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Submitting a paper without your supervisor knowing, ask for help
I am stuck and I need your experience, ideas, and help.
Background story. I have a supervisor who is giving me critics and always lowers my confidence. For example, when last year I wrote a paper for a workshop by myself, he told me I suggest you not to submit because you will burn your name and this is horrible works, etc. He then said if you insist on sending it don't put my name!!! He also didn't allow me to apply for a doctoral symposium (the most prestigious one, he said you won't benefit).
After a year, I was really disappointed in my own work, he was on holiday, and I thought my work is valueless. He also criticizes me for not publishing anything.
My issue:
He was on sick leave, there was a conference, and I had some work that if not for this conference, it would be useless for anywhere else. The conference is a C level(computer science) but the only conference in this area of work and all important people in the community are there. I wrote a paper, and because I was really disappointed I submitted it to get some feedbacks. I mentioned my intention of sending the paper to him in an email, probably he didn't see anyway. As a result, he wasn't there and I submitted the paper, now it got a conditional acceptance. This is my first time writing a paper and I was new to the submission. The conference was double blind, and that was why I submitted it anyway. I didn't know where I should put his name or how to submit, I did it anyway.
Problem:
Now I am scared to tell him about the conditional acceptance. Should I tell him or just refuse from doing the revisions and acceptance? How can I include his name(I thought initially it would be in the camera ready version, but the email says it is just me as the author)? What should I do?
Instead of being happy for my first paper,  I am worried and close to nervous breakdown. What should I do? Please help me.

Tell him that you got the paper conditionally accepted. Send him the paper and ask if he would like for you to add him as an author, there is still room for that. Publish the paper one way or the other and congratulations on your first paper.

Can I add him as an author? It states in the email that the title and authors name or order are not changeable! Is it possible if I write an email to the chairs and say I made a mistake? I really didn't know about the system and I submitted five minutes before the deadline.

It's usually the case that you can change this things, especially if you made a mistake. Ask them. But you should not do his without his consent.

I had a student who did this.  Your supervisor sounded like me.  Like you, this student did not listen and submitted a paper to a dodgy conference because he/she thought it will prove me wrong or simply to get a boost in confidence.  I withdrew my name, and refused to provide any support.  End of the day, reputation is everything in academia.  There are many conferences and journals, and only a few really matters.

@prof. Santa Claus. So may I ask what do you suggest? Is it smart to withdraw and benefit only from the feedbacks and not even mention this? I don't intend to be disrespectful nor overconfident. I just want to learn. I didn't want to prove anything, I was just looking for some feedback on my work, which my supervisor himself states he has no expertise to provide. I can't see this result to be published anywhere else. but I really don't mind just learn from this experience either. About the conference, 55% acceptance rate, IEEE, and very specialized topic.

Best thing you can do is talk to him openly. Worst thing ever would be hiding anything from him.

If you wrote it on your own and got the c.a. on your own don't bother listing them if they weren't an author.  You go with your guts and if somebody else wants to judge you, remember that life is about confidence and reputation means nothing if you don't like the people that respect you.

@Sarah I would tell your supervisor.  He/she might agree to have his/her name included, depending on the conference and paper.  You might get a scolding, so what?   The next problem is then whether a conference allows a name to be added after acceptance; good conferences don't allow this because authors have been known to sell co-authorship.  I wouldn't withdraw either because you've just wasted reviewers' time; this is unethical.  That's why there is a no multiple submissions rule.  Lastly, 'IEEE' doesn't mean it's good.  55% acceptance is not so good.

Let's go through it one by one:

How can I include his name?

I think he has already made his viewpoint quite clear, when you quote "I suggest you not to submit because you will burn your name and this is horrible works, etc. He then said if you insist on sending it don't put my name"
So, please don't do it. Any academician would be horribly pissed off if he saw his name appear on a scientific article which he himself deems "horrible", or in more polite language, unworthy of having his name on the author list. You are assuming some malicious intentions on his part, but please try to understand that he may have some very valid reasons for saying what he said.
You are only starting out, and are yet to make a name for yourself, but presumably he already has made one. It is a well known fact in academia that respected researchers would prefer not publishing to publishing a mediocre work. That's because, ultimately in academia, a person is only as good as his work. An average work would be taken to mean that the person doing it also has average abilities.
The last thing he would want is to have his reputation being smothered by an overzealous student, who went ahead and presented something prematurely, and puts it across as done by me under Professor ABC. Because then, it won't be about you and you work, it would be about Prof. ABC deeming a premature work as publication-worthy, which he never agreed to!
Thus, in all seriousness, since you are actually going ahead with the publication, you should do that without your supervisor's name.

Now I am scared to tell him about the conditional acceptance. Should I tell him?

While you are not obligated to inform him, it is generally very bad etiquette to hold your supervisor in the dark about these things. Of course, revealing this will enrage him, of course you will draw flak. But that's still a better option than him discovering about this independently, or through other sources (he eventually will find out, one way or the other). And in that case, bridges will be burned completely. So, my advise would be, if you were courageous enough to actually go ahead and submit despite your supervisor telling you not to do so, you would burn lesser bridges by owning up the repercussions, rather than running away from it.
Having said that, be prepared to hear a response to the tune of I'm not going to participate in amending the manuscript now, please do it on your own. Which is completely reasonable. If it is helpful to think of it this way, you will also benefit from the confidence you will gain from making the changes yourself, and getting it published. So, better do it yourself.
Finally,

(Should I) just refuse from doing the revisions and acceptance?

That would be extremely unprofessional behavior and will decimate your reputation. While manuscripts can be withdrawn, what exactly will you say is your withdrawl reason?

"The results are erroneous", then they shouldn't have been submitted in the first place.
"We realized the flaws later", that will present you as a person who saw an opportunity to publish and jumped the gun, particularly true if you do it as a single author.
"I have some other commitments", that's again silly for a PhD student with the little commitments they have besides their work; you should have foreseen whether or not you would be able to attend the conference, and only then gone ahead with the submission.
"Emergency situation excuse", well I have no words how to respond to that, and most likely the conference people would also not have any.
"No excuse", that's extremely unprofessional.

So, my advice would be, own up the publication, and please do not even contemplate this option.

Thank you all for your answers . Here is what happened. I wrote to my supervisor about it and he called me in and he was in a great mood overall. But he also said he doesn't want his name in. Not angry at all! However, after he read the reviews, he said I can put his name and helped editing the final version.
The conference was a very focused one and a very good experience. I went to the conference and presented my paper. I received amazing reviews and comments for the paper and my work.
And about his name, I wrote and explained to the organizers and it was OK considering my supervisor's contributions especially in the final version.
Finally, after the paper, he is becoming more supportive in term of letting me work and noticing that the research idea seems to have some fans in the community.
So sometimes you get lucky and it ends up well AND not as a disaster. I learned a lot from your points and I agree that it was a mistake from my side. I just was very lucky this time and the paper has been invited for an extended version for a journal but I could have ruined my relationship with my supervisor forever. I am just happy it ended considerably well.

Do you think you should maybe give the answer points to one of the people who answered your question?

I think you really only have two options.
The first one is to leave away the name of your supervisor from the paper, pay for all the travel expenses (flight / transport, accommodation, conference fee) yourself, and make sure that the travel and preparation does not interfere with any other commitment at the University you might possibly have (e.g. tutoring). Be prepared though for your supervisor to be irritated (or worse) when he/she hears about this and for your relationship to hit a low. And if the conference is really shady then you will also have the repetitional damage (Santa Claus is right about stressing the importance of reputation).
The second one (my recommendation): talk to your supervisor and listen to him/her, even if that means that you withdraw the paper! Unless your relationship is already damaged beyond repair, you can normally assume that it is not your supervisors primary intention to put you down, but to help and support you -- after all he/she also has an own interest in making your PhD successful. Maybe your supervisor is right that your work is not yet mature enough to withstand scrutiny at a good conference, and has chosen to not sugarcoat this. Your conversation should not be about this paper, but generally about publication / work planning and perhaps also about mutual expectations around both your scientific work and the way you want to interact.

+1 (Talk to your supervisor and Listen to him) and suggestion to make the conversation about what makes work publishable, in general, and learning that. Don't be surprised, however, that at this point he will have no trust because you've already proved yourself untrustworthy and not very sensible - that this will spill over in that he likely won't trust anything thinking "what is this student hiding now in order to make the 'facts' fit her ideas"?


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Why does a university course become defunct?
What are some reasons that lead to a university course being no longer offered?
I am thinking in particular about the course "Computational sustainability" or CPSC 530M offered in University of British Columbia.
I am guessing the following could be the reasons, but I'm not sure:

Not enough students are interested in the course
The course spends too much money and earns too little
The subject matter is obsolete (e.g. Eugenics theory)

Sometimes students feel intimidated by authority and do not ask their department questions such as this one.  There is no reason not to ask!

My experience is that when a course seems to have disappeared, a not uncommon cause is that, for some reason, someone decided to change the name or the course number. The course itself is still there.

Ironic that a course on sustainability was not sustainable.

Some reasons we've eliminated courses in my department:

The professor who created the course is no longer at the college or is no longer interested in the material.
College-wide requirements have changed, and the course was created to meet a requirement (such as for interdisciplinary work).
As new courses are added, other courses have to be removed, unless the size of the faculty grows.

"The professor who created the course is no longer at the college"  Heh, reminds me when I tried taking a Game Development/Design course at my Community College.  College built a program around a certain professor, dedicated lab space, invested in what at the time were high end gaming machines, about 45 of them.  Right at the end the professor decided to go back to college herself to get another degree.

The professor who usually teaches the course is on a sabbatical or maternity leave or...

The first suggestion is probably one of the most important ones. Except for "basic topics" that should definitely be taught in a given field, the concrete selection of courses depends primarily on who is ready to provide expertise in which specific topics. I have even seen considerable shifts in focus in the aforementioned basic courses (e.g. introduction to programming in CS) depending on who taught them.

@skymningen that normally shouldn't cause a course to be stricken, as the professor can teach it upon return. It just means it won't be offered for a semester or two.

@guifa Where I am, the students would not know if that's the case. It just wouldn't appear in the syllabus, the next year syllabus not being visible yet.

My institution (a community college) has recently started a policy of rotating assignments on courses that previously were only taught by a single instructor. This was at least in part due to losing a number of such instructors (retirement, illness, transfer, etc) and then being unable to offer the courses. Some of these courses were key electives for transfer degrees (such courses as Fundamentals of Journalism, Critical Thinking for Philosophy, and Introduction to Debate) and losing them has narrowed student options considerably, which in turn caused other courses to become impacted.

Just to add one more possible reason:
At our department when one professor takes a Sabbatical his courses are usually not offered by the remaining professors.

The answers vary. Sometimes there's not demand, not enough registered people for the course, or no professor that can teach it. Courses may stay in the books (the catalog) but don't get offered. Perfect example, my department offers courses in applied probability and stochastic differential equations in the catalog, but it doesn't get taught.
As for your particular course, I'm not sure.

They also can vanish because of restructuring, either of its content, or because of the greater degree changes.
This happened a huge amount over my undergraduate degree,
as my university did a near complete overhaul, changing many 4 year bachelors degree's into 3 year bachelors + 2 year masters, and adding significant extra cross disciplinary requirements.
2 units may have there content reorganized into 1, or 3 units into 2 etc.
or  unit might be appear to be cancelled, but is actually being deffered as it's position in the course structure has changed.
For example, something might vanish for a few years, if it was originally a 2nd or 3rd year undergrad elective, but became a 5th year post-grad elective.
Which may result from its pre-requisites moving around.
In one of the cases where this happened to me, even the faculty concerned thought the unit was being cancelled for good -- possibly because of the huge mess communicating is, or possibly because it was infact cancelled, only to be brought back as a separate decision, after seeing how it would fit into the new structure.

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Resolving dependency on a senior colleague before deadline
(Disclaimer: While this question pertains to interpersonal issues in a working environment, I feel it is better suited to this SE than Workplace because of it being in the context of a lack of formal responsibility/hierarchy in an academic environment)
Background
The deadline for the camera-ready version of a publication and conference registration is in seven days; In order to finalize the publication, I need to specify information regarding licensing of the primary data (it is literally an HTML field which I have to fill out in order to submit the paper; It is not "just" some legal requirement).
I do not have the experience to decide what licensing is applicable to the type of data I need to license, the hosting setup for the data which will ultimately be in place, and the country/countries involved (I don't even know what countries would have jurisdiction). However, this would in theory not be a problem, because a tenured member of staff, who also said they would settle the issues regarding hosting, said they would "look into it". This person is otherwise not related to the publication or project.
Problem
The problem now is that I have been regularly asking the person who offered to deal with licensing issues about the status of the issue for two months now, with the frequency and seriousness of the contact increasing (first it was an occasional e-mail, then more e-mails, then physically finding said person and asking them in person). However, now I have almost no time left, and I still have no resolution to the issues described above.
I do not doubt the person's "trustworthiness" since they are a senior member of faculty in a small department and I know neither this department nor the person very well. Nevertheless, I cannot trust that this person will magically do what I asked of them one hour before the deadline because the stakes are too high. How can I resolve my dependency on this person before the hard deadline, i.e. how can I get them to do what they said they would do when I cannot do it myself and don't have time to find someone else who can? The person is neither my supervisor nor formally part of any project I am working on, so I have absolutely no way of formally resolving this.

Is this colleague an author on the paper? Currently it doesn't sound like they actually have any responsibility for the problem, having just offered to help. In that case you need to find someone else who can help you (eg the research support office at your institution).

There is no research support office. I have been trying to resolve this since July 2017.

@errantlinguist you missed the first part of the question : "Is this colleague an author on the paper"...

@SolarMike the answer is no

@errantlinguist Get in touch with the journal/conference/whatever. It seems to me this should have been sorted before you started gathering data, as part of the ethics approval process.

@JessicaB that has already been asked here. Also, "you should have done x" does nothing but make the addressee either angry or want to kill themselves.

@errantlinguist I didnt know you were a Phd student. This does not sound like the sort of position a student should be in. The obvious person to help you sort the problem is your supervisor.

@errantlinguist Also, note that I didn't say you should have done it, but that it should have been done. It sounds like the research environment you are in is not functioning well. While you have responsibility for your work, your institution also has responsibility for making sure you know what needs doing and that it gets done.

@JessicaB "your institution also has responsibility for making sure you know what needs doing and that it gets done" > lol, I don't know what university you work at, but do they have openings?

@errantlinguist Any in western Europe, the US, Canada, Australia, Israel would do. Probably other countries too, but I don't know details.

@JessicaB I am in one of those places you mentioned, so, no.

@errantlinguist Time to sell your story to the papers? A university that wants to maintain a good reputation but doesn't keep an eye on the research being done at it...

@JessicaB I'm pretty sure that the local news wouldn't care and the university wouldn't care either, considering that everyone tells me that this is par for the course. I think you have a very optimistic view of the world, which is why I wish I was where you are (judging by your responses, I reckon somewhere in the Anglosphere)

Perhaps the better course is to find out from the senior faculty who else might be able to help. Or who else might have faced a similar problem. Then find out what that person did in your situation.

Circumvent that person as a stop-gap. Specifically:

Fix a time shortly before the deadline when you are certain you'll be able to make the submission setting the information yourself.
Guesstimate to the best of your ability what the correct value for the licensing field should be - erring on the side of making data openly available (i.e. something like CC-BY-SA or public domain).
Regardless of how you communicate with the person who's supposed to take care of it - when the time comes, if s/he hasn't done it, you do it.

If that person gets upset after you've applied this stop-gap - you'll be able to argue that it was necessary so as not to miss the deadline, and that you're sorry but you had no choice. You can also say that if s/he believes somethinh else should have been put in, you both can always communicate the change to the organizers and say the original input was an error.
As for an effective way to "prod" this person, I can't suggest something particularly great without additional information, but:

You could talk to someone who's in close contact with him/her, and on speaking terms with you, and get them to try to apply their influence.
You could bring this up in a public forum where s/he is also participating, e.g. a group status meeting.
You could let him/her know about your stop gap in advance. That's a bit risky because they might object and you may end up having to directly disregard the objection.

Why the downvote?

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Are PhD supervisors responsible for informing students about legal issues pertaining to research?
After an extreme amount of effort, I am now in possession of a very large dataset of human experiments which is required for my research. However, after speaking with some of my colleagues about writing papers about it, I was told that I need to have had the IRB decide what level of consent is necessary and then had each participant sign the consent form specified by IRB... or else I can't distribute the data... to anyone (yes, I know this is country-specific, but most countries require at at least some legally-valid form of consent).
I hadn't thought about this because I was told by my supervisor to collect the data... and so I did. Now, after asking my supervisor about the ability to legally distribute the data, he agrees with my colleagues in that I need to have had them sign a consent form... but if he told me to collect the data, then methinks he could have been prudent enough to say "oh, and before you go persuade 50+ random people to participate in an experiment, don't forget to have them sign this form or else you can't share the data with anyone at all".
Are PhD supervisors responsible for telling their students about the legal requirements of their work? If not, is it expected that all "learning" done while a PhD student be from making horrible mistakes? Should I basically treat my supervisor not as a boss but as just some random person who might not actually know what I should do?

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

Good research practice (which I would argue is not country specific), requires an independent ethical review of any research that involves human subjects. A university can make blanket determinations that certain types of research do not require individual review (e.g., interviews).
It is generally considered academic/research misconduct to not have proper ethical review and follow the recommended guidelines. Failure to obtain informed consent, when necessary, definitely falls under research misconduct. In the US and UK, it is the responsibility of the supervisor to make sure that the proper procedures are being followed.
In your case, your supervisor should have told you to get informed consent. The problem, however, sounds way bigger then you just not being able to use the data. The problem could be as large as PhD students not being properly trained regarding human subject research and faculty not following good research practice.
You need to work this out with your supervisor quickly. It should eventually escalate to your department chair and the IRB/ethics board. Not getting informed consent, when needed, is a huge deal.

In many cases, even interviews or other similarly "low-risk" types of research are covered by IRB. The IRB might have a simplified review process (sometimes called "exempt" review) where they essentially say "Yep, we don't need to cover this further, go ahead" - but they still have to review the protocol. Just for an example, see the guidelines from UPenn: http://www.upenn.edu/IRB/sites/default/files/Is%20IRB%20Review%20Required.pdf

@BryanKrause yes, that is what I was trying to get at with blanket determinations. My university has a check list process. The first part separates out research from non-research with non-research not needing approval. The second part separates human subject from non-human subject with non-human subject research not needing approval (animal work is different). The third part identifies exempt human subject research which is self approved. The final question is basically are there any reasons this research needs to be examined by the IRB.

Yeah, I was just pointing out that in some institutions, the blanket determinations process is still done through IRB. My institution is like that, UPenn's seems to be, I looked at a third one and saw the same language too. Basically if it involves a person, and you interact with them personally (i.e., you aren't taking data from an already-anonymized database or similar source), even if it is only an electronic survey, sometimes you still need IRB to sign off on "this does not need further review from IRB."

Are PhD supervisors responsible for informing students about legal issues pertaining to research?

Yes, they definitely are. They're not called "supervisors" for nothing, after all. But - that does not mean the PhD candidates have no responsibility of their own; and the extent of that depends on the specifics of each situation.
Also - the fact they are responsible does not mean they won't try to shirk their responsibility, so it also depends on the advisor's quality of character.

Now for your specific case.
Did you get explicit oral consent from your human test subjects, and they were all aware of what you are doing and that the results go into research publications?

"No":  In this case, you are also responsible since you should have known better than not to ask their permission at least in some form. Actually, some would argue that you should have applied due diligence and had them agree in writing to participating in the experiment regardless of anything.
"Yes": In this case, your own responsibility is limited; however, that does not mean you'll get to actually publish even if you are not to blame.

At any rate, you need to convince the university to give you access to their lawyers, especially in light of your advisor's negligence and the fact that you were directly instructed by him to go collect the data. You should bring up the following points when talking to the lawyer(s):

Perhaps the kind of experiments you carried out can be excepted from the consent form requirement?
Can the data be anonymized so as to avoid the requirement?
Can statistics/aggregates be published without constituting breaking the legal requirement?
Does making the data accessible to individuals under certain conditions break the legal requirement? If not, you could publish your work without the actual data, and make that data available to whoever accepts the appropriate conditons.

Finally, if push comes to shove, you could think of possibilities like:

The university awarding your a PhD without proper publication of your thesis, with just a few examiners reading it (might not be possible).
Repeating the experimental work - hopefully with university funding to do so.
Piggy-backing a repeat of your experimental work onto that of another researcher performing continued work in the same vein. If they need your experiment + more things than you get the previous option for free (although with a time delay).

I'm going to disagree.  "Responsibility" has legal ramifications, and researchers are not in a position to give legal counsel.  It is the PI's responsibility to make sure that research in the lab follows human subject guidelines, and it is the responsibility of the University to make sure this happens.  The way our university deals with  this is to use a commercial online training program to certify people to work with human subjects, from PI's to techs.  The PI is out of the loop

@ScottSeidman: I did actually mean "responsibility with legal ramifications"... and the fact that researchers are not lawyers does not mean they aren't legally responsible. About your university - that's an ok arrangement, in which a PI discharges this responsibility when s/he has made sure his graduate researchers have actually undergone that training. Of course, this training might not cover anything so the PIs should be aware of what that training actually comprises.

There are two pertinent issues to address here. First, not all forms of research require consent since some data collection doesn't subject participants to any stress or other form of risk and some forms of data will not disclose identifying details of your subjects' behaviors, biomarkers, or other characteristics. In all cases, how far you are required to go in obtaining informed consent depends primarily upon how much 'risk' your participants were exposed to by agreeing to participate in your experiment. This includes 'risk' undertaken by participation and 'risk' they may be exposed to when the data becomes public in some form. If you are doing research within the US, for instance, you should have gone through an IRB process beforehand. When an IRB determines that there is some risk (even minimal) they will require a researcher to stipulate how that risk will be mitigated and may require the researcher to brief subjects about before or after the fact.
However, some forms of data and data collection pose no risk to your participants and can be exempted. If your data set includes no identifying information (including names, biomarkers, photographs, video, etc) then you may not actually have needed an ethics board (or IRB) clearance and there may be no issue with your advisor whatsoever. Online surveys, for instance, or observations of public behavior, do not require consent of any kind, and several other types of research which pose exceptionally low risk can proceed without much sign off. It is possible that obtaining verbal consent from your participants would satisfy your university, but I cannot say for sure. You will need to inquire at your university to figure out whom to consult about this. It will be different at each institution. Since you've indicated that you carried out an experiment on roughly 50 people, I'm guessing it's behavioral research you're conducting. The good news is that in many experimental studies, subjects are expected to be fully informed and give consent only after the experiment has been conducted. There is much precedent for this in psychology.
Second, your relationship with your advisor, while there are gray areas depending upon discipline and university, is not a boss-employee relationship when it comes to your own independent research. If you are getting credit for what you are doing, then you are the one who bears responsibility to make sure that what you're doing is ethical and well considered. I'd suggest that this isn't your advisor's responsibility unless it was clear that your were working on her/his behalf. However, if you and your advisor are having difficulty communicating about expectations and you're receiving little guidance on how to design and carry out research, I would suggest taking on an additional mentor, either in the form of a secondary advisor or graduate counselors at your university.

Some of your examples may not require consent, but they probably do require IRB approval of some kind. IRB would determine what level of consent is appropriate, all before the research is conducted.

In the US, most funding agencies place responsibility on the University to make sure that all working with human subjects receive proper training.  Whether the University passes that responsibility to the individual mentors is an internal decision, but as it's effectively the University that can lose it's ability to do human research, responsibility is not often passed along.
Specifically for your case, aside from legal scenarios in your country, it depends very much on what the data is.  For example, if it's a simple questionairre on the usability of a device, you probably don't need consent.  For many other things, you probably do need consent.
Also, aside from legal issues, journals will not publish papers that don't meet ethical standards on human subjects put forth in the Declaration of Helsinki or the Belmont Report, for Europe and the US, repectively.

This doesn't answer OP's question.

In the US, the institution where the data is collected is responsible for providing appropriate training about data collected from human subjects, working with Institutional Review Boards (IRBs), an all things related to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
It seems to me that you are getting secondary data. If the data was collected here in the US, then, in compliance with HIPAA, the experimental protocol was reviewed by an IRB, and all subjects should have signed a consent form if the IRB deemed it necessary. The IRB might have also deemed it not necessary. It depends on the risks associated with the study.
Your adviser might be as clueless as you on how to deal with the data copyright (so to speak). The question is, then: from where did you obtain the data? If you obtained it from another researcher, who collected it, then he should know. Get your adviser involved by contacting that person. If you obtained it from a public data repository, then the rules of the repository apply.

Yes! Without a shadow of a doubt.   The ethical issues around human data collection and use are an absolutely critical aspect of research. Data should not be collected without approval by a local ethics committee. The protocol that they will approved will contain a detailed description of the informed consent, your plans for data management, anonymisation and use.
Critical question:    you say 'dataset of human experiments', do you mean 1. data that you generated - ie experiments that you performed - OR 2. a dataset of data collected by others from experiments that they did. If the former, you are screwed, if the latter you need to find out the circumstances under which the data was collected, there may be a way that your use of the data can be covered by the original consent and ethical approvals. But under those circumstances, whoever gave you the data had a responsibility to ensure that your intended use was consistent with the original approvals.

I am a Ph.D. Professer and graduate student adviser at a university with graduate programs...
No, there is no "responsibility" on the adviser in a legal sense. (people who say otherwise are simply expressing their opinion on how they want the legal landscape to be, not how it actually is.)
Should the Ph.D. adviser be knowledgeable about such things, monitor the student's behavior and correct/educate them when they do something wrong? Certainly. If they can't or won't then the student should have picked a better, more competent, adviser.
But if the student does something illegal or unethical it is 100% the student's responsibility. There will be no legal consequences or repercussions for the adviser as the adviser has no legal responsibility. It is entirely up to the student to make sure they know what they are doing and what is allowed. Any transgression is their fault, not the adviser. The adviser is simply an academic resource and not legally liable for the student's behavior or product.
So, as you asked... yep. just some random dude that might not actually know what you should do. (a pretty good rule to think about every human in existence, including your parents and yourself actually.)
Yes, I know that as an adviser I sound like I'm just covering my ass and trying to avoid responsibility but that is not the case. I have a business obligation to be competent and educate my students well but this does not constitute a legal responsibility for a student's behavior which is what your question is specifically asking about (since there are state and federal legal requirements concerning human and animal test subjects.) It is not the faculty members responsibility that you know them or follow them, though I strongly believe he should know them and make sure that you do too before you embark on your thesis.
But ultimately any legal responsibility for the outcome rests with the student.
Should a driving instructor teach students not to speed? Certainly. Is he legally liable for their speeding tickets... nope. Same sort of relationship.

The question is not whether a driving instructor is liable but whether he/she should have taught the student not to speed.

I appreciate the input, but a more appropriate metaphor would be to tell me to drive through a nature reserve without telling me I need a permit first... And then tells me after I come out the other side.

This is a poor analogy, in my opinion. Moreover, the question asks about responsibility of PhD supervisors -- which can be viewed in ethical and professional senses -- and your answer seems to be overly focused on legal liability

Uh, there definitely is a certain degree of responsibility in the legal sense - liability. Advising a PhD candidate is not some "business transaction". I suggest you start making that assumption, lest you'll find yourself in administrative procedures, or even in court... I believe your position is based merely on wishful thinking, unless you can provide some legal basis for your very strong claim of 0% liability.

@JustSaying: Those issues are very much related. Indeed, if a driving instructor did not teach his student anything at all about speed limitations, and even told him "drive fast from point X to point Y", and the student broke speed limitations, said instructor is most probably liable. And - user3059763, again, don't live in the blissfully ignorant assumption that the driving instructor is not liable. See errantlinguist's comment.

@einpoklum on a speculative level I think you may be right, but your claim is just as unfounded as user3059673's. Do you know of an actual case where an adviser was successfully sued (or just sued, even unsuccessfully) by a student for a failure to properly advise/inform the student that led the student to unwittingly break laws? If not, then I think you should acknowledge that we don't know for sure whether an adviser can be held legally liable in OP's scenario.

I can point to a case where an Assurance number was yanked from an entire university triggered by events in one lab, shutting down all human research.

I don't know how driving licenses are obtained in every country. But I know that at least in some countries you first have to pass a theoretical test before you can learn to drive a car. So that means you should know that speeding is forbidden. Furthermore I asked my driving instructor once when I learned to drive: during lessons, they are responsible (and have to pay the speeding tickets) since students are allowed to make mistakes.

@DanRomik: It's true that my claim has a very flimsy foundation, being my own legal and grad-student-union experience (and that I haven't explicitly mentioned those as a base for my claim), but - I claim it can be anything from nearly-zero to full responsibility, which is claiming very little. And my claim is the cautious, more safe-to-assume option.

@WillemVanOnsem: The example with the driving instructor is not about getting the license, it's about what happens if the student is caught speeding while still practicing with the instructor. The second part of your comment is the relevant one IMO.

@DanRomik I definitely know of cases (indirectly, relayed via our health & safety officer) where the supervisor as well as the employer were held legally responsible for failure to enforce safety procedures in PhD students’ work (at least one famous case led to the death of a student). Now, ethics isn’t safety but the procedure in both cases (getting a review signed off) is very similar. I assume the legal ramifications are, too.

@einpoklum: The point with the driving instructor is that s/he's the only person in the car with a driver's license, and therefore legally liable. Even when not actually behind the steering wheel. But it's unusual enough to be specifically legislated, which makes it clear that the default position is that instructors are not liable.

@MSalters: Your conclusion is wrong. Specific legislation is not required to make him liable, since anyone in a similar position of responsibility would be liable.

@einpoklum: Wet rijonderricht motorrijtuigen 1993, WVW Art 108 lid b.2. In Dutch law, the exception confirms the general rule, but I'd have to dive into my legal books to cite the jurisprudence for that.

@MSalters: I don't know Dutch law, but - you're assuming the general rule is that driving instructors are not responsible for anything, and I doubt that's the case. Also, this is getting off topic.

Liability issues aside, every grant agency I've submitted to, as well as my employment contract, says that all research supervisors (PI and Co-PI positions) are responsible for ensuring that research is done according to professional standards and university policy. A broad reading would suggest that I could lose my grant funding, be fired, and be responsible for any costs or lost income the university suffers as a result of me not holding up my end of the contract.

Also, in the realm of safety regulations (as opposed to ethics) research supervisors absolutely have been held personally liable for putting under qualified students in dangerous positions. Similar stories to the one linked below are of increasing concern for science educators both at the university and high school level. http://www.chronicle.com/article/Liability-in-the-Lab-UCLA/147303/

This answer is technically wrong, which is the best type of wrong.


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Is there an API to obtain article information via DOI?
Is there any API that allow to get article information (in JSON or BIBREF format) using article DOI? I need: article title, authors, journal name, year of publication, volume (number), page numbers.
Is there a script written in PHP?

It looks like your question has been answered here: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/500222/retrieve-bibliographic-data-from-doi-code-using-command-line

You are looking for https://doi2bib.org . It shouldn't be very hard to extract the actual bibtex entry from the html you get from that page.
If you want to see how it works under the hood, take a look at the sources here: https://github.com/davidagraf/doi2bib2/ .

Yes, it is a good javascript software. Moreover, it is possible to use a direct GET request to doi.org and receive a bibtext reference.

If it does not need to be pure PHP there is a javascript library: Citation.js https://citation.js.org/ it allows you to convert information from one format into another. Maybe it fits your specific usecase.

For Crossref DOIs (110 million+) there's a public API - https://api.crossref.org/ that returns JSON

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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Comments for Elsevier paper proof
I have just corrected my first paper and I might have done something very wrong.
Using the website provided by Elsevier, I corrected everything regarding words and sentences, in addition to small changes in the equations. But, some changes were not possible for me to do, maybe the website had some built-in prevention. For example I couldn't delete and add equations, and I couldn't properly change the layout of the equations (Some equations were cut in half, and some were longer than the text width), also one of the tables needed some changes but I couldn't do them in the website!
So, I wrote multiple comments for the copy-editor regarding these changes. But does this mean that he will do them properly?
Since I will not have the chance to see the changes before publication. I fear that the copy-editor will not make the proper changes! And I might end up with a Frankenstein paper.
Sorry if the question is silly, but I have no experience in this.

Are you sure you won't be able to see the changes before publication? Even when I've dealt with incompetent copyeditors (which is to say on multiple occasions), they have given me a final version to approve or suggest further changes to.

@academic Honestly I have no idea. The email I received contained the following sentence:((Kindly note that now we have received your corrections, your article is considered finalised and further amendments are no longer possible.))

Email them and complain. "Actually, I would like to see the corrected manuscript. When you are finished, would you please send this to me so that I can verify that everything was done correctly?"

Why on Earth are you asking us rather than someone at Elsevier?! This boggles my mind.

@user2705196 I emailed them. Plus, as you can figure out from the OP, I have no experience. I wanted to know if all journals take the same procedures  in general or not. Because I am working on another paper as well.

I think it is very unlikely that any reputable publisher won't review your changes and get back to you if anything seems wrong.
However, if you have contacted the copy-editor, they are also warned that it needs a look. Relax for now, I think. You may have more work to do, of course.
They likely deal with similar things about once a week (day?).

Thank you for the reply. What scared me was the email they sent to me regarding the submission of the corrections. Which included the following sentence: ((Kindly note that now we have received your corrections, your article is considered finalised and further amendments are no longer possible.))

I suspect that has intent more like "the web system is now locked". But it would be foolish of them to automate the production from your submission forward with no human intervention.


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Is it more respectful to address a professor who is an MD as "Dr." or "Professor" in email?
Thus far in my postgraduate academic career I have leaned towards addressing my (US MD) medical school professors who are MDs, MD/PhDs, or PhDs as "Professor", since we are not in a clinical setting. Today two of my classmates addressed one such MD as "Dr." in an email chain following my reply, as if to correct me (though maybe it was out of habit).
Was I less respectful than I could have been by addressing the professor as "Professor"? The latter title seems more prestigious in the context, but maybe I am mistaken.

The answer probably depends on the culture, so you may get better answers if you specify the country.

@DavidKetcheson Thank you for the suggestion. I've edited my question.

The answer strongly depends on local culture. For example, for Germany there has been a similar question some time ago (Do german professors like to be called "Herr X"?). To make things worse, the culture might vary even between institutions.
I learned that in Mexico the "professor" is just the job description, while "Dr." is the valuable academic degree.
In the US, some professors in my field (medical computer science) are very relaxed regarding titles, others are not (but this is an outsiders view).
The easiest way is to ask a professor you can trust in your institution. Most will happily explain the common habbits and I assume you'll her some interesting anecdotes ;-).
In general, the most respectful way to adress a professor is "Prof. Dr. XXX".

I would only add that in the US, people are pretty informal about such things. Either would do. At some levels, even first names will do. But it is easy enough to ask, as the writer here suggests.

In Europe and US, Professor is more prestigious. In my experience, they won't care much in the US (it is quite usual to use first names once you get in confidence), while in Europe there is a sligtly higher probability that someone can feel "offended" if you use Dr. instead of Prof. (and calling by name is not as common as in the US, definitely something to avoid unless the setting is very informal). If you are in doubt, Professor will work both in Europe and USA.

Note that in various European contexts “professor” is only appropriate for “full professors”. I tend to slightly cringe every time I get an email addressing me as “professor”.


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NSF mathematics postdoctoral fellowship: how to indicate U.S. citizenship status
I'm currently preparing to submit my NSF mathematics postdoctoral fellowship application, with deadline tomorrow on October 17. You must be a U.S. citizen (or permanent resident, etc.) to apply. There is a line on the application to indicate this:

CITIZENSHIP (check one)
  __ US Citizen or National ___ Permanent Resident ___Foreign National(give country: )

In what I believe to be the relevant part of the application (the page Application Form), there is a field which reads:

I. Citizenship status:      Do not wish to provide

without any way to modify this.
There is an advisory listed on the NSF Fastlane main page, dated Oct. 1, which reads:

The Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships solicitation (NSF 16-558) requires proposers to indicate U.S. citizenship status; however, the ability to update this information is no longer functional. Proposals that are not compliant with solicitation requirements may be returned without review. Please email rgov@nsf.gov or contact the FastLane Help Desk at 1-800-673-6188.

This is rather cryptic. It seems to say that me not being able to update citizenship status on the application is in fact what everybody is experiencing. On the other hand, it also seems to indicate that nevertheless it is important to indicate U.S. citizenship status, and that my application may be rejected immediately without this information.
I'd naturally prefer not to have my application rejected for technicalities. Is anyone else going through the same issue right now? If so, what is the right way to address it? Is there a way to update citizenship status? Or is this matter inconsequential?

The main reason I'm bringing it up in this forum is because, potentially, this is an issue which affects virtually everyone else doing the NSF application. So it seems appropriate to try to get some community-type answer for this. (Yes, I've left a tight window to clear up this problem, but the issue didn't become apparent until I was reviewing the full PDF of my application checking for any potential problems.)

Yeah, so I did go ahead and call them. So I'll go ahead and answer my own question in case it helps anybody else with the same issue: so the office staff can manually update citizenship status on your behalf on their end. Basically I had to send them an email with a statement to that effect. I guess for me the confusing part is that it wasn't clear that the point of the advisory was to say that we're supposed to call them as the means of updating our citizenship status. (Why they can't fix their system to allow users to do this themselves is another matter...)

@mdr Please post that as an answer so it's more obvious to everyone. I suspect they aren't pushing a fix live because they don't want to break things any worse right before things are due.

@NajibIdrissi For the record, NSF GFRP applications are due up until the 26th, depending on the field. Only the first fields (physics?) are due starting tomorrow

It's 2021, and they still haven't fixed this issue.

I called them and said something along the lines of them no longer changing it in the backend (not 100% sure what they meant) and to just leave it as is. They said that the program officers are aware of this.

This may be too late, but I ran into the same issue when applying for an NSF PRFB biology postdoc fellowship. They sent an email saying to provide your country of citizenship on like K (usually reserved for foreign nationals). I sent an email to follow up that all's good, and they said I did it correctly. Hope this helps someone!
Here's a screenshot of the NSF application:

The office staff can update this information for you. If you call the number listed in the advisory (quoted in the question) they can walk you through this.


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Is it too soon to contact prospective PI's for postdoc or research positions if im one month away from my PhD oral defense?
I am an international PhD student in Taiwan. I am scheduled to have my oral defense next month. I don't see any foreseeable problem that might happen during that time, but I still make sure I'm prepared. While trying to manage the stress of the coming oral defense, I'm also thinking about the future. After the oral defense, I will stay for one year before leaving the country. I want to apply for postdocs or research positions in Canada, specifically in Calgary. Is it too soon to contact PI's about a position?

If you're looking to start a postdoc in 2024 then it is definitely not too early to start reaching out to academics. Although many PI's may still not know about their potential funding. (Most positions begin to be advertised over the next few months).

Thank you for the valuable comment.

My PI used to say that the deadline to do anything in academia is "yesterday". Although a PI may not know for sure whether they will have funding or open positions in 13 months, it is never too early to start expressing your interest for their lab and to start discussing research topic and collaborations. The worst they can answer is "please contact me again later". And that would leave you plenty of time to look for your own funding.

Yes, it is too soon to contact PI for positions that will be open in ~13 months for now.
However, it is not too soon to getting in touch with potential hosts (as a postdoc, what you define PIs can be your host and you can be the PI) to get accostumed to possible source of funding.
Since you are looking for a specific place, it will be much easier to bring there your "own" funds (i.e. getting a project of your own funded) rather than getting a postdoc position there.
Disclaimer: much easier means still "very hard".

I am curious about this and might be asking a dumb question, but how do you even do that? "get a funded project before getting hired by the host PI?". Does that mean finding a PI and writing a grant proposal with them, and getting hired if it gets funding?

PI means Principal Investigator. PI makes sense only internally in a project. no project = no PI.
You may be employed, or affiliated, or a guest at a certain department, with or without a salary. This does not prevent you to write a proposal. But often for the proposal you need to define a PI and an hosting institution/department.
You can be the Principal Investigator, then there is a department hosting you, and in the hosting department there will be someone willing to support you.

A short and not complete list of possible funding sources in Canada (specific to Ottawa, you may find similar stuff for Calgary):
https://www.uottawa.ca/study/graduate-studies/postdoctoral-fellowships-external-agencies#:~:text=External%20postdoctoral%20funding%20sources%20include,Council%20of%20Canada%20(SSHRC).
good luck!


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ECTS average mark?
I studied in Denmark, where degree results are compared by average marks, amongst other things.
There are conversion tables for converting individual marks into ECTS marks, however I could not find out how this works for averages or how to compare precisely with a UK classification, for instance 1st, 2:1, 2:2, ...
My question is how do ECTS marks work for averages/overall degree results?

For example,
The mark 12 is translated to an ECTS A
The mark 10 is translated to an ECTS B
The mark 7 is translated to an ECTS C
and so on.
And you can find tables listing conversions between degree classifications and ECTS marks, for example here.
But for an average it is unrealistic to expect the top mark in every exam in a degree (21 marked exams and 4 pass/fail awards in my case) to get an A for the overall degree result. Or put a different way, without meaning any disrespect, I don't think all holders of UK 1st class degrees could have gotten the top mark 12 in all 21 exams without exception.
To give full details, I have a 5-year cand. scient. degree including one year of research with a public presentation and viva voce as final exam. I present this an MSc by research.
My average degree mark is 9.9 under the Danish 13-scale, which converts to 10.8 under the new 7-point scale with marks from -3 to 12. This is very respectable, the question is just how to explain/justify to employers that this exceeds the requirements for a 2:1 UK degree.

Perhaps look at distributions of the different marks?


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PhD hopping due to professional but non-research issues
I'm a foreign PhD student and have had extreme difficulties in the last six months due to the university school administration not providing the documentation required to get a residence permit in time to start working on the date agreed to by said administration. This means I had to wait for about four months past the intended start date... meaning that I had also e.g. formally canceled my work and living arrangements by that time, making me homeless and jobless while still trying to sort out a bureaucratic nightmare all by myself.
The university continues to be extremely unhelpful to foreign students (apparently there is no support at all for them despite the university having loads of foreign students.). I'm finally here, but the situation is not getting better. My experiences in combination with the issue being effectively ignored by administration has soured my feelings on staying for the years it takes to get a PhD.
Irrespective of this, I do respect and like the actual people in the department I work in, and I still am interested in my particular area of research (despite feeling like I need to take several months off already despite having done very little actual research); I feel bad about "abandoning ship", but the problem won't get better as I'm not going to suddenly acquire another, better passport.
Is this a valid reason to give other departments when inquiring about working with them, and, if so, how can I formulate this in a way which is positive?

Is this a valid reason to give other departments when inquiring about working with them?

Yes, absolutely!  By not providing the necessary resources for you to begin on your expected start date, the university has released you from any obligation to attend.  You are a free agent.

How can I formulate this in a way which is positive?

It's not clear that you need to formulate it at all.  Since you never attended your intended university, you are under no obligation to mention it in your CV or application.  At most, you may need to explain the one-year gap in your education/employment record, in which case — if asked — I'd suggest something simple like "I was admitted to the graduate program at [University X], but I was unable to attend because of unforeseen delays in processing immigration documents, which was out of my control."
As a courtesy, you should also explain your decision to pursue other opportunities to the department that admitted you, and in particular to your prospective advisor (if you have one).  In fact, I would recommend starting there; your department/advisor may be able to pressure the university bureaucrats into providing the paperwork you need.

I feel that "unforeseen immigration difficulties" may speak too much by speaking too little. Take US as an example, this reason can evoke a wide array of speculations, some of which can be very negative. I'd suggest to be a bit more descriptive: "unforeseen delay in immigration documents that was out of my control."

In theory this would be a good idea, but now I'm here. Thus I'd have to quit.

@Penguin_Knight - I disagree.  Visas for researchers from a variety of countries face this and their colleagues in the U.S. show a great deal of empathy and solidarity.  It's frustrating on all sides.  There's nothing embarrassing or suspicious whatsoever about OP's situation.  Unless you somehow progressed through a great deal of formal education as a rabid xenophobe.

This is intended to supplement JeffE's answer.

How can I formulate this in a positive way?

You can ask,

What guidance and support does (name of institution) provide to international students and scholars who might be facing visa difficulties?

You can also take a look at their websites, to see what sort of institutional commitment the university might have made in this regard.  Here's an example of one that gives me a good impression: University Letter of Support for International Students, Faculty, and Staff (University of Utah).


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Is there a possibility that an NSF proposal recommended for funding might not be awarded the funds?
Is there a possibility that an NSF proposal recommended for funding might not be awarded the funds? If so, what could be possible reasons? Also, how long does it typically take for a recommended proposal to be awarded to the university?

Research administrator here.  I have received hundreds of NSF awards and have never seen one declined after recommendation of funding, however, they do reserve the right for several reasons (previously answered).  One of the main things to remember about any federal grant process -- Program Officers (PO) are not contract people.  They can tell you things that are not entirely true.  They may not be checking all of the detailed compliance, and while the science is great, there are other reasons it cannot be done.
As for the time it takes to get an award-- that depends largely on your directorate and solicitation.  CAREER awards for example, are nearly always awarded in the January/February timeframe, and are submitted in July.  In my extensive experience with CISE, they most frequently dump their funding at the end of the government fiscal year, so summer is frequently when you will hear back.  However, I have seen some programs, e.g., the CCF program officer, has been responsive within only a few months (e.g. awarding in January/February), so it can vary by the program officer as well.
After the recommendation is made, the execution similarly will depend on the PO and also the science and its required compliance.  If more information is required "just in time", then this can delay the award. They mostly require updated current and pending files prior to award, in addition to any other compliance-related documentation, e.g., around human subjects.  They may also require a revised budget and budget impact statement.  In my experience, most of the programs dump their budgets at the end of the government fiscal year, so I would expect everything to be executed by end of September, unless you/your institution delays the process.  That is not a guarantee, but more a strong pattern of observation.
If you would like to spend now -- check your institution's rules on procuring an "advance account".  You also should be entitled to spend 90 days prior to award, but that is tricky to do now without a guaranteed start date.  Check with your assigned research administrator, and they will guide you appropriately.

thank you for sharing your perspective. I like you answer and learned from it. Would you mind defining acronyms in your answer?

sure -- CISE = Computer and Information Science and Engineering; CCF = Computing and Communication Foundations --  see more about the directorates and programs here:  https://new.nsf.gov/about/directorates-offices   -- PO = Program Officer (should have made that more obvious).

Would you mind adding those into you answer? Comments are ephemeral on this site :)

I thought I did?  Well, I linked right to CISE which lists the name and the programs instead of putting that into the answer.  I suppose I could list them all out if that was helpful.

From an NSF FAQ:

Program Officers "recommend" proposals for award but lack authority to commit NSF funds. After recommendation, applications are reviewed, primarily by non-scientist NSF grant administrators, for technical correctness. This process can take up to two months and an electronic award notification is then sent to the grantee sponsored research office. No grant is official and no NSF commitment final until this time. I almost always contact the Principal Investigator directly when I make the recommendation. This allows for a pleasant exchange in the midst of more difficult ones and also permits the applicant to plan ahead. It is extremely rare for a recommended project not to become an award and most researchers and institutions act with this realization in mind.

To your questions:
Is there a possibility that an NSF proposal recommended for funding might not be awarded the funds?
Yes. See above.
If so, what could be possible reasons?
The FAQ does mention "technical correctness".
For example, NSF finds something wrong the proposal (e.g., the PI is not eligible).
Also, changes in funding from Congress (who may decrease funding unexpectedly to NSF) might be another reason (this is a guess on my part).
Also, how long does it typically take for a recommended proposal to be awarded to the university?
The above FAQ notes: "This process can take up to two months and an electronic award notification is then sent to the grantee sponsored research office."

As other answers have noted:
Yes

No grant is official and no NSF commitment final until this time.

However, likelihood is low if you've already received a "Recommmended" letter.
Can elaborate a bit as an academic who went to work with the feds and did proposal reviews (NASA though, not NSF, so gov. science general view).
There can be money issues:

Budgets are often interim / projected at the feds, yet writers need to state how much money they "believe" they'll have and how many they expect to fund months in advance.
The "color" of the money can occasionally be wrong.  We believed this could be used for proposals, yet its only allowable for other purposes.
NSF budget is historically generally stable, yet agency budgets can occasionally get adjusted.
Money can also get shifted around within Directorates or Divisions.  "We thought we were going to fund Infrastructure more in Biological Sciences, but we ended pushing that money into Emerging Frontiers."  This mostly tends to happen if the agency has a major strategy change (went through Space Shuttle to SLS transition personally)

On the proposal side, from my experience, they often get binned into something like:

We will fund this (even in our worst budget projection)
We'll probably fund this (if its our moderate projection)
We'd like to fund this (if we get more than we expect)
We probably won't fund these (unless money floods in)

The first and second tiers probably get "Recommended" letters.


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What is a 'Chair' in British academia?
I understand that a 'Chair' is a traditional title of a professor in the UK.
Nowadays, what is the difference, if any, between a Chair and a Professor in the UK?

@RobbieGoodwin Having worked in both North America and the UK I can confirm that there really is a different usage, which avid's answer below seems closest to capturing

@YemonChoi : I think Avid's answer only deals with the Professor/Professor-with-a-chair question, and not the Professor of Maths/Chair of Maths which Paul Garrett also covers. It's not clear to me which problem the OP is asking to be solved. As he says "A Chair, a Professor" I'd assumed he meant the latter; the former is about "a Chair, a Professorship" in normal usage.

Specifically, my interest was why a professor position in maths in the UK would be advertised as a chair, but I am absolutely happy with a lively discussion which the question initiated. I think it links nicely to British traditional, complex and slightly confusing way of doing things (just think of cricket).

OK, that would be a Chair (or Professorship) of Mathematics. The holder would be have the title "Professor", one wouldn't call him (unless for some other reason) "Chair".

Yes, exactly, and I wonder why call it a Char in the job ad?

It is the difference between the role or job and the person who is doing that job.
The person has achieved the status and title of Professor. That person can take the position of the "Chair of Computer Science at the University of Somewhere".
Sometimes a particular Chair will have been endowed or funded at a University and then a Professor is recruited to take that Chair. That  person could have  moved from another Chair at some other University.
Some of  the Chair endowments are quite old, like this example from 1702 in Cambridge: https://www.ch.cam.ac.uk/alumni/new-name-our-oldest-chair

Fun fact: up to some years ago (I cannot recall exactly when or if it was a gradual thing), also in Italy there was this distinction between the title and the position, but the professor was said to hold a Desk (Cattedra in Italian) rather than a Chair.

@DanielHatton This is interesting and forced me to better check the meaning of cattedra on a dictionary. And even though cattedra is commonly understood to be the desk, it actually denotes the desk and the chair (and, yes, also the bishop's throne), and archaically a chair. So, I've learned also something about my language :-)

In the days long gone in Russia, I think a professor was receiving a "кафедра" (= cafedra) which is the same word as for both a department, and a tribune from which that professors addresses the students. And indeed, one of the meanings of the same word seems to be some kind of Roman chair...

Does a "chair" have additional administrative duties that a professor wouldn't? In the US, a chair is an administrator at least part time, often half.

@Buffy I don't believe so. Having a particular post designated as a chair is (at least in my discipline) possibly a way to justify to the university managment the need to have a position at that level, rather than a promotion of an existing member of staff to that level. One might argue that for strategic reasons there should be a Chair of Applied Statistics or a Chair in Algebra, and then go recruiting.

There are many older chairs. Your example is only one of the oldest chemistry chairs.

@OrangeDog and John Fisher went  to our local Grammar School before Cambridge!

As the other answers demonstrate, this is one of those terms that has a variety of different meanings in academia, depending on institution and context.
Historically, British universities had very few professorial positions; typically a university would have one for each broad field of study. These positions were created within the framework of the university's statutes, and are/were known as Chairs. Each Chair exists independent of any particular individual occupying the position, and the university statutes prescribe the procedure for appointing a new holder if the Chair becomes vacant. Sometimes the Chair is associated with the name of a particular individual or benefactor: hence Oxford has (say) the Regius Professor of Hebrew, established by the king in 1546. Many of the positions created in this way continue to exist, and occasionally new ones are added.
In modern times (particularly since the 1990s) universities have sought to award more people the title of Professor, and it has become a job title within the standard framework of career progression. However, most such jobs are not 'written into' the university's statutes in the same way as the traditional Chairs: when holders leave, the position ceases to exist.
Thus, a hypothetical university might establish two chairs: the [University] Professor of Ancient History, and the [University] Professor of Modern History. They might also hire a number of other historians, and give them the title of Professor - but these jobs would have less prestige than the chairs.

"Professor" is a 'rank' (next up from "Reader" iirc), whereas "Chair" is a specific job-role - they do not mean the same thing.
In smaller fields, there will only be one Professor, who will be said to 'hold the chair'.
In larger fields, there may be more than on person who holds the title of Professor, but only one can be the head, or 'Chair' - have a look at the definition of "Emeritus Professor" for more.
For comparison, think of "Princes" - in the UK, Charles has the rank of Prince, so is known as "Prince Charles", but so is "Prince Andrew".
However Charles holds the position of "Prince of Wales" (meaning first-in-line to the throne) which is necessarily unique.

Can there really only be one chair per department? I'm not familiar with the British system, but I thought there would be a distinction between the "department chair" (i.e., head of department) and an "endowed chair" or named chair (usually assigned to a distinguished professor).

@cag51 The phrase "department chair" does not seem commonly used in UK departments, at least in my discipline, while I had the impression it is standard usage in North America for instance.

Interesting, thanks. Though in this case, it seems even less intuitive that each department would have exactly one chair.

@cag51  - the reason it seems odd is because department is pretty ill defined - for example, you might have a "Chair of computational biology" in the biology department - they're not the head of the biology department, but they are in charge of the computational biology bit. It's an archaic position now, though - mostly used by places like oxford and cambridge (and probably durham etc..)

@cag51  I didn't mean to imply that each dept had exactly one chair; rather that a dept (however that is defined - e.g. "School" vs Department) could technically (though completely unlikely) be staffed entirely by Professors, while the number of Chairs available is strictly limited - some smaller departments won't have a Chair at all.

Although my observation of the UK system is only "from afar", at Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Bristol, Warwick, London, and other serious places, one can look through the faculty list ... and see that (as in other answers) "Professor" is a title, more senior than "Reader", etc. There are also "department chairs", who will almost always have the title of "Professor", and are administrative heads of departments, but this sense of "chair" is quite different from, e.g., "The Savilian Chair in Geometry" (or whatever), within a math dept. The person (almost surely a "Professor") holding the Savilian chair is probably not the head-of-department, although certainly has a very senior position, and perhaps is only answerable to administration outside the math dept.
In fact, this is generally parallel to the U.S., where "the dept chair" is "dept head", and is not necessarily any special honor, but, rather, entails much administrative responsibility. There are also "named chairs", like "University Chair in X"... Confusingly, sometimes there is "University Professor in Math" or similarly. In the latter usage (not uncommon in the U.S.), the usage of "chair" and "professor" have merged.


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Is it unethical for a professor to misrepresent the format of an exam?
If a professor at a university explicitly states an exam will contain "multiple choice questions and true/false questions" and then administers an exam with several short answer and essay questions, is that worth filing a complaint to the department about?
I'm a very dedicated student and don't mind essay questions at all, in fact, I prefer them...when I've been given proper notice and can prepare accordingly. There's a much different way to approach material when you need to draft responses from memory. If it WASN'T clearly stated what the format of the exam would be, that would be different. If it were one or two questions that deviated from the format, that wouldn't be a big deal. But to clearly state it would be multiple choice and true/false and then to have about 20% of the exam not follow that format seems unprofessional and poor practice.
I've already reached out to the professor about it and have not yet received a response. However, I'm considering also contacting the department. Am I overreacting? Or is this reasonable?

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Did they say it would only contain such elements? And, did it contain those in addition to the short answer/essay questions?

First, there’s some important background information to consider about professors, which is that they are human and occasionally make mistakes just like everyone else. In particular, as can happen to anyone in any other workplace or general life context, they may sometimes forget what they said to whom and when, or say something they didn’t fully intend, e.g., omitting an important detail or making a statement that is misleading or not entirely accurate.
Moreover, these effects are at their worst when a professor is overloaded with work. Small misstatements of this type can happen for example because a student accosts them with a curveball question at the end of lecture when they are frazzled and distracted and in a hurry to get somewhere (happened to me more times than I count), or due to many other kinds of cognitive overload that are a frequent occurrence in many professors’ lives. As an example, just this week I confused the lecture times of the two different classes I’m teaching in an email to a colleague about scheduling a meeting, and have found myself making a few other similar (fortunately insignificant) mistakes recently. This is very atypical for me, and it’s clear to me that it’s strongly correlated with a period of increased workload.
Coming back to your question, it’s obviously not great that the professor did not give you accurate information about the exam, but saying it’s “unethical” is making a statement about the professor’s intent. If they deliberately misled you, then yeah, that’s not very nice, and, depending on how misleading their description was, I can see the label “unethical” as being potentially appropriate. But based on my experience, I’m extremely skeptical that the misrepresentation was intentional. It’s much more likely that the explanation involved an error, forgetfulness, preparing the exam at the last minute and making a spontaneous decision to add an essay question without realizing that this would make some students upset, or some other such explanation.
Basically, in most situations of this type in academia, rather than assume bad faith, your default assumption should be that the person whose behavior you are aggrieved about made a mistake. They may be disorganized or even mildly incompetent, but none of that equates to being unethical. Unless you have hard evidence of an intent to deceive or the level of incompetence implied by the mistake is truly outrageous, complaining about this seems like a waste of time to me.

This is similar to Hanlon's Razor, except it's caused by other factors than stupidity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

Discussing things with the professor might be entirely appropriate, though, given the effects that such a switcharoo could have on students with, e.g., anxiety which can turn things into an ADA question.  I don't know if the OP is a student with disabilities, but having witnessed the extreme effects that such conditions can have with a family member in college, I know that having other students being willing to approach (emphasis: approach, not complain and jump to conclusions) the professor about it is a good thing because such students might not feel comfortable doing so.

@computercarguy, I’ve extended that with “don’t assume stupidity when it could be ignorance” and “don’t assume ignorance when it could be misunderstanding.”

This is only a very small (and not important) part of your answer but If they deliberately misled the students that would definitely (not just potentially) be unethical in my opinion. I agree that this is very unlikely though.

I think this answer puts excessive weight on the word "unethical" and misses the intent of the question. Which is, is this grounds for a complaint. I believe the word OP really intended here was "unfair", but simply saying 'unfair' would make the question sound like a "boo hoo yes move along" rather than confer that this is something that should be dealt with. Unfortunate choice of words, but there you go.

@WGroleau, yep, and I like it. I was just pointing out Hanlon's Razor in case people didn't already know about it.

@TasosPapastylianou thanks for your thoughts. I think your criticism of my answer is a bit unfair, but not unethical.

Right. Unethical implies some form of malicious or ill-intended action when it seems more like just them a little bit of being sloppy. There isn't anything I see here that would suggest intentional deception.

If a professor at a university explicitly states an exam will contain
  "multiple choice questions and true/false questions"

What you described they said is not the same as if they had said
"The exam will be 100 percent multiple choice questions."
So I think having 20% not multiple choice questions is perfectly fine.

(+1) I was just about to say something to this effect in a comment, then noticed there were some answers, so I thought I'd read over those first. Incidentally, it could be the case that the OP poorly conveyed here what was actually said by the professor (sometimes people use "contains" for "consists entirely of").

This may be true in a technical sense, but it is not good practice for a professor to make “gotcha”, technically-true-but-misleading statements. If you can predict that some students will be misled by what you say and still say it, that’s unprofessional. The real problem is that it’s often difficult to predict such things. My guess is the professor made a mistake, as I said in my answer. But if they intentionally said something they knew to be misleading but phrased it in such a way that they could argue it was formally true on the grounds you’ve described, I’d say that’s not “perfectly fine”.

More likely than this being a "gotcha" is that the professor thought they were clearly saying that the exam will have some multiple choice and true/false questions and either accidentally were less clear than they intended or that they were clear but the student misunderstood or misremembered anyway.

We can only speculate on this since OP has not yet provided clarification. I just wanted to point out that it might not be a good idea to file a complain with OPs  wording. If I was asked for my personal opinion on this: Even if he would have made it 100% clear that there were only multiple choice questions in the exam, I still would not file a complain. I got used to stuff like this at my university and I learned to never trust a professor when he is talking about the exam.

Firstly, wait until your professor gets back to you. As Dan Romik says above, it could've just been an honest mistake - either on your part or on the professor's.
Secondly, you might want to ask other students about the exam. Did they feel blindsided as well? Did they know there would be short-answer questions? Take their answers into consideration.
Thirdly, if you want the professor to really make a change going forward, I'd recommend stating as much in the teaching evaluation surveys - assuming your school has them. Be objective, reasonable, and respectful. At my school, professors take them very seriously and emphasize that they need feedback from us in order to improve the class. Leaving a paper trail that this has happened might make your professor a bit more mindful when they write the future exams. But if this is a one-off thing and/or the professor makes an attempt to "correct" for it, that may not even be necessary.
Based on your description alone, however, I would say that escalating the problem to the department is jumping the gun - especially when the professor hasn't even responded yet.

There is another aspect that may be at play here -- the professor may have announced in good faith that the exam would be 100% multiple choice, and possibly even created such an exam, and then learned that departmental guidelines don't allow such easy exams for a course at this level. They would then have a variety of suboptimal ways to solve the problem; depending on timing, making an announcement   of the changed format that would not reach all students might be seen as unfair.
I once took a survey course that was described in the syllabus as graded solely based on class participation.  On the first day, the professor gave us a syllabus that included a paper at 50% of the grade.  (At that university at that time, switching to a different class was a very unappealing prospect, as only undesirable section times of unpopular courses were not oversubscribed by the beginning of the semester.)  I thought this was deeply unfair, but not unethical.
My recommendation is to look carefully at the description of the exam you were given, and if there is still a discrepancy, ask the professor for the reason, stressing the difference in preparation for one format over the other.

There's another gray area worth noting in that the professor may have intended such an exam, and then chosen to change it at a later date for some reason (though not necessarily a department/university coercion) and simply forgotten to report the change.

It seems like a mistake (if everything you write is accurate). I would probably consider "unethical" (this word gets used too often here...) to willingly lie to students, but that is not what is going on here.
It is reasonable to make a complaint, in my view. The complaint will be discussed internally.
Don't expect that this complaint will have a visible effect on your grade. It is not reasonable to expect that the exam is voided, repeated, or that votes are increased for everyone. You took an exam in a reasonable format; the instructors have enough elements to form an opinion of how much you understood the content of the course and assign you a grade. If grading is on a curve, there is no particular reason why you were penalized over your peers. If grading is not on a curve, I assume (after your complaint) that graders will take into account the conditions in which you all took the exam.

I believe the question here masks an even more serious problem.
"Why was a sample-paper not provided in the first place?"
I 100% agree with the student's assessment that the format of an exam is absolutely critical knowledge which largely dictates the type of preparation for that exam.
I 100% disagree with the (in my opinion naive) comments above that "if you really knew the material it would not matter". One need not think further than driving tests as a simple example that this is simply not true.
The question of whether an exam "should" be generalizable enough such that it accurately reflects the topic it is supposed to examine, and how to achieve such an exam, is an altogether different question which has plagued educators for centuries. But as it stands, one can guarantee a crippled outcome in an exam if exam technique is unaccounted for, let alone misdirected.
So yes, the act of 'not providing a sample paper in the first place', let alone misrepresenting the format of the exam when described orally, (whether this was done maliciously, which is very unlikely, or by omission), is absolutely fair grounds for a complain to the department, because the department is responsible for ensuring exams are fair and representative of student's abilities.
Note this is not a case of 'burning' the professor involved. The department absolutely needs to know so that it can manage the delivery of its courses better. And if there are no departmental guidelines ensuring appropriate provision of sample-papers to students, this will hopefully prompt them to create such a guideline.

PS. Many of the answers here have given far too much weight on the word 'unethical' in the title, and have interpreted this and focused instead on whether it is appropriate for the student to be 'throwing accusations of intent'. While this is a reasonable, albeit secondary, point to address, I believe this is missing the point entirely, and it doesn't sound to me like, bar some frustration for the feeling of unfairness involved, that the student is somehow on a personal crusade against a professor. It is entirely accurate to state that the format of the exam is necessary information, and it is entirely fair to initiate a grievance procedure if this has been misrepresented to the extent that it affected student outcomes.

It's pretty amazing how quickly times change. Up until about 20 years ago (northeast U.S.), neither I nor any of my acquaintances had ever heard of a "sample-paper" for college exams, throughout any of our careers.

@DanielR.Collins many professors do not provide that kind of practice/sample material even nowadays, and there isn’t a universal expectation that they have to do so, despite this answer appearing to assume that there is.

@DanielR.Collins sample papers are not necessary in the presence of past papers. And in the absence of both, some sort of description of exam format would be necessary. In my 20 years since college I've never heard of people walking blind to an exam. Obviously I'm sure we both agree on this, and simply putting the emphasis at different points on the spectrum. The point is I agree with the student. It is in the educator's best interests that students do not walk blind w.r.t. the format of the exam, let alone receive misleading instructions (intentionally or otherwise).

I do think this could be ground to consider a complaint, although not because of ethics, but because of correctness.
If the official description of the course stated that the exam would contain multiple choice questions and true/false questions, and the actual exam deviated from this, this seems to me like some form of 'breach of contract'.
At the University of Antwerp, an exam was annulled because of both deviations in the exam description (indicating essay and multiple choice questions, but only providing multiple choice questions) as well as issues with the content of the questions at hand. (Dutch article)
To answer the question, I would not complain regarding ethics, but a complaint/question to an examination board regarding the correctness of the information regarding the exam would be the correct step forwards in my opinion.
EDIT: I think that the main benefit of posing the question would be to prevent future students encountering the same misinformation or confusion. I don't think that the situation is as severe as in my example, but it proves that it can happen. Also note that the professor in the article was not punished for his mistake, which is in line with my (and other's) opinion that this is not an ethical issue.

It isn't clear from that article that any complaint would have been upheld if the questions had been correct though.

+1 It's a good answer (citing an example!), even if I wouldn't formally complain.

I would say no. Just because the professor told you that there would be certain types of questions on the exam, unless he specifically stated that there would not be other types then he did not misrepresent the exam at all. As long as there existed multiple choice and true/false questions in the exam then he in fact told the truth.
This situation varies from the answer posted by T.Verliefde in that the example in that answer did not include the type of questions indicated.

Unless this was a formal logic class, "He technically told the truth" is not a convincing argument. Language is sometimes ambiguous, yes, but in common English, the statement "The exam contains multiple-choice and true/false questions" is generally taken to mean that those are the only types of questions on the test, unless there is context to suggest otherwise. A professor giving such misleading instructions regarding an exam would be inappropriate (though, of course, it was likely an accident in this case).

The real thing the instructor maybe-kinda did wrong was not spending enough time explaining the test format. Teachers hate wasting time on mechanics and Admin -- I'd love to say tests will be "normal" and move on -- but students get nervous. We don't want our A students freezing up, or Q's where 1/2 the class clearly misunderstood. In the long run, it's worth it to waste class-time going over the format.
Maybe a sample test (use last semester's), or sample Q's in class (or by TA's in recitation). For those essay Q's, there would have been an example -- "if you see an essay Q like this, an answer like this is fine. You don't need to add X, Y, and Z". I used to even explain how 1 inch of space for the answer meant the answer was 1 line, but you didn't lose points for using more (during a test, students will suddenly freak about about things like that). So now students know there will be some short essay Q's.
It's not so much unethical. It's just that if a certain number of students are spending too much time fretting over process; as an instructor, it's our fault/problem (which we will fix next semester).
I had a similar thing happen. The final exam for a huge class was Friday afternoon through a scheduling error. We had to use some multiple choice Q's and I spent some class-time going over them, since it was new. But the back 1/3rd of the final was written-out Q's, exactly like previous tests. I didn't need to re-explain them. I don't think anyone assumed it would be all multiple choice, but it's possible.

I guess it depends on how much weight the exam carries - all our exams carry between 50 and 100% of the credit for a module (which would equate to between 5% and 25% of the credit for the . So this could be very serious. This is why all our exams have to be vetted by an external examiner. The style of the exam has to be laid down at least a year in advance, and recorded in the module handbook.
Under those circumstances, a lecturer providing you with a short-answer/essay exam, when a multiple choice had been specified would certainly be grounds for complaint. I doubt it is "unethical", as I'm sure the lecturer would not be trying to trick you. What on earth would he gain from doing so - its him that will be in trouble if the average grade on his module is down. But that is irrelevant. You have been disadvantaged, and the department/school needs to find a way to account for this.

Modules? This is an English public Uni? My experience with an American State Uni is very different. We'd never restrict an instructor's testing options like that, certainly not in advance. And oversight is much less -- mostly the (every 4 year?) Accreditors. They would't except to see test formats in the syllabus, or worry about changes in average grades. For you, does the department design courses, and the lecturer merely administers them?

Yes, this is England (all but one UK uni is public). Modules have to be specified in a module specification form, but that generally lists the aims, learning outcomes, teaching methods (how many lectures, seminars, practicals etc), and the assessment modes (exam, coursework essays, presentations etc). They can be submitted by the department, but often they'll be submitted by the module co-ordinator. Exam formats comes in the handbook and because exams must be validated by the external examiners, and printed by the university service. All exams are administered by the university centrally.

Other answers explained already why you should not question the professor's ethics here. Additionally, you should take a step back and analyse what went wrong if you, as a dedicated student (which I do not doubt since you obviously take your studies seriously), cannot formulate answers about the content that you "learned".
Try to put more emphasis on understanding the lecture and try not to learn for an exam but maybe find answers to the questions you personally have about the subject. Your current way of learning seems very shallow and inappropriate given your interest in your studies. And to answer your question: after you calm down and give this a second thought you might actually thank your professor!