How to handle lecturer who doesn't let me use my phone? Inspired by another question where a user asks how to handle students with a phone, my question is from the opposite perspective: what is the correct response when a lecturer asks one to put away the phone?

This actually recently happened to me (a few months ago), and for obvious reasons (not wanting to interrupt the flow of the lecture, not wanting to have a falling out with the professor, etc), I just put my phone down.

But to be honest, I don't think that's the correct response, or at least I feel this is not the way it should be, because I find such demands inappropriate for a number of reasons, and so I shouldn't be giving in to them, should I?

My reasoning:

First of all, and this may sound immature, but what I do with my phone is none of the lecturer's business. As long as I am not disturbing anybody (audio is always off, I am never typing loudly because it's a touch-screen, and nobody is distracted by the screen because I make sure to sit in the back), it shouldn't be a problem.

Secondly, I find that such demands can impede my learning. I often use the phone to look up information related to what the lecturer is actually talking about. If a topic is mentioned that I don't quite recall, a quick google search or a 10-second glance at the topic's Wikipedia page brings me up to speed. Or perhaps the textbook for the course is on my cloud server and I need to the phone to actually access the book, if I didn't bring (or even buy) the physical copy.

Finally, I find it highly disrespectful to call a student out for being on a phone in the middle of a lecture in front of all others. Such conversations, if they need to be had, should be had in private. Approach me after the lecture or during the break if you have a problem. Don't call me out in front of the entire class.

this may sound immature

And it is.

You're acting as if you have the right to do what you want.  You don't!

It's a teaching session in a building owned and run by other people and they set the rules and delegate the authority.

You have two legitimate choices (1) obey the rules and the authority or (2) leave.

If you want to protest the rule, contact your student union (a legitimate channel for complaints).  You can pass your opinion along that way.  However the decision still rests with the people in authority, and ultimately you will have to accept that fact.

Note also that the people making that decision are both experienced teachers and students themselves.  You are not.  Respect their experience.

There's one more important reason:

You are there to learn.  You should be paying attention and listening.  You may need to ask questions and you may miss something if you don't.

I watch a driving show where bad drivers are educated and it's astonishing to see how many of the bad drivers put forward all sorts of elaborate rationalizations for using a phone when driving.  People are, simply, addicted to their phones.  Learn to do without it.  If you can't sit through a lecture without your phone, it bodes ill for when you hit the real world.

Note then if you were my employee and you started looking at your phone when I was presenting a report in a meeting, you'd be on your way to being fired.

The right you think you have to use a phone when you want does not exist.

Respect the rules other people set when using their resources.

It's that simple.

  Finally, I find it highly disrespectful to call a student out for being on a phone in the middle of a lecture in front of all others

You are now experiencing the real world.  The one where people call you out to your face and in public for your errors.

Get used to it.  It's the difference between an adult and child.  All part of learning.

How disrespectful were you being by ignoring the teacher?   Did you think about that?

Immature is the right word.

Edit : regarding this and similar comments :

There are too many comments to address individually and this is as much effort as I'm willing to spend on this relatively small storm in a teacup.  My gut feeling is this won't make people who oppose my viewpoint any happier, but they deserve some kind of response.  But life's too short, so this is probably all I'll be doing on the subject.

Remember : Agree to Disagree is not ideal, but it's practical. :-)

  One thing which could improve this answer is an acknowledgement that the OP is paying the institution for certain services and - unless he disturbs others - it's not the institution owning his time and not their place to order him around. The OP is not working for the professor, the professor is working for him.

That's not how it works ( in the real world :-) ).

The fantasy that "the professor is working for him" is not correct.  What is happening is that for a fee you are permitted access to the resources (including lectures) of the college/school.  But that's not a one way contract - you are accepting the authority of the college/school and it's agents and their rules.  Typically that small print gives the lecturer rather a lot more power and discretion than you realize.

If the rules are really unreasonable (e.g. pretty girls/guys in front, stand all the time when there are seats, etc.) then you have two choices : dispute them in some legal way (e.g. contact the authorities or ultimately take legal action) or leave.

Now one of the most basic rules is that you pay attention.  It's not complicated.  It's nor strange.  It's not an infringement on your human rights.  It's an implicit (possibly explicit) part of your contract with the school.  It's the only thing you are required to do at a lecture beyond those other common sense things of not disturbing other people, dressing, not eating, not drinking, not talking - and so on..

And, yes, it can disturb other people when you start using your phone to text or whatever.

  OP just said they did put the phone down when the teacher asked

That's nice but the issue is the fact they should not have been using the phone in the first place.  The OP doesn't get this or the question would not have been asked here.

I've explained the OP needs to contact the authorities via appropriate channels.  That's all there is to it.

Many people seem upset by my post.  Fine.  They have a right to be upset if that's how they feel.  If it's any consolation when I was a young student I also thought every rule, restriction and law was personally aimed at suppressing my rights.  Maturity (experience) teaches you that it's not that black and white.  Some rules are necessary.

Inconvenience is not the same as being deprived of a right.

I am happy to encourage people who disagree to say so, but if you want change remember three things :

I can't change things.  You need to exercise normal legal political activity to try and get changes you want.  In normal political activity you do not always get what you want.  So contact your student unions, get a petition going, make a logical case to the authorities.  But be prepared to not win, because that happens.  Never start a battle you are not prepared to lose.
You can get more with a carrot and stick than you can with a stick.  Make a logical case why using a phone would benefit the college and lecturer as well as the student and you'll get a lot further than talking about rights you don't actually have.  That kind of approach will sound very naive to the authorities.
There are better battles for your energies that the right to fiddle with your phone during lectures.  Put that youthful vigor into something more useful to the rest of the world, please.

As long as you aren't in violation of other academic expectations, then yes, you're probably fine. Note that there are a lot of standards, particularly not impeding others, that need to be complied with; however, if you are in compliance with everything, then the professor is out of line.

To resolve the issue? If you wish, you may speak with the professor after class about this, but be prepared for a tough time convincing the professor of your intentions. Even if you are polite and courteous, some professors won't be receptive to your argument. Most teachers dislike when students have phones out for any reason, simply because some students abuse their phones. I'd recommend putting the phone away discreetly, then talking to the prof after if the use of the cell phone for your education is important enough to you. By directly defying the professor, you risk alienating them to your plight (if they took the time to ask you to put it away, they probably wouldn't like to have the discussion right then and there.


Religious supervisor wants to thank god in the acknowledgements My PhD supervisor and I are co-authoring a paper. We have an excellent relation, and he is both a well-regarded scientist in its field and a deeply religious person. In our co-authored paper, he wants to include, for the first time in his career, a perfunctory thanks to God in the acknowledgements. Nevertheless, our field has an ongoing and widely publicized scuffle with intelligent design and I am afraid that such statement might hinder the paper's credibility or insult some readers.

Although not religious, I am a strong defendant of people's (and my supervisor's) freedom of belief as long as their doctrines aren't violent or discriminatory, which his aren't. It is, for me, a matter of tolerance. He also is very respectful of my position and has made clear that he didn't wanted to sneak the sentence without my consent. Furthermore, he is not trying to push any religious agenda, it is simply something that has to do with his personal beliefs.

The paper is sound from a scientific stance, no single word in its body hints anyhow to God to fill gaps in the argument and he isn't planning to include a grandiloquent dedication, but I am still afraid that squeamish readers would take matters personally and discard the paper without a second reading, affect my career in the long the long term or, even worse, we might hit the news ("see these people, they are thanking god in their paper").

Am I risking something big if I say "yes", go ahead? Should I refuse to let him put the word God in the paper? Is there any precedent of a paper in which God was thanked by the authors?

EDIT: This questions has been flagged as duplicate. I would like to clarify why it's different:

The authorship of a thesis, including its acknowledgements, belongs to the student and is not shared with the supervisor. It is (explicitly or implicitly) understood that everything that goes into a thesis was written by the student and approved by the supervisor, but, in regards with the acknowledgements, it's the students choice who to thank and the supervisor has no voice or vote on that matter. Have you ever seen thesis acknowledgements written jointly by supervisor and student? Can a supervisor ask a student to thank his wife (or his God)? Probably not. On the contrary, authorship and responsibility is fully shared in papers.
Theses are more of a formality and can be stored for decades without much attention. Papers, on the other side, are meant to reach the large amounts of readers and it is very likely that someone, sooner or later, will spot the dedication.
I wasn't clear enough about a key point in my question and will expand here. I wouldn't mind saying "yes" to my supervisor or following @Ritz recommendation if this was a paper in, lets say, accounting, business administration or even engineering, but my field is in full confrontation with intelligent design and some people might read the acknowledgements as a nod to the movement. (I see my supervisor as a good example of NOMA. Some people can do excellent science and be religious. So far, in the scientific realm, we are doing pretty well, but the reader is not going to care about that.)

On a coauthored paper, it's perfectly reasonable for the acknowledgments to specify who is thanking whom when it's just a subset of the authors, and this is not uncommon (e.g., "X and Y are grateful to the A Institute for hosting their visit" or the like, when author Z wasn't actually there).  This is the approach Ritz suggested in the comments, and I'd strongly recommend it.  For example, in this paper one author thanks God, without including the others.

I'm sure nobody would hold this against you personally, and I can't really believe anyone would discard or disbelieve the paper because of the acknowledgments.  It might indeed get some attention: even in mathematics, I've heard people comment on an author's tendency to thank God (nothing negative, just a "gee, that's unusual"), and I can imagine it might get more attention in areas where religion is more contentious.  However, I don't think you need to worry that your career will suffer because your coauthor thanked God.

You should consider talking to the graduate program supervisor in your faculty/department and asking for their thoughts/advice. Regardless of whether you agree to this or not, your supervisor is pressuring you through his position of authority - which is inappropriate.

Also, I would try talking to other former or existing supervisees (is that a word?) of your supervisor, to determine whether this actually is the first time he has wanted to do that.


Should students have access to past exams or an exam bank? Something I never understood is how in so many undergrad classes North America, the students are allowed to have past exams that they are allowed to study over.

It never made sense to me because it is apparent that this practice could cause so many problems, especially as exams accumulate over the years, e.g. leading to inflated grades. I do not exclude myself from this practice.

As an example, in one of the classes, I knew only a small number of students had access to an exam around that was given around 5 years ago (literally gotten through one of the student's relatives who took the exams years before), and one of the question from that past exam was very similar to another one that was given in the actual exam. This doesn't seem very fair to me.

Finally, I always felt that my work was delegitimized with access to these resources, and over the year sort of adopted a pessimistic view on learning and knowledge, seeing that so many of my peers became arrogant and prideful despite having had access to these external resources. It was not until I did grad school much later on (where past exams are virtually non-existent) did I "let go" of those feelings and regain a bit of confidence in my own capabilities.

Should students have access to past exams or an exam bank that they can study? Why does it not constitute as cheating? My background is in STEM.

As a professor, one has to assume that all past exam questions are available to students. Some student organizations debrief members after exams and capture the questions for such an exam bank.

Some professors realize this and take action accordingly, not reusing questions, or not using enough of them to matter substantially. Others think, probably mistakenly, that they can set rules forbidding the use of such "resources". The rules will be broken by at least some of the students. I don't know of any effective way to actually prevent access to old questions. So, just assume that they are available.

My own opinion is that the professor should just assume that it will happen and, if they want to make the test taking "fair" will make old exams available for study. Some even go so far as to give out the final exam on the first day of class, to be taken later, though I suspect that not many do that.

But old exams are useful for honest students to study from if they don't expect to get those questions on their own exams.

Of course, coming up with new questions each term/year adds a bit of work, but if the course is so "stagnant" that an exam from a few years ago is still being reused then the prof needs to do a better job.

It's best to ignore this issue, whether some students get an advantage over others at exams this way is irrelevant, because exams are at best only a very crude way to assess students' ability anyway and those students who focus too much on exams tend not to become the best experts in the field later.

So, this is just yet another aspect of the "teaching to the test" problem that should be tackled comprehensively instead of looking at one symptom at a time and trying to invent some ad-hoc band-aid for that. The best solution i.m.o. is to get rid of exams and degrees altogether. Universities should be places where students buy an education of their choice out of pure interest or to get qualified for a job of they later want to do. How does an employer find out whether a job applicant is suitable for the job? By letting the job applicant sit an exam that tests the specific skills required for the job.

The employer can then choose to outsource this to some specialized testing company, or to a university. So, universities may still end up taking exams, but this is then not directly related to the courses given to students. Students can, of course, sit voluntary exams to test whether they can be confident to pass an exam set by a prospective employer.


What is a Scientific approach to Law and Epistemology? In an extended discussion in Law SE chat, there was a description of the legal approach to epistemology, namely one that is dependent upon the findings of the various actors of the criminal justice system: police, defendants and plaintiffs, judges, lawyers, and juries. The specific quote that I wanted to touch upon was:

  It means that science and law fundamentally (and, one could argue, incompatibly) disagree on the nature of truth. In science, no group exists that can declare something "fact". In law, that's what juries and/or judges do. Asking scientific questions about something science considers impossible is akin to asking what color the most magical unicorns are. - cHao

But despite this, I know that there is a distinct gap in my knowledge of both realms to conclusively address the issue.

  How would you test it? It is fundamental that juries decide what is fact from disputed evidence (juries have nothing to do when the parties agree what the facts are). How do you set up your double blind experiment when there is no way of telling objectively who the guilty and not guilty defendants are? - Dale M

Taking a research-approach to the question, I posited a rough sketch of how I would've approached the topic.

  @DaleM complete taking a guess here, a control (12 jurors) and different experimental groups consisting of different sizes. A known “case” where it is known with a p value of <0.05 that the defendant is X (can be real or imagined). The prosecution (study confederate) would present evidence systematically and equally to all groups but without knowing actual case X. Based on experimental results, determine optimal jury size. - Me

So I ask:

Why is there a fundamental gap between law and science?
Can the two ever be 'merged' or 'reconciled'?
How would both realms work if they adopted attributes from either realm?

Courts have to make a definite decision (that can only be appealed so often) about what the law is in every given case. The law reduces uncertainty.

Scientific progress builds on fallibility, at least in the empirical sciences. The final proof is always elusive, postponed indefinitely. And because every provisional answer invites new questions, science produces uncertainty.

Both systems can, fundamentally, not be reconciled, because they operate according to different logics.

US law appears to not accept standard logic and rejects ex falso quodlibet in particular. You cannot argue that

The US constitution demands separation of church and state
The Alabama constitution (or whatever) requires elected officials to be Christian

and therefore

My client is not guilty of this traffic violation.

Laws "in the books" that are in direct contradiction with higher laws cannot be challenged unless it's by an event directly related to them. Maybe that's reasonable but it's not logic.


Should I refuse to be named as co-author of a low quality paper? During my bachelor I did a research internship in another country for a few months and contributed to a research project which is now, a few years later, going to be published. The research is in a specific field of computer science, but the responsible professors' main interest is focused in another STEM area. So now his grad student approached me and asked if I would review the paper. I read it and I think the quality is not good. There are many writing errors, the papers to which the results are being compared  are quite old (around 6 years) and the datasets used to evaluate the algorithms are from the 90's. This is quite old in a fast growing field like computer science. The techniques which were used are correct, as far as I can judge, but not new.

I know that the professor and his grad student are no experts in this field but I now pursue my masters degree in this specific field of computer science. I recently learned about more modern approaches and I think that their methods are not worth being published in a paper. I wasn't experienced enough to notice this when I was with them in this internship. It would also be too much work for me to fix all these issues I named.

Now I wonder if it could give me, as a computer scientist, a bad reputation to  eventually  co-author a paper which (I think) is outdated and poorly written. Can I decline being named but allow them to publish it? On the other hand, if I would be named as a co-author, this would be my first publication and maybe this would count as "better than nothing", or people would acknowledge the fact that I contributed to some okay-ish research in my early bachelors. I am not sure yet if I want to pursue a career in science or in the industry.

First, if you think the manuscript is not worth submitting even after major revisions, or in other words, if you as a referee would recommend its rejection, then the answer is clear - you shouldn't be coauthor.

However it seems that you evaluate the manuscript as ok-ish, and the main concern is that its content is somehow outdated. I would do what your old group asked you to do: review and possibly improve the paper. Do this to the maximum extent you can - given the fact that your are likely busy with other tasks and research - and then leave the main responsibility to the first author and your old group.

After all, you are still a young student / researcher. This paper could be your first entry in your publication list, and some more time and more papers have to come before you get concerned about your papers being all of the very best quality. A published paper normally cannot be too wrong, and various journals can accommodate different quality or differently tailored papers. So perhaps try to influence also the choice of where to submit, especially to avoid a non-ending revision phase.

At this stage of your career, you can only benefit from a published article. To those who read it, it will show that you actively entered the research of a group even when you were younger than now. To the rest of the community, it will be just a publication. And that is better than no publications.

The main point is how much you can improve it, and if there is space for it. As a "publish as it is" decision seems to be highly unlikely, you must be prepared to work on it further. But again, leave the responsibility to the group from which the research originated.

See it as an opportunity to publish, and not as an annoyance.

The above applies to a salvageable manuscript. For a better and definitive answer I should be a specialist in your field and evaluate the manuscript myself.

Rejection would also fix the issue. Although I always tried to avoid rejection even as coauthor, I don't think it should be your concern at this stage. Nobody will know except the referees, and even they won't blame or remember you.

edit: I want to make clear that the recipient journal should not be a predatory one, or one with such a low reputation that is not worth working to publish therein. The above answer assumed this.

Also, above I wrote " A published paper normally cannot be too wrong, and various journals...". Beside that "normally" means what should be the normality, this doesn't mean that errors and, even worse, frauds, have no room in literature. It must be seen a concern for the whole community and is not related to the OP situation. If the manuscript will be accepted, it will most likely stand as an acceptable paper, indeed. Not to say that the manuscript is in the hands of the OP. With this respect, the paper cannot be too wrong already. Otherwise there wouldn't be this thread.

I would write them a letter saying that my name should be removed from the excellent paper, because I cannot find in it any contribution that came from me, and therefore it would be dishonest for me to obtain credit from it. In other words, hide your real motive under a generous heap of its precise opposite. If they give you assurances that it's okay, insist that you might be questioned about that paper (for instance in some future interview), which will create an uncomfortable situation for you.

The real reason (wanting to withdraw from a mediocre paper out of embarrassment) will likely create a bad feeling. It is unnecessary "collateral damage" in pursuit of the simple goal of getting your name removed.

In life, try to get things done without collateral damage, whenever possible.


Is it unethical to accept extra time on exams when I still do well? I have ADHD (real, diagnosed ADHD, not just "I-say-I-have-ADHD-because-it's-trendy" ADHD). I have never taken the extended time exams that are offered for ADHD students, because I have never needed to, and it was diagnosed just a year ago. However, exams do stress me out and I am certain I would do better on them with some more time - but this is true for almost anyone, not just ADHD students. Thus, would it be unethical to make use of the ADHD services offered to me?

(Edit: You might ask - why would you want to / feel it is justified? Well, hypothetically say ADHD students only achieve 75% of their "non-ADHD" potential in a standard-time setting. Maybe, even though I am doing well, I would be doing even better if I did have the extended time or didn't have ADHD, i.e. due to my exhaustive preparation, even with the disadvantage of my ADHD I am still managing to get a high score. But, with a "level playing field" [extended time for me], I would be at the top of the class. However, I still don't know if this is logical / ethical.)

Absolutely not. If you meet the full requirements set up by your University, it is perfectly ethical to use all of the resources made available to you. ADHD is a real medical condition and medical experts and policy makers have decided that special test accommodations are the fairest solution. Accommodations like this are based on medical decisions, not whether you are doing well in the course. Take the extra time if you want it. There is no need to feel guilty about doing so.

It depends on the subject matter. In math and physics, you are typically given way more time than you need. Most 3 hour exams can be completed in one hour or less, if you have mastered the subject perfectly. The reason why some exams are 3 hours is to minimize the failure rate due to trivial problems, like making a mistake somewhere, and then having to backtrack and start the exercise anew, causing you to not finish on time and possibly failing the exam. Only the students who don't study well will experience the time pressure during an exam.

This is why I would not ask for extra time, unless I had an handicap that causes me to to take way more time to read the problems and/or write up answers.


I was pushed to submit a mediocre paper to a conference. To my surprise it was accepted. How to save face? I wrote a paper under pressure from my supervisor who gives high importance for publishing. I feel that both the conference and my paper are mediocre. What is done is done. How to distance myself from this evil mistake hanging in IEEE Xplore with my name on it forever? Is there any way? I really hate my predicament.
There is no incorrect information in my paper. The finding is nothing startling. The experiments lack rigor. Any serious researcher reading it will definitely point it out. Being associated with a work of mediocre quality pains me. I feel embarrassed.
The conference has a 65% acceptance rate.  My supervisor says it is a good conference. It is not small. Neither is it specialized. It has multiple tracks. And it's definitely accepting mediocre papers.
As for the choice of supervisor. It's life. Mistakes happen. I want to make sure it does not become a blunder. No point in wasting time whining about it. When the time is ripe I will disengage from mediocrity.
Edit: Today while the publications were being discussed with another professor my paper was discussed. The professor whose ideology differs from my supervisor's clearly found the paper lacking in substance. And then my supervisor disowned me saying he had a different opinion about my results and this discussion brought new knowledge to him. This makes my wound deeper. First I hate publishing my work and then I am to be blamed when it is criticized? This is the price of working with the wrong mind. Note that the paper was read by my supervisor before sending it.

How to save face?  Have more high quality papers than poor ones.  People understand that a student's first paper is not necessarily outstanding, especially if his/her supervisor is more about quantity than quality. So it reflects more badly on your supervisor than you as long as you have the 'student' badge on.  However, you can only wear the 'student' badge for so long.  So, aim to get better papers published.

Personally, when I glance at a person's CV, I only look for the best publications.  That's what I judge him/her on.

In summary, people remember successes or high quality papers or those with impact.

Aside: in my area, there is a paper in a poor venue with 10K+ cites.  In contrast, lots of high quality papers have zero citation. Don't despair, there is hope!

It is important for a PhD student to write papers and participate in conferences. By 'forcing' you into this, your supervisor is developing your career. Also, going to a conference can be a good change of scene; when you go, you'll feel much better.


Should non-native speakers get extra time to compose exam answers? Today I met with a student who had plagiarized answers on an exam from online sources. She explained to me with apparent honesty that she had spent too long answering the first two questions and then run out of time. In her telling, being a non-native speaker makes grammatical writing in English very slow going. On this exam, I expected the students to write approximately ten to twenty sentences in an hour.

Sometimes our academic counseling department requests disability-related accommodations which allow certain students 1.5x or 2x time for an exam. However, I've never seen one related specifically to speech and language.

Does non-native speech warrant extra time when writing exam answers?

Disability conditions are applicable when there is an uncontrollable disadvantage that prevents the person fairly demonstrating their knowledge, skill and ability in the same timeframe.

This is not the case for a person who has and takes the option of moving to a country or region where their language proficiency is not sufficient to demonstrate knowledge or skill.

Such a person has the choice of developing their language skills to sufficiency or of simply studying at a university where the common language is one they are fluent in. They control the situation and therefore, it is their obligation to resolve it, not the assessor's duty.

Where these two groups intersect is a case rare enough that it should be handled on its own merits according to any applicable policy and law (which most likely will mean the extra time is given to account for the disability).

There are two separate issues here, but both come to the same answer.

If the student is studying maths, physics or engineering, then using fully grammatically-correct sentences should not be part of the marking scheme.  So long as the maths/physics/engineering is clear and correct, supporting text is secondary.  Any exam should not generally be asking for long essay-form questions because it is not an appropriate way of assessing the course.  Since there shouldn't be a need for large amounts of writing in English, there should be no need for extra time to be allowed.

If the student is studying some subject which requires discussion, conversation and writing in English, their standard of written and spoken English has to be good enough to allow this.  This applies just as much for native English speakers as non-native English speakers.  Native English speakers are often not taught English grammar at school to academic-level standards, so a native English speaker may well have the same problem as a non-native English speaker with written assessments.  Regardless, the ability to communicate in written English is a core requirement for the course.  If the student cannot meet that core requirement, a foundation year to get all their skills up to scratch may be more appropriate for them, but you can't allow them extra time to cover their lack of core skills.

For a further problem, your student has clearly cheated in the exam, been caught cheating, and admitted cheating.  Your organisation should have a standard policy for dealing with cheating, and saying "I couldn't finish the exam in time" is not a justification.  Students who approach their teachers/tutors/lecturers with their academic problems ahead of time are likely to get some kind of help, whether that's extra mentoring in English or whatever.  Students who cheat and then say "I couldn't do it" as justification can only get what the disciplinary process says they deserve though.


Accidentally addressed lecturer as Mrs instead of Ms I accidentally addressed my lecturer as Mrs instead of Ms in an email.

Should I send a follow-up email explaining it was a typo or should I leave it be?

Since requested multiple times in comments: The lecturer does not hold a doctorate or any other academic titles. She also did not specify how she prefers to be addressed before.

I have heard from women (in mathematics departments, in the US) that they prefer not to be addressed as Ms or Mrs.

The issue is that some students address their male professors as "Dr." or "Professor" but their female professors as "Ms." or "Mrs." Perhaps you don't do this, but I would still recommend "Dr." or "Professor" unless your professor encourages otherwise.

Indeed, I know of one female professor who tells students that she is happy to be called "Dr. X" or "Professor X", and happier still to be addressed by her first name, but requests that her students avoid "Ms" or "Mrs".

It should also be added that this in the US, and cultural practices may be different elsewhere.

I don't think it's necessary to send a follow-up e-mail, but since you are worried about it, I think it would be perfectly polite to write something very brief like "p.s. How do you prefer to be addressed? Is Dr. X better?"

I cannot imagine she paid any attention to it, unless she should, by rights, be addressed as "Dr" or "Professor". I wouldn't bring it up. However, if it's really bothering you, or if she's already explicitly asked you (individually or as a group) to call her "Ms", you can briefly apologize the next time you see her. "Oh, by the way, I'm sorry I called you 'Mrs' in an email the other day. I know you prefer 'Ms' and I didn't realize until after I'd sent it."

Also, just as a data point, I prefer "Ms" even when using my husband's last name because I was raised according to some now-outdated social guidelines. One of those guidelines is that a woman is "Mrs [husband's first name] [husband's last name]", because "Mrs [woman's first name] [husband's last name]" is only used once he's dead.


Professor behaving oddly, but I don't want to persecute him I’m doing my masters (while working full-time) and one of my professors from last semester, who is teaching my class this semester as well, always asks me, “Did you get your husband to do your homework?” He also asks me if I'm married before giving me feedback. I wish he would just give me the feedback like he does for the guys in my class. I've told him it doesn't matter if I'm married or not but he laughed at me. I outright told him to stop multiple times and he didn't listen.

He also said, “You aren’t going to get your husband to come in here and beat me up, are you?” I think he was making a joke but I'm "on the spectrum" so I'm not sure. I just said "no" and kept staring at him. I'm very socially awkward.

I’m not married and I don’t wear any rings, I don't think he is thinking I'm married.

I was thinking of going to some university higher-up about it. I documented everything contemporaneously and they won’t be able to claim I’m bitter over a bad grade, because he actually gave me quite a good grade in my previous class. The current class has just started today so no grade yet.

I want to go to the program head or a higher up at the university. But I don't want to persecute my professor. I know there is a lot of persecution against conservative professors. I think he is just expressing the conservative view that women should be married by my age (I'm 30 - he doesn't know my exact age but can probably guess I'm 27-33). I understand the point of view, but sometimes it doesn't work out. My family believes the same and they tried to get me to married. My ex fiance and I were engaged for 10 months and ended it then, ended up for the better as we would definitely have divorced. Nevertheless, I am not against marriage. I am no liberal. I just want my professor to STOP asking me about my marital status but he won't listen. I want to go to higher ups but I don't want to persecute my professor either.

EDIT This is not sexual harrassment. He is only asking me if I am married before giving me feedback and to know that my husband has not completed my homework (which would be academic dishonesty). Not for sex purposes. He is not seeking any relationship with me so it's not sexual harrassment. It may be sex-based harrassment since he is not harrassing my male classmates however it is not sexual at all and thus cannot be sexual harrassment

Without going into legal definitions of what this is exactly, the bottom line is:

This is inappropriate, discriminatory behavior, and you shouldn’t put up with it.

It seems like you’ve already done your best to politely stop these kinds of comments with no success. The fact that you documented everything is really great. You should approach student affairs/ombudsman/Graduate studies division and report this. Keep a record of the report.

I’m willing to bet that you’re not the first student that encountered this behavior. One could hope that you’ll be the last if you report him.

I want to tell you that your school will make sure that your grades won’t suffer and that the outcome will be that the professor will face disciplinary action. In cases like this it’s unfortunately not always the case. Even more severe cases (eg outright sexual assault) have been covered up by university officials because of their bad press repercussions. I hope your university will do better.

I’m sorry this happened...

It’s true that in some universities, conservatives are persecuted, but I am still inclined to say “report it.”  However, if you are reluctant, perhaps there is another “conservative” professor you could trust to advise you?

Unfortunately, there is the risk that your professor will retaliate with a bad grade—or even do so because you are female (since he apparently has rather strange attitudes about women).


Cheated on an exam when I was eight years old. Should I tell graduate admissions? I cheated at a language exam when I was eight years old. I finished early and noticed that I had accidentally left a dictionary in my drawer. I double-checked my answers and promptly got caught.
The incident is probably unverifiable at this point: The physical evidence is long gone; the teacher probably retired; the school probably didn’t keep records or has already destroyed it. I might be the only person on the planet who still remembers it.

Should I mention this incident when being asked about academic integrity in job interviews or similar?
Should I tell graduate admissions?

I suspect the answer is no since it was so long ago and I was eight years old, but I’m afraid I might be rationalizing.

As noted in the comments, actions committed long ago as a child are (and should be) entirely irrelevant to graduate admissions.

It is well understood that children do not have same ability as adults to comprehend the consequences on their actions.  As a result, many legal systems wipe a child's record clean of most or all juvenile offenses upon reaching adulthood.

I would thus similarly argue that any academic offense predating your undergraduate education should generally neither be reported nor considered in an application for graduate school.

You probably should.
If it bothers you, you should tell them. Our silly childhood embarrassments are a sign of deeper psychological injury that we cannot forget. If you want to tell them about it, that means you decided it's time to grow up from childhood and leave the past behind


Crackpot research paper in mathematics How does a math journal react to a crackpot math research paper?
In mathematics (especially in Number Theory) there are many meaningless papers on the web, and possibly a ton of meaningless submissions. Also, how does a journal react when a proof of a major unsolved problems, such as the 'Riemann Hypothesis', is submitted?

Here are the basic mechanisms that I know of, having only limited experience on an editorial board.
The first is a classic desk rejection.  This is where the editor who makes the initial assessment, just says no, without asking for referees.  This has to happen, or one gets flooded with AI generated nonsense as a joke.
Some journals insist that you list a few potential referees.  I believe that one of the reasons they do this is to see if you have interactions (even just closely reading their papers) with mathematicians.  If the author of a number theory paper list as potential referees three Fields medalists from three different areas of mathematics, probably they have no idea what they are doing.  Makes a desk reject easier.
The second is the editor asks for a quick opinion from a mathematician in vaguely the correct area, asking if the paper is worth refereeing.  You can tell if you get this type of rejection sometimes as the editor says after a few weeks something like "the feedback I have gotten are that this is out of scope for our journal." So I have heard.  From a friend.
Finally there is just sending it to one or more reviewers.  If the editor needs one referee, asks four in succession and they all say no, then the editor is likely to reject the paper.
There are problems with these methods.  Some innovative work is hard to classify, and a paper gets rejected because the editor asks all the wrong people.  I had a paper go to a topic editor, go out for review, then get assigned to another topic editor, out for several reviews.  It finally landed on the correct reviewer, but this could easily have gotten rejected.

There is always the possibility that some gem is hidden in what otherwise seems like a crackpot submissions.  An editor has to accept the that a field can be revolutionized by a single new idea.
A good editor knows most of the ways that thinking goes astray and can categorize wrong ideas easily and tell the author where their own thinking is wrong and respond with stock responses they've already collected.  When they can't do this, either the individual is onto something new or a new path of wrong thinking has been found and the editor can update their set of premade responses.  In either of these cases, the world gains.
If you can't do this, you've succumbed to the hubris that established power often falls into and it serves no one, ultimately.  Honestly, unless it's vandalism or disrespect of the establishment, people should be worthy of responding to.
If we have a society where people are too worthless to give criticism or feedback, then a Doctor of Philosophy has to step up and understand what's going on in their society.


Should I include all authors for in-text citation if I cite a source with three (or more) authors in a different chapter again? According to this site, when you're using the APA reference style, if a source has 3-5 authors, all authors should be mentioned in the first in-text citation, while only the first author need to be mentioned in the subsequent citation. Does "subsequent" applies to the whole work or just the current chapter or section?

I am writing a master thesis.

Though not explicitly stated in the original post, the question pertains to the use of "et al."

This is mostly a nonissue for APA 7th edition because three or more authors are now cited as "et al." from the first mention, whether parenthetical or not, except where it would create ambiguity.

The website seems pretty clearly to refer to "document", not chapter. You should believe them and assume that they probably thought about it and didn't make an exception for a reason.

The intent is to clearly reference back to a particular source without unnecessarily making the document harder to read.

Document.

An exception might be assumed if the "thesis" is really just a collection of papers, possibly already published. Then, it might be assumed that "document" and "chapter" are the same thing, rather than "document" and "thesis".


How to prove that a paper published with a particular English transliteration of my Russian name is mine? My first name is Евгений (it is Russian; the usual transliteration is Yevgeny). I was born in Ukraine in 1990, when it was still in the Soviet Union, where Russian was the official language. I lived there until 2011, when I went to Canada, where I am currently working on a Ph.D in mathematics. The name indicated in my passport is IEVGEN. It has undergone two rounds of changes: first it was translated from Russian into Ukrainian (Евгений => Євген), and then the Ukrainian version was transliterated into English under the transliteration rules that were valid at the time of receiving the passport. If I received the passport under the present rules, it would be spelled as IEVHEN. The issue here is that the sound in the Ukrainian version is something in between of G and H.

I am deeply unhappy with the "name" IEVGEN: it looks odd, it is not pronounced as the Ukrainian version, and it is definitely not how my parents named me.

I really don't want this spelling to appear on my publications, and ideally even on my Ph.D. thesis. Right now I don't know which version I would prefer, but let's consider YEVGENY, which is the closest to the original, and EUGENE, which is the English/French version of the same name. I know that I am the one who decides under which name to be published, but it raises the following question:

If at some point I will need to prove the authorship of a certain publication that bears a name slightly, or significantly different from what is in my documents, will that be a problem?

EDIT: some of the answers suggest me several ways of how to spell my name, and I appreciate them, but it is not what I have asked. My question only had to do with bureaucratic and juridical aspects of the problem.

EDIT 2: The title of the question was changed by an editor to "What author name to list on publications when English translation of Russian name on passport is unsatisfactory?", which is again completely misleading. I am not asking what to put on publication, I am asking about how to prove that the chosen name corresponds to me. So I edited the title back to the original.

As a possible solution if you are still worried about it: Get an ORCID account.

They basically created an ID, a DOI for researchers. If you link your publications to your ORC-ID, you don't need to worry if your name is very common (e.g. John Smith) or if someone misspelled your name.

It is quite common for Eastern European people to anglicise their names when settling in English speaking countries.  I had a Hungarian co-worker who was originally named "Szillardi" and he got fed up with people calling him "Mr Salami" so he changed it to "Sillars".  With first names its even a bigger issue.  "Janos" is much harder for most people than "John". So why not change your name to Eugene or even  Gene?

BTW:  Details on changing the name on your passport may be found at https://travel.state.gov/content/passports/en/passports/services/correction.html


As a beginning graduate student, can you do without conferences in theoretical CS? I'm beginning my graduate study in theoretical computer science soon, and I've been admitted to two graduate schools in Northeastern Asia.

One of those makes it a rule to grant compensation for travel to conferences to graduate students who finished their master's thesis.  However, for beginning graduate students, they said they cannot be sure if they can fully afford their travel costs for conferences.

The graduate school requires the students little coursework and all I will do there will be do actual research.  As you may know, conferences are important in computer science and reputable conferences are usually held far removed from us in Northeast Asia.

Can I do with journals and preprint servers, and possibly without reputable conferences, in the field of theoretical computer science, as a beginning graduate student?

(By the way, the cons of the other school are that the professor supervises too many students and that he hasn't been nice to me.)

Conferences are very important in CS. Journals are also important, but they tend to accept more mature work, and therefore might be especially hard to publish into as a beginning graduate student (which, in your terms, seems to refer to someone who hasn't finished his/her master thesis yet). Nothing is impossible, of course, but you have to be careful not to end up with no publications after 4 years, just because you were aiming too high. In addition, some journals are very slow to respond, so you might spend half a year or even more waiting for a decision. In the mean time, you cannot send this work anywhere else.

You should ask students there how the official policy is, it might just be that they don't want to fund you a trip to a small workshop in Hawaii, but the question could be different if you were to get a paper at POPL. You should also consider that there are good conferences coming to Asia, and many conferences offer financial support to students (including reducing the registration fee, sometimes even helping with transport/accommodation). Finally, if you're writing your paper with someone else, such as your advisor, this person might be able to travel to the conference and present the paper (which would be a shame for you not to attend, but it still counts as a publication in your CV).

EDIT Some clarification: technically speaking, the only important thing is to produce good research, and to write good paper. What you plan to do after your PhD also matters, but if you'd like to stay in Academia, you will need at some point to get a job, and you will be judged on your papers (on other aspects too, but papers are very important). Now, to answer your question: yes, you could get a job with only journal publications, as long as they are good. Is that the best strategy? Probably not. Conferences are very important because they allow you to meet other people, to be exposed to state-of-the-art research, to confront your ideas with the community, to get published within a relatively short time period, to receive more frequent feedback, to construct your research project in a more incremental way (present your idea at some workshop, work on a good conference paper, present the extended version to a journal).

If I can give you one example, I've presented some of my work at a workshop with no proceedings (so it didn't count as a publication), and I met there someone who accepted to be one of my external PhD examiners.

In CS, conferences and journals serve different purposes: conferences are great for networking and exchange of ideas, and the important ones are having low acceptance rates so publishing there is worthy, but still, many (most?) are not listed in citation indexes and often people are just checking there for "real publications" (aka journal publications).

Edit due to many comments:
Just to clarify this: I did not say that it is GOOD to judge someone based on journal papers, I just said some people do! I personally had to learn this the hard way since I had many good conference publications which were not regarded as "publications" in some contexts.
Edit end

So if you do write journal publications, you made an important step towards a successful PhD (I know several advisoors who want to have x journal publications (x in {1..3} as pre-requisite), but you are missing the interaction and exchange of ideas. Especially in the first half of your thesis, this would be very valuable.

But maybe the people at grad school were just honest: Usually there are not enough travel funds to let everyone travel to every conference - one has to build a strategy on who visits which conference and how often. It's just a matter of resources since an international conference visit costs about 2.500€ and most funding schemes would not allow for more than one international conference per year.

I would recommend asking a grad student who is already there, how this is handled in practice.


How do I use lemmas that are probably already proven, but including the proof myself is quicker than looking up a source? Suppose I have proven several lemmas during my work that are neither original nor significant (these results were needed for applied engineering/CS research, not mathematics). I believe that if I spend enough time going through articles in minor journals/theses in theoretical CS/applied mathematics, eventually, I will find the statements/proofs of these results. However, it seems that finding these results may take more time than it took to prove the results.
I am curious whether there is a chance that not providing citations could be perceived as plagiarism in one form or another. Would it suffice to state that I do not claim that the results are original without providing a citation?

You do need to make some effort to find in the literature a result you think is known, but after that what you propose is common and I feel is fine.  I do it sometimes.  In such a situation, I tend to say ``the following is probably known, but we include a proof for completeness.''
Even if you find the all your background lemmas in the literature, it might still make the reader's life easier if you include some or all of their proofs.  It is really annoying to have to request seven obscure papers by inter-library loan, and then figure out all the different authors' notation, just to fill in a few pages of proofs.

I am basing my answer on some assumptions:

Those results are really well-known;
Those results can be found in a standard literature on the topic;
You need those results, as you (as a decent mathematical thesis would) begin from the definitions and need to lay some ground work, but your actual contribution is later and definitely not here.

I would bring the lemmas from some standard book, adjusted to your notation, of course. I would cite the book in the lemma, e.g.,

Lemma 17.34 (Einstein and Feynman, 1892, Lemma 1.2). Each smooth n-dimensional hedgehog can be brushed over if n is even.

Then I would not state the full proof, but the proof idea:

Idea of the proof: If n is odd, the tail cannot be brushed. However, 2k-dimensional hedgehogs can be shown not to have a tail.

You want to advance the knowledge, not gurgle-up decades-old proofs. Of course, you should be able to reproduce the proof, if asked, e.g., during a thesis defence.


How aware are grad school application readers of differing standards internationally? Recently two friends of mine have come back to Australia after having done 2 semesters of 3rd and 4th year subjects (about half mathematics) at different branches of the University of California.
They said that the tests would only ask questions directly from or similar to material covered in lectures and example sheets. If questions deviated from the lectures or example sheets very much students would complain to the lecturer. Thus, if one studied the example sheets enough they got an A relatively easily. They returned with A or A+ in all of their maths subjects, but they average about 75-80 for their maths subjects here.
In Australia, about 70% of the exam is usually like that. The rest are questions that we learned enough theory to feasibly do, but we hadn't seen that type of question before so it requires some level of cleverness to get it within the time limits of the exam.
My questions are

Can anyone corroborate that the maths tests at american universities are actually like this?
If so, is this well known and accounted for by the people who look at grad school applications from international students?
How do they fairly evaluate the performance of international applications? How are Australian applicants generally viewed by them?

Edit: Chris's answer below seems to answer the first question by "not quite", which is what I expected I suppose. The other questions still stand.

Repeating a bit other remarks: in the U.S., exams in upper-division courses are usually designed by the individual instructor, and vary widely.

There is a tradition in top-tier places in the U.S. to "challenge" students on exams, and students seem to expect this, while, yes, in some local cultures students expect/demand exams that contain no surprises.

For that matter, it is not clear to me that "testing cleverness" is necessarily an important goal for timed exams. I am well aware that there is a huge tradition in which quickness and cleverness are construed as fundamental skills/talents. Certainly these are important for math contests, and occasionally useful in the practice of mathematics, but I don't think our classes teach these things, in any case. Thus, testing for quickness and cleverness is testing for something outside the course content. Thus, in many regards it is an irrelevant challenge to the students.

That is, substantial mathematics often has genuine complications and difficulties that exist despite examples and forthrightness, and it is sometimes (often?) counterproductive to create "challenging (surprise) problems" from material that should be straightforward.

But, yes, people on admissions committees are well aware of such traditions and their variations, don't worry.

For me, the letters of recommendation from math faculty are far more important than grades on the transcript, in any case. Similarly, the statement of purpose of the applicant tells much more than the transcript. And, one more time, the skill set relevant to surprise questions on timed exams becomes ever less relevant throughout grad school.

You have two very different questions here:

how the international applicants are being treated, and
how are math courses being evaluated.

The site would have been better off if you split them, as they are conceptually unrelated to one another. Ah well.

JeffE gave a good answer regarding the former question. His answer seems generalizable, as I've heard of other departments doing similar things. The admissions committees usually try to identify the countrymate among the faculty of their university and ask them whether the school the applicant is coming from is a worthy one. It is more difficult to do with applicants from Kenya or Morocco than those from Australia -- most academics will know about the top AU schools (and if they don't, I just gave them the link :) ).

For your latter question, there is no good answer as there are 4000 colleges * 5-50 math instructors in each. Oversimplified hand-holding you described is typical of the intro classes where the students will bitch about the letter $\theta$ and the sign $\forall$ as they have never seen it before. This creates huge impediments to instructors in trying to challenge the more inspiring and better prepared students who have to be held back at the level of the rest of the crowd.

I had a British prof in my Stat program, and he said that the British exams are usually written so that 70% completion gives you an A. I.e., the instructor reasonably expects that the top students will get 70 out of 100 on this exam. His exams were like that. As the system down under is built after the British system, you probably have the same approach.

The silly American "grading curve" system is 90-100% for "A", the top grade; 80-90% for "B", the second best grade; 70-80% for "C", which few students want to get; 60-70% for "D", which is a very low pass, and often requires retaking the course. Students want higher grades, and do not hesitate to give lower evaluations to instructors who grade less generously, so the professors, especially whose main responsibility is teaching (vs. research on the tenure track), have the incentives to make the exams simple so that the students are happy. The system produces a lot of students with nominal "A"s who know little to nothing. Only the top 20 or so universities (arguably stronger than the Australian G8 schools) have stronger incentives to maintain the university reputation, and tell their profs to make the exams real. I would expect that the stronger campuses of the Univ of California system (Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD) would know better than just hand everybody an "A".

As an artifact of the grading curve, the instructors have to populate their exams with 70% of very simple problems to let the bottom students accumulate enough credit for their "C"s, and can basically afford only one or two problems on a typical 90-120 minutes test to distinguish between the top "A" students and solid but not the top "B" students. This all is a matter of habit and tradition. Some instructors try to override it by making the total sum of scores in the course to be 431 or some prime number like that, so that there will be an extra step for the students to convert their 301 score to the familiar 100% range -- and most will fail without a calculator, and won't be able to tell whether getting three extra points they can squeeze for a homework would change their grade to pass from 69.93% to 70.05% into the next letter category. Professors coming from other countries may sometimes bring their own evaluation ideas (as my British prof did), and those interested in teaching and learning devise their own systems -- I described mine here.

Best luck with your applications, rest assured that you won't have any issues with the US schools just because you say it "todie" instead of "today" :).


Is it possible to get a PhD based on research papers I have written? I am working as a young scientist after finishing my masters in physics in India. In last three years, I have published 12 research papers (Quantum theory) with my collabrators. I am facing problems in registering for PhD in my institute.

How can I get a Doctrate degree based upon my  research papers without registering for PhD. ??

Is there any such degree in India or abroad which can be awarded to me based upon my research papers ??

I doubt that you will find such a thing anywhere. An earned doctorate almost always (I know of no exceptions) requires an official registration and most likely, your presence at the institution for some period of time. There are normally qualifying examinations and often (not always) some required coursework.

Your publication history, however, would be a very positive factor in obtaining admission to a program in most places. You don't say why you are having difficulties, so it is impossible to say if there is some impediment.

But the only way to know about your chances are to apply to a program somewhere other than your institute, and possibly in another country. But a research background would help your chances.

The only way to get awarded a PhD without registering first is to have a University regard your work so highly that they offer you an "Honorary PhD". You usually see mention of these in the press sometimes for celebrities who have done things over and above the normal...

You may find that a University will take the papers you have produced as some equivalent towards what they will accept, but you will have to apply.


Independent Research and institutional review boards? If I am conducting independent research (ie no university affiliation), do I need to worry about institutional review board (IRB) approval, if I am working in a field where it is normally required?

This issue actually got some press recently with the case of uBiome, a citizen science startup that raised over $350,000 in crowdfunding.

This startup received a lot of negative attention for not getting IRB approval before raising the money. You can read some of this criticism here, here, and here.

A statement from the founders of uBiome says they were advised that they don't legally require IRB approval if they aren't receiving federal funding, don't plan to publish, and don't plan to apply for FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) approval:

  Before we started our crowdfunding campaign, we consulted with our advisors at QB3, the startup incubator at UCSF, and the lawyers they provided us. We were informed (correctly) that IRBs are only required for federally funded projects, clinical trials, and those who seek publication in peer-reviewed journals. That’s right — projects that don’t want federal money, FDA approval, or to publish in traditional journals require no ethical review at all as far as we know. (No, that doesn’t sound like a great system to us either.)

In the end, they went through a private IRB firm (Wikipedia says it was this one) and got their protocols approved. The founders say:

  This is the same institution that works with academic IRBs that need to coordinate multi-site studies, as well as private firms such as 23andme and pharmaceutical companies doing clinical trials.

This incident raises the question of what you plan to do with your independent research (assuming the kind of research you are doing is generally subject to IRB oversight):

If you plan to publish your research in a traditional peer-reviewed journal, you will usually need an IRB review
If you plan to develop pharmaceuticals that will require FDA approval, you will need IRB review
If you plan to get federal funding for your work, you will need IRB review. If you plan to get other funding for your work, it'll be hard to get without IRB review.
If you plan to create a startup around your research, you may not require IRB review, but not having it can engender quite a bit of criticism (as per uBiome's story)

As an independent researcher myself, who has taken a less traditional route of publication (in an open access journal versus a peer-reviewed journal), I am of the understanding that IRB approval is not required unless your study is being featured in a peer reviewed journal.  With that said, I think that the participant protections that I put in place to protect my subjects are much more stringent than any IRB requirements.  Mine was a case study with two participants and both agreed in writing that they felt adequately protected.  They also agreed when reading the study prior to its publication that while they themselves could tell what each part represented, the nonuse of their names, the fictitious place they were said to have grown up, a couple of minor alterations to their stories, which did not change the results or themes, but furthered their anonymity made it so that they were certain that no one could identify them.


How to submit two separate works simultaneously to two conferences when the works are similar in a few parts? I want to submit two separate works to two different conferences in CS field. The conference deadlines differ only by 3 weeks and one of them would be held in November while the other in September.

The problem is that i designed an algorithm and used that in both of the works. This algorithm is not the essential part of these papers, so i can introduce it completely in paper A as a novel method and just cite and use it in paper B; or vice versa!

But the problem is that at the time of submission, both of them are just submitted works, and i'm not sure if citing a submitted work is acceptable? Especially because if i only cite and use it in paper B, the reviewers cannot read paper A to see the complete proofs.
And even i'm not sure which paper may be accepted/rejected!

Also if i introduce the method in both papers as a novel method, then if both of them get accepted they will consider it plagiarism!

I had done something similar during my PhD (upon advice by my supervisors). I'll explain my situation as it seems similar to yours (though you only told us about the similarities but not the differences between the content you have for your two papers).

I've developed a novel technique as well, and had quite a bit of results, though not quite enough for a journal submission. We submitted two conference papers:

The first one was targeting a smaller, very specialized conference, specifically in the subfield focused on the theory used in my technique; here we submitted a paper dissecting the theory behind my new technique and offering an exhaustive test of parameters and similar.
The second one in a much wider-topic conference, focusing on the performance of the method on the datasets of wide interest and comparison to other state of the art.

The theory was discussed at length in the theoretical paper. However, as there was no guarantee either of the papers would be published, we also introduced the theory in the other paper in a much denser and shorter, but still complete (i.e. containing everything necessary to make my experiments repeatable) manner. We then referred to the theory paper in the performance paper.

For cross-citation of such papers:

upload them both to preprint services (arXiv is fine but occasionally there is institutional services which are much less demanding to use)
cite them as (submitted) or (submitted to X) or (under review) and update it through the submission process (if you pass the first round of reviews)
some conferences allow/require to send a copy of any relevant but unpublished materials, so you can also send the second manuscript as supporting material with the submission (especially if, for any reason, you did not manage to use a pre-print service).
make sure there is no "significant overlap" between the papers (which would constitute auto-plagiarism) and that you are not re-using your own text

Most importantly though, if you can, talk to your supervisor. They will likely have experience and will be able to advise you best since they know your work.

Publish or Perish (3)–Fraud and ethics, 2000 has on page 3 a short description of the phenomena of “dual publication”. It happens quite often and is seldom punished. Another source see self-plagiarism mixed:

  “Self-plagiarism refers to the practice of an author using portions of
  their previous writings on the same topic in another of their
  publications, without specifically citing it formally in quotes.“
  Tips from the Editor,
  2000

He comes to the conclusion, that self-plagiarsm is probably not a scientific misconduct, but it violates the copyright of the publisher. To prevent any kind of plagiarism the editor of the journal / conference should be informed and the plagiarist should be asked for an explanation.


Professor not giving solutions to exams and assignments that I need to grade I am a grader for a CS course at the college institution I attend. The professor I am TAing for is a full-time employee at a company. He is teaching this CS course on top of doing that. The first exam and homework assignment have been collected. He has effectively told me that he "trusts my judgment" in the grading and is not giving me solutions to grade the exam and assignment against.

Is this a fair practice? Whether the solutions are supposed to be given me was not established before I started as grader.

I'm just unsure since I have not heard of this type of situation happening. In my experience the professor has always given solutions to the grader. I am unsure of what to do at this point.

Edited Update: Prof still wants me to use my own solutions and the CS dept has decided as long as he is "supervising the grading," he is permitted to allow this. I will be grading them with my solutions. I suggest for anyone to possibly contact the department for the official policy. In terms of whether it's a fair practice, I see that the discussion still stands.

I can't tell quite what your concern is, so I'll address both.

Is it OK for a non-professor to write solutions and design a rubric?

In my experience (large US universities, STEM), this is extremely common. I disagree a bit with others saying that only professors can make such determinations (though of course the instructor of record can make such determinations if they are inclined to do so).

Is this abusive toward the TA?

How are you being paid?

If it is hourly, then there is no issue; you should solve the problems and make a rubric however you see fit, and then bill for that time as normal.
If it is a set stipend, then there is usually a nominal time requirement (in my university it was 20 hrs/week for grad students). If making solutions will put you way over this, it's fine to raise the issue with the professor and/or with the administration (in fact, you may technically be required to do so)

One other tip -- you might consider taking the top-performing students' solutions and using them as a starting place for your own solutions. Of course, you'll have to be sure you're grading those students fairly and catching any errors. But I've found that the I can often create a solution set just by mixing and matching solutions from the top ~3 students and adding a few expository details.

I think you have misphrased the question. The question should say "The professor isn't giving me a rubric"; if the professor isn't giving you the solution, then presumably he isn't giving you a rubric, either, which is more of an issue. Unless there's no partial credit or anything along those lines, it's the professor's job to decide not only what answers will be accepted, but how many points each question is worth, and what level of answer receives how many points. Even if you solve the questions correctly, that won't answer those sort of questions. Plus, what a correct answer is can depend on the course. To take a math example, some teachers might take 9 pi as a correct answer to "What is the area of a circle with radius 3?", but there are probably math teachers out there who insist on 28.27. If the professor has solved the problems himself, then he is making you redo a lot of work. And if he hasn't, that's rather odd.

So rather than asking for solutions, for which he has come up with the dodge "Just solve them yourself", you should ask for the rubric, for which it's going to be harder for him to pretend that he isn't avoiding something that he should be doing himself.


Finding scholarship in England I am a master's graduate from Iran. I received an admission offer (PhD in business) from one of the reputable universities in England but I don't have scholarship yet.
My question is: In addition to internal scholarships(I mean the university's) What are external scholarships I can apply for? i.e.  If the university doesn't give me a scholarship, are there other British institutions to fund my phd studies or not? I am exploring all my chances in the remaining time to accept the offer.

Jobs.ac.uk has a page about funding a PhD that includes the following:

A number of charitable organisations, foundations and trusts can help fund PhD’s. These include:
The Wellcome Trust
Cancer Research UK
The British Academy
The British Federation of Women Graduates
The Institution of Civil Engineers
Institution of Engineering & Technology
Institution of Mechanical Engineers
Royal Geographical Society
Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland
Leverhulme Trust
Action Medical Research

One friend introduced Islamic Development Bank (IDB) scholarships.


Is it possible to write publication with a BSc student co-author? I am an associate professor in a department, mostly focusing on progressive topics related to spatial applications of artificial intelligence.

Besides my research projects, I have innovative and novel ideas, with I just don't have time to deal. If students interested to work with me, I used to give them ideas like that.

They can present their results (under my consultation/supervision) i.e., in a Student Conference at the university. But according to our university licensing, consulting does not lead to any authorship for the mentor.

If I think in the long-term, there is a good chance they will leave the university after a BSc (or even MSc) thesis. In that case, my shared (sometimes novel) ideas get stuck. Since I won't publish their 'managed' contribution to the research, it's a moral thing for me.

So I was thinking, instead of (or beside) draining them to the Student Conference, I should motivate them to write journal or conference paper, where copyrights are better solved, I can be a senior, last co-author.

But I am afraid that journals/papers don't support BSc student authors that much. Am I right? Are there journals/papers where the acceptance rate doesn't depend that much on the authors' affiliation?
Do you have any hint, feedback on this idea?

But according to our university licensing, consulting does not lead to any  authorship for the mentor.

You may want to consider double-checking what exactly that means. It's highly likely that your university does not forbid you to be co-author of a paper written under your supervision if you contributed intellectually to the paper, which is the case if the student uses your ideas. The rule most likely states or is meant to state that supervision alone is not sufficient for authorship.

  But I am afraid that journals/papers don't support BSc student authors that much.

How would they know that the student is a BSc student? The only case I've ever seen where this is mentioned is in IEEE journals, where some authors may have ", Student Member" attached to their name if they pay the student rate of the IEEE membership - but even then, it could still be a PhD student.

If you want the paper to be published at a good venue, you will most likely take an active role in the writing process, and in the resulting paper, it should not be visible what status the individual authors had.

Nobody cares about the degree of the student.  Often in the US, you don't even have the whole comma Ph.D. thing* and people just figure the asterisked (communicating) author is a PI, professor, with Ph.D. and the others are postdocs or grad students (i.e. pre Ph.D.)  But they could even be other PIs in a subordinate role.  Really unless the reviewers or editors are familiar with the PI, nobody even notices or thinks about authors having a particular degree.

That said, there's a pretty normal way of writing, submitting papers, etc.  So you should be seen as fitting in that.  And this will help avoid any worries you have about degrees...but really nobody cares.  But somehow reading between the lines, I don't get the impression that you are a skilled, "blooded" writer for peer reviewed literature yourself.  So I am a little leery of the fate of some of your "new idea" papers or your ability to supervise a student through the process.  That does NOT mean, don't do it.  It does mean...know your blind spots and buckle down, write tight, follow the notice to authors, etc.

The other considerations to think about are if you can really package things to they result in at least an LPU.  Probably very possible, but requires some thinking, strategy.  Don't assume that the bachelors students will produce the way a full time grad student would, don't plan projects or deliverables with this exact expectation.

I would also think, please, to disentangle the issue of getting students good (right difficulty) projects with a citation (nice for them) from the broader topic of "have ideas but not time to develop them".  Frequently that Venn diagram intersection will be small since the ideas really require more dedicated and skillful research to develop.  Again, you're being naive if you think you can use the pre-bachelors students like a real grad student (and even that can have issues, delays...but still I can understand using them as "leverage").

*Amazing the strong correlation of how the weakest Ph.D.s take the most pleasure in the title and the strongest don't care (not that hard really...world is even arguably flooded with excess Ph.D.s), but take pleasure in discoveries instead.


Should I tell my recommendation writers about my self-studying since graduating? Should I also mention my illness and depression? I completed my masters in mathematics in my home country in June 2020. I didn't had success in 4th semester of my masters with PhD Applications. So, I thought I would try next year in both my home country and abroad (Europe). I didn't apply earlier to any of my home country's universities.
So, I started studying  for the qualifying exam in my home country while side by side studying some more mathematics to apply for PhD programmes abroad. But I fell in depression and wasted 1 month and 1 week in stomach infection till now.
The depression problem: I took the exam for PhD admission in my home country in December and received the result in early January. The result was lower than I had hoped for, although I don't yet know if I've been accepted.
My father is using this to make cruel comments to me, hurting my mental health. This contributed to me being depressed and missing several application deadlines for European universities. I completed only one application on time. Since then I have received medical help for my mental health problems and for 1 week I could not study due to pretty bad stomachache.
Question 1: Should I email the professors which will be sending letter of recommendation, and tell them what I have been doing since I completed my masters in June 2020? It would be only list of topics I have studied till now.
Question 2: If so, should I also include episodes of depression along with stomach infection?
Question 3: If so, should I also describe the reason behind the depression?

First, I agree completely with Arno's answer here. The logic from that answer applies to these questions as well. Specifically...

Should I email the professors which will be sending letter of recommendation [and tell them] what I have been doing since I completed my masters in June 2020? (It would only list topics I have studied till now)?

Those reviewing your application may be interested to know what you have been up to during the past year. The answer appears to be "studying." So, it may be worth listing this briefly in your application somewhere. Just one bullet on your CV, or one sentence in one of your essays.
To your question: I see no harm in also providing this information to your letter writers. For the most part, their letters will focus on what they know about you directly, not what you say you did after graduating. But, it's definitely a good idea to stay in touch with your letter writers, and mentioning your recent activities is a natural thing to say in this context.

[Should I] include episodes of depression along with stomach infection?

No. It's usually better to declare victory rather than make excuses. In your case, there is no need for excuses; it is quite straightforward to say "since graduating, I've been studying topics X, Y, and Z." This sounds much better than "I've been trying to study, but between depression and illness I haven't made much progress." Why volunteer these extra details?

[Should I include] the reason behind the depression [issues with my father]?

Definitely not. This is very much oversharing. It is understandable that you want to discuss your difficult circumstances and are seeking forgiveness, validation, and/or reassurance. But you should have this discussion with your family, friends, or therapist, not with your professional references.

This is a tricky one. In my opinion, informing the people responsible for giving out letters is always the right thing to do. Let them know what happened, what you did, what you are currently working on. That is a must. Talking about mental health and difficulties you faced is correct when you can make sure it does not seem like a pity call rather proving how you are successfully battling your challenges.


Is it rational to lose confidence in authors whose books contain many typos? I make mistakes too as a flawed human. Yet I always lose confidence in and doubt authors (whose native language is English) whose textbooks or journal articles contain glaring typos or orthographical errors. Is this expectation rational or warranted?

For instance, Michael Spivak's Calculus contains many such typos. But I've spotted no typos in David Benatar's books. Here are my assumptions:

The author or the publisher can hire or engage multiple proofreaders (who can be university students, friends, or family members) to proofread.
The publisher permits the author to read a draft of the book before it's printed, to spot any last-minute mistakes. So these typos aren't the publisher's fault.

Your assumptions are faulty. Unless a book is self published, it is the publisher only who hires reviewers, and, more importantly, editors. They are too expensive for the author to engage. A text that sells for about $90 USD returns about $5 USD to the author and sells between 0 and a few thousand copies (with a few exceptions). The cost of the textbook prep is all up-front other than reprinting.

For many (most?) people, proofreading your own work is nearly impossible. If you made an error when you first wrote it, it was because of some slip of the mindset. Thinking one thing and writing another. When you go to re-read it you actually read what you thought you wrote, not what you actually wrote. It is the publisher, and more important, the reviewers who should catch these since they read it with a fresh mind. The author isn't perfect but he/she is innocent here.

Some authors and publishers will pay bounties for errors caught by readers so that they can be corrected in future printing (and editions). Donald Knuth famously did this for The Art of Computer Programming.

Many authors an/or publishers will also put errata lists online where readers should be able to find them.

Typos are annoying, of course, and the other qualities of any given work have to be sufficient to overcome that annoyance.

But it is the publisher of the book that pays the upfront costs of editing, review, typesetting, etc. They (publishers) earn a ton of money for this and are responsible when it goes badly. While reviewers often work for free, editors don't. They are employees of the publishers.

The veracity of a work is independent of the author's English. Second, the writing of even native English speakers can include many typos. Have you ever seen exams for which the instructor awarded bonus marks because of a critical typo in a question? This can happen even though the exam has presumably been checked by many people. Therefore the short answer is no, it is not rational.

If there are lots of typos, then I would hold it against the publisher first before the authors. It's true that the authors get to read the final files of the book before it goes to press, but it's also true that the publisher will have staff whose job is to catch these errors before printing. No human can catch every error, but they should still catch most of them.

However, it must also be said that this is not necessarily fair, because there's no way to tell what happened during the production process from the outside. For example, if the authors signed a contract to provide a camera-ready copy (CRC), that's effectively an agreement that the publisher will save on publication costs (like performing copyediting) and, in return, they'll provide the authors a higher royalty. If the authors provide a typo-ridden CRC then the authors are more at fault than the publisher.


Should I address a "Charge de Recherche" or "Directeur de recherche" in France as "Prof."? In France, the following are two of the main ways people get promoted in academic positions:

Maître de Conférences (assistant professor whose responsibilities include teaching as well as research) -> professeur (professor)

and

Chargé de recherche (in charge of research) -> Directeur de recherche (director of research).

Note that in the second sequence of academic promotions, one doesn't have to teach and the positions are mostly dedicated to research (although one can opt to teach if s/he wants to).
My question is: while applying to a position (postdoc/permanent) in the team of a chargé de recherche where s/he is the PI of the project, should one address her/him as a professor ("Prof."), say in the cover letter? It's technically incorrect it seems, but perhaps no harm is done because their positions are equivalent to those of professors anyway.
I'd like to know the viewpoint(s) of someone(s) who's familiar with the French system!

French academia is not big on titles. Whether it's by students, colleagues, or the administration, people are rarely if ever addressed by their titles. I'm a "maître de conférences" myself, and nobody addresses me as anything other than "Monsieur", and my colleagues of another gender are addressed as "Madame". That's it, no fluff, no "Prof Dr", no "Maître" -- which wouldn't be appropriate as this is how you address attorneys and notaries, not even "Dr".
If you want to err on the side of the formality, which is perhaps better until you know more about the person in question and how they like to be addressed, you can call them "Prof". It's inaccurate, yes, but we are used to the outside world wanting to impose American title norms on us. You can take comfort in the fact that many institutions have "research professors", so a chargé de recherches could be viewed as a "junior/associate research professor", that you would address as "Prof", indeed.
Personally I wouldn't care if a foreign applicant started an email with "Dear Mr. XYZ" (or Ms. as appropriate), and I doubt (m)any of my colleagues would. But I hesitate to give this advice, as it's possible that in some French academic subcultures some people give more importance to titles. I'm thinking of law and medicine, especially.
However, do not ever address someone as "Dear Chargé de recherches Dupont" or "Dear CR Dupont". That's just not used as a salutation, even if it's the title used by that person on their website.

Use whatever title they use on their website. E.g.,

Use Dr Alpha Bravo or Professor Alpha Bravo, if they appear.

When titles aren't used, e.g.,

Their website uses Alpha Bravo, PhD, you can rightly use Dr Alpha Bravo, but may favour Alpha Bravo, since they're discrete about their title.

When no titles are used, you're probably safe with their name, e.g., Alpha Bravo. (Although, you may like to google their name, find and use the title that appears in the press.)
Don't assume an academic adopts national conventions/stereotypes, especially a non-native.


Supervisor does not allow use of commercial software for student project, against student's interests My supervisor does not allow me to use commercial software for my project. I believe that they want to reuse, modify and build upon what I do and thus are interested only in tools/libraries that are widely-accepted in the scientific community (which I do not intend to pursue a career in).

The commercial software products license costs are not an issue as students can either officially use the software for free or licenses are quite cheap (e.g. less than 5 Euro for students). As I know which tools are used in the kind of jobs I want to get in, I do not need the supervisor "to guide my software decisions" to help me in this aspect. I am also already quite proficient in one of the commercial software tools I want to use, but I feel my supervisor is not (and also has no interest in learning more about it - I do not blame him for this).

When signing up for the project, usage of commercial software was not explicitly excluded. The topic of the project itself is actually interesting, it is just the software that we cannot agree on.

How might I persuade them to change their view? If impossible, how can I make the most of this situation?

This question is related to what I am asking about, but it is more normative in nature.

The student license can be cheap, but the standard license is probably not. If the chair doesn't have funding for a standard license, or they are not interested in this specific software, the lab will end up with an unusable piece of software as soon as you leave. This is certainly not in the interest of the lab.

  What would you advise me to do?

There's not much you can do: either accept the chair's choice of software or go find a project in a lab which uses your preferred choice of software.

You can propose to write your project in both the supervisor's preferred software (which you'll have to learn) and your preferred software at about the same time. Assuming that the bulk of the difficulty of your project is in what you're doing with the software, rather than how you do it, then keeping both versions in sync should be reasonable. The flexibility this approach would demonstrate might even look good on a resume/CV. In the worst case, you can simply use your preferred software on the side, for your own benefit, without needing to tell your supervisor.


Difficult student would dispute every grade in the course and now wants letter of recommendation I had a student in one of my courses that for every graded assignment would come to me and challenge the grade given, even though I provided a rubric to show exactly why the points where taken off.

For one of the last assignments, which was a class presentation, this student went off into another topic and for half of the presentation time essentially filled the time with an interesting topic, that unfortunately, although interesting, was not what the assignment for the presentation required. There were other problems with the presentation, which I outlined in the rubric, but twice the student came to me to challenge the grade, because they "worked so hard on the presentation," and that they "did cover what was required" and did not deserve a B (which in retrospect, should have been a C), I explained why again the student got the grade they deserved...and after a while the student saying that they did not agree, left.

But then on the following class, the student came to talk to me about their grade again and was even somewhat aggressive towards me, and very confrontational raising their tone of voice and won't give up on the point that s/he deserved an A. I said that I would be happy to grade the presentation again, but that I was often very lenient and that the grade could either improve/or decrease if I were to grade it again. The student then gave up, and said that s/he would focus then on the final paper and asked whether I give full points (100) in the final paper, to which I replied, "yes, if you exceed my expectations." (haven't graded this assignment yet).

Well, a week went by and then this student asks me for a letter of recommendation! Granted s/he currently have a A- in my course, but after the way the student spoke to me, with complete lack of respect, I was very surprised that s/he would ask for a letter.

...and at first the student did not want to waive their rights to the letter, claiming that we had to sign the page "together" whenever they would pick up the letter. I explained that the student could actually fill out the top part, if s/he wanted to waive the rights, and I would fill out the bottom part, include the form with the letter in a sealed envelope. But that if s/he did not want to waive the rights, that would be fine as well, and I would just sign the bottom part...then the student decided it would be best to waive their rights...

I am now in the process of writing the letter and was wondering if anyone was ever put in the same situation, and what did you do? This is a good student, however, clearly lacks respect for their professors. Any advice/guidance/help? How/Should I mentioned this in the letter?

It sounds like you've agreed to write a letter so I think you are committed unless the student releases you from your commitment.  (Personally, I'd have said no in the first place and explained if asked that, based on their behavior, I could not honestly give a favorable recommendation.  But that ship has sailed.)

But what you haven't agreed to yet, I hope, is a favorable letter.  What I would do in your situation is contact the student to explain that on reflection, you've become concerned that the only honest letter you can write will not be helpful.  You don't feel you can honestly ignore that the student is a difficult, argumentative, confrontational and disrespectful individual.  To be an honest appraisal, that has to go in there.  You cannot write an honest letter that only recites the good stuff.

At that point, you can ask, do they still want the letter?  I'm sure they'll be difficult and disrespectful once again but that's nothing new and if you stand your ground, I think they'll decide to go elsewhere.  Problem solved.  (And maybe they'll learn something from the experience, though, from what you describe, probably not.)

Tell them you'll mail the letter directly and then "forget" to mail the letter.  Don't even bother wasting your time.

Although, in this case, we see only what we're looking for.  You see the student's stubbornness and we could discern that you're a negative thinker.  A positive thinker would see the student's unwillingness to accept anything less than the best which is a good thing from an employer perspective.

Then again there are way too many variables involved.  It depends on the context of the situation and how the student channels that energy.  If they're constantly being confrontational with the team and their supervisors that isn't a good thing because this student would get in the way, slow the team down and likely prevent the team from achieving goals.

I'm sure this student would make a good negotiator though if placed in the right context.