief, but I have decided not to give it to the authors; I will consider publishing independently in the future if their work ever appears elsewhere.
Their paper is not on arXiv or any other website.

I think you are treading on thin ice, ethically speaking. Obviously you, as an editor, have no obligation to help the authors in any specific way, and you are free to tell them about your improvement or not, but rejecting their paper, taking the idea/problem, applying a different method to its resolution, and then publishing this under your own name seems problematic.

As an editor, you are usually expected to treat the papers you are handling as privileged information, and you are specifically expected to not use your knowledge of rejected papers to scoop the authors - which is exactly what you plan to do. Say you reject the paper with comments along the line "important problem, solution is too simplistic". The authors now go back to the drawing board, come up with a solution similar to what you had in mind, and get their paper accepted. If you publish your idea first they obviously can't do this anymore - you have effectively made use of knowledge you learned as an editor to pull the rug from under the people who initially thought of the research project, even if they did not do a great job with the first submission.

I understand that it sucks that if you told them about your idea you would be giving away information that, in different circumstances, may be sufficient for co-authorship. However, I would argue, as a reviewer / editor we sign up for helping the authors "for free" to some extent (that is, without expecting recognition).

If you really don't want to tell the authors about your idea your best hope is that the authors get their work accepted somewhere else. In that case you are free to write your follow-up paper and cite the original paper.

As addition to xLeitix very thoughtful answer I would give the authors a period of grace (say half a year or so, depending on the typical time scales of your discipline).

If by then they did not publish an improved version matching the performance of your ideas from now, I would regard the confidentiality period to be over and the subject to be fair game for everyone including you.

If they published the poor version somewhere else you should cite them. Do not copy from their submitted previous manuscript. Conduct your own research and present it as such.

If you tell them now about a possible way to improve it's because you want them to improve and publish a better version. If they don't, you could still do it on your own then. But you would have to wait to find out.

The waiting period is the key here and without it you are indeed acting unethically. The waiting period must be really quite generous. However, it should not be infinitely long because otherwise as an editor (or reviewer) you would unfairly restrict yourself in possible research if all topics you ever got to see were inaccessible to you in the future.


Including articles in submission in "refereed publications" section of CV? I have a section for "refereed publications" and one for "other publications".
Where should I put publications that are presently in submission?
Is it OK to put them in "refereed publications"?

If you submit them to a journal that will referee them then put them in the refereed publications and mark them "submitted - under consideration" or similar. Just make it clear.

And update the CV as needed if you get accepted or rejected.

An alternative, if permitted, is a third section for submitted work under consideration or even work in progress with submitted works tagged as submitted. My preference (for myself) would be "Work in Progress". Sending that signal can help you.


Commercial company wants me to list all prior "inventions", give up everything not listed I'm a post-doctoral researcher in computer science, but my next position will be in industry.  I've been negotiating a contract with this commercial company to do R&D work (not while I'm employed at a university). It's been a negative experience overall, because - like many companies - they did not write their draft contract themselves, nor gave it serious thought, but had some lawyer draw it up (without seriously reading it afterwards).

Not going into all the horrors of what the IP part looked like - here's a bit of it:

  "Invention" shall include but not be limited to improvements, designs, discoveries, developments and works of authorship or artistry (including without limitation software, integrated circuit, printed circuit board or computer design, and documentation).

  ... (etc. etc.)

  I have attached hereto, as Schedule 1, a complete list of all Inventions to which I claim ownership and desire to remove from the scope of this Agreement, and acknowledge that such list is complete ("Prior Inventions")

and basically they get to own everything else.

This may (?) be just fine for people who move from employment in one commercial company to another and never feel the need to publish anything or have rights to develop anything independently - each company makes you essentially say "you own everything" and then they can dish it out amongst themselves. But - it obviously won't fly if you're involved in continuing research - earlier, in an academic institute and now independently, outside the scope of your commercial employment, and/or if you're writing free software. I've had lots of ideas, notes, open ends of other work, talks with people, etc. which may be developed further - in addition to things you've actually published or registered in any way. I can't just recite all of them - nor do I want to tell the company all about them.

My question is about how to deal with this situation, or perhaps - how indignant I should be about it. Some options:

Just strike out that section of the contract and explain to them it's an unreasonable request.
Try to tweak the wording so that the list isn't wholly definitive ( <- A bad idea IMHO)
Write a list, but add items which are general and vague to represent half-baked (or unbaked) stuff, sort of catch-all "inventions" you could later claim cover actual things you pick up on.
Give in, write down some sort of a list and hope they don't go after you.

Suggestions with concrete examples are especially helpful.

Notes:

It isn't just this one company, I've seen similar contract drafts in several places already. It's not like this everywhere, but I don't want to have to rule out workplaces just because they are careless about their contracts (that is, assuming they don't actually want to suck you dry of your independent contributions).
I have no problems rewording this part of the contract whichever way I like, so I'm not asking for help with reading or writing "legalese" here.
I'm not in the US (and I don't want to make this question country-specific).

I work at an R&D company that has a pretty similar clause in its contract, and in fact most R&D companies will.

The core reason is that things change quickly in R&D, so an area that the company has no interest in today may be a big part of their in business in 5-10 years.  Moreover, employees like you are likely to be the ones who create new business areas like that, and if they don't put in a very broad clause, there's nothing to stop you from taking work you've done at the company to a competitor or spinning off your own company (see, for example the fights going on over self-driving tech).

So, what should you do?  Well, it really depends on the reason for your objection.

If you've got moral objections to IP being controlled by companies, don't work in commercial R&D.
If you want to keep contributing to existing free and open software projects, put that down as a general reservation in the "prior inventions" section. Most reasonable R&D organizations will accept that in some form (though it may take a bit of back and forth on the wording), since for most companies that's never going to be their competition.
If you want to be able to pursue new side projects: embrace the clause! Don't think of it as "the company wants to steal my ideas" but instead as "the company might want to pay me to do my side projects".  In a healthy R&D organization, what you do with a potentially commercially interesting side project is essentially give them "right of first refusal" -- and if they don't want to support it, then it's yours.

Now, unhealthy organizations are a whole different story, of course, but there's lots of better reasons you wouldn't want to work for one of them in any case.

Adding in a clarifying note based on the comments:

While we can't know for sure without seeing the full statement, what has been shared, however, doesn't actually say the company is claiming all prior works. Instead, it appears to follow the usual practice of clarifying which IP the company agrees cannot be claimed, due to their origins in prior works. Prior works not listed, if they come into dispute, just have to have their origin established in other ways (e.g., scientific publication, date-stamps in metadata).

I often encounter boilerplate (template) contracts with clauses that are a problem. Usually you can work around them.

In this case they want a list of work that i claim for myself. So that's exactly what I'd do. I would aim to be reasonable and my goal would be to let them have the problem instead. Which is fair, its their contract after all. I answer it as best I can, and then shrug, I can't answer it any better.

So my own approach would be, to boldly add to the bottom of my own list, like this:

  [Item of work]

  [Item of work]

  [Item of work]

  Any works or ideas which I have conceived, worked on, undertaken preparatory work for, or been involved in, prior to commencing this employment, and to which I retain any ownership or rights at this time.

  Any works or ideas undertaken outside this employment, or in other previous employments or capacities, or  undertaken as a result of my own personal choice and not as part of my work duties, or arising after this employment ends, or to which I retain any ownership or rights at this time.

They will probably object, and I'd shrug and say, "You asked what I claim, I can't provide an absolute list. I'm a PhD in Computer Science with X years experience and a ton of hobbyist and other work. [Optional: I do coding and creative ideas 18 hours a day, 365 days a year, since I was a kid. That's what you're hiring me for.]  I must have worked on tens of thousands of ideas in that time. If you need me to waive or sign over rights to certain specified agreed works, such as works in the course of my duties, I can do that. But I can't possibly list all I've already done, every last item, in my entire life, so if you ask for what I claim that's the honest best I can do."

They might not engage you. But most likely they'll scratch their heads and consult internally, and see the problem (which is a real one, and of their own making since its their own contract). Maybe they'll suggest a way around it if faced with an actual honest answer.

You actually have a quite serious second problem, that you might not know what you own rights to, or which ideas are yours, and should be claimed. That's because typically any previous employer will have broad terms about ideas you invented while there, or related to.work.  Unless each of  the possible wisps and creations of hours during your working life is tested in a courtroom, you have no idea for most of them, if they are indeed still yours to be claimed, or legally belong to some past employer. The scope to certify incorrectly is huge - and you may accidentally certify things you cant or shouldn't. To be honest, these kinds of clauses might be universal, but this particular variety that says to list anything claimed, and claims the rest, is unanswerable as written. You might well  need to accept that.

They might decide not to engage you, or try and pressure you. But if they see the problem but insist on a list of specifics only, that you know you can't do, then its an impossible contract for you to sign anyway, so no loss.


What early career development questions to ask during a Postdoc Interview? Is is polite and acceptable? I recently finished my PhD. I am going to have a Zoom interview for a postdoc position (in life sciences).
My postdoc goal is to get a better experience in Research and become independent in R&D -project management. Mostly, after postdoctoral training, I would move to the industry.
I love this lab research project, mostly similar to my PhD project. So I will easily get adapt to the methods and I am happy to learn new techniques.
However I want to know their lab culture, importantly how supportive this PI for career development.
During Ph.D. I had to be in a toxic environment, I felt almost trapped, where no support was given, mentally abused.
So, I don’t want my next move going to be in the same environment.
What kind of polite, professional questions I can ask this Professor during the interview?
My main concern is how much he supportive of career development and giving opportunities?
Also, what are other questions I should be ready to answer and ask him during the interview?

During my own post doc interviews (and PhD interviews), I asked what the situation would be like.
I've included examples for your questions:

What kind of polite, professional questions I can ask this Professor during the interview?
My main concern is how much he supportive of career development and giving opportunities?
Also, what are other questions I should be ready to answer and ask him during the interview?

Ask the Professor how they run their research group. Specific question might include:

How many people are in your group including post-docs, grad students, undergrads, and technical staff?
How do meet with your research group? One-on-one regular meetings? Weekly meetings?
What is your management style? Are you hands-off? Hands-on?

Ask how the professor has mentored previous post-docs.

What do they view the goal of a post-doc to be? Do they view it as mentorship role? Do you they view you as a labor source?
Where do their previous post-docs end up?
Do post-docs get the freedom to ask their own questions? Are you only limited to the PI's question?

Ask what the professor wants from you.

For example, do they expect X publications per year?
Ask what they expect from their post docs on weekly basis. Do people work 40-hr weeks? 80-hr weeks? Are they expected to be in the lab on weekends?

For more ideas, I suggest checking out the Ask the Headhunter newsletter.
He offers good tips for interviewing.
Last, reach out to current post-docs in the lab and ask them if they would be willing to have a call about what it is like to work for the professor.
Other answers on this page such as this one describe what you ask the previous and current lab members.

The interview is not a time for the job applicant to directly gather information.  You can do that after you get a job offer.
When you get the opportunity to ask questions:

Do not ask questions that you could have found the answer to with Google.
Do ask questions that show you have researched the employer.  This shows you are motivated.
Ask easy questions.  You might have studied up before the interview, but the person interviewing you did not.  Do not embarrass them.
Ask questions that will give you an opportunity talk about why you should be hired (don't be too blatant).

After you get an offer, you can ask the supervisor the real, tough questions, whatever they might be.  Also ask people who have left the group; not all supervisors are honest.