text:
Manuscript rejected for no reason after revision. Elsevier
After submitting to one of the journals in Elsevier recently,
we got a response as following:

I think the manuscript can be improved and should be resubmitted, but the changes will probably take too long to accomplish within a "major revision" timeline.

The editor wrote that they were only able to find one reviewer and the final decision was a "reject."
The reviewer had made detailed suggestions for improvement and asked for files and figs.
Within a month, we re-submitted to the same journal addressing all the revisions, mentioning these point-by-point in the communication to the Editor.
The journal sent back an automated message without any comments or reason stating it has been rejected, after a week from submission.
Does anyone have a clue on what is happening?
Is this a technical issue? In the past, Elsevier's system seems to have been hacked.

If you really think it is a tech issue, contact the editor. More likely is that the editor isn't happy with the current version.

It sounds to me like 1) your original manuscript was rejected, 2) you tried to resubmit anyways, and 3) the journal rejected your resubmission without further consideration.
The result (3) sounds completely normal to me given (1) + (2); the place where something went wrong is when you tried to resubmit a rejected manuscript. Doing so likely seems rude to the editor, though I don't think this was your intent. It's like you asked if someone would have lunch with you, they said "no, sorry, I'm busy", and then you arrived at their office anyway with sandwiches. Maybe you thought that bringing sandwiches would fix things - after all, if someone is busy, wouldn't it be useful if someone else made them lunch? However, the message they gave was really just "No", despite the extra words used.
The editor may share some blame here, because their reasons for rejection were not particularly clear and persuasive. It would have been better that they just say "reject" was the final decision and not make up reasons about timelines to revise. I suspect that they saw far deeper problems in your manuscript than you are appreciating, and that the changes you made are comparatively superficial. Importantly, you are resubmitting to the editor, not this other reviewer, so addressing the reviewer's concerns may not be sufficient. I think there is an implied statement in the rejection that is missing:

I think the manuscript can be improved and should be resubmitted (somewhere else)

I suppose if you are uncertain, you could write the editor and ask them what has happened, but I suspect all they will do is confirm that your manuscript was rejected and that this means "do not submit a revision here".
The next step is to submit the latest version of the manuscript to a different journal.

Or more charitably, a language issue

The content doesn't seem to be an issue based on the fact that we have received multiple offers for publishing after posting on arXiv.

@007 It's not normal to receive offers for publishing in academia, the way things work is you submit (to one journal at a time) and they review. If you're getting unsolicited offers by email or something, those are likely coming from "predatory publishers". These are not really "offers for publishing" they are "requests for money and we'll put it on our non-reputable website"; they don't care about your content, they care about your money.

There are few journals with a very good fit for this topic. This was one of those journals. Others are of a broader topic. Choice is more limited when we avoid journals with APC.

@007 Whether other journals will take your paper is not really a matter of concern for the editor of this one.

Honestly, there are much worse publications published in their journal, so it's hard to understand.

@007 Academic publishing can be very frustrating. I'd recommend getting input on your manuscript from other researchers that your group trusts for advice - sometimes it's hard to see weaknesses in the work you've put so much time into. It's hard to pretend to be an unbiased third party.

It's not normal to receive offers for publishing -- surely not. There's a role called "acquisition editor" whose role is explicitly to go and find papers to publish. Granted it is of the "why don't you submit tor our journal" kind of message, but that can still be interpreted as an offer to publish.

@007 The fact that the editor found only one reviewer might be an indication that your paper was not as good a fit as you think. I suggest you follow the advice by Bryan and also discuss with those others about where they would publish a paper like yours.

@Allure, I would be surprised if a mainstream/non-predatory academic journal had an acquisitions editor; usually they sit back and wait for submissions. Academic publishers certainly have acquisitions editors who find book manuscripts to publish ... can you point to an academic journal that has an acquisitions editor ...??

@Allure: After posting on arXive, we got some 7+ invitations to publish, most of them were trash, however, one was from editor-in-chief (from a well known institute) of a peer-reviewed journal with IF 20+. However, their publishing cost is comparable to other average journals (IF 3~5) in the field even after 40% discount.

@BenBolker here is an example I got from a quick Google search: https://jobs.thebookseller.com/job/commissioning-editor-scientific-journals-global-publisher

OK, I take it back.


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How can I get human-subjects approval from a nearby university?
I am a high school student planning to do a research project involving human participants.  This is for a research class at my school, and one of my teachers told me that I need IRB approval. My research mentor has a computer science PhD.
I want to improve on existing machine learning models for detecting dyslexia. I want to collect data from both dyslexic and non-dyslexic participants.
My school does not have an IRB so I am planning to send it to an IRB of a surrounding university.
My question is, how can I get my project reviewed by an IRB? Is it possible for me to send IRBs to multiple universities at the same time? I know you can submit to a different IRB if one IRB rejects you, but I could not find any answers to my question.

"My school does not have an IRB so I am planning to send it to an IRB of a surrounding university" - what makes you think these other universities' IRBs will consider your submission? Do they have some sort of agreement with your institution?

@BryanKrause no. I'm not sure, I don't know anything about this process. Is there any place that will consider any submission?

What is your position - are you a student? Faculty member? Ordinarily someone without an IRB would have to pay a private IRB to review, and I'd expect this to cost $1000s. Does your institution have any research support staff?

Only the institution can accept an IRB decision, and has sole authority to determine which IRB(s) it would accept decisions from. You need to find which IRB(s) (if any!) are acceptable to the institution. If there is no acceptable IRB, well, you cannot perform the research.

@DanielHatton - ouch, that may make it well nigh impossible to use human subjects. The school board (or board of trustees) may need to be consulted to see if something is possible.

So you would need IRB approval if you are collecting data from subjects like this. But there may be some already collected data that you could use for your purposes, and it might be sufficiently anonymized that you would no longer have to deal with IRB. I would look at papers you have read that use data that is similar to that which you intend to collect and see if you can get access to pre-existing, anonymized data.

@AzorAhai-him- "Well, for one, CS researchers don't usually do IRBs" -- I would suggest not leading anyone on thin ice. CS researchers don't usually do IRBs because they are working with machines. But those CS researchers you work with humans do need IRB approval for their research if they want to publish it, and that is particularly true if they want to work with people who have disabilities such as dyslexia. Let's not suggest that one can be blase about these sorts of things and just skip IRB approval "because it's only CS research"!

@WolfgangBangerth Ah, apologies if my comment was unclear. I meant "your mentor may not actually have experience submitting IRBs," in response to Melted's previous comment not "you don't need one" (no comment on that).

Melted, I tweaked your question a little, and added some info from the comments. By "rejects you" do you mean refuses to consider your application, or denies your protocol?

I made the edits I did because it's kind of a big jump from "I'm a high school student needing human subjects approval" to "how to submit to multiple IRBs at once?"

@AzorAhai-him- I mean denies protocol. I'll put it in, thanks.

Also, the teacher who told me about IRB wasn't my research mentor, it was a different one.

Nevertheless, unless that teacher has done research in psychology, they may not be correct and may not be able to guide you through the process.

Each institution has its own rules about human subjects. Large school districts often have a policy on access to its own students for research. Find out if there is one and what it is. My experience is that IRB staff is often helpful to novices, even from outside. Contact a nearby IRB and ask to talk with a staff member. If this is for a science fair then the organization probably has a policy. If so, they are likely to have a designated IRB. I think this is problematic if you are not yourself an adult, since you cannot enter into an agreement with subjects.

how can I get my project reviewed by an IRB?

You pay them. University IRBs may or may not handle cases from outside the university, but there are commercial IRBs that do this all the time.
It is likely that your project would qualify for a "minimal risk" exemption (e.g., if you are having participants complete simple tasks and recording their responses and reaction times, then the odds of a participant being harmed are negligible). But, even this would be take months and cost at least $1,000.
The possible complication is that you would presumably be recording diagnoses (e.g., which participants are dyslexic) and publishing data based on this dataset. I do not know if this would be considered a "medical record," but I suspect it might be, in which case you might actually need a full IRB protocol. This would probably be a no-go: I seriously doubt any IRB would approve a study in which the principal investigator is a high school student. (And even if they did, this would be very expensive and time consuming).

one of my teachers told me that I need IRB approval.

This may or may not technically be true. For sure federally-funded research requires an IRB (either a full protocol or a formal exemption), and if you want to publish this in a "real" science journal, they will require it too. If this is for a science competition, they may have a policy requiring one (though they probably just say "at your own risk"). If none of the above apply, you probably don't actually need IRB approval.
That said, the above discussion should hopefully make it clear that there are lots of legal landmines here. While the odds of you harming someone and getting sued are very small, it could really mess up your life if it happened. Your teacher advisor is probably (rightly) concerned about this (I suspect "you'd need IRB approval for that" is an elegant way of saying "no freaking way!").

I want to improve on existing machine learning models for detecting dyslexia. I want to collect data from both dyslexic and non-dyslexic participants.

Bear in mind that machine learning models are data-hungry, and collecting data is tedious. Even getting data from 50 participants would likely require a heroic amount of work on your part, and it's unlikely you could do much machine learning based on such a small dataset.

Although it might vary from country to country, my experience is that many  universities are willing to undertake ethical review of research projects for a fee.
To prevent one from shopping around for a favorable review, it is often a condition that you declare on your submission that you have not previously submitted a similar application to another Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC) or Institutional Review Board (IRB). You might, as a consequence, need to consider carefully which institution is the best one for your submission, and perhaps do so in consultation with an appropriate person from your own institution.
Maintaining an IRB or HREC is an expensive exercise and a number of smaller institutions can't afford to do so. In addition, by providing a review service to non-insitutional members, a university that does have ad IRB can assist those people who are not affiliated with any formal institution to meet the demands of journals that insist that authors have previously had their project reviewed for conformance with accepted ethical standards.
You will see, for example, that the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia discusses "non-affiliated" applications on this page.

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Editors, having a initial idea about the final decision from the first look at the paper?
The first type of review a manuscript gets when submitted is the internal review done by the editor, who is in general an expert in the field.
Given their expertise, can an editor have an initial impression on the manuscript that gives them an insight on whether it will eventually get accepted or not, ahead of the reviewers recommendations?
I'm asking this question because depending on the editor and the journal, the editorial screening isn't just about the respect of the journal's directives and being within its scope, but also the novelty of the subject as well as the quality of the manuscript. So, if the editor is convinced that the manuscript is of a high quality and the results are novel, then this may give them an initial idea of the decision that they will eventually make.

Many do on many papers, but so what? What is the point of your question?

@Buffy, the question rephrased is : Can the editor be able to make the decision from the first look at the paper and have an idea if it will get accepted or not, before receiving the reviewers recommendations.

An editor can desk reject a submission they think has no chance. This is typically done for more formal reasons like exceed the maximum length or a topic that does not fit the topic of the journal. However, this can also happen when the editor thinks there is a serious problem with the quality of the paper. So that is an example where the editor can decide before any reviewers see the paper.

A peer reviewed journal means that every article that appears in it has been peer reviewed (or clearly labeled as otherwise). It does not mean that every submission receives reviews.

@MaartenBuis, your last point is very important. Folks can forget that.

@HichamKhalil you have now asked multiple questions on the same topic. Apperently, you don't receive the answer you are looking for. I think we are dealing with an XY problem here ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem ). A good way to solve that is if you told us why you want to know this. If we just look at your question on its own, then there is no reason why you should care. So apperently there is something more going on. If you don't tell us what that is, then we cannot help you.

FWIW one of the reasons my stint as an editor failed was because I was "too nice" to reject some submissions outright. It was, naturally, very difficult to find willing reviewers for some manuscripts. The editor-in-chief did urge me to use this right, but I did not internalize it in time, and at that point other personal problems had surfaced, forcing me to quit. But, yes, the editors have the more or less final say on the decisions. The reviewers are, in a sense, experts the editor consults.

As an editor for 15 years and editor-in-chief for 4 years, my experience is this: for 50% of papers, I know after a couple of minutes whether they will be accepted, and I'm reasonably sure about the others.
For the ones that I think have no chance, they get rejected without review. This is about 30% of papers. For the ones that I'm doubtful, I often ask one of the Associate Editors about their opinion and for some of them, we decide to reject without revision. Since we're weeding out the ones we believe are not competitive, we end up with a pool of papers that get sent out to reviewers and of which 2/3 or 3/4 eventually get published (though sometimes after two or even three revisions).
My take is that editors who do not have the will to reject papers right away and hide behind reviews are putting a burden on everyone (authors, reviewers), and I encourage them to feel empowered to reject papers outright.

I'll guess some of those "immediate reject" papers were just from cranks; squaring the circle and such. Any guess about what percentage? How about how many were "publishable" in reputable journals, but not the ones you served as editor?

The fraction of "crank papers" is actually very small. The majority of papers we reject right away are just not in scope of the journal, or cover research areas that were current in the 1970s and 1980s but are no longer of interest. I imagine that these could be published somewhere, but not in the top tier of journals.

Gasp!! My papers. Oh woe. Actually mine were really "current" in the 1930's.

Did your opinion of a paper influence which reviewer(s) you sent it to?

I don't really have an issue with editors taking some initiative, but I would have an issue rejecting a paper before review unless a modicum of feedback is provided to the authors.  It needn't be a comprehensive explanation, but the author should certainly be made aware of shortcomings so major that the paper was not sent for review.  Even the NIH, which triages many grants before a study section discusses them, sends the applicants preliminary reviews from the assigned reviewers.

Of course, this doesn't count those journals like Science, that do a desk pre-review before sending it out.

@ScottSeidman I'm not going to make any apologies at all for desk rejecting papers. I've been a professional for 25 years, I can see when a paper is not good and you're not going to convince me that I'm not 100% correct on the papers I'm desk rejecting.  (There are of course papers I'm unsure about and those get sent to reviewer.) Sending bad papers out for peer review is a waste of everyone's time: Editors, reviewers, and authors. -- -- I do tell authors why I reject their papers, but it's rarely more than a paragraph.

@AlexanderWoo No. I send papers to the people who know the field best, regardless of whether I think it's a great or a mediocre paper. As mentioned above, the bad ones I don't send out at all.

@ScottSeidman As an author, I would much rather have a desk rejection after a week or two with no feedback (other than perhaps "we don't think your results are strong enough for this journal, try the next one") than a rejection after six months (or more) with reviewer feedback. And the worst of all cases is the slow rejection despite positive feedback from reviewers.

There is one journal I refuse to review for, and it's the one that has twice rejected papers despite my very positive reviews.

I'm not an editor, so can't speak to what editors do. I can hypothesize.
Were I an editor I would expect to have opinions about most papers that crossed my desk - after all, I am an editor because I know the field well and am willing to put in the effort needed to advance it.
I would expect that careful reviews by referees would more often than not support my initial thoughts. When they didn't I would think about why. If it happened often I might think I was the wrong person for the job.
I would base final accept/reject decision on the referees' recommendations and reasons. There would be close calls requiring judgement.

It's certainly possible. For example when the Large Hadron Collider first started running and the first ATLAS collaboration papers were submitted, one can be confident that the papers will eventually be accepted. That itself is a consequence of the fact that the collaboration involves hundreds of reputable scientists who will surely be cross-checking each other's work. One does not need to be an expert in particle physics to be able to say the above.
For most papers though, the editor will not know (they certainly won't know the topic as well as the reviewer).

Your last point is important. Editors aren't "expert" in the entire field of, say, physics or mathematics, but only in fairly narrow subfields. Journals are usually broader than the expertise of any one person. And, at time of submission the editor isn't going to "accept" the paper for publication even when they recognize that such will eventually occur. Review also improves papers, not just judges them "as is".

It is also important to note that the editors initial view need not and should not prejudice the final decision. Every paper needs a close examination. I wonder, just out of curiosity, what proportion of papers in reputable journals are published exactly as first submitted. My best guess is "very near zero". Probably higher for conference papers, though, due to time constraints.

@Buffy - I had a number of papers (APL, PRB, ...) accepted as-is. Good results and a great deal of effort writing clearly...

I would expect an initial opinion of "reject" to carry much more weight than "accept". There are many reasons for rejection, poorly written and off topic being two that an editor should be able to immediately spot without bothering a reviewer.

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Study methods for average IQ individuals, math and physics
How should a person with 110 IQ approach studying? Particularly with math and physics. What are the methods (if any) that can be employed to compensate for my inherent inability to understand very advanced topics? Perhaps focusing on rote memorization in such a case? I'm looking for personal experiences and sources, if possible. Feel free to speak frankly.

An IQ of 110 doesn't seem to be average, but rather somewhere at the boundary of the upper 25% quantile of IQ distribution; see here. Anyway, it seems like an utterly bad idea to take the result of some IQ test as a frame of reference when you try to find out how you should learn and what you are able to learn.

How to study depends upon the individual, and more than just their IQ. For example, if basing a study plan only upon test scores (a bad idea, but I digress) I would use working memory rather than IQ.

"my inherent inability to understand very advanced topics" That's not what IQ means.

Given you are on Stack Exchange, "smart and gets things done" should be the mantra (see Joel Spolsky). You are smart, but nobody learns anything without putting work into it.

@JochenGlueck Regardless of the real utility of this question, while 110 might be higher than the population average, OP is comparing themselves to people who have started undergrad training.

@AzorAhai-him-: Admittedly, I'm not sure to whom precisely OP is comparing themselves - but anyway I don't think it's a good idea to explicitly formulate a sweepingly general claim, and leave the important qualification "within this or that peer group" implicit. Otherwise any fields medalist might write a question with the title "Research methods for people with average mathematical abilities like me", and if somebody complains they would add "well, average within the group of all fields medalist".

@JochenGlueck I mean sure, if you wanna go totally reductio ad absurdum. The point was why OP might have made that remark.

@AzorAhai-him- I agree with your reasoning why OP might have chosen that wording. My point was just that it would probably still be better to change the wording.

You seem to be interpreting the IQ test as an absolute unbreakable block to your understanding. It is no such thing. Don't try to excuse yourself from the need for hard work to understand deep things.
I was once told, based on a test, that I had the "ability" to do well in a junior college but would probably be frustrated if I tried to go farther than that. I later earned a PhD in mathematics.
No, rote memorization isn't going to take you terrifically far, though some of that may be needed. For the very young it probably is (6*7=42), but not later once the brain develops along with the ability to do abstract thought.
The key to success for most is to work hard but effectively. Don't just try to memorize, but try to solve problems and exercises in both math and physics. Don't read solutions, create them. But you also need feedback on what you do. A good course with a reasonable number of students and a skilled staff should provide that feedback. If they don't then you need to seek it out. Office hours. Be a pest if you need to.
You don't have an inability to understand deep topics. You have a need to develop skills. You may have some setbacks, but even those with great scores on IQ tests will also. Learn to push through those setbacks, with hard work and determination.
I don't know of any university that asks for IQ test results as part of admissions at any level.
The IQ number is just a number it isn't a locked gate.
For background see this at Wikipedia

Let me note a moderately common phenomenon. Some people, perhaps those with high IQ, seem to find early schooling easy and don't have to work very hard to succeed. It just comes naturally. But eventually most everyone will reach a point when it ain't so easy anymore and, if they haven't learned how to learn, might fail at that point having no concept of the work it takes to succeed. I was "lucky" to reach my natural limit early enough that I knew I had to work hard. My sister, who had an easier time in school and far surpassed me in grades, didn't go so far. The "natural limit" of ability (whatever that is) hit her harder.

+1, especially for "Don't try to excuse yourself from the need for hard work to understand deep things."

Basically like anyone else, some references I tend to refer to (and used myself to improve how I learn) are:

Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning  - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18770267-make-it-stick
Learning How To Learn (Online Course) - https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn

The online course is offered for free and based on the material of the book, though I as a warning, it that it is designed for schoolkids as well and so the lectures may come across as childish. However the material they cover is still useful for improving the speed and depth with which you can obtain knowledge.
A couple of other points:

Regarding IQs, I remember coming across a study (can't remember where) which states that IQ is only correlated with job performance upto around 120 (a couple of jobs, such as theoretical physics and some mathematics see a correlation going upto 140, though note this was only theoretical physics). Beyond that other skills tended to dominate, e.g. emotional intelligence, networking, drive to perform.

Keep in mind IQ only refers to how quickly a person can in theory learn something, it doesn't say how much they will know. If you are an expert in something and we are talking about your area of expertise, you will be the expert regardless of how high my IQ is. All a high IQ means is that if we were both starting from the same background knowledge I would be able to reach your level of expertise quicker than you would. But I would still need to decide that I need to become an expert rather than simply deferring to you (there is such a thing as opportunity cost).

To back up Buffy's statement about coasting on natural ability, having a high IQ myself there was a lot of effort put into making sure I didn't think I'd just be able to rely on my natural ability but should have to learn how to study. There is such a thing as a growth mindset and average IQ plus growth mindset will probably be able to do more than a high IQ and fixed ability mindset, even if it might take longer to reach that point. I still need to remind myself every now (particularly if life is happening) and then to engage in focused learning rather then just falling back on my abilities and what I already know.

As suggested by the previous point on IQ only being useful upto a point, having a drive to contribute or interest in nature is something I'd say professors keep an eye out for, not just raw intelligence.

If you are still worried "My lack of intelligence means I don't have the mental resources to understand this topic", think of it another way. Those people with high IQ can just throw mental resources at a problem until they understand it, if you have to come up with a smarter way to think about something so that you "fit it into your mental capacity" then you have a drive to come up with simpler ways to understand a topic which the high IQ people do not. This can be an incredibly valuable contribution, and is something the high IQ people may also find quite useful themselves.

PS: Rote memorisation should never be your go to, its only useful when trying to deeply understand a more advanced topic than what you're memorising, but you should understand the less advanced topic first.

do you believe iq would ever be a barrier to what someone can learn, or would it always be a rate?


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How to use a transcript with wrong course names in my application
The transcript for my last year of master's contains severe errors in course names. I will need it fixed if I want to apply to PhD programs, otherwise my chances would diminish.

The master program's director confirmed the error and gave me the correct course names.
The dean of computer science agreed that it's an error and asked the registrar to issue a fixed version.
The registrar refused to fix it, because it's been "administratively validated". The dean apparently can't order them to change their minds.

As a result, the dean of CS wants me to send them a fixed version so they can validate it and add the department's official stamp.
I would like to know how to go about writing this, so that the departments I will apply to don't think I'm sending them a fake. The dean will retire soon, so they won't be in their position if a school wants to contact them to confirm that the fixed transcript is valid.
I don't have the model the registrar uses for the transcripts. I could re-write a different document in Microsoft Word, or scan the existing one and digitally alter it. Both will probably look dodgy to someone who can see the other years' transcripts.
There is no web service for other schools to verify the transcripts. I'm the only student asking for this, as far as I'm aware.
What is the best way to write this document and attach it to my applications to avoid suspicions and delays?

This is odd. What country is this in and where do you hope to apply?

It's France. I haven't decided where to apply yet, but probably in several EU countries, and maybe the US too.

And yes, I'm aware that this is an odd situation. The registrar at my school is often unhelpful and this master has had huge administrative issues for several years. I think the dean and program director know this and are trying to help, but they can't do much more than this.

Can you give an example of an incorrectly translated course name, along with the "fixed" ones? Is it bad enough to actually confuse anyone?

@WolfgangBangerth Several courses that are central to my degree go from "exactly the field I'm applying in" to "a completely unrelated area of computer science". It's bad enough to confuse someone.

Is the error in the English translations of the course names?

@orna Can you give actual examples?

@FedericoPoloni No, it's just a totally different name. As I understood, the profs re-used a "slot" used by an older course, but somehow didn't manage to change their name, so a machine learning course becomes a virtual reality one (but has nothing to do with VR and everything to do with ML), etc.

Oh wow. What a disaster. I'd be deeply embarrassed as the dean.

@FedericoPoloni This was two years ago. The current year's transcript still has the same error. :)

You want to avoid any suggestion of impropriety. Find a way to send them a packet of documentation including the official transcript and the communication stream with the various administrators.
But don't try to pass off an unofficial document as an official one. They might be confused a bit but these sorts of things can happen.
You may want the administrators (director and dean) to provide you an electronic version of a signed document. Something like a pdf that you can pass on. Make sure that it includes contact information such as email addresses so that anyone can confirm what is going on.
This is a bit harder with online submissions, I know, so you may need to find a way to supplement that.

Separately, if your university has a student ombuds or similar (quasi-legal process) you might want to file a complaint against the registrar for improper behavior: putting their own procedures in place to the detriment of students. Or simple incompetence.


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Last Course needed to graduate suddenly not being offered
I’m a master's student with soon to be 32 credit hours of the 36 needed to graduate.
My university is suddenly not offering one of the last two courses I need to graduate. It was supposed to offered in Fall 2022 but it’s instead going to be offered in Fall 2023.
At least five of us are set to graduate in Fall 2022 but can't without this class.  In my bioinformatics program, the required courses can be few and far between in terms of finding similar courses at different universities, thanks to the extra subjects included in my university’s version of most courses.
I talked to the dean, who spoke with the head of the department, and they’re telling me to speak with my advisor, but they know less than other people I’ve spoken with.
Are universities allowed to delay our graduation for a full year like this? It’s very frustrating. What options do I have for a timely graduation?

After your edit the question is more appropriate, but is still in the "needs more focus" category.

Are you sure this isn't just a course that's only offered every two years? In that case they probably should have alerted you but then it would have been your responsibility to take it last year.

Chelsea, sorry to hear about this. I'm sure it's frustrating for you, but I edited the tone of your post down a little as I fear it's part of the reason it's attracting close and down votes (I think it's a perfectly clear, on-topic question). I hope you're able to work something out.

Since you've already talked to the dean and head of department, keep following up with them. The dean, at least, probably has the power to make exceptions, but wants your advisor involved. Maybe a four way conversation is needed. But substituting another course is a common solution.
Another option that is open in some places is to do an independent study with some professor on a "relevant" topic, perhaps not the one that isn't being offered. A small research project with a professor might be especially valuable. But the dean, most likely, needs to sign off on it.
If there are five or so of you, then you might get together and propose a substitute that will advance your careers. Again, talk to the people with authority, including your advisor(s).
I doubt they will make you wait a year. They want happy graduates.

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To expand somewhat on @Buffy's very good answer, I will say that every year there are things like this that happen. Unless you somehow got out of sync with a cohort-based program (which it doesn't sound like you did) you should continue to work with your advisor, chair and Dean to come up with a way to get the credits.  Some suggestions are:

Tutorial for the 5 of you. (I'm in the US and my institution has a
way of calculating faculty hours for this.)
Substitute another course in your program.
Substitute a course in another department that has some overlapping content. For example, maybe if it is a project management class that could be done in the business program.
Potentially do a course
at another institution. You don't say where you are located, but you
could look at relatively near by institutions. In the US often there are relationships between institutions that simplify this. Also with the
expansion of online programs you might be able to do an online course
in a different program.

The main thing is that, without being a pain, keep working on it and coming up with ideas. Ask other faculty for ideas too, including whoever normally teaches that course. Time to graduation is actually an important outcome measure for all programs and delaying a year also has an impact on your short term earnings.

Very nice answer, +1. Although, I wouldn't worry about being a pain -- keep complaining until there's a solution. The cost is not just short term earnings lost but potentially more student debt that would be accumulated.

Really, don't be a pain is important.  Don't email every day, don't whine.  Go in with a collaborative approach.  All of these people deal with student issues every day, believe me there are real disadvantages to being someone who people see as a headache.

Yeah I probably should have clarified. I agree, emailing every day or whining is bad, and framing it as working with the administration is best. But also, don't worry about being assertive and advocating for yourself. There should be a solution for this that can be found.

+1 for 'Potentially do a course at another institution', I've done this. a few hoops to jump through to justify it but it's definitely a thing, and the OP's reason is perfectly valid, especially since she isn't the only one.


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Likeliness of getting University posts outside India when you started doing PhD at 35 in Mathematics
I need to tell you somewhat about myself first so that you people can better understand my situation. I did intermediate in 2005, then I did nothing until 2018 (bipolar disorder), but I recovered and started a BSc in 2019.
I did my "distance learning" BSc from IGNOU (very reputed in India for distance learning). I passed my BSc in 2022, and I got selected for MSc cum PhD programme in elite "Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India in 2022.
Now, my age is 35 at time of entering in the Institute.
My professors say you wouldn't be able to hold any academic position in India even after your PhD.
So I want to ask you all is there some hope outside India as carrier opportunities in Mathematics? I am very worried even after getting selected in the research institute. Please help me if you think you can by suggesting or guiding me for my carrier.

Getting an academic job in mathematics in the US/UK/EU is very difficult regardless of age.

I hope you take this helpfully, but I just tidied up your post, and your English is far from being ready to teach in an English-speaking country. It would be helpful to tag what countries you'd be interested in moving to.

The binding factor won't be your age or where you studied. If you have done good work in your doctorate then you are competitive.
However, in many places, the academic market isn't very good at the present time and many people are having trouble getting a permanent position. Many do post-docs and hope to move to a permanent position. There is a lot of competition.
But, you won't know for sure until you make some applications. Make a broad search, not only in top institutions. For the US, note that there are many (many) teaching institutions that need good mathematics instruction, but require little research. Also note that in the US, letters of recordation are very important compared to other places.
In any application stress your accomplishments and your likelihood of future success, not the things that held you back initially. Try to make the same true in any letters of recommendation.
Note also that much of the competition will be from people who studied in the country they are applying for. That can make it hard for any international student unless a place is actively looking to diversify faculty.

Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, someone who has never studied nor taught in the US has zero chance of getting a teaching-oriented permanent position (in the US) and very little chance of getting a teaching-oriented temporary position.


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What are the benefits of having a rank based cut-off over a marks based cut-off in entrance exams (if any)?
There are usually two types of cut-offs in entrance exams that decide who will and who won't be able to attend the particular institution.
They are :

Rank based
Marks based

In a rank based cut-off system, students with a rank above a specified rank can attend the institution.
In a marks based cut-off system, students who obtain marks above a particular mark can attend the institution.
In my opinion, a marks based cut-off is a much better system since it focuses more on learning, rather than competition.
I also believe that in a rank based system, the focus slowly shifts from learning to being above others. Students start focusing less on actually trying to understand what they need to understand to master a certain topic and more on what constitutes an exam. There comes a point where they no longer make use of their own brain, no longer explore what they're taught and just do what's required to be done for them to clear an exam (say). This is basically what the education system is at most of the places in the world.
Marks based systems are converting to rank based systems at a dramatically high rate.
What would be the benefits of a rank based system over a marks based system (if any)?

I edit your question to make it suitable for graduate school admission by add "graduate admission" tag and replace Children by Students. I believe you are asking both college and graduate school entrance exams. However, we do not deal with undergraduate level admission, only graduate school levels..

i suggest you remove parts heavy on "In my opinion" as it invites further opinions. Unless you have personal experience or hard data to support your opinion

Related: How is grading by curve fair at all? Are there any arguments in favor of it?

When knowledge is measured by an exam, some students will naturally focus more on learning "how to do the exam" instead of the actual content. Others will be more interested by the content. In my opinion, whether the cut-off is rank-based or mark-based has little effect on this. For example, cut-offs for English language exams such as TOEFL are always mark-based, but most exam takers will be happy to practice using old exams. The best way to get students to "learn the content instead of the exam" is to design good exams that can only be passed if one knows the content well.
That aside, the following advantages of each type of cut-off come to mind:
 Rank-based cut-off
The most obvious advantage of rank-based cut-offs is that the number of students who pass the cut-off is fixed. If this is an entrance exam to some program for which there are limited seats, rank-based is the easiest way to go. It becomes easier to plan resources.
Another advantage of rank-based cut-offs is that they are less dependent on the fluctuations in the difficulty of each year's exam. The exam designers do not have to worry so much about making it "equally difficult" to previous years, because the N best students will pass anyway.
Mark-based cut-off
As you said, the main advantage of mark-based cut-off is that it actually evaluates how well the student knows the content, independently of what their peers know. It is less about competition (which may be good or bad, but that is not the question here) and more about actual knowledge. If the two "logistic" problems discussed above are mitigated (i.e., if the number of seats is unlimited and exams can be designed to be equally difficult every year), then mark-based cut-offs are probably a fairer evaluation of students' skills.

With regards to planning there is also the opposite direction. Having too few students will get you into trouble with regards to funding, either directly through lack of tuition or student dependent funding or indirectly, because some funding agency will rightfully complain about paying to much per actual student.

Well written! About the fluctuating exam difficulty, I think that changing the cut-off mark every year would pretty much solve it. Some experienced person/committee can decide the mark.

'The best way to get students to "learn the content instead of the exam" is to design good exams that can only be passed if one knows the content well.' - very well written. Still, it should be noted that even in that situation, "most exam takers will be happy to practice using old exams", for two reasons: 1) The described well-designed exams are simply a good way to practice one's knowledge independently of the exam, and 2) by at least looking at the old exams, students can find out that they can indeed focus on the content this time without also learning some quirks of the particular exam.

@RajdeepSindhu If you change the cut-off each year based on general performance, don't you effectively end up with a rank based system? The standard is again set by your peers then.

@O.R.Mapper of course, there is no denying that exams are a stressful situation with limited time, and most students will want to practice using old exams to train for that particular situation. Still, my main point is that this will not be changed much by whether cut-offs are mark-based or rank-based.

Interesting: "the main advantage of mark-based cut-off is that it actually evaluates how well the student knows the content, independently of what their peers know". My initial thoughts were the exact opposite, ie that a disadvantage of mark-based is that it does not tell you how much the candidate/s know, but rather how good they were at this exam. During my undergraduate, we were always marked relatively, the argument being that the students' quality should be more stable year-to-year than the difficult of the exam. I am at an institution which thinks a lot of itself, though...

@SamT It means if you manage to find a better way to teach the students, they won't feel like it helped them.

@user253751 I'm at a university which has been around for hundreds of years. You'll have to explain this concept of "finding a better way [and changing to it]" to me ;-) -- more seriously, yes, you are right. However, it seems far more likely that the exam will be easier/harder from year to year. Of course, if you only have a few entrants (the exams to which I am referring have ~200 students), then this type of "law of large numbers" doesn't really apply

I suspect the primary reason that rank based metrics are used is that a (graduate) school has capacity to take a limited number of people every year. For example, my department has funding to take 6 PhD students a year. Even with Master's students, we only have the staff and lab space to take around 40.
Of course ranking people on an exam and taking the top 6 students would be a terrible way to decide who gets in and who doesn't, and even where exams are used (we don't use exams), they should only be a part of the picture, so that somewhat removes that advantage.

Well said! By the way, what does we don't use exams mean?

We don't have entrance exams, or use standardized test scores for admitting people to our degrees. (We do have exams at the end of our courses, and we will take into account the grade you got in your previous degrees).

I didn't know those types of admissions happen. Thanks for letting me know.

@RajdeepSindhu - All of the smaller, wealthier universities in the US use holistic admissions - you submit test scores, essays, high school grades, and various other pieces of information, and a committee reads all of it and decides who to admit based on their impressions of the applicants.

@AlexanderWoo I actually find entrance exams a much better option, since they're focused on the subjects that the student will pursue further in the university

@RajdeepSindhu: Harvard's mission is to prepare future leaders of society, not for students to learn facts.

If someone wants to pursue, say, Mathematics at a Harvard, would Harvard ask for high school scores related to all subjects (it's what I assumed) or just Mathematics? If it's the latter, I'm good with it but I still feel the need to test students on the basis of some exam. If the exam features questions that only the students with a better understanding are able to solve, it's better (in my opinion). Also, I strongly believe that facts are meant to be understood, not learned.

At Harvard you are not admitted to study a certain subject, rather you choose your major until your sophomore year. Thus it would be impossible to only judge using the subject the student intended to study, as the university does not know what that is.

I am from the UK, and I should be clear that when I said we don't entrance exams or stanardized exam scores, I meant at the graduate level. At the undergrad level, we do use the test results in the public exams that almost all British 18-year olds bound for university sit at 18 - 16 year olds choose 3 or 4 subjects to study until 18, and then all the national exam in that subject at 18. E.g. our Biology degrees require two As and a B, one of which must be chemistry. At Cambridge you must get A* in all subjects, but that is insufficient and must undergo further "wholistic" selection.

I agree with you that a marks based system promotes learning more and also in a cooperative manner.
I can think of one advantage of a rank based system though. A rank based system can normalize an exam otherwise too hard for anyone to get to a certain mark. An example of this could be a qualifying exam in a graduate school. Suppose a scenario in which there are few questions in an exam with the majority being very difficult questions by mistake (let’s say that year a new professor made the questions). If the school had a mark based system, it could be possible that most people cannot pass the exam due to questions being too hard. In that case, a rank based system would be better, since it would at least acknowledge the toughness of the situation and somehow provide an opportunity to pass the maximum number of students without being unfair.

Note that even with a mark based system you can adjust the grading scheme should it become obvious that some questions are too easy or too difficult. Put to the extreme a mark based scheme can effectively become rank-based (if you always without questioning adjust the grading to fit a fixed passing percentage).

I can give a perspective of this from the lens of a country which does have a Rank based entrance, India with a specific focus on an exam named JEE. Firstly, the thing to understand is that there is not enough seats in colleges to go around.
To put in perspective, in a usual year about 900,000 people write this exam. The actual amount of seat in the college which have the most funding are about 30k-40k. Now, the actual seats of those college which leads to having a higher chance of employability is even less. You may say, why on earth did I bring up employment statistic? That is because the main focus of many Asian countries is employability. You can clearly see this when you see that only those with highest rank can get in those employable fields.

Marks based systems are converting to rank based systems at a dramatically high rate.

This is exclusive to India actually. If you see other part of world, they are starting to move away from test scores to seeing what a person actually does as criteria for admission. 1 , 2

One more point: A mark based criteria would mean, if one is competent enough then they can participate. A rank based means, just competition for sake of it. If we were a society were resource were in abundance and things could be spared, it is a no brainer to take the first option. But, we are not, and that's why it's the second.
In the particular case of India, there will be more and more people writing entrance exams per year till it dips again due to the dipping birth rates now. So, yeah.

That summarizes it well. I'm from India too, a JEE "aspirant" actually, not a fan of it lol.


text:
How should one select his or her citations when writing a thesis in STEM?
I have looked over the master and PhD thesis of several past colleagues, and it seems that their thesis section are all very organized and does not deviate too much from the standard literature. In fact, I was not at all surprised by their selection and could recognize most of them (if their work was similar to mine). One of my colleague's citation mostly contained widely cited papers from well known conferences.
However, I work in the very multidiscipinary field of "theoretical mathematical biology for engineering applications in computer science related fields". So I need results from a wide range of topics.
I have found that I need to cite obscure math references in order to prove my result. On Google, some of these papers have no or 1 citation. This sharply contrasts with the selection of citation from my previous colleague, which makes me a little nervous. I'm sure these mathematicians are famous in their field, but should I keep on digging until I find the (similar) result in a well known textbook?
Further, the text in this area is extremely abundant but no single source contain all the results. This means I have to continuously cite textbooks despite already citing prominent ones such as Winfree's "Geometry of Biological time".
All in all I will probably have over 80 citations. Is this too much?
There seems to be no guideline or rule to selecting citations. Can people working in engineering, physics, and math provide some insights on how to select/filter the list of citations for a master or PhD thesis?

I'd say you're overthinking this.  Cite the sources that are important or relevant to your work.  Nobody cares how many that turns out to be.

Did you use them? Are they helpful? Do you delegate information to them that you do not want to mention in the thesis itself? Having few citations is not a reason not to quote a paper. In fact, what does it matter. Some people are unlucky to not have a very visible publication record, while doing good work.

If part of the issue is that you're stretching into fields where neither you nor your advisor have much familiarity with the literature, you might want to sit down with one or more of your institution's subject librarians. They're likely to have a good grasp on some of the interdisciplinary research issues.

The general answer to all your questions is to ask your thesis advisor. (S)he will definitely be able to tell you what the customs for theses in your field, and in your university, are.
That being said, I had the impression that you may have some misconceptions about why, and how, we use citations in academic texts. Specifically, you claim that:

There seems to be no guideline or rule to selecting citations.

I would argue that this is because one does not "select" citations as such. Rather, the literature that your thesis cites should emerge from the text you are writing. You build a scientific argument and then, at the appropriate points in the text, refer back the original text whenever you use a pre-existing piece of knowledge. Sometimes this pre-existing knowledge may be standard enough that a textbook is a good source, but it is not uncommon that you will need to refer to original research papers.
If those papers have been cited often or rarely so far is not the right question to ask. Instead, if your argument requires that X is true, you find the original paper that proves X. You don't cite a different paper that also somehow uses X because it is more often cited. If you are not aware of any research that actually showed X, you have a different problem - why can you reliably assume X to be the case in your thesis anyway? Your current approach of writing down results and then worrying about what to cite for them seems a little backwards to me.

All in all I will probably have over 80 citations. Is this too much?

"How many references should I have?" is really the wrong question to ask. You use as many as you need. That being said, if you have very few citations of previous work in a thesis it is usually a bit worrying, as a lack of citations often indicates that a student is not aware of the scientific state of the art or, even worse, of good citation practices. Conversely, citing many previous works is not usually a problem for theses. Of course some upper bounds exist in practice, but 80 citations seems nowhere close to excessive even for a master's thesis. Note that mathematical texts tend to have fewer citations than other STEM fields, so this may have biased your expectations when looking through the literature.

"Your current approach of writing down results and then worrying about what to cite for them seems a little backwards to me." - for what it's worth, in some fields "close to practice", this is somewhat common. A certain part of the information one builds upon comes from one's experience with practically used products. And even though certain features might be common or at least present in one or more of these products, it can be hard to find any written proof for that, let alone in a scientific text.

@O.R.Mapper I conduct research in software engineering, I know what you mean. However, I still think it's an anti-pattern that we should discourage students from using.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
Colleague Plagiarizes Entire Course Content
I am sharing a course with a colleague, the share is 50-50. I do my part, she does her part.
However, I noticed that for her part, the entire structure of the course, from the slides to notes and exercises, has been taken from some particular open tutorials that can be found on the internet. My colleague has simply copy-pasted the material, and no changes have been made to it.
That is not necessarily a huge issue, but my colleague is using her name on the materials distributed (implying she wrote everything). At no point does she have a reference to the original source of the material.
Now, this makes me very uncomfortable. We teach our students that using someone else's work as your own is plagiarism which is academic fraud. The examinations committee at my department is punishing students for failing to cite a Wikipedia article in their submitted answer. Clearly what my colleague does is sending the wrong signal to the students, to say the least.
My question is: how to handle it? Remember that I am responsible for half of the course, and personally I do not want to be associated with a "cheating" colleague.

Ignore it. Everyone does it and no one is expected to develop their own materials. This option is the least comfortable for me as I have put a lot of thought and effort on my part of the course, only for my colleague to come and do a very low effort job, without giving credit where credit is due (i.g., the entire set of materials that she has uploaded).
Talk to the colleague. I do not like confrontations, and they may very well reply with "mind my own business". I may also to be labeled as "that guy".
Talk to the program director/coordinator. This might result in the same issues as the previous point. Also, in that case the situation might escalate, which I also do not want.
Any other suggestions?

You may also argue that I am unreasonable to be bothered, fair enough, but I know how I feel, and when I saw the material my reaction was that I couldn't believe what I was looking at. After some days have passed, my uneasiness hasn't decreased (on the contrary). At the end of the day I feel very uncomfortable and I do not know what the appropriate course of action is.
I am talking about the Netherlands, for what it's worth.

My sympathies... something extremely gentle... ?

Various textbooks used to provide slides to teach from.

@JonCuster I am not talking about a textbook, I thought that's obvious

The point of open tutorials is to provide material to teach. Many teachers borrow widely to find good stuff. Sure, they should say where it comes from. So tell them that.

In another comment you say the colleague is a nasty one (how else to describe the behavior?). The colleague did not yet fully blossom their manipulative behavior, but from personal experience I can guarantee they will. Please remember that in general for progrma directors/coordinators you TAs are just expendible workforce, as soon as your contracts expire the problem will automatically solve, so it is likely they will do nothing.
Although I would be happy to be proven contrary, you are doomed, I see no solution apart from "listen to yourself, vent publicly about the colleague".

Your colleague runs the risk that a student might independently discover the materials that she has taken from the internet and used under her own name. If you do nothing, you share that risk.

@Wastrel Indeed. This is one of the reasons that this whole story makes me uncomfortable. I am coordinator (with her) of the course, and under no circumstances I would like to be associated with such blatant case of plagiarism.

Not worthy to be posted as an answer: Just notify your university ethics department or your department head.  Your university undoubtedly has "whistleblower protection" so, as far as your colleague knows the whistleblower is a student, faculty member, etc.  If someone engages in blatantly unethical behavior then they do not deserve boot licking; notify a university official and allow that person to make the determination as to whether a line was crossed.

@tnknepp We agree. That person, at least as a first step, might be the program director because he has proven to be trustworthy. And I agree that this shouldn't let it be, I really hate free-riders

Does your university assert ownership over material of this kind created by its staff? (Some do, some don't.) If so, then what she's doing is not only plagiarism, but also a kind of fraud perpetrated against the university: they are paying her to create an asset for them (intellectual property) but in fact what she's "selling" them is something they won't legally own. Depending on their values, this might be a more persuasive angle than the fact that she's ripping off some stranger who'd already open-sourced the material.

A good strategy to address your concerns without risking offense might be to take the collaborative angle, since you are both working together on the same course. Instead of directly expressing your concerns about improperly referncing or copy-pasting materials, you could exploit the leverage you have as a collaborator. For referencing, for instance, you could propose something like
"I think it would be useful if we provided the students with a reference list next year, so that interested students can follow up on material not covered in the course. I have already prepared a small list. Any other references I should add?" - Then you present a list of your references that includes the source from which your colleague drew her material.
Alternatively, if you would like her to adjust her content, too:
"I think the course went well this year! Looking ahead to next year, I had some ideas on how to better align our materials. For instance, I would like to anticipate the material you cover in lecture X during my lecture on Y, and you could call back to that with a small slide to really emphasize that connection." - That way, you encourage your colleague to adapt the material without directly calling her out.

I like this sleight of hand method. Entirely dodging the confrontation part without offending anyone.

This approach would be appropriate if the offense was one of omission.  For example, copying 10 slides from the middle of a 90 slide deck, which did not have attribution, and failing to add it/copy the intro slide (which was not contiguous) that bore the original authorship.  However, OP's comments indicate that the offender has been removing attribution that already did exist.  That's deliberate.

I don't at all agree with this answer. Expecting someone to understand what we want to communicate while refusing to actually communicate it is passive-aggressive. Trying to avoid someone taking offense is a laudable goal, but it doesn't outweigh the more serious concerns you've described.

@Greg Martin. I agree that direct communication is the simplest way to resolve (or escalate) the situation. However, OP has indicated that they are uncomfortable with this, so unless they came for emotional support, I wanted to suggest an alternative. A more indirect approach gives the colleague the chance to recognize their mistakes without cornering them, which would be a certain recipe for the situation to turn sour. The goal here isn't aggression but peace. It subtlety didn't work, no bridges have been burned. Then you can still be direct, knowing you tried extending an olive branch first.

Talk to your colleague. Not doing anything is ethically dubious, while talking to a superior escalates the issue. Besides, broadly speaking, when there's a dispute it's preferable to first talk to the other party and see if you can resolve it before calling in the big guns (see e.g. how courts prefer parties settle out of court before escalating to a lawsuit).
Of course, when talking to your colleague, don't start with accusations or assertive statements like "you shouldn't do this". Instead, mention the issue and say you are concerned, and see how she responds. For example, begin with "does it trouble you that ..." and see what she says.
Who knows, you might discover that she is the originator of the materials, and the person who uploaded them to those websites.

_Who knows, you might discover that she is the originator of the materials, and the person who uploaded them to those websites." Yeah, no.  These notes are from another researcher's Github. She copy pasted because she wanted to remove his name from each slide/note. I think that in principle your (and similar) advice is the soundest. However, my concern lies on the character of the colleague, she is defensive, and aloof, and she will 100% take things the ``wrong'' way.

@PsySp - It could well be that this other researcher gave her permission to do this. Seems unlikely, but remember the principle of charity.

@ScottishTapWater Good point. Highly unlikely, but good point nevertheless.

I am not sure so sure, @ScottishTapWater: Permission would address the copyright issues, but not the plagiarism.

Could you contact the presumed source of the material yourself via github to ask if they have either ever given permission for, or are unconcerned by, unattributed use? As for the response you expect from your colleague, you are setting yourself up for more trouble down the road if you let such responses deter you from looking after your own interest, which, as you know, is also at risk here.

The GitHub repo must have a license or your colleague's actions are not only plagiarism but also copyright infringement. If there is a license, it includes a clause on any requirements for attribution. Almost all open-source licenses do require some attribution; unless the author has made these documents public domain, your colleague is almost certainly infringing the license.

@PsySp Something invaluable I've learned; it doesn't matter too much what you say as long as you say it the right way; and by "the right way" I don't necessarily mean "using the right words", but more so "using the right tone" and "converying the right emotions": the trick to get defensive people to not "gut-react" to an accusation is to not appear as a threat, and to pretend to de-criminalize the act, a trick detectives often pull out when interrogating suspects. Put is as "it's not that big of a deal", "I'm mostly pointing it out for you so that you don't face consequences", etc.

@PsySp Does doing that make you ungenuine in that instance? Yes, kinda, but it'll force them to deal with the issue, without escalating the situation further, which is probably more important in this case.

I think I'd be more direct - not "does it trouble you.." rather "have you got permission to use this material... I understand the source in licensed and you're not attributing .. as required by the original license...". You're in a profession situation, I would expect colleagues to be called out for stuff like this.

@KevinCarlson License: CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Disclaimer: I was a graduate teaching assistant and now work in government, so my thoughts may not reflect your reality. I studied Organizational Economics and business and psychology before that; I'm currently a Presidential Management Fellow and receiving coaching and training on these sorts of issues.  Additionally, I worked in a Dean of Students Office at an SEC school for several years where I collaborated closely with academic leadership on student services and experience issues.

This sounds like a really good opportunity to approach either a curriculum consultant / instruction coach (many university libraries, undergraduate studies offices, or graduate schools have them) to review the course and offer recommendations on ways it could be improved. You could quietly share your concerns, perhaps from the angle that it may be less than fair to assess students on questions with answers readily available online (those who cheat will get prefect scores, but those who try to work through it won't).
If your institution doesn't offer that sort of support and you happen to be in the early stage of your career, it sounds like something a trusted mentor or senior member of the department may be able to assist with. It might be especially helpful if that individual serves on a curriculum committee or something similar.
If you're more senior than your colleague, it sounds like it's your responsibility to make clear what the norms are in your department. If their behavior is not acceptable and they refuse to redress it once it's brought to their attention, it's something to escalate and consider during their tenure / performance evaluations.
Finally, if the colleague is a peer in terms of seniority / rank and / or more senior, you either have to quietly wait for it to blow up or bring it to a senior leader's attention.
The solution here is all about power dynamics, and it can often be helpful to bring in a neutral third party whose role includes reviewing curriculum. Barring that, it's about what influence you have or can muster to address it. Ultimately, it's important to keep the students in mind. They're paying for a service, and they're not getting their money's worth from a course you're an instructor of. With declining enrollments pushing a lot of universities towards financial exigency, your career and the viability of your program will very likely depend on the experience your students have. You need to do what you can to make it a positive one.

I do not like confrontations, and they may very well reply with "mind my own business". I may also to be labeled as "that guy".

Your university may have (and probably has) an ethics contact where people can submit ethical concerns. You can submit anonymously and, provided that there is tangible evidence, it will be assessed.
This manages the "I do not like confrontations" part but opens two problems. The first one is

Also, in that case the situation might escalate, which I also do not want

It will.
The second problem is that you are both the authors of the course, so your part will be scrutinized as well. You will need to have good evidence of primary work.

I always suggest to people who have a problem with an ethical case (now in industry, but the core problem is the same) to either give it to me and I will put it on the table (for those who trust me to do it anonymously), or open a case anonymously without telling anybody else.
I can completely understand that someone is not ready for confrontation (not everyone is) but at the same time ethics are more or less bent (to the point of breaking sometimes).
This is to say - do not think of you as a coward for not waving the flag and taking the hits.

Agreed. Another problem is that I do not trust our ethics committee. Also, due to some shenanigans that I will not go into, my colleague is seen very favorably by our head of the department. If I open a case against her, there is a good chance that it will backfire against me. The only trustworthy person in my case might be the program director, a modest, sincere person. I may try talk in an unofficial way, without escalating. At any rate, I do not want to "leave it alone" but its complex to find the right course of action (it shouldn't be)

If I open a case against her, there is a good chance that it will backfire against me. Yes, that's why I mentioned the anonymous approach.

I'm sorry, but I started chuckling when I read about the trustworthiness of the ethics committee!  Sorry you are in that situation.

First, I think you are rightfully bothered at academic material not being referenced, as it is not proper practice, but you should also give your colleague the benefit of the doubt; maybe she ignores the relevance of properly referencing sources.
Second, why would talking to your colleague necessarily mean a confrontation? You can talk to your colleague without being confrontative; saying that you noticed her material is based on an online source and that it could be a good idea to share that reference with the students, both for their self-study and to adequately recognize the sources used for the course. Just letting it pass can be irresponsible asyou mentioned, and escalating it directly to a supervisor can negatively affect your relationship with your colleague and make you "that guy".

Thank you. 1) I cannot comprehend how any academic fails to see the relevance of proper citing. 2) she took some slides from the original source and handwritten them down as her own details supplementing the already plagiarized slides. Why would anyone do that without the clear intention of passing these details as their own?  3) she has a history of delegating tastes to other people. And knowing her she will get very defensive on the slightest criticism. Frankly I do not want to be involved with this colleague anymore

Finally, and probably I am petty, I do not want her to get away with it by simply adding a reference. Then, she will keep the low effort jobs without any consequences

It should certainly be properly referenced and acknowledged, but if it is good teaching material and the students are learning from it, is there any harm in your colleague taking a low effort approach? Is this really so different from using a published text book if a good one is available rather than writing your own text for the course? [Perhaps it is if the students are paying for original content?]

@Significance yes it is different: it is a specialized course. Of the myriads relevant topics, she has chosen the one that has full online videos, supplemented by slides, notes and excercises. She clearly chosen that because it's easier to her not because is better for the students.

How would you proceed further if the colleague says "Yes, good idea, I will consider it" and then nothing happens?

@lighthousekeeper That is one of the most probably outcomes. Knowing the colleague, and her consistent "aloof" behavior, she will most probably dismiss it, not necessarily unintentionally. On top of her unprofessionalism, I think that this might be a chance to find a way to break her detrimental habits, but I want to do it avoiding larger damage.

"1) I cannot comprehend how any academic fails to see the relevance of proper citing. "
Please split your expectations about reality from reality itself, otherwise you are bound to large suffering. Additionally, I sense an underlying bit of elitarianism "academics should be superior entities that knows well good and bad". Sorry to disappoint you, academics are humans, they may have an ego to satisfy (progress must be furthered, I will further the progress through my research) instead of the greed that drive many people, but ...

@EarlGrey I do not think that is elitarianism, or unreasonable expectations to expect from a tenured colleague to adhere to proper referencing of source material. But I do get your point. I think that is a combination of 1) her low-effort consistent behavior and 2) her need to show that she owns the material (scientifically speaking).

@PsySp You are obviously troubled by this behavior (this is obvious within the current comment thread) and you obviously feel very strongly that action must be taken but you are hesitant to take that action.  I am sorry to put it bluntly, but you must make a decision.  Either take action through the proper university channels or quit complaining (edit: that sounded mean, but it's not intended to be mean spirited.
I honestly see these as your 2 options).

@tnknepp Thanks. Indeed. I want to take action, I think this is clear. It is not exactly clear what the best action might be given the situation. The proper university channel might be an options but I have reasons to believe it might backfire.

@PsySp: There's always the news.  University presidents have been getting fired left and right for plagiarism recently.  If they aren't "too big to fail", neither is your co-lecturer.


text:
Advisor asks me to use plots that favor our approach, saying "the numbers in our paper don't matter; what matters is the message"
My advisor has been asking me to generate plots I am uncomfortable with, since they overestimate the success of our approach, or make the data seem less noisy than it is.  He says this is okay because the numbers in the paper don't matter as much as the high level message.  What should I do?
We haven't fabricated data per se but some of the analyses are sketchy. For example in one plot we are comparing our approach to a baseline, but due to lack of data, any point that our approach fails on will also register as a failure when we apply the baseline method to it, meaning our approach will always look better.
Due to lack of data, there's no obvious "alternative plot"; the alternative would be not generating any plot, or generating a plot that underestimates the success of our approach (which he says is just as bad as overestimating its success).  In some cases, our plot and another plot are equally defensible, but our plot looks a lot better so we kept it.

How were the data obtained?

It's unclear from the information you gave whether this constitute misconducts. In the first example it seems there is not much alternative, because of limitations in the data. The notion of look better is very ambiguous. Did you omit any data without reporting it? Did the plot procedure add to the data or picked an inappropriate scale to mislead the reader?

Standard definitions of scientific misconduct consider omission of conflicting data an instance of data falsification, see, for example, the guidelines as applied by the BMJ, or Gupta 2013 on fraud and misconduct:

Falsifying data means altering the existing records. It is the deliberate distortion or omission of undesired data or results.

If your advisor asks you to deliberately produce a figure that downplays undesired results, he or she is asking you to falsify your data.
So, what should you do?
Speak again to your advisor. Tell him or her that you don't feel comfortable with the suggested plot, and explain that you feel obliged to report the data faithfully, including weaknesses of the analysis and conflicting observations.
If your advisor insists on using the falsifying plot, you should consider choosing a different advisor, because the present one may not teach you proper scientific conduct.

I agree with Schmuddi, for the most part. However, if there is truly no 'alternative' plotting method (hard to believe) or way to represent your data (even harder to believe) and your advisor forces the issue then I think the best way to handle it is:

Point blank ask them, preferably in an email, what they are asking you to do. This keeps a paper trail down the road.
Make it extremely clear exactly what you did in the methods section.
Refuse to have your name on the paper as an author if it comes to it. Or if the journal you're submitting to has a section for it, list the advisor as the one who designed the experiments, wrote the paper, or whatever is appropriate. This will make it clear what your contribution was - and who is accountable for what.

Again, as Schmuddi said, have an honest discussion with your advisor. If your department has one ask the ombudsman what you should do.
Hope this helps. Good luck.

As far as I understood you aren't fabricating numbers,right?
I don't know which research field is yours, but when reporting on research results, it's necessary to discuss decisions of the experimental design that show how the results can be interpreted.
A useful framework for organizing this thinking is the collection of "validity" criteria: construct validity, internal validity, external validity, etc.
Maybe you just have to admit the limitations and describe what you did to minimize systematic errors.
Best,

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
marking scale between Egypt and the UK
How can I convert marks in the Egyptian scale to marks in the UK scale.
for example if I got a mark of 40 in Egypt what is the equivalent mark in the UK.

It's called rule of three: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-multiplication#Rule_of_Three

@PsySp: Are you sure that it's that easy? There's a whole page on Wikipedia dedicated to international grading systems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grading_systems_by_country. I'm pretty certain that you can't simply convert between all of them by applying the rule of three. For example, the German grading system uses the grades 1.0 (best), 1.3, 1.7, 2.0, 2.3, ... down to 5.0 (fail). Usually, in-between grades (e.g. 1.5) are not allowed. Most people treat the distance between (1.0 and 1.3) and (1.3 and 1.7) the same: as one subgrade unit. Can you model that by the rule of three?

@Schmuddi If both systems are modeled by a discrete scale with a discrete meaning, I do not see where is the problem.

@PsySp: German 1.0 corresponds to the 96-100 percent bracket, 1.3 to the 91-95 percent bracket, 1.7 to the 86-90 percent bracket, and so on. So, the German scale is increasing with decreasing percentages, and it is neither continuous nor are the steps equidistant.  Unless you have a mapping function, you cannot express this by the rule of three.

@Schmuddi It seems highly structured to me (96-100, 86-90 and so on) but I see your point and I agree.

According to Naric (the UK's national agency responsible for grade comparisons):

[Egyptian undergraduate] grading systems vary between institutions and even departments. The table below indicates the different systems in use and the relationship between them:
75-100     Distinguished / excellent / very good     A
65-74      Good                                      B
50-64      Pass                                      C
0-49       Fail/Weak                                 F

For a UK undegraduate degree, grading is almost always as follows
70-100     First Class
60-69      Second Class Upper Division (often written 2.1)
50-59      Second Class Lower Division (often written 2.2)
40-49      Third Class
0-39       Fail
Naric suggests the following equivalency:
First class = A or A-
Second Class Upper Division = B+ or B
Second Class Lower Division = B- or C+
Third Class = C


text:
Professors refusing to write recommendation letter due to change of field
I am a chemistry undergraduate student applying for master’s programs in electrical and computer engineering or computer science (ECE/CS). All my programming skills are self-taught so my professors have no idea about my program switch.
I’ve already contacted some professors and they are willing to give me the references. But once I said I am not applying for a chemistry degree but ECE/CS, two of my references said they cannot give me the reference for non-chemistry related programs since they know nothing about my programming skills. Those two references are who know me the most (IMO) and I think I performed well in their courses/projects.
What can I do? I cannot put too much workload on each professor if two of whom quit.

Is it possible the professors are politely refusing to provide a good reference beyond the basics? I've worked with several chemists-turned-programmers, most seemed to make the shift, it's not an enormous leap.

Coming back to this question; I think it's a little odd two professors have declined for the same reason. I wonder if there is an unstated reason

In my experience as a freelance software developer, I have seen again and again that many academics and science majors without a formal education in computer science are terrible programmers. They are often self-taught or only taught the bare minimum to squeeze numbers out of Matlab, R, or Python. The code they write is convoluted, inefficient, and almost impossible to read. It is completely inflexible and breaks if anything is changed. The CS department may want to be sure you don't fall into this category. You may need to overcome the negative connotation of "self-taught".

I've had physics professors write recommendations for teaching English. IMO I think it's most likely they don't know you that well, or like you enough to make the extra effort to write a custom recommendation. Usually professors will have a copy+paste recommendation plus a sentence or two, and in this case would likely have to work harder to help you out.

Is it usual where you are to get recommendation letters from professors that taught you undergrad courses? It's not where I am. Maybe from where you wrote your thesis, or did some work on the side.

I also wonder what overlap there is between chemistry and CS undergrad studies that warrants "skipping" the CS undergrad.

@smcs: from my studies (chemistry, 20 years ago, other continent) I'd say candidates for skipping (either in the way that their grades are directly accepted or in that they are e.g. allowed to try the exam without attending the course) would be basic physics, possibly also some basic maths. We also had to take a certain number of required courses in "unrelated subjects" and in foreign languages. Further candidates would be "small stuff" like short courses by the library (e.g. "how to work with publication data bases", "patent search"), research ethics, etc.

Your professors are in essence, trying to help. They think that their letters would not carry enough weight to help you. They may be thinking about if they'd admit a student from a different field whose letter-writers said nothing about their chemistry experience (and apparently deciding they would not). Professor's time is valuable, and they don't want to spend it writing a letter that they think would be useless.

But once I said I am not applying for a chemistry degree but ECE/CS 2 of my references said they cannot give me the reference for non-chemistry related programs since they know nothing about my programming skills.

I do not know whether you need letters that espouse your programming skills, but the solution is to:

Tell the professors that you have already got a letter-writer addressing your programming skills, and ask them to write about something more specific, like your research experience, or go-getting-ness (etc., etc.). You have a letter that explains why you'd be a good ECE/CS student, right?
Explain why that's not a concern, and then ask them to focus on something more specific.

If they still refuse, unfortunately, there is little you can do.

It is not for the referee to guess how much weight her/his reference letter will have.  The best a referee can do is advise the student that he or she does not think the letter will have much weight.

@Zero Well I would certainly agree that the professors in question should be more explicit about their reasonings, but no one is obliged to write a letter or rec, least of all for someone that only took a class with them. In effect, the profs think their letter would so worthless as to not be worth their time (which is valuable) to write. Therefore, it is up to OP to convince them their letter would be worthwhile.

I agree.  In fact, I tell any student who asks me for a letter of reference that he should make a list of bullet points that he wants said about himself, identify a mix of referees who can speak to each of them, and tell those referees what he's hoping they'll mention in their letters.

I'm retired now but I bluffed my way into several courses - including a Masters. Luckily I went on to get the qualifications.
If you got a first-class degree in anything, (apart perhaps from a so-called "soft" subject, I won't go into details), then this in itself is enough to indicate that that you are bright enough and determined enough to cope with studying at Masters level (IMHO).
My suggestion is that you pick one of these profs who know you the most and try an experiment.
Write your own reference, laying out your strengths, e.g. Works hard, capable of team work, but also capable of working alone, excellent attention to detail in the lab, etc, etc.  Make sure that you are truthful and realistic.
Now comes the experiment (let's face it you have nothing to lose)
Send the above reference to one of the profs who has refused. Ask if s/he would be willing to send it as one of your recommendations even though it says nothing about computing skills.  Ask them simply to redact or amend anything that is not true. This will save them a lot of work.
The professor can respond in a number of ways. Let's consider two.

They give you a straight "No". Then you are no worse off because they weren't going to anyway.

They say "Yes", then you have the opportunity to go ahead.  Make sure you do use the letter though or the prof will resent putting in even putting in the limited amount of work.

Note
There are Masters and Masters. Some are clearly designated as conversion courses. They are for experts in other fields who want to add new knowledge; These courses are rather like doing  a three-year first degree but in one year. This is tough but can be done - however you won't get too advanced - probably you'll only be able to reach graduate level in the subject.
Others are intended as an advance from a first degree in the same subject. In my opinion, unless you are a genius) you would be crazy to attempt this coming from a different subject. Computer science is not  about having written a few C programs or any other programming language. It is about understanding data structures (trees, stack, heap etc), search algorithms, graph traversal, computability theory, operating systems, machine architecture, etc. (Those are just the first that came to mind). Already being fluent in several different programming paradigms (OOP, Functional, Procedural, etc.) is taken for granted.
I think you should carefully read the prerequisites for the course and see if you believe you have them. Otherwise think again.

The OP is applying to an EECS program, not a CS  so it is likely their background is sufficient to the task.

@iheanyi: What makes you think that an EE masters would have less in the way of background requirements?

Ben Voigt, I would argue CS should have an even lower bar for entry than ECE as most CS classes are not as math intensive. And in fact most CS graduate programs accept people in related STEM fields.  Most undergrad CS programs are pretty bottom of the barrel in so far as requiring particularly difficult technical development.

This is disappointing but you may have dodged a bullet there.  It seems from the information you provide that this professor would have not gone much beyond the boilerplate stuff that admission officer can get from the transcript.
It is simple enough to state in the opening paragraph that the referee cannot comment on the ability of the candidate to perform in the proposed program but instead focus on what not in the transcript.
Indeed, the strongest reference letters are those that go beyond repeating what’s in the transcript, i.e. the discuss the work ethics, industry, collegiality of the candidate, etc.  If this professor is cannot do this, then it’s unlikely the reference letter would have been useful in the first place.

Yes you are right but thing is I can't apply for the graduate study without even a useless reference

looks like my initial comment was removed, ha. legenddaniel it's obvious the professors aren't interested in helping you. This has nothing to do with programming and reflects their personal issues. It's unfortunate you're dependent upon them for help.

Computer Science is more than just programming it also involves theory, logical arguments, and problem solving. If you can suggests to your professors to instead discuss you abilities as a good problem solver or abstract/mathematical thinker that should be something they can write about.

You need to gain relevant experience so that you can obtain relevant letters of recommendation.  This can be done by working in the software industry or conducting academic research that uses your programming skills.
Alternately, I would expect that some masters programs do not require letters of recommendation.  You can seek those out.