I believe I have solved a famous open problem. How do I convince people in the field that I am not a crank? I am interested in the situation where you have a very interesting result. For instance, you have solved a very important open problem. However, you are not known in the field and do not have any remarkable publications. Your supervisor thinks the work is good and you submit the work to a high profile journal, but you get rejected.

The thing is that the contribution is very strong. It breaks what most people believe or what they have already proven: e.g., you solve the P vs. NP problem or any other well known open problem.

The reviewers strongly reject your work with no justification and they do not state why the result is wrong. Examples of reviewer comments include:

"The proof must be wrong."
"You cannot achieve such a result."
"You do not understand well the notion of ..."

My question is what to do in this situation? Where to go? If your advisor accepts the work, but the reviewers from the top journal reject the work without even explaining the mistakes,  what should you do?

Your question has some issues.  Given some of the questions you have asked on other SE sites in the last few days, I have some reservations about whether your question is being asked in good faith, but taken on its own merits it is a reasonable question so I will try to answer it.

The main issue is that, even in asking this relatively simple question, your writing is far from clear.  If you cannot write clearly in this situation, your chances of writing up a difficult piece of mathematics or theoretical computer science are less than good.  For instance:

  His/Her supervisor(s) accept the work and they published it in a highly known journal and they get rejected.

Laying aside issues of subject/verb agreement and consistency of tense, the entire sentence doesn't make sense: you can't publish a paper and get rejected.

  It breaks what most people believe

I don't know what it means to "break what most people believe".

  or what they have already proven,

What? Are you saying that your proof contradicts other proven results?  Taken literally, that would mean that you have shown mathematics to be inconsistent.  In practice this could only mean that if your result is correct then some previously published work is incorrect.  If that's the case then you need to be very clear about that and explain the flaws in the earlier work.  It distresses me that you don't really seem to believe this but are just throwing it off as loose language.

  i.e., He/She solves the P vs. NP problem or any other well known open problem.

Solving an open problem would not "break what people have already proven"....that's what it means for the problem to be open.  Also saying "P vs. NP problem or any other well known open problem" is a strange bit of coyness: there is no other problem in theoretical computer science (and very few to none in mathematics as a whole) which is "like" P vs. NP.  So it doesn't make sense to give that as an example.  It's like saying "i.e., he found the Holy Grail or some other famous cup".

In other questions you have spoken specifically about having a proof of P vs. NP and then upon questioning have retreated from this.  This sort of vacillation about what you have done is a red flag of "crankiness" that will make professionals wary.

  The reviewers strongly reject his/her work with no justification and they said that the result must be wrong.

Saying that the result must be wrong is not just a justification for rejection, it's the best justification.  No professional reviewer will say something is wrong lightly.  Almost any reviewer who says this will point to at least one specific error.  If they do not, then in practice it almost certainly means that the entire document did not make enough sense to them to be more specific.

  If your advisor accepts the work, the reviewers reject the work without even explain the mistakes (it is the "best" journal in his/her domain) then what he/she must do?

If you submit a paper to the top journal in your field claiming a solution to the top problem in your field, and your paper does not make sense or does not evince even a correct understanding of the problem, then the editors are likely not to want to spend much time in response.  On the other hand, if you are sincerely interested in getting their expertise, it seems reasonable to write back very politely and ask for more specifics about the error.  If your response is in any way argumentative then you risk the editorial staff thinking that you will keep hounding them ad infinitum, and at some point they have to stop replying.  So you should write back saying that you are not considering resubmitting the paper to that journal but for your own progress it would be extremely helpful to know what is wrong with it.  You could also mention that your supervisor found the paper to be correct.

In fact you could be getting more help on this from your supervisor.  If you have really "solved P vs. NP problem or any other well known open problem" and your supervisor believes your solution to be correct, why isn't your supervisor moving heaven and earth to be sure your work is getting the attention it deserves?  That doesn't add up.  The two possible explanations seem to be (i) your supervisor is being too polite with you: s/he does not actually believe that you have solved P vs. NP; and (ii) your advisor's imprimatur does not carry any weight in the community whatsoever.  The latter unfortunately means his/her opinion on the correctness of your work is not worth very much.

A good way to find out whether it's (i), (ii) or -- I do admit that anything is possible! perhaps the top journal in your field is unfairly ignoring your revolutionary work -- is to seek your advisor's help in getting another faculty member to evaluate the work, preferably someone in the department that you can speak to recently.

Finally, you seem to have some real worries that if an unknown person solves a famous problem then it somehow doesn't count.  This is really not the way academia works, provided the unknown person is capable of presenting the work in a way which makes sense to the experts (and if not, what a shame, but what else could one possibly expect?).  Have you heard of the recent example of Yitang Zhang?  Zhang was a non-tenure-track lecturer at the University of New Hampshire when he stunned the mathematical world by proving the existence of bounded prime gaps.  He submitted his work to the top mathematical journal...and by all accounts they accepted it with unusual speed.  In other words, they received a paper from someone they had probably never heard of, looked at it quickly and saw that it was a plausible attack on a huge open problem, and as a result they sprung into action much more rapidly and thoroughly than for most submissions they get.  This is an amazing story, but a true one, and it shows how the community responds to a real situation like this.

Prepare for your fearlessness. You will need to use it frequently.

Let's say our goal is to accomplish Kaveh's list. Assuming he has some experience in academic research, then each of these statements are equivalent:

His priority is not really to have his work accepted, but actually about not being misunderstood (the actual premise of the question is about having productive feedback)
For him she is just stating the obvious (the upper part of the list), and telling him to do things he is already doing (the lower part)
She needs him to accomplish the list, but he cannot do that if she accuses him for doing the thing he didn't do
The problem of convincing her that he is not a crank is reduced to the emotional and misunderstanding problems

I think that in all discussions about cranks the overwhelming assumption is that he is hubris. This is, unfortunately, one-sided, because the actual emotions should be guilt and frustration . He is guilty for worrying he is hubris, and frustrated for her misjudge that he is hubris. With all my respect, think most experts lack the necessary experience to give an efficient advice.
 Because this answer doesn't attempt to answer the problems that most established experts want to address, it is basically a frame challenge answer.
The rest of the answer is just an elaboration on how to deal with emotional reactions and misunderstandings in each specific case. Here is the table of content for this answer:

Dealing with your emotions
Dealing with their reactions
Other problems
For those who want to help
Links

You can also read an answer for a generalized question (what challenges one may face during the project, not just how to convince the experts). I will assume that your platform to get feedback on your work is Reddit, but it's not a big deal.
Dealing with your emotions
First, there are two things to begin with:

Epistemologically, it seems that in order to solve a hard problem, you need to be aware to the solution a priori
Epistemology is a field in philosophy studying about the nature of knowledge and how we acquire it. I haven't read much about this though.
Psychologically, when you are aware of yourself, these self-conscious emotions will evoke: pride, shame, guilt, and embarrassment

Because doing research is to prove that you are wrong before proving you are right, a natural thing when you think you know something is have skepticism about yourself. So alongside with the specific problem you are working with you will ask these self-conscious questions:

Am I claiming a thing that I haven't proved it yet?
Am I claiming that I know better than the experts, when I lack formal education?

Since the answers to those questions should be yes, they will evoke self-conscious emotions, drifting you from the one and only thing you should focus on: the problem you are working at. You will enter a feedback loop of questioning yourself: the answer for those questions is the reason you questioning yourself at the first place. The real answer lies in the work you are researching, not about whether you are sane or not.
To deal with fantasy (a kind of pride), try to imagine how a life of a famous person would actually be. For every kind of success you are dreaming of, there are people who have already got it. So say you dream about the Nobel prize, ask yourself this question: how did Einstein live with his fame and money? When you realize that in fact all famous persons are annoyed for being famous, then your fantasy is cut. By being able to put yourself into their shoes, you can detach to your emotions, and get back to reality. At that time, if you still wonder what you will do when you become famous, then the only thing you want is a dark and quiet place to have a dreamless sleep through it.
Please be aware that you may have messiah complex. You may not have grandiose delusion, but the thinking that (1) only you can provide a solution that no one seems to see, and (2) in other to deliver that solution, you have to overcome the skepticism regardless how harsh it is, can develop this complex. People may also accuse you for performing gaslighting as well. All of these will make the guilt about yourself even stronger.
To distinguish them with true psychological problems, whose root is insecurity, I will call them as "intellectual messiah complex" and "intellectual gaslighting".
Because the fear that you are delusional only continue when in fact you see that you still have fantasy, so when you have successfully cut it, then the fear itself will disappear. You will not feel shame, guilt or embarrass about your work anymore.
In general, the emotions are only intense when your research is still at the vague phase. The more knowledge you acquire, the less frequent they show up.
Dealing with their reactions
In my experience, there are these types of unproductive response: labeling and sarcasm.
Labeling
When they tell that you are crank, just give them this crackpot index, list all the points that may apply to you, and explain how they are wrong. If they accuse you for being arrogant, tell them that confidently walking into a storm with a smile is different to seeking for attention. If they think that you are insane (walking into a storm with a smile is insane obviously), it would be much easier if you can have the conversation face-to-face. Only by seeing how your eyes are determinate but your mind is not closed at all, that they can assume that you are not. Don't be embarrass for telling them how you have prepared for the project.
Let's discuss more about insanity. I think it is best to "help" them reach the conclusion that you are insane, because it is no longer a label on your behavior, but a label on your rationality. When you reach that stage, they will have a strong motivation to continue the conversation, and your evidences will be listened carefully. If you can create a cognitive dissonance in their mind, then their pattern-matching will be silent, and they will not be locked in their perspective anymore.
Respond to their labelling (crank, arrogant, insane, stupid, high, bias, spam, word salad, not even wrong, woowoo, pseudoscience, time- wasting, etc.) by giving the definition of the word and show why it doesn't apply to you. Have a note listing all your prepared answers for each label, so that you don't need to rely on your poor memory. To deal with skepticism, you need to immediately form perfect combination of words, and your brain will put you down. (More details later.)
Sarcasm
If they simply making some jokes, it may be true that it is actually funny. In that case, perhaps it is best to continue the joke. Seeing how you actually enjoy their jokes will make them see that it doesn't affect you at all. Like if you are a fat person, then joking on your fatness will make them see that you are aware of your shortcoming, and it's just that you don't have time to solve it yet. If you are a blind, then having a joke involving your disability will make the non-blinds astonishingly surprised. They will perceived you as invincible now.
If it's really hurt and you can't think of a clever thing to say, then perhaps it's best to remind them that they are in a place that mocking is not acceptable. Like a smack down show, they literally see you as the arrogant prideful guy who need to be taught. Note down links to comedic shows, where making fun of others is the goal, like WWE shows, higaniga conspiracy theory videos, or mocking subreddits, and show them how hilarious their actions are. For example, you can say:

Wow, r/Buddhism becomes r/WWE now?

Or you can invite an authority to deal with this:

I don't think this behavior is appropriate. I'll report the mods/I believe others don't find this appropriate as well.

In short, be clever when dealing with ad hominem. The problem is that you can't be clever when your mind is clouded with anger. So you need to prepare for clever moments. When you can do that, then their next response will likely be productive again.
But in all, don't interact with them because you feel misunderstood, but because of the knowledge they have. Try to convert questions about your identity/self (e.g. "am I crank?") to question about definition (e.g. "what is crank?"). Show how you possess a rigid body of knowledge of what they are trying to convey, with phrases like "psychologically speaking", "what you are talking about is called ______ in philosophy", "in the field of informal logic", etc. They are relevant interesting academic fields that they don't know of. If you think that they have knowledge on what you need, only focus on that, and ignore any unreasonable critique at you.
When you have solved all of the emotional problems, then 90% of the conversations now are productive. But there will still other problems.
Other problems
Memorial problem
You may have wasted so much time to read about crackpotism, conspiracy theories, delusion, etc. You may have wasted so much time on conversations that at first people strongly disagree with you, but after some talks it turns out that they don't really disagree with what you actual mean, and all of this is just misunderstanding. Take note on every evidence that that make you feel you are on the right track. Don't let your research about your sanity gone.
The problem of being unable to explain yourself is because of tacit knowledge and the tip of the tongue phenomenon. When you have a very strong evidence that you are not a crank, then after a week or so what is left is just a feeling that you are not. Lacking the evidence, you will be dragged into the loop again. You need to immediately make a perfect combination of words to get out of this.
Misunderstanding
Even when miracle happens (they spend their time and energy to analyze what you say), there will be a very strange phenomenon that you just can't understand: you always feel that they implicitly agree with what you say, but you two can't settle to a consensus, and thus just going circular.
I think, all conflicts in the world come down to the problem of priority. Usually the situation is like this: person 1 can see that problem A is more important than problem B, and person 2 see that B is more important than A. The problem is that, most of the time both A and B have to be solved together, or else none of them can be achieved. But because both insist that their point is more important, both will miss and pass each other point. Both will feel the conversation is unproductive, and sooner or later one will drop it.
When this happens, it is just a blind leading a blind, or worse, a blind fight. Investigating the nature of this phenomenon and how to deal with it is my research interest. My advice to deal with misunderstanding is to use negation, not explanation.
Egocentricism
Egocentrism is not about being selfish or have a huge ego, but about being unable to differentiate your mind with others' minds. When you find something interesting, then you will automatically assign that others will find it interesting as well, and will be confused when in fact they don't really care. However you remind yourself about this, this tendency will still activate.
Don't assume that they will assume that their feedback is wrong. You may be open minded, and they are too, but in practice both of you can't. If you assume that they are curious to know why they are wrong (a kind of trust), then you will tend to give explanation. But in fact they just see that you are defensive. They accuse you for things you have never done, and then either passively drop the conversation or actively block you from further explanation. I term this as "intellectual silent treatment".
Seeking feedback
When an idea pop up and you feel wonderful, your gut will still tell you that there are much more fields you need to read carefully. Although you don't mind spending more effort on researching, you just want to ask for feedback because it would be much more efficient. Your egocentricism assumes that people will get what you get too. If you want to finish the project as soon as possible to move on to other important things, then your urge to share it will be higher. But STOP! Posting it now will only receive harsh, unreasonable critiques. Listen to your gut, and read all the fields you need first. Good questions only come when your mind is in the ignorance stage, which is the result of understanding the field as it is.
Having said that, at some point you will see that there is no point to ask questions, and you just want them to read your work as it is. If you have the necessary requirements (literary review, inline citation, methodology, etc.), then you can now submit to an academic journal, and you don't have to be afraid for being misunderstood as a crank anymore.
Receiving feedback
In case your first and foremost audience of your work is the popular audience, making your writing style necessarily un-academic, then the situation will be complicated, because your most important audience is the academic one. (Yes, sometimes the important thing is not the one you should prioritize – see the Eisenhower method.) Because your work has to serve two different kinds of audience, who have different background, knowledge and expectation, you will have mixed feelings when receiving their feedback:

Popular audience cannot provide useful feedback, but their excitements indicate that you have touched a big problem that they are looking for
More knowledgeable readers or even academics from distant fields can give useful knowledge, and can play the role of initial gatekeepers. But once they say good luck to you, you know that they cannot help you anymore
Academics from relevant fields will feel it's vague or wishy washy, because they expect your work to truly be presented in academic form. But if you explicitly say that this is just the phase to capture what you have in your mind, then their attitude will flip 180 degrees

Let's talk more about the last point. In your mind, having no literary review, methodology or dataset is not important, because you already accept that you don't have one. Therefore, you must say explicitly that the article is just a cursory research to sketch a roadmap for your study, and list all of your shortcomings as best as you can remember. Without this part their expectation will lock their minds, and any of your explanation from now on will be perceived as defensive.
For those who want to help
Here is my advice for those who want to help. Hopefully it can reduce wasted effort, and bring you maximum happiness:

Always assume that the person you are talking at has something interesting that you can learn
Be conscious that although they may not know what they are talking about, you may not know what they really want to convey either
Confirm their correct observations before address your concerns
Use Socratic questioning

Don't feel threaten when they show signs of crankiness. The fact that they accept to be labeled as crank indicates that they have something more important to do. Like you, they are rational creatures, and they have already run cost-benefit analysis before starting the project. When you want to give them advices, you may want to frame it like this:

I don't think there is another option to do X / The best way to do this is Y. But since it seems that you know this too, can you explain why you don't think it suits you?
I don't think you understand concept Z as it is. In my opinion, Z is about a, b, or c, and perhaps c is closer to what you mean. Is that correct?

You may want to learn about conceptual metaphors if you want to know why sometimes serious ideas are hilariously crazy. I recommend the book Metaphors we live by by Lakoff and Johnson.
Links
Kletische has some good articles about this:

How to Handle False Accusations in Everyday Life
Why You Win When You Forgive
How to Handle, and Grow From, Hateful Criticism

You can also read my research: A theory of perspective. It discusses about various things, two of which are intellectual betrayal, and cold gaze, which are relevant to this answer.


Is this OK that I use "doctor (or doctorate) candidate" as appellation on my business card? Is this correct to call my self "Doctor of engineering CANDIDATE" on my business card?
If it's not improper, what should I use instead of doctorate candidate?
Background:
I'm a college student in master's course and will graduate this summer, then go on to a doctoral course.
So, I'll become the student who has master's degree and also become the student who tries to work toward a doctorate's degree.
I will have business cards available after entering the doctorate course.

*This is my first time to have business cards available.
*I was looking for many same questions, but anything didn't fit my background.

Before graduating with an MA (and assuming the BE is a requirement for your current program):

Emma, B.E.
graduate student at University X, program Y

After graduating:

Emma, M.E.

After acceptance into the PhD program:

Emma, M.E.
PhD student at University X, program Y

The exact titles (e.g. M.E. or MA) depend on country and institution.
By the way, I've maybe used four business cards in the last ten years, and I probably might as well not have. (It's nice to read your name on a piece of high-quality cardboard, though.)

I suggest not bothering with business cards, they seem rather antiquated to me. (Unless your culture, or your country of residence's culture, uses them as common practise.)
I've observed, and personally experienced, (potential) recipients declining cards in favour of a LinkedIn/Twitter connection, which seems far more valuable. I can't think of a scenario where a PhD student would benefit from business cards over a digital connection. (Post-PhD scenarios may arise.)
Nonetheless, if you do decide to have business cards, you can list your highest degree and your job title, e.g.,

Emma, MSc
Doctorate candidate, Department, University

(Where Doctorate candidate is the title used by your university.)


Master thesis advisor gave me an ill-defined question. I worked on it for a year! My master thesis advisor gave me an ill-defined question. His expertise is in mathematical optimization, but he wanted to shift to heuristic optimization so he assigned all his graduate students topics in that field although he actually doesn't know much about it.

He assigned me a problem. I had a feeling that it was ill-defined. I worked on the problem he assigned me for a year but now the numerical results affirms that I was right.

I am not sure how to deal with the situation. Should I waste more time trying  to re-formulate the statement of the problem? I feel it's unfair for me to be both the student and the mentor! What is his job, really? If I'm to do everything on my own...

He doesn't know anything about this field he forced his students to work in.

However, if I quit probably no one is going to believe that it is his fault as a mentor and won't find anyone in the department to write me a recommendation letter to start fresh somewhere else.

So, what are my options now?

Is it advisable to tell the truth to other professors? Will they believe me?

You (and some of the commenters) have a misconception about mathematics, and even research in general. You need to dispel that and present what you have done and learned in a way that satisfies your advisor so that you can finish your degree.
Comments about research in general
If your advisor knew the answer before giving you the problem, then it wouldn't be research. Research is an exploration of the unknown. All research questions are "ill formed" at the start. People notice an anomaly or a missing piece of theory and ask "What in the world is going on here?". There are not immediate answers. Einstein said “If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?”.
Since you are exploring the unknown the results could come out to be anything at all. You start with an idea that "might be true". If you set out to "prove that it is true" then you are doing propaganda and not research. You want to take the attitude that "How do I show whether this is true or not?". Starting with preconceptions can easily lead you astray into scientific misconduct. Reality is brutal.
And no, in doctoral research you don't need "positive" results. You need to discover the truth. Learning and establishing that some hypothesis is false is just as valuable as knowledge as knowing that it is true.
Comments about mathematics in particular
Mathematical research shares a lot with research in general. It is a search into the unknown to find truth. But establishing that, for example, Fermat's Last Theorem was false would be precisely as valuable as showing that it is true. Possibly even more so, if it led to new insights. But it is what it is, not what you want it to be.
And, again, if your advisor knew the answer to the question posed to you, then you wouldn't be doing research but only, perhaps, confirming something already known.
What to do
You actually have written your solution within your question. You say "I worked on the problem he assigned me for a year now but now the numerical results affirms that I was right". That is a result. It is precisely what mathematics is about. Write that up. You have been successful at doing mathematics. You haven't failed. You have succeeded. You have insight into a problem. Perhaps you have insight that no one else in the world has at the moment.

You did not mention your country but at least if you are in Europe the contents your Master thesis do not matter. The Master degree does, of course, but nobody cares about what is in the thesis if it remotely makes sense.

Have a chat with your advisor and turn it into a "I proved that X and Y do not work". It is perfectly fine.

Have a quick look at other master theses in your department and give one or two a closer read. You will see 50% of introduction, 40% of graphs (big graphs), 5% of acknowledgements and 5% of actual findings (if any of substantial nature).

This is absolutely normal - we are talking about a Masters, something zillions of people get and one cannot expect each of them to be a breakthrough and reveal a new scientist every time.


APA: Citing an annual report over multiple years I have looked everywhere for an answer to this question. I don't often use APA format. In Chicago, when referencing in-text an annual report over a span of years, one simply types: (Smith, multiple years). I'm referencing an economic report, published annually, to analyse performance over a span of six years. Must I create a separate reference for each year, or may I do the same as in Chicago?
Best guess is the reference will look like:
Smith, J. (2002-2016) Annual Report
OR
Smith, J. (Multiple years) Annual Report

I don't work in APA much, but in the several papers I have had published the journal has had particular requirements for special cases like that. Step one would be to reach out to the editor of your chosen publication.
In the mean time I would probably cite them separately.

  Smith, J. (2002) Annual Report
   Smith, J. (2003) Annual Report
   Smith, J. (2004) Annual Report
   etc.

with the in text citation (Smith, 2002, 2003, 2004 ... ). I find it preferable to include too much detail and be asked to scale back than vice versa.

If it is a report / essay for your University check with them, if it is a paper for a journal, again, check with them. They may even have information on their site.


How to deal with two students who potentially colluded when one is unavailable? We have two students in my department who handed in identical essays. As per our policy we scheduled independent meetings with both students to determine what happened. Going into these meetings our primary objective is to figure out which of the following 5 possibilities occurred:

The students worked jointly and wrote one essay
One student wrote the essay and knowingly allowed the other student to copy the essay
One student wrote the essay and the other student copied their essay without the first student's knowledge
The students worked independently and managed to write word for word identical essays (this seems unlikely)
The students independently copied the same source

One student is on medical leave and was therefore unable to attend the meeting. The student who attended the meeting showed us drafts of previous essays which have convinced us that neither (4) nor (5) occurred. Further, when we exclude the other student's essay, TurnItIn doesn't find anything of concern. We also are confident that the student who attended the meeting did not copy the essay from the other student. This leaves us with possibilities (1), (2), and (3).

Our policy states that both students would be punished for academic misconducted if either (1) or (2) occurred and only the other student would be punished if (3) occurred. It seems without talking to the other student we cannot really come to a fair conclusion. Without a decision the student who attended the meeting will have neither passed or failed the class and therefore is not eligible to retake the class nor take any class which has the class in question as a prerequisite. It is unlikely the student on medical leave will be back in time to make a timely decision. How should we proceed?

Not letting this student move forward at this point would be punishment. If there is a chance that you will find the student innocent of any wrongdoing, it seems like the injustice of punishing them for something they did not do is  worse than letting them get away with something they did.

Make it clear to the student that they will pass the class given the lack of evidence against them but that you will continue to evaluate the situation. Make sure they know that if you conclude later that they have colluded, you will update their grade to a failing one and force them to retake the class.

The only real negative consequence of this is that the student might be able to take classes that require this class as a prerequisite before they are forced to go back and take the original class again. That's not ideal, but it doesn't really seem so bad.

It's hard to believe that both students would have agreed to turn in identical papers. Most students would know that turning in a paper identical to some other student's would certainly be noticed. So, it is more likely that only one of them is the culprit. In this case, this student is most likely stupid as well as dishonest. The question is how do we tell who is lying? I believe King Solomon had a similar problem, when two woman claimed to be the mother of a single child. You might want to offer to give half credit to each. The one who cheated would likely object less.


Is there any way to post my code on Code Review Stack Exchange and not be worried about plagiarism? I am doing my thesis-based master’s in computer engineering and am required to program a tool in C++ as a part of my research. I am quite impressed by the help offered on the Code Review website and am considering posting a big chunk of my code for suggestions and improvement. However, I am also worried that someone may plagiarize the idea contained in my posted code. This, in turn, might affect the credibility of my work.

I believe one solution is to post a minimal, verifiable and complete example for the code I want suggestions for. However, I am interested in knowing if it is possible to post my code as is and not be worried about it getting copied.

In addition to all the good answers you received so far, I should also point out that in general people's fear of being unethically scooped is vastly exaggerated. I would imagine that there really isn't a community of people scouring the Web for master's thesis level research that they can find and then, with considerable time disadvantage to the original author, copy. I say "with considerable time disadvantage" because even if somebody finds your work, they still need to reverse engineer a lot of what you already have and know to get to a publishable thesis or paper from your code alone. Unless you consider letting your work sit for half a year it seems unlikely that a copycat will end up publishing quicker than you, the original author.

Yes, being scooped sucks, but it usually does not happen because somebody stole your code, or even your idea. Scooping happens because there are multiple independent teams working worldwide on almost any mainstream research topic, and there usually only are a finite number of ways to attack any given problem given the current state of literature. Situations where two teams are working with similar approaches on similar problems are bound to come up.

First of all : Does your university requires you to license the program for you masters under the university's ownership or some specific license?

If not, (that is you are the owner of your work), why not publish it on Github under the desired license of your choice.#

This way you can prove the credibility/first authorship of the program prima facie and subsequently seek the improvements/contributions from the community.

If the program turns out to be quite useful and gains significant traction , then this might prove to be a shining badge on your resume.

# Since you are doing masters, I assume you will be making foray into industry  at some point sooner or later and for your program to gain traction in industry(read:a shining resume) it must have a permissive license, so if you want a simple license choices instead of researching yourself(or much better consulting a lawyer) you can choose between LGPL vs Apache vs zLib .


Order of authors for a tenure-track assistant professor in the USA: second author after Ph.D. student or last author? I am a second-year Assistant Professor in an engineering department at a US university. I did my Ph.D. in a non-US university and post-docs in the USA. I have a two papers that my Ph.D. students are about to submit, with 5 and 7 authors respectively. A Ph.D. student of mine will be first author in each of those, since he contributed the most, no doubt whatsoever with this.

But what is best for me? I am definitely the person who contributed the most after my student. I had always assumed that I should be the second author. A colleague in Europe told me, however, "Are you crazy? You should be the last author of the list, which is the most prestigious spot after the first author! The main PI or person who helped most the student is always the last author in the list!" So now I am doubting my choice.

Where should my name be on the list, given that I am the main PI and I helped the most? I know it is surely not the main factor for tenure, but I'd like to do this in the most correct way.

The answer for appropriate author order is very dependent on the culture of your (sub)field.  For example, if you are a computer engineer, you should probably be second author, while if you are a biological engineer, you should probably be last author.  Follow whatever you see others doing in the venues where you are submitting.

That said, these days it is often possible to make the contributions explicit so that there are no questions about contribution.  Many journals now request or require an "author contributions" section that attributes specific work to specific authors. Even if the venue that you are submitting to does not have such a requirement, you can still  add that information into the acknowledgements section.  Furthermore, the CRediT taxonomy provides a set of standard widely-recognized roles that are useful for describing such work.

Your colleague was right. Whatever your contributions or advice/information aimed at resolving a problem are important but all that thing was done by your student so you should be always at second position. Moreover, if there have another CO-PI in their research then their name would be the last.

The order should be

Student or researcher
PI
CO-PI


What is done in a workshop? How does it differ from an academic conference? I have done some research on this, but I still don't know what is carried out in a workshop. What activities are arranged? How are they different from conferences?

The reason why it is difficult to tell what workshops are about is because it is a catch-all category that many different types of academic meeting are labelled as. To illustrate, let me give examples of the nature of some of the events that I have attended in the last two years that all use the same word "workshop" to describe themselves:

A "baby conference" attached to a full-size conference, where the small meeting simply isn't large enough to meet on its own yet.
A project meeting for researchers who are all funded by the same large grant
A planning and discussion session aimed at helping determine the direction of a field
A joint industry/academia fact-finding meeting sponsored by an industry consortium
A specialty conference attended by around 100 people
A premier conference attended by several hundred people
A working meeting by a standards development group

The length of these meetings ranged from a single afternoon to a full week. Their programs ranged from nothing but loosely structured discussion to a full-on tightly packed conference schedule.  The level of peer review ranged from non-applicable to minimal to full-on single-blind review and revision.

In short: a workshop is whatever it wants to be, and different ones serve different purposes in the academic ecosystem.

A Workshop is as the name suggests a shop where we work to produce some products. Here the participants are workers, the methodology used like presentation of papers, question answer sessions, group discussions, debates, group and individual problem solving sessions are the tools/machinery in a workshop. The theme proposed by the organisers is the raw-material and the recommendations/models and answers arrived at is the finished product.
Col SK Mahapatra


When resubmitting a paper, should I write individual letters for each reviewer or one common letter? My question is simple. When resubmitting a paper after review was done, should I include different response letters to each reviewer, or should I include my comments addressing each reviewer remark in a single letter?

Edit: I usually send one single letter. However, recently, I was in a situation where the reviewers made only minor comments while the editor had a major issue. I'd think the editor would not necessarily want to share his major comments with the reviewers, so I sent separate letters so the editor might choose which ones to send to the reviewers. This made me think that always sending separate letters is possibly the best practice.

Edit 2: Please note that I'm not asking how to write good response letters in general. I'm sure there are plenty of good advice about that on Academia.SE. I'm particularly interested in pros and cons of using single vs multiple letters.

Usually, you sent back one single letter in which you answer the reviewers questions one by one. I always start with a short note to the editor, listing the major revisions done as bullet points. I also thank the reviewers for their time spent on the review and that their comments advanced my manuscript (of course I write this only if the review really improved my work). Then I start with "Reviewer 1" and list each of his questions or remarks and mark my comments either in bold or in a different color.

I agree with the prior responses. Typically, the editor does not share the letter with authors' responses with the reviewers. Therefore, there is no need to worry that the reviewers' will see the suggested responses from the editor. Good luck!


How should I respond to a reviewer's complaint about self-citation? Recently, I submitted an article and got a response from a reviewer that I cited 6 of my own articles out of 44. The reviewer said that it’s a cheap act of self promotion.

If I do not cite my own work, how can I expect others to?
Is it bad practice to cite your own work?

The reviewer didn’t say I cited senselessly, rather he complained about the citation of my own work. How to respond in this given situation?

The answers here of Solar Mike and corey979 are correct, but let me point out two additional issues.

First, it might be that without your citations you could validly be accused of self plagiarism. Readers of the current work need to be able to trace back the ideas to earlier work. This is why we cite ourselves rather than just reuse old work.

Second, if you want a mental check on whether a self-citation is proper or not, just ask whether you would still be giving this citation if the other paper were written by someone unknown to you. If the answer is yes, then it is certainly proper - even essential - to cite it. If the answer is no, then you should probably forgo.

As for a response, you could simply ignore it. However, if you think that it is affecting the editor's decision, you could point out the self-plagiarism aspect.

You can reply that citing your other works will be valuable for the reader to be able to follow your train of work.

Just reading a paper without context it can be hard to get a grasp of why to even research what this paper tries to address.

With context, it is much easier to explain to a new reader why this latest paper is relevant to the trail of papers.


Are there any Books/Guides to developing researching skills for academia I will be doing an Honours in Commerce next year at a GO8 university.

This is essentially a stepping stone into a pathway to academia (or sometimes a resume booster for getting into industry).

It will be my first time getting an exposure to reading and researching academic articles, and I was wondering if there was some sort of guide or standard to researching and reading academic papers, particularly in finance and economics.

In essence, I was hoping to find something of a similar nature to this guide on studying university level mathematics.

I feel this question may be received as vague, thus I will give an example:

suppose I am looking for research inspiration, for instance. Then, in searching it would (perhaps obviously, or perhaps I am entirely wrong) not be the best idea to read articles and thoroughly understand every single detail of each and every one of them, but rather, read articles and see where there are knowledge gaps and potential for future research.

there is surely a methodology to roughly follow or guide or book out there which helps you become/build the skills to be a good/more efficient/effective researcher?

any help is appreciated.

These are things I found useful
I don't have enough reputation for links, but you will be able to find them

Standalone articles/talks/papers/blogposts:

You and Tour Research by Richard Hamming
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html

10 Things You Should Know Before Starting A PhD from Next Scientist
http://www.nextscientist.com/graduate-school-advice-series-starting-phd/
especially the point that your job is to write papers

The care and maintenance of your adviser by  Hugh Kearns and Maria Gardiner

The illustrated guide to a Ph.D.by Matt Might

Advice books for scientist

Advice for a Young Investigator by Ramon Cajal, Old but good and everything written there is still relevant. Mostly about important mindsets, personality traits and skills for success in science. It's good to realize that in 1897 common concern of new grad students were that The most important problems
are already solved.

Crafting Your Research Future: A Guide to Successful Master's and Ph.D. Degrees in Science & Engineering By Ling and Yang, Has very concrete guides for finding a research gaps, branding yourself, reading papers etc

Books not necessarily for scientist

So Good They Can't Ignore You by Call Newport, about developing valuable skills

Valuable blogs

Next scientist

Matt Might

Thesis whisperer

Fumbling Toward Tenure

Before reading an article, you should know some information about journal where is this paper published, this means, that you know from what field is that article ( applied, basic, innovative), and to conclude via IF rating or scimago position of that paper so you can predict what amount of foreknowledge is necessary (most of the time(not always) higher reputation of paper, more complex and innovative research could be found).
Than, you should read abstract, introduction and discussion. Abstract and introduction will tell you about amount of knowledge that you acquired during your student life ( or life in general, either formal or informal)-this mean it is clear to you what is origin of that paper, how researchers come to point of conducting that research. if you dont have sufficient understanding, than you will need to read previous papers also!!!
Discussion will tell you if you can recognise patterns and methodology used in that paper, order to get to some conclusion, (new finding, to prove hypothesis, etc) So when you know introduction, than you should have idea in your mind what method and research plan they will use or implement,
next you should move on methodology and results and  see how is their design different from yours, and you should try to understand why they use that methodology, is it adequate for their purpose and critically to evaluate importance of every step in their work, as whole work, of course.


Is there evidence that suggests students should take notes? I hear a lot about good note-taking strategies vs bad note-taking strategies, and I have seen a lot of research papers on different styles of note-taking. What I haven't seen though is any study that has asked if we should even be taking notes in the first place.

Specifically I would like to know the long-term effects of taking notes vs not taking notes. It is clear to me that if someone has taken notes their entire academic career, then immediately stops, their performance will probably plummet, but how do students who have never taken notes compare to students who have always taken notes?

I would guess certain learning styles would benefit from note-taking while other learning styles are hindered by note-taking, but I would like to see some actual data on this if anyone knows anything about it. A cursory Google search didn't return anything, so I hope there is someone on here that may be able to shed some light on this.

Edit: A lot of people have taken this question to solely be asking for research on this topic. While I would most like to see actual data, I did not intend this to solely be a literature search, and people can post their anecdotal evidence, as long as it is pointed at the long-term difference in note-taking vs not taking notes.

You said you're not looking for research on note-taking, so consider this a freebie.

That said, I'm not entirely sure what you are looking for here. There's a preponderance of research showing that (1) putting things in your own words and (2) recall exercises over time significantly improve memory. This pdf has some good overviews, and points to this academic publication (note: paywall) which contains a bunch of actual references.

Actually, the more I'm researching here, there does seem to be significant evidence that the act of note-taking itself is beneficial to recall and understanding. Two more recent examples relate to mock jurors watching a mock trial while either taking notes or not [1][2]. There's a paper which I can't seem to download but I've seen cited a few times that discusses the positive effect of note taking on student performance [3].

All this said, there's more to it than this. There are numerous note-taking methods, and they have a literature all of their own (e.g., [4]). The way you take notes definitely affects how effective the note-taking will be.

So yeah, it helps.

Edit based on comments: There is substantial evidence that note-taking, by itself, improves retention. That said, the OP seems to be curious whether the fact that we take notes at all is biasing our results; perhaps we should be focusing on comparing pure memory recall techniques to note-taking. Said differently, will someone with memory training outperform someone proficient at note-taking?

I still think that this question itself has issues. Specifically:

There is a significant difference between someone who simply doesn't take notes and someone who has trained themselves to not need written notes. I know people who avoid writing anything (mostly psychiatrists who don't want everything written down and subpoena-able), and it took years of mental training to get there. That is different from the lazy kid who just says "I can remember everything."
As with note-taking, there are many different techniques for remembering without notes, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. I think that ignoring the techniques ignores an important part of the question.
I don't think this question is even answerable anymore. Most of the modern world takes notes in some form (source: I made this up), whereas a very minor percentage of people nowadays use purely memory-based techniques (source: I made this up too). As such, finding a representative sample from the second group for our comparison would be pretty doggone difficult.

I think it is important to distinguish two kinds of note-takers.

The first kind of note taker takes notes because they can't understand the material in real-time. This group of note-takers plan to learn by poring over the notes later, perhaps in several iterations. Such note-takers are, of course, not the creme of the crop academically.

The second kind of note taker takes notes because writing things down is their way of memorizing things. Members of this group of note-takers rarely, if ever, refer back to their notes. Their notes may be distinctly less organized than those of the first group of note-takers. They may also have poor memory when it comes to anything non-academic that they wouldn't necessarily think of writing down.

It's also important to distinguish two kinds of non-note-takers: Students who don't take notes because they plan to barely pass the course versus students why are exceptionally capable of memorizing things without aids.

As you can see, overall, both "good" and "bad" students span the entire spectrum of note-taking, making it difficult to make accurate judgements based on observing note-taking behavior alone.


Is it unfair to regrade prior work after detecting cheating? I teach various undergraduate courses. I make the cheating policies clear on the first day of lectures, check the student's understanding of this with an on-line quiz, and remind students of the policy almost weekly in class. I try hard to detect cheating, but cannot catch everyone.

Sometimes I discover cheating mid-way through the semester. For example, I caught some students submitting duplicate assignments. After making the discovery, I looked back to past work that they submitted to the course Web site, and found the students sent identical papers for all past assignments, but I already awarded them A's.

Is it unfair of me to go back and regrade prior assignments when students cheated?

Looking over previous assignments after detecting cheating is perfectly reasonable.  In fact, I'd advise that you should do it if you can.

Revising previous judgment calls about the quality of a student's work could be unfair, or at least extremely upsetting to the student.  For example, it wouldn't be reasonable to say "Remember that paper I gave you an A- on?  After thinking about it a little more, I've decided that I was too generous and your work deserved a B+ instead, so I'm changing your grade."

However, looking for evidence of cheating is different from reconsidering your grading standards.  You aren't changing your opinion of the grade the work would deserve if it was properly done.  Instead, you are trying to figure out whether it was in fact properly done.  If not, then the student never earned the grade in the first place and has no cause to complain about unfairness.

In other words, there's no statute of limitations for cheating.  Just because a grade has already been assigned, it doesn't mean you can't be found guilty of cheating, in which case the previous grade becomes irrelevant.

In all fairness, I think cheating is just the same as answering correctly.

In real life, you are graded on the result of you work. If you are asked to deliver X and deliver X, that is acceptable regardless of the means (unless illegal).

What really is the difference between cheating or studying? in the long run, I would argue that cheating is actually a much more beneficial skill to lean. For example if you know how to cheat, you can cheat at any subject, if you study for math, you wont necessarily pass science.

School is suppose to prepare you for life, And thus should take into account things like technology. Never in life will a boss tell a co-worker to find a solution to a problem but they can not use the internet or their mobile phone to find the answer. Before starting my own business, I have worked for a few larger companies and the mentality of most of the young out of college employees seem to be if you are tasked with an assignment, do it on your own and don't ask anyone for help even if you don't know the answer or else you will seem incapable, probably because they have this mindset coming out of school that asking peers for the answer to a problem is not the way things are done.

If you student(s) have found a way to receive a positive result with less work, I think that deserves and A...

The exception I would give is plagiarism.


Only one student answered an exam question - and I strongly suspect he cheated Today we (professors + teaching assistants) proctored a midterm exam for a class of about 80 students.  There was undoubtedly a "hardest" question on the exam, since nearly the entire classroom of students asked us how to proceed with that question. To be fair, we didn't give any hints, but it was clear that one had to use a definition to be able to proceed.

When we collected the exams, all of the exam booklets had that question unanswered -- except for one student's exam.  And this was the only student who asked to go to the bathroom.  I gave him permission to go, but I did not ask for his phone, which I now highly regret.

What can we do in this situation, in which I strongly suspect that this student went to the bathroom to look up a definition on his phone, so that he could answer the question correctly?

We still have to look at every exam to be sure that only one student got it right (the bathroom student), but if this were indeed the case, do we have any power to accuse him of cheating, or, have we missed our chance by not asking for him to leave his phone in the room?

I feel a big injustice will have been done to the rest of the honest students, if we let this one slide ...

I apologize in advance for my frankness.

  What can we do in this situation, in which I strongly suspect that this student went to the bathroom to look up a definition on his phone, so that he could answer the question correctly?

Nothing.

  have we missed our chance by not asking for him to leave his phone in the room?

You missed it, but it doesn't really matter: the student might have had a mate with a phone in the bathroom. Or not. The student might even have known the answer.

  I feel a big injustice will have been done to the rest of the honest students, if we let this one slide

In your career you quite probably have already let others slide.

I wrote in this answer that, on the basis of my (now sufficiently long) experience, if a student wants to cheat, they will. Therefore, one has to accept that, from time to time, a student cheats, and one doesn't notice or is not able to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the student cheated (and you don't want to accuse someone of cheating if you're not able to prove it, right?).

So, move on.

NB: As some have remarked in various comments, the fact that almost all students were unable to answer that question can be a major issue. In this answer, I specifically wanted to address the cheating part only, because I think that this other issue is a totally different matter, which can be also culture-dependent, and which is probably worth of a different (interesting) question.

If you think that you failed to teach the class sufficiently enough for any your students to be able to answer the question on an exam you gave them, then the things that are unfair are these, and a few others:
1. You put questions in the exam that you did not teach them adequately
2. You assume that your student cheated

The exam and its results have no value in the real world. The knowledge gained from a well-taught class has value. The skills learned while studying subjects has value.

Do a much better job teaching the subjects. Do a much better job building exams that test the students on only the material that you sufficiently taught them.  Grade your teaching skills on the results of the student's ability to answer the questions.

If you had the only student who realized that it was completely unfair of you to have put a question that you as the teacher thought not one student should have been able to answer, and that student decided to make it fair, by looking up the answer themselves, then that student deserves extra credit.

You are not the only teacher who has their perspective on what matters wrong.

Praise the student for being the only one to get it right, and ask them about how they got the answer.


What to do when the professor does not stand up to cheating? I was the teaching assistant (TA) for a very introductory physics course at a large state university. In the course of grading for this class, I came to learn that my university used the same course material as many other universities had for the equivalent course for more than twenty years. The answers to questions, in particular, were readily available online, through various forums. The syllabus explicitly forbade providing disingenuous answers, as well as any plagiarized responses. To be clear, this instructor was a fully tenured professor; not someone in any risk of losing their position.

After noticing patterns in homework assignments, I began to look for them in midterm and final exams as well. What I initially thought was a couple of bad students turned out to be more than 50% of the class regularly citing online sources word-for-word. Once I realized what was happening, I informed the professor, and I started assigning zeros to the offending students, in accordance with University policy, and the professor did not object to my assignment of zeros. However, all of this was still subject to the lead professor's review.

The professor asked for documentation of the offenses, and was in fact the undergraduate director of the department. I spent the better part of a week accumulating evidence, scouring Yahoo answers and other common homework repositories for the sources of the dirty students' answers. I found a veritable source for every single one. I printed copies of the students' responses, alongside their internet sources, and deposited the six-inch-tall stack of documents at the professor's door.

As far as I know, nothing happened to a single student, and word was never made public of the massive cheating scandal that was blatantly obvious in this course. Multiple athletes were in this (1A) course.

Is this just academia?

Beer and Circus calls this the "student-faculty non-aggression pact":

Faculty provide an easy class and don't look too hard into cheating
Students happily take the easy grade and leave the professor free to do research

I wouldn't say this is "the rule"; plenty of faculty do an awesome job teaching. But, I'm not surprised to hear your report -- some faculty don't care about teaching generally, while others care about teaching but don't care about grades or catching cheaters. Many feel (for better or worse) that cheaters get what they deserve eventually, and don't want to be personally involved in punishing them.

  What to do...

I would carefully check the department and university policies -- often, cheating cases are explicitly prosecuted "at the professor's discretion." I would also speak directly with the professor. Speaking of....

  I started assigning zeros to the offending students...[collected evidence]...and deposited the six-inch-tall stack of documents at the professor's door.

I suspect this was not the best way to go about it. I would recommend first speaking with the professor, making them aware of the problem, and asking how to proceed. At a minimum, this could have saved you a week's worth of wasted effort. As it is, you assigned a bunch of zeros, and it sounds like your professor was okay with this -- that is some punishment, at least.

  Is this just [the way of] academia?

Well, it's certainly a bit dysfunctional. And it's inevitable as long as prosecuting cheaters is a lot of work for the faculty while providing absolutely no "reward" when done successfully.

There is an argument that cheating should be clearly and formally forbidden,
but it is not important to enforce that.

The reasoning is based on that the student does harm only to himself.

While enforcing it is not fundamentally important, it may still be desirable to enforce it, but with lower priority when short on resources.

The base assumption may or may not be valid, the student may in some context do harm to others, like gaining an objective competitive advantage. But note that, except for the final grades, an advantage in grading of exams or classes is not an objective advantage in the world outside the university. An objective advantage would be receiving a certificate or final grade that has a value independent of what was learned.

For example, this is a valid approach in the following context:

There are introductory lectures that are needed as base for a lecture later in the curriculum.

In studying physics at an university that includes a lecture on statistical mechanics, there will be an earlier lecture of thermodynamics. It is not important to have valid grades for thermodynamics, because a student does not need the grade, but only the knowledge to get a good grade in the lecture about statistical mechanics. A good grade in that implies understanding the underlying concepts used.

A student cheating in the thermodynamics lecture without gaining the knowledge just needs to learn it later. There is no way to understand why pressure and temperature interact the way they do without knowing how they interact.


Best practices in sharing qualitative data such as interview transcripts alongside a paper publication? In the past I have shared quantitative datasets by uploading them to data repositories (like Zenodo) as CSV-files or similar formats.
But I lack experience with regards to qualitative data such as interview transcripts.
The interviewees will be asked to agree with the sharing of the (pseudonymized or anonymized) transcripts.
But other than that, are there best practices associated with such a qualitative data-sharing? Would it be sufficient to use merely upload, say, a simple Word-document of the interview transcriptions on Zenodo? Or perhaps also a HTML-file which would contain my way of having coded the transcripts*? Is there anything else that I should take into account?

* I plan to use a specific program for coding the interview transcripts, namely RQDA, an R-package; RQDA seems to allow users to export marked-up transcripts in a HTML-file format.

If your research data comes from people, your sharing of the data needs to be approved through an ethical review process, or an exemption from that process must be obtained through the exemption process.
CSV format seems to be the most reliable data format; it does not matter if your data is quantitative of qualitative.  Your choice of repository should be guided by the customs of your field and your views of the repository's reliability, not the type of data.


Going back to university after suspension, how do I move past the shame? I was suspended for 1 year from my university for copying an assignment from an online source. There were several extenuating circumstances but I won't go into them as they are irrelevant, I did cheat and I do deserve the punishment I was given - that is not the question.

After I found out my sentence, I found it very hard to attend classes relating to that department, or to look professors or my deans and advisors in the face and carry out conversations with them. The professor who's class I cheated in is one I was hoping to talk to as she is in the same area that I hope to go into one day and I really enjoyed her class, teaching methods, and enthusiasm for the subject. I also am extremely saddened by the fact that since I'm a fourth year, this means all my peers will be graduating and will have left by the time I come back and I'm finding it hard to cope with the thought of being without them for the rest of my undergraduate career.

My question is how do I cope with the stress and shame I am feeling and how do I get over that so that I can return to the academic environment in 1 year? Can I ever approach that professor again, or should I avoid her? I'm asking this here because I'd like the opinions of those who are on the other side of this.

The university suspended you, which is a signal that it is still willing to have you as a student after serving your suspension.  (If it wasn't, you'd have been expelled.)  Therefore, upon your return, this professor (and every other professor) has the same professional obligations towards you that she would to any other student: to accept you in her classes, to treat you with courtesy and respect, to help you learn the material, to grade you fairly based on your work and the standards of the course.  It is possible that your assignments may face extra scrutiny for plagiarism, but hopefully that is irrelevant as you're not going to do it again.

It's possible that relations may be strained between you, but I think this may be more on your side than hers.  Speaking for myself, I certainly find it disappointing when a student cheats, but it's not as if I'm going to declare a personal vendetta against them and seethe with fury every time I pass them in the hall.  That would be unprofessional, and not worth the emotional energy anyway.  We go through the disciplinary process, I hope that they learn their lesson, and it's back to business as usual.  If they are able to turn things around and show genuine interest in and dedication to their studies, for me that's ultimately uplifting.

So if you want to take her class at a later date, by all means do so.  You might find it helpful to talk with her first: express your regret over the incident, as well as your continued interest in your subject and in completing your degree.  I think it's very likely this will help clear the air for both of you.  It would be wise for you to be extra diligent about quotations, citing sources, etc, and to consult your professor if you have the slightest question about any such issues.

Maybe she won't invite you to dinner, and she probably won't be the best person to write you a letter of recommendation.  (Even if you get to be on better terms, which I hope you will, she might still feel it's her duty to mention the cheating incident in any letter she writes, which is probably not good for you.)  But I don't see any reason you can't have the same basic educational experience as any other student.

Years ago I took a final exam for a student who I was tutoring (we became friends during our tutoring sessions.). I hid in the bathroom; he snuck the exam out to me; I completed it and he turned it in. It was a Calculus test.

He was caught and suspended for a semester. I personally went in to the university to explain our actions, explain why I did it and to lend my support for him and to ask them for lenient punishment on him. The school administrators were appreciative of this and I think it was reflected.

In any case, he was out for the semester. Then, he went back again, finished school, and went on to grad school and his career. All said and done, very little if any harm done.

Life goes on. Sometimes people cheat, sometimes they plagiarize, we all do it to some extent in our lives, not a huge deal as far as I'm concerned if you don't do it often and you learn something about yourself in the process.


Is it acceptable to setup a survey online (but not send to human subjects) before getting IRB approval? I am doing a small survey-based research project, where I need to setup surveys online. I was wondering if I needed full IRB approval before I can setup the surveys online on Qualtrics/RedCap/Google forms? (I'll of course wait after approval before sharing the survey with any human subjects that would fill in the survey)

Addenum:
It's social science research, it's a few questions from a validated survey we will be using. I'm pretty sure the protocol will be accepted. There is a visiting student for the month here and to gain time I thought he could setup the questions on Qualtrics. Would this be acceptable?

Yes, this is quite standard. There is nothing special about setting up the survey in Qualtrics that requires IRB approval. Just be prepared to make any changes the IRB requires/recommends during the approval process.

Note that you should not SEND your survey to human subjects using Qualtircs. But taking it yourself or working through the bugs with an RA would be fine. Think about it this way - if this was a "paper survey" you would be allowed to type your survey before handing it into IRB. But you wouldn't be allowed to mail it to any subjects.

You should have IRB approval as soon as possible. One of the aspects of IRB approval is approving your protocol - how can you set up the surveys if you don't know if the protocol has been approved?


How to ignore a presenter's bad english? I recently attended an average international conference in Computer Science. This was the first time I actually attended an international conference.

The level of English that I heard during the talks ranged from average to extremely bad (ignoring the native speakers/people that lived a long time in an english speaking country).

I am not a native English speaker, and I do not expect other researchers in the same situation to be as fluent as a native speaker either. But I have worked hard to improve my accent and my elocution to a point where I feel very comfortable speaking the language without stuttering every two words or mispronouncing a lot of things.

As such, I felt extremely frustrated during the entire conference: a speaker with bad English would quickly annoy me, because I felt as if they did not work hard enough on their English elocution, which I believe is an inherent part of being a scientist (especially in Computer Science, where conferences are very common). Therefore, I ended up not being interest in the vast majority of the presentations, even if the subject might have sounded appealing.

How can one improve at looking (or rather, hearing) past the researcher's English, and focusing on their actual contribution?

So I'm a native English speaker, and I used to be kind of a snob about people whose spoken English was poor. I got over it. I remember the exact instant that I got over it, in fact. Here it is:

I was an undergraduate, and I visited a seminar on a subject that interested me but that I didn't know very much about.  The speaker at the seminar had an impenetrable Chinese accent, and I wasn't able to focus on the talk at all because I could barely understand him. "This is terrible," I thought. "No one can possibly be getting anything from this."

The talk ended and the speaker took questions. The first question was long, thoughtful, and detailed: the questioner was trying to related something from a slide early in the presentation to a slide from late in the presentation.  I did not understand the question because the gentleman who asked it had an impenetrable Polish accent.

After some back and forth, it became clear that the speaker thought the question was interesting but didn't know the answer.  But someone else in the audience did: a long, thoughtful answer that I did not understand because the answerer had an impenetrable Russian accent.

Then it hit me: everyone in the seminar room had just learned something interesting, except me, because I was distracted by being an English-language snob.  That was my problem, not theirs.

I eventually figured out to concentrate on what's maybe called "active listening": constantly rephrasing what the other person is saying into my own words, and inquiring occasionally whether I'm summarizing things correctly.
You might not like to interrupt someone with clarifying questions during a presentation.  Within reasonable limits, you should get over that --- if you're flummoxed about something, chances are that other people in the audience are confused about the same thing.
Active listening has helped me to deal with native English speakers just as much as with speakers of broken English, in fact. For instance, when you argue with someone, they have a lot more respect for you if you can correctly state their position before you take issue with it.

(The happy ending of the story is that the Russian and the Pole both ended up on my PhD committee --- good people, both of them, from whom I learned a great deal. No recollection of who the original seminar speaker was, though.)

The researcher, given their poor English skills should have made the presentation more understandable by using other media.  Whether this be referring to a Powerpoint, using websites, video, whatever.

I once managed a group of engineers that traveled the world to teach our other engineers.  Quite a few of them from Asia had trouble with English, some did great.

I for one had to travel all over.  Easy right because I am native speaker?  No because in each region they had different English levels, used slightly different terminology, and had certain expectations.

Things the speaker needs:

preparation - as mentioned above using cheat sheets, materials and media as aids.
self-awareness - the speaker needs to understand their abilities.  Don't use words that you don't fully understand, speaker louder, speak slower, and so on.  There is nothing worse than someone butchering any language mumbling at a million words a minute.
know your audience - if you have that much comment on your speaker's English skills part of the problem was them trying to cover too much in a short time frame for too big of an audience.  The focus should have probably been narrowed and more interactive.
the speaker has to care - I have gone up in front of many groups and watch their eyes glaze over.  Sometimes I was not explaining something well, sometimes too fast, sometimes at too complex of a level, whatever.  But as a speaker you can see your audience hit the wall.  If you don't care enough to stop and change course or to ask questions to see where people's heads are then you are just clicking a checkbox and the session was useless.
the speaker needs to confirm - once you have made major points make sure that your audience understands them and confirms that when you made point XYZ that they understand that was XYZ.  Sounds simple but using slightly different wording or terminology/slang can put a 180 spin on things quickly.

The answer is you cannot fix bad communication, especially at a large conference.  It is painful to watch anyone that is a poor communicator and language skills are just a piece of the pie.  What you probably witnessed was a person with poor English skills but a few other presenting issues too.


Does grant funded equipment result in authorship? Just a quick question regarding authorship. Recently, a PI won a grant, which was used to buy some computer equipment (~$1000 piece of computation equipment along with some other equipment not relevant to the post).

I am a student that has been using the piece of equipment, as it was not being used by their students.

I am now going to be submitting a manuscript, which used the equipment as mentioned above. Does this entail the PI who won the funds to pay for it authorship? Or, as I believe, just acknowledgment (for both the grant and the PI who won it)?

EDIT 1: I should note, my research has nothing to do whatsoever with the PI's grant or their research.

EDIT 2: I found this interesting paper on the subject.

Authorship, no, not if the only contribution was a piece of equipment. Authorship at a minimum requires an intellectual contribution to the project.

Acknowledgment, perhaps. $1000 sounds like a fairly minimal investment for an acknowledgment even, but the standards for what is worthy of acknowledging are much more up to the authors of a given paper. If the work truly would not have been possible without the equipment, then it may certainly be appropriate. If you were just borrowing someone's unused computer, that doesn't sound acknowledgment-worthy to me.

On a brief note in the other direction: some people come here and ask authorship questions where they feel someone (usually an advisor) doesn't deserve authorship, but in reality they made a substantial intellectual contribution to the project. Norms for this vary by field, but make sure when you are assessing answers you get here that you are describing this PI's complete contribution accurately.

Is the grant related to the project you worked on? If so, in my field (CS) that would be enough. Without their intellectual contribution there would have been no grant, no equipment, and no project.

Perhaps you should ask why are you writing a manuscript without supervision from a more senior researcher (if that's the case).


How to verify a proof prior to peer review in mathematics I think I have found that squared magic squares cannot be constructed which is an unsolved problem.
I have searched for months for any mistakes and I could not find any. I have sent this to Mr.Boyer who hosts the page yet I ended up not being able to regain contact with him after he stated he found an error in my paper. However, as I think I have been aware of the error (if clarification is needed, I will do so) and have resolved the error later in the paper, I doubt that it was, in fact, an error. However, I have no method of confirming this except by myself.

Hence, I think that the only method I have left is submitting to a peer-reviewed journal. Yet is there a method of verifying the proof prior to this? I have heard that the procedure of peer review may take years.

I am only a high-school student thus I do not have any connections to mathematicians.

Ask your teachers. They know you well, probably know math better than you, and are your closest connection to the academic world. That means they're the most likely to be willing to look through your proof, capable of finding an error you didn't spot, and if they can't find anything wrong, they'll know who to approach next (e.g. their professors from when they did their degrees).

You could conceivably approach math professors at your local university directly, but you risk coming across as a crank and being ignored. If you're able to get your math teacher to vouch for your proof, that would lend strength to your claim.

Universities list their faculty members, usually by faculty, then by department of a faculty. The professors, e.g. in the math department, will usually have their specialties listed along with their e-mail addresses.

Scholars don't often get serious letters from the general public about their specialty and are usually quite pleased when they do.


Is it fair that a PhD student should be allowed to review a research paper? I really can't understand why an inexperienced PhD student should be allowed to review a research article written by researchers of considerably more experience and expertise.

How do journals/editors select referees for submissions?

Yes, it is fair.

The quality of reviews written by highly experienced researchers is low.
Many manuscripts have obvious flaws that should be spotted by the inexperienced.
Reviewers are (in theory) supervised by the editor.
Novice reviewers are more enthusiastic than experienced reviewers.
If the paper cannot be understood by a PhD student, it will not be useful to very many people.
PhD students may have more specialized expertise because they work on fewer projects, as compared to senior researchers (per @nayrb)

Of course, it depends on the individual PhD student.  Some are better prepared to review than others.

Your question is simply ambiguous. You ask:

  why an inexperienced PhD student should be allowed to review a research article?

This can be read as one of the following two different questions:

"Why an inexperienced researcher (that is by chance also a PhD student) be allow to review?"; or
"Why a PhD student, which I assume in advance to be inexperienced, because all PhD students are inexperienced, be allowed to review?".

For the first interpretation, the editor or program committee should take the inexperience of a reviewer into consideration. For the second interpretation, it lies on a false premise, and so is wrong.


Is it advisable to use a URL link shortening service when writing an academic article? Is it OK to present a URL using a link shortening service such as bit.ly? The reason I'm asking is that I think it's a lot easier to enter this URL (e.g., if you read it in a paper) as opposed to full URL. Or is this a bad idea?

You should never offer a link shortener as the only option in an academic paper, for two reasons:

It's adding another point of failure: if the shortening service is down, then the link cannot be followed.  This is a particular worry over time, since the service may go out of business.
One of the big reasons why link shorteners are so popular is that they keep track of usage statistics.  I'd be offended if I thought an author was using this to monitor when the link was followed, where the people following it were located, etc.

So if you offer a shortened URL, it should only be in addition to the real URL, not in place of it.  However, I'd tend to avoid even that.  It doesn't look professional to me, and I don't think there's much savings for the reader.  (Online papers should have clickable URLs, or at least ones that can be copied and pasted, so this only arises for someone who has a printed copy but no online copy.  That can happen, but it's hardly a major issue.)

I have no problem with shortening a link. In a paper, you won't risk your reputation just to have a spam or contained virus link, therefore people won't need to worry about the security. Also, I don't know if other services have this feature, but you can make an customized link as long as it is unique.

For example, this was my link to my dissertation: bit.ly/epHIVprotease. (Need not to follow it, I have pulled it down)

Anyone in my field will immediately understand what it says: electrostatic potential of a HIV protease. So it's also looked professional, I think.


How can I judge reputation of a publisher? Any rankings? Correct me if I'm wrong: identity of publishers affects quality of a publication. E.g., OUP and CUP feels like the most reputable and trustworthy in the UK, as Oxbridge are globally renowned.

But how can unknown publishers be judged, like those unconnected with any top universities?

There are no rankings of publishers I'm aware of (what criteria would you even use?); however, my experience is that academics also barely care about the prestige of the publisher. If there are any publishers at all whose names carry weight, it's CUP and OUP.

Just make sure not to publish with a predatory publisher and you should be set.

for journals:
journals have a number that is drived by the sitations of their articles. I don't remember the name. it is something with factor or impact. you can check journals' reputation of the publisher. also, I would recommend you to read fiew articles on the journal and if you find it quality. you should think publishing in there. I think that we need quality papers in every journal and one way to do that is to publish in less known journals or publishers in general.


Mistakenly passing a student I miscalculated the mark of one of my students and mistakenly notified him that he passed the class. However, I noticed my mistake after some hours and fixed it, thereby resulting in him failing the class. Obviously, the student is very upset now. Should I have left the mistake and pretend I hadn't noticed it?

On the few occasions where I've accidentally mis-reported a grade, mercifully the computational error was not great, and it was within my authority to change the pass-fail line (or other relevant line) by a small-but-sufficient amount to make my initial report "become correct". Of course, I correspondingly "improved" other peoples' grades to match. That is, if we are talking about a small adjustment, I feel that the initial grade announcement should be "made true" by changing the grade line.

My rationale for this is that precise gradelines are pretty meaningless, so a small change (in favor of students) is completely harmless, and thus avoids the very-bad fallout from recanting on a grade.

If some bizarre, large computational mistake occurs, so that one has reported an "A" instead of "F", it's probably not feasible to make the better grade "true". Whatever your local policies allow/require, do be sure to manifest the same "adjustment" (and only upward, by my thinking...) for every student in the course. Large errors, and/or large changes, should probably be discussed with other people in your department so that they'll  not be "surprised" at any further fallout.

Since you didn't communicate directly with the student: You need to talk to the professor in charge of the course. Being an authority figure in the eye's of the student, more experienced with the university's policies, and in the position to make the necessary decisions to smooth things over (i.e. extra credit, or making it a take it or leave it situation), the most appropriate course of action is to just pass by your professor's office and discuss it with her/him tete-a-tete.

You sound very remorseful; empathy is good, but take it easy, these things happen, and it's a beneficial experience for all parties involved since some day you or the student may be put in similar situations.

Good luck.

EDIT: In response to O.R. Mapper (Due to comment length restrictions):
You're right, the student did have the chance and failed.
I'm only giving advice based on OP's general direction.
I've seen young professors dismissed because of a collective number of small mistakes, but also because they were consistently tough/harsh.
Hence, why I'm giving advice based on what I can infer is what the OP wants to do, but does not know how to do.
This is a course of action I've seen put to use in a variety of occasions by several professors that have the same empathetic regard towards all of their students; regardless of their academic standing.
In regards to the larger decision of being tough or lenient; that is a much larger question that only the OP can decide. I'm only working with what is apparent to us.


How to get work done on the weekends As an undergraduate, I had a problem: I could work very efficiently during the week, but over the weekend I could get absolutely nothing done. Usually my plans for the weekend would include errands, studying, working on papers and projects, getting ahead with reading, and taking care of numerous chores (laundry, bills, writing applications, etc.)

But I would end up doing none of this. Instead, I would find myself scrambling to do the bare minimum for Monday in the wee hours of Sunday night or in the last few minutes before class.

Does anyone have tips for navigating short periods of unstructured time, such as two free days, in an academic setting?

One solution that has often worked for me is to try to not work on the weekends.  If your weekdays are solid work times, then you can do more intense work on the weekdays and aim to have your weekend entirely free.  Even if you don't entirely succeed, you'll still be in a much better situation with respect to the things you need to do by Monday.  Then you can take real time off and have fun without guilt and actually recharge yourself for another solid week.

What I tried to do in college and post-grad is party my ass off on Friday and Saturday.  Sunday was recovery and study/research day.  Much easier to focus when you get the party out of you and when you have a slight hang-over you don't feel like doing much else.

(I am vehemently opposed to those who act like they are going to study all weekend and procrastinate, bitch to their friends about all the stuff they need to do, watch netflix and just waste the weekend.  Party it up then cram on Sunday!)


How many references should be included in the bibliography of a Master thesis? Surprisingly, I have not found a similar question to mine - all I found was a question about the maximum number of citations per sentence.

However, I am more interested in the total number of citations that is considered normal for a paper (to be more specific, a Master Thesis, which in my case will be around 60 pages of content.)

I heard that about 1 - 1.5 multiplied with page count would be a good number of sources cited.

I am asking because I am a little worried that I might have cited too many sources.

There is no definite answer. It really depends on how much previous literature exists, how much of it you have reviewed and cited appropriately, and (loosely) what the word count of the document is. Page count can misleading, as some theses have many more figures and tables than others.

No one is going to skip to the bibliography, think negative thoughts, and say "you have too many references!" without reading the document. If no individual part of the thesis could be considered as having too many citations, then the thesis as a whole has an appropriate number of citations.

These related questions have answers as to how you can decide if a particular part of the thesis has too many citations.

Maximum number of citations per sentence?
Is there such thing as too many references for one paper?

The number should be N, where N is the exact number of papers that you have really read, understood and (mostly) relevant to your thesis.


Does an internal report count as a publication? I worked in an academic laboratory for several months for an undergraduate research experience. The results of my project were not novel enough to be published in a journal. However, I wrote a 50-page report that detailed my project (technical details of the experimental apparatus, design considerations, important calculations, etc).

The report is meant to be a reference for future members of the lab.

Does this count as a "publication" that I could put on my graduate school applications? It is not peer-reviewed except for having been read over by the lab PI and other lab members.
Is this type of document commonly considered a 'technical report', 'internal report', 'scientific report', or by some other name?
I authored the report by myself but other members of the lab helped extensively with the project. If I list it under "publications", should I put only my name or the names of all those who contributed to the project?

I am planning to upload the report to my public web page, but it is not otherwise hosted online.

Does this count as a "publication" that I could put on my graduate school applications? It is not peer-reviewed except for having been read over by the lab PI and other lab members.

Normally CVs have areas for journal articles, conferences, and "unrefereed publications".  I would think the same would be true of an application.  Certainly worth listing.

  Is this type of document commonly considered a 'technical report', 'internal report', 'scientific report', or by some other name?

Usually this depends on the institution.  If you called it a technical report, it's a technical report.  If you didn't call it anything, I'd say "internal report, XYZ lab" sounds about right.

  I authored the report by myself but other members of the lab helped extensively with the project. If I list it under "publications", should I put only my name or the names of all those who contributed to the project?

If you were the sole author listed in the report, you should list yourself as the sole author when putting it on the CV/application.  Perhaps you should have included coauthors; if so, if it's not too late, maybe you can amend & reissue it appropriately.

That certainly sounds like a substantial project, but I would not consider it a publication, even an un-refereed one, especially because you are not clear about the appropriate authorship (which suggests it is not in the polished state that even a non-peer-reviewed publication would be in).

I would instead suggest listing it as one of the deliverables when you note your research/work experience on your application. Although you want to highlight this experience, I fear that including it as some sort of publication may make it seem like you are trying to pad your resume and you would have to be careful to present it clearly as not an academic publication. Doing so is even more difficult if you don't have another publication that is an academic work.

As an undergraduate, it isn't necessarily expected that you will produce an academic publication. Research experience by itself can be an asset.

Also, only do this:

  I am planning to upload the report to my public web page, but it is not otherwise hosted online.

..if you have permission to do so from your PI.