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How will failing a PhD qualifying exam affect admission to other PhD programs in the future?
My son, 25, just got notified that he didn't pass his qualifier the second time around so he's been dropped from his PhD program.
As a parent, I only want my child to be successfully happy, both in his personal and social life.  It's disheartening and heartbreaking to know that all his hard work and countless hours of studying and burying deep in papers can all fall apart just like that because a committee wills him not good enough for them.  He wasn't even pursuing a PhD.  He was working on his MS in EE and one of his professors saw potential in him so she encouraged him to pursue a PhD with full funding.  He will leave the program with a terminal MS (which he had already earned before entering the PhD program).
On the exterior, he says he's fine with the outcome and can't wait to get into the real workforce.  However, internally, I can sense he is battling with disappointment and alienation from his advisors and department, preferably the people he works with.  I can only advise him to rethink his future 5 years from now where he'll be an accomplished Engineer with loads of work experience under his belt or a recent PhD graduate looking for a job.  On the phone, I assured him, "you didn't fail, they failed you."
My son will remain with his department until the end of the academic school year.  However, how will being dropped from his program affect his transcripts if he should want to reapply at another university?

At the moment, this seems to be about how this will look to non-academic employers, which we're not really qualified to answer as a bunch of academics - see the [help/on-topic]. Perhaps they may be able to help over on [workplace.se]? (But check their help center first to make sure it's on topic there.)

(If, however, your son was planning to apply to other PhD programs and wanted to know how this will affect his graduate admissions prospects - that would be something we could help you with. But it sounds like he wants to enter the workforce, so it seems not.)

He has a masters, and that's going to give him a leg up on the competition, whatever he does.  He has no obligation to state 'tried for Phd' in his applications. Having this advanced degree will absolutely help.
That being said - and I mean no disrespect - PhDs are very difficult.  If they were easy, everyone would have one.  At most universities, the system is set up to weed out individuals who, for whatever reason, are not cut out for the psychological, emotional, cognitive assault it requires. Is it not possible the system worked? Your heart and soul has to be bought in at every level.

Half to two-thirds of persons entering a PhD program do not end up graduating. Typically this is not because they can't handle the intellectual challenge of their degree - departments have a strong incentive to only admit people they think will succeed, because each student represents a large investment of time and energy that is "lost" if they leave early. It is well understood within academia that failing to achieve the PhD means little. The PhD is a very specific degree with a very specific utility, and lots of people rightly decide that it's just not for them.

He does not just have the master's. He has everything he learned while in the PhD program.

@Patricia. "He will leave the program with a terminal MS"

@HEITZ Are you assuming the only benefit from learning is pieces of paper, that he will have gained no insights, understanding, or skills that might help him succeed as an engineer?

@patricia sorry, misread your comment. I agree with you wholeheartedly.

It is not clear that your son even really wanted to attempt a PhD the first time around, let alone trying again a second time. For all we know, his MS advisor suggested it, your son thought "hey, why not?" and then here we are.

Just because your son failed a qualifying exam for university X doesn't mean he's not qualified to get a PhD at all.
The chances of this affecting future PhD admissions are slim as they would only consider the current qualification and skill-set of the candidate.

...you didn't fail, they failed you.

This reminds me about Thomas Edison Mother's Letter. You said the right thing to your son! Because, more than anything else, he shouldn't lose his self-confidence.
You believe in your son and so does his MS advisor. However, whether he has the potential or not, talk to him and find out whether he has the passion for research. PhD requires more of perseverance than skill.
If he still got the interest, then by all means encourage him to apply again to another university.
My best wishes!

As mentioned in the comments, the official transcript will not give any hints about the failed exams, so future grad school admissions should not be affected.
Your son would do well to speak frankly with his references.  Probably their own good judgment would lead them not to mention the false start to a PhD in their letters of recommendation (for either PhD or employment).  But it wouldn't hurt to verify that they will take this approach.
With academic references, my impression is that there is generally no follow-up phone call.  But for employment, which I believe was originally one of your concerns, it is fairly common for the potential employer to phone a reference for follow-up.
Thus, it is possible that in such a conversation, the failed exams might come up... although I would guess that the probability of this occurring would be about 10%.  (This really is just a guess.)
Now, typically, the sequence goes like this: you send your CV to a promising job announcement, they ask you to interview, maybe there is a second interview, if they like you they check your references, and then they make you an offer.  This means that if the false start is discovered in the reference check step, and you didn't mention it in the interview, that might raise a small red flag for someone in the company.
Therefore, it might be a good idea to mention the false start in the interview, to be on the safe side.
It is nothing to be ashamed about, however.  I'm only suggesting this because companies sometimes get a little uncomfortable when something that comes up in a reference check wasn't mentioned in the interview.
I have a parent-to-parent comment (this may already be obvious to you, but just in case it hadn't occurred to you already): the conclusion you came to, that great sentence about who failed whom -- very well put!  And now, having found the perfect bon mot, and having shared it once with your son, you'll want to relegate the failed exams to the role of the elephant in the room that you don't talk about.  You should also be careful not to talk to others about them in your son's hearing.  That's probably the most helpful thing you can do at this stage.
It will be easier for you to stay away from that topic if you consciously steer your thoughts elsewhere every time the thought of those exams starts to creep toward the front of your mind.
(Of course, if your son introduces the topic, then it's okay to talk about it with him.)
Do you know the joke about the mother on the ocean liner who needs to sound the "Man Overboard" alert as quickly as possible, but she is so bursting with pride that she sacrifices speedy action because of her need to brag?  "Help, help!  My son, the doctor, fell overboard!"
Okay, so maybe you won't be the mother of a "my son the doctor."  But here's the silver lining: chances are, you'll become a grandmother that much quicker now!  (A PhD can really slow you down with other aspects of life.)

I had a hard time negotiating the "speak to your references" advice.  Many will say what they will say.  Trying to coach them on that just seems to backfire.

@JosephDoggie - Knowledge is power.  If I know a particular person will not write a super strong letter, then I might move that person down on my list, and move someone else up.

All I know is that it didn't work for me when I tried this many years ago ....

@JosephDoggie - sorry to hear it.  It can be tricky to find out how weak/strong a reference will be, so as to choose one's references strategically.


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Equivalent to agile software development but for research?
In software development, there are many development methodologies with a focus on speed/efficiency: Agile, Scrum, DevOps, Kanban etc.
Are there similar methodologies in scientific research? (something like "Agile Research")
A couple of related ideas that come to mind are: design of experiments (how to vary independent variables for optimum statistical inference and how to sequence experiments) and MLOps (similar to DevOps but in machine learning).  While those address some aspects, they aren't a complete methodology for doing research.

Not an answer as I'm not so experienced in academic research, however from what I've seen the process is a lot less formal in academia as opposed to an industry job with set boards and processes and such

Though aspects of those methodologies can be useful, my impression from software engineer friends is that implementing any of them "as written" is a time wasting disaster. I can't imagine why you'd want to bring them to a research environment.

Agile basically evolved to prioritize cheap and fast.  Academic research values cheap and good.

@BryanKrause Your friends must not have seen what happens without using agile: much bigger disaster.  Of course many teams don't necessarily implement this well, but ...

@AlexanderWoo Interesting! Sounds right. I wonder if cheap and good has a name/description about how to do it systematically. Research in industry still needs cheap and fast sometimes

@AlexI Agile is just a management fad. That doesn't mean aspects of it aren't useful, but they also aren't unique to Agile. From my perspective, the Agile fans seem to pretend that not being Agile means somehow doing the opposite of Agile which is simply not the case.

@BryanKrause, actually not a fad. It has transformed software process at some large and very important companies. It changed the thinking. Personal knowledge of this, actually. But a lot of what has transpired is people calling some junk process "agile" for a marketing purpose when it is easy to see, upon examination that it has no agile aspects at all. "Do you 'test first'?" .... "Well, not exactly, we test every few months". "How long are your iterations?" ... "Oh, about three years." and on and on.

@Buffy "actually not a fad. It has transformed software process at some large and very important companies" - except this is what management fads do, lean, six-sigma... Fans of the fad credit it with the successes and blame improper adherence for the failures, or compare it to a strawman like waterfall while claiming that it's specific details of the agile process that matter most.

It is probably applicable when writing a paper.

As someone who has used, taught, and published things about agile software process, I can give you some ideas. I don't know about tested successful existing practice for applying the ideas to research, however.
First, the practices that agile developers use are mostly not applicable to research, though consistent "pairing" probably is. You really need to go back to the principles from which agile was developed to find appropriate principles and practices. For example, it is unlikely that a research team has a "customer (product owner)" in the sense of an agile software project, unless, perhaps, for product research. So, I'll assume you are interested in basic research, leading to an opening of new ideas and theories. I'll also assume, as in agile software development that you are interested in the work of teams.
The goal, all along was to create high quality software in a flexible, changing, environment using continuous feedback on the product as it developed. There was also a reluctance to guess about the needs and to therefore need to make corrections due to bad guesses, though enable changes due to changing conditions. How do you hit a moving target effectively and (relatively) efficiently?
The principles, often stated, are: We value

individuals and interactions over processes and tools,

working software over comprehensive documentation,

customer collaboration over contract negotiation,

responding to change over following a plan.

As you can see even these principles need some restatement for research. These were devised by experienced developers to guide the creation of the actual practices.
But note that research, being an attempt to look into the unknown, has some of the same underlying characteristics. It isn't so much that the target moves, but that it is unknown, so our view of it at any moment might change.
So, what would agile research principles be? What would researchers value?
Let me suggest a few, though I can't claim to be either complete or especially near the mark. This requires some group  thinking to come to a consensus. It would also require being put to the test.
But, I suggest that we value:

collaboration over individual work,

insight over individual results,

flexibility over established process,

(questionable) small projects over big,

peer feedback over holding details back.

And note, importantly, that these aren't binary choices. It isn't that individual work isn't valued, it is just a matter of shifting balance. And, the simple statements above need a lot of expansion and elaboration.
I'm not sure I've got it right yet, and won't on my own, but it might give you a starting framework that you could use to develop such a framework.

Thank you! I really like the way you're trying to apply the principles of agile, and agreed it does have some similarities in dealing with the unknown.  I'd like to see these ideas developed in more detail.  "assume you are interested in basic research" - I'm in industry, so for me personally, somewhere in between - basic but has a specific applied goal in mind.  "unlikely that a research team has a customer" - what about the funders as the customer?  :)

@AlexI, industrial research, as long as it isn't "blue sky" stuff is probably closer to the software situation, since you probably do have a product owner who provides guidance and feedback toward an elusive goal. The tis probably an easier case for development of principles and then practices.  Testing might be available, short iterations, etc.

No. Not that I am aware of. Here's a couple of things.
Generally speaking, academic research is relatively independent when compared to a product dev/delivery cycle. Agile methodology "pays better" in more complex group workstreams. So the necessity of codifying practices in my PhD program is muted. I'm sure there are larger academic research projects that would definitely benefit from more rigor in the process, I feel that's the exception.
At the risk of being controversial, agile is business first and methodology second. The training costs money; the trainers get the money. Academic groups don't line up to spend that money because it's not required. Additionally, there is less sell pressure from the agile trainers, for whatever reason. Perhaps this is a good business opportunity?

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How to deal with a team colleague submiting a bad article?
My friend and I have been researching on a topic since when we were doing our master degrees. We were preparing to submit the next chapter of the research to a publication (we already have an article published on the matter), when the coordinating teacher decided to introduce another individual, one of his phD students, into the team, probably to get a higher count of published articles.
Now, this guy never worked on the project, and he didn't really know what it was about. Worse, the coordinating teacher asked him to write the article for us (so as not to give him an article for free), and boy he screwed it up.
He made really bad English mistakes, he didn't format the document properly, he left things in our native language and he forgot to delete some of the template text from the document.
The worst part is that he never sent the "final form" of the article to either me or my friend. As a result, all of these mistakes came down on our heads when the reviewers declined the "paper", rightfully so. He even "forgot" to put me as an author in this research, but my friend caught word of this and forced him to put me in there too. This could have easily escalated to legal trouble in my country, since this is intellectual theft.
I sent to them both (coordinating teacher and new guy) an email in which I said that this problem could have been easily avoided should the new guy had actually played as a team player and send the paper for peer review to the rest of the team. Was I wrong in doing so?
EDIT: I am more concerned about the fact that the teacher forced this guy into the team so he can get "free" research points without actually doing any research. As this guy is backed by the teacher, by calling up on his mistake may worsen the relationship between me and that teacher.
So the question can be rephrased to a more general one: how to deal with such a situation when the responsible for the failure is someone backed up by the teacher, but who has no actual contribution to the research?

You seems pretty sure that you're right and have lined up all accusations. Why do you want us to tell you if you're wrong? What I can comment is that given what is presented, the last e-mail part appeared to be done professionally. Yet, I can't judge the whole thing; this kind of question posts is never objective. I do wish your plead had led to an improvement and the project has then moved forward smoothly. Also consider rewording the question because the last sentence sounds like an opinion poll, but your topic question seems interesting.

I just want to hear another option on this matter, because the new guy was forced as part of the team, so he can get "free" credit, which is a common practice in my country. You could say he had support from the teacher, so this may very well make my relationship with the teacher who vouched from him worse, since I called him up on his mistake.

Then the concern should be better included in the question.

I voted to close as I am really not sure what the question here is. Yes, this is terrible, but you already know that. What does telling you again help?

I rephrased the question to represent a more general situation. Others might encounter a similar situation, and I haven't seen anything related to this kind of problems here.

As a teacher, if I were to put a student in a team, is for the student to join and learn; and possibly (as it may be your case), to relieve the team from some tedious work. And actually, writing down a paper could be a good way of making sure he understands everything that has been done. Assuming there is no favouritism, I don't have any reason to make the guy get "research points" if he doesn't learn something in the process. So, if I am convinced he is affecting negatively an otherwise successful team, he is going to get little sympathy from me.
On the other hand, you are in a bit of a "he said-she said" situation, so you have to be careful and show that you have tried to collaborate with your teammate and attempted to solve the problem in a civilised manner. Show that when he joined the team, you didn't just dump the task on his lap and forget about him, but you actively tried to help and teach him what you did (because you tried to help, right?).

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Why my PhD supervisors do not want to be involved in my research ideas?
I am a PhD student close to finishing my 1st year, highly motivated, passionate, hard working and with one accepted article in a really good journal (related to PhD project) plus conference proceedings.
I would like to grow as a scientist and also develop my ideas and therefore having a good research portfolio (i.e. papers) is essential for an early career scientist as me.
I am trying to share some of my research ideas, which are something extra outside the PhD project (multi-task), with my PhD supervisors but it seems that they won't listen or are not interested.
Why are the not involving/listening to me in their ongoing research?
My field is applied physical sciences and I am based in 'EU'.

Where are you located? In the US? Abroad? Are your ideas related to the work being done in the group? There's not really enough information here to give you a reliable answer.

You said you shared your ideas with your advisers, but have you asked about their ideas and expressed an interest in being involved in any of their upcoming or ongoing projects? If it's just been a one-way conversation so far, asking questions about their plans, interests, current and planned projects can be a very effective way to get a conversation started - and then, of course, listen thoughtfully and carefully. You can then decide if there is something you want to be involved with, express your interest, and/or ask to be a part.

What makes you think they "won't listen or are not interested"? Could it be that they don't have the time/money to test your ideas?

The title is misleading. It's not that they're not involving you in their research. It's that they're not getting involved in your research.

Without knowing the situation and the people concerned, we can't really know why they're not interested in your ideas. However, a PhD is essentially a full-time job and your advisors would probably prefer that you concentrate on your PhD rather than filling your time with side projects.

Maybe it is time to have a meta-discussion about this.
You are a first year PhD student. At that time it is important for you to get your own main project(s) going and come up with ideas to improve that. Already repeatedly talking about side-projects that as you say are not very related to your PhD project is not necessarily a good idea.
While your ideas might be interesting, there are other points to consider. They might not fit your supervisor's research portfolio. Which means that it is not worth for them to spend their or your time on. They might not be feasible to be pursued for your group because of a lack of infrastructure (in applied physical sciences I would expect infrastructure to be very important).
Try talking about the general fact that you want to take up on a side project and develop the basis of that project together with your supervisor. Involve them in your plans, so they will start to involve you in theirs. Or come up with an idea that actually relates to one of their other projects and might be interesting for both of you.
Otherwise, keep the ideas. Revisit them later on, maybe one of them will be the basis of your first PostDoc grant.

It's not clear whether the OP is a theorist or an experimentalist. I would guess theorist, which means that the lack of infrastructure is irrelevant. (And yes, there are theorists in the applied physical sciences.)

Who suggested your PhD project?
Ask your advisors to suggest some research problems for you.
There are a few graduate students who don't seem to want to have research projects suggested to them, but seem to want to work more or less independently. And if they succeed in publishing lots of good papers this way, there may be no real reason for their advisors to direct their research — they're already scientifically mature enough to manage their own research programs. Your advisor may think you are one of these rare graduate students who prefers to work on your own.
If you suggest research directions to your advisors, these directions may not fit in with their own research programs, and they are also likely to be very busy, and not have time to collaborate with you. So your advisors might not get involved with your research ideas. (Or they easily may, depending.) If you ask your advisors for a few suggested problems, they are much more likely to be interested in collaborating.

Isn't the point of a research advisor to advice a young (1st year) PhD student on the potential of her/his research ideas? Usually, 1st years are not very mature enough to pursue their research. I agree with your answer that maybe the advisor thinks that the student is stellar and does not need guidance, but at least this should come in an encouraging way, not just by ignoring the student (that is the feeling I got)

@PsySp: While that may be the ideal relationship between a student and a research advisor, it isn't always what happens in real life. If the student came up with their own research direction that the advisor doesn't have much feel for, it will take quite a bit of time to understand it and offer constructive suggestions. And the advisor may have some other students who are really struggling. I'm trying to give some constructive advice, rather than just saying "your advisor sucks" (which is the message I would take away from your comment).

@PsySp: First-year students are generally not mature enough to get several conference proceedings and a paper in a really good journal while being ignored by their advisor. Usually, an advisor suggests a problem for the student to work on, and not the other way around (which it seems the OP wants to do). The advisor may think he's being encouraging, while the student may not perceive it that way.

Agree. We do not have much info, we are just guessing the advisor's motivation on not involving the student in his research assuming good faith (of course!) In any event, there is an obvious problem in the established communication which could pile up to a more serious problem in the future (the student should defend at some point, to the advisor as well). Even if the advisor thinks he is encouraging the student, then this obviously is not working. (btw I did not imply that the "advisor sucks" rather than the communication "sucks"). Thus, I agree with the advise to go and ask directly.

The ideas I am proposing are something extra outside the PhD project -> multi-task.

Thanks for the suggestion to ask them about their current projects/ideas but I don't want to appear the one who bothers people for just a name on a paper, i.e. I don't like begging and eventually become 'noted' only because I am the student of X. You know what? no one cares about my ideas..I will try to develop them on my own without ignoring my PhD project. Thank you

One of your advisor's roles is to give you ideas for projects to work on. I hope they wouldn't think you were bothering them just to get a name on a paper.

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What are the different acceptance levels in peer review?
I'm new to academic writing. I submitted a paper which I co-authored with my supervisor to an upcoming conference. I wasn't too confident that the paper would be up to scratch because I'd never submitted one before, so I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the paper was accepted. Of the two peer reviews, one was a "weak accept" while the other was a "weak reject".
I couldn't really find anything by Googling. What exactly do "weak accept" and "weak reject" mean, and what are the other levels of acceptance? Where do weak accept and reject fall in the scale?
Edit: The conference did state that at least three reviewers would be selected. I have only received feedback from 2 at the moment.

Are you sure this is a good conference? Your paper getting accepted when reviewers gave it a weak reject and a weak accept is not very likely for very good conferences.

@Alexandros I'm pretty sure it's a decent conference, but it seems pretty small. I asked my supervisor his opinion first, and he was happy to go for it. The head of my school is one of the speaker chairs.

In my field (mostly signal processing), you usually don't receive replies until a decision has been made, so if you have replies from two reviewers now, I would expect that is all you are going to get. Sometimes TPC members are unable to find enough reviewers even though they would ideally like at least, e.g. three.

In my discipline (CS) in conferences you can find several levels of reviewer recommendations that are different depending on the venue's regulations. You may have:

Strong Accept (+3)
Accept (+2)
Weak Accept (+1)
Borderline (0)
Weak Reject (-1)
Reject (-2)
Strong Reject (-3)

Not all conference have the same levels. E.g., The Borderline level is not very common (I have only met it in one conference) and Strong Reject or Strong Accept might not be there as well.
Usually, for your paper to be accepted in good conferences, when we are talking about 3 reviewers, you usually need at least 2 weak accepts and 1 accept or something similar. Getting accepted with a weak reject is not very likely, unless the other two reviewers gave an Accept or better, but I do not think this is very common.

Many conferences use a reviewing system that ranks papers as "Accept", "Weak Accept". "Borderline", "Weak Reject", and "Reject". They may even add a level with "strong" qualifiers on both sides. Each reviewer gives their written opinion, maybe some numerical scores, and this ranking. When the Program Committee meets they can look at the reviewers' opinions and rankings and try to decide which papers they want in and which ones they want out.
Since there are no absolute standards for what should be presented at a conference, the "weak" qualifier gives each reviewer the opportunity to hedge their ranking a little. If there are lots of papers, then having 5 levels of ranking may help distinguish between papers that 3 or even 2 levels of ranking would not.
Now, it's a little surprising that your paper only got 2 reviews. That might mean that the conference is small or, as the comment suggests, that the conference is of lower quality. Without absolute standards though, it's hard to gauge whether there's any meaning to a weak accept and a weak reject leading to an acceptance or not.

Yeah, I'm leaning towards "small". By all evidence, the conference is supported by the right people and organisations to indicate that it's got potential to be a quality conference; representatives from my own school are chairing, and some important societies have their names on it. Ultimately I think the particular track I submitted in was not swamped with submissions.

In CS science conferences, there are often the following levels :  strong accept (3), accept (2), weak accept (1), borderline (0), weak reject (-1), reject (-2) and strong reject (-3). But this can vary from one conference to another
Besides, a reviewer may often be able to indicats its confidence level on a scale for example of 1 to 5. This is used as a kind of weight. For example, a reviewer may choose "accept" but with a confidence of 3 which means that he is not so confident because he may not be an expert in that field. Or he may choose confidence of 5 if he is an expert in that field and then its recommendation will have more weight.
Overall, it depends on the conference. Besides, after all papers have been reviewed, the organizers of the conference will choose the top ranked paper as being accepted. Sometimes a paper could be accepted with "weak accept" or "borderline" or even with a "weak reject". It always depends on overall how many papers are submitted and their relative evaluation.


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Is it ever harmful to submit extra recommendation letters from somebody outside of my department?
I'm a senior applying for admissions to Ph.D. programs in mathematics. The departments I'm applying to all ask for three recommendations and encourage (but don't usually require) them to be from math professors.
I have three math professors whom I plan to ask for letters, and I believe all of them will be strong, but perhaps not superlative.  In addition, I know a professor who is primarily from the philosophy department (whose interests are related to math) who I believe would write a stronger letter than the other three. (He supervised an unusual independent study course for me and it was fairly successful).
The subjects I studied with him were entirely mathematical (logic), but his own work is more distinctly on the philosophy side (philosophy of science/math and related topics, not mathematical logic) .
Could asking this professor to write a fourth letter harm my application in any way? I think the letter itself would represent me in a good light and highlight an unusual aspect of my resume, but I don't want it to replace a letter from a mathematician for fear of admissions committees looking negatively at a letter from someone in the wrong department.
EDIT In response to the comment: I've worked closely will all three math professors. I've done long-term research projects with two of them (my university requires a junior and senior thesis; they were my advisors), and a year-long independent study with the third. I believe they were all reasonably happy with my performance, but I'm not sure I was able to blow them away. The independent study project I did with the professor from the philosophy department was more unusual, took more initiative on my part, and I believe I made a stronger positive impression.

The philosophy professor supervised an unusual independent study course for you and it was fairly successful. Did you do independent study or research with all of the three math professors?

It seems unlikely that the additional letter would hurt you, although there are situations where it might. Unfortunately there's no certainty in life.

I read about 200 graduate applications a year. In my department we take a fairly dim view of people who do not conform to the specified application process. For one, it displays a wilful ignorance of the departments' requests, which are typically not arbitrary. Secondly, it can be construed as arrogant—as if you think you somehow deserve or require something that everyone else does not get. Lastly, each letter of reference takes about two or three minutes to read. If every candidate was permitted to flout the rules then our admissions panel members would each have to spend an extra ten hours reading redundant recommendation letters.
Others may take a more relaxed view of course, but I would urge you to submit exactly the material requested by the departments to which you are applying. That includes complying with the requested length of any research proposal, etc.
As far as letters are concerned, select whichever three you believe will make the strongest case for admission to your target programmes. It may well be that the optimal strategy is to send two mathematics letters along with the philosophy one. After all, getting a PhD is about more than subject knowledge: it requires originality/creativity, self-discipline and motivation, ability to work with the literature, etc. All of these are strengths that the philosophy professor could possibly comment on. A good strategy might be to ask a neutral party—such as the head of admissions in your current department—for advice as norms vary from discipline to discipline.

Honestly, there are no wrong departments and they will not punish you for sending such a letter. Nevertheless, you must understand that they want to evaluate you, and a letter from another department will probably have a different weight when compared with a letter from someone who belongs to your same area.
In my opinion, since they ask for three letters, I suggest you to apply only three. In case someone misses your invitation for writing a letter, you can ask from this person (from philosophy).


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Is it possible to replicate the experience gained in a grad school on my own without attending one?
Is it possible to become a researcher on my own? How do I replicate the grad school experience through self study or being an autodidact?
I came across these two sites: How to Become a Pure Mathematician (or Statistician) and How to become a
GOOD Theoretical Physicist.
I came across such a thing on CS Theory Stack Exchange too.
Is it true that if I follow actively what has been given in these sites I’d be a physicist or mathematician or an independent researcher? I don’t know about publishing papers. At the best, I can access arXiv and Google Scholar on my internet connection. I don’t think I’d be actively ‘contributing’ to research or advancing the frontiers of knowledge. At the best, I guess I can try answer questions on SE sites.

I've reopened your post. Note that "replicate the grad school experience" is not the same thing as "become an independent researcher without attending grad school," so the title of your post doesn't exactly match the contents.

Related (though not exactly the same): Are there any aspects of PhD work that do not translate well to distance learning? and What careers not requiring an academic degree might be open to a self-learner who wants to do research on pure mathematics?

Isn't it the point of grad school to train one self to learn the trade of research as an apprentice so as to become an independent researcher, whether or not we collaborate with other people?

"Replicate the experience" implies "try to reproduce as closely as possible the kind of training that happens in grad school." Presumably "the specific kind of training that happens in grad school" may not be the only way to become an independent researcher, though - if you are training yourself to become an indepent researcher outside of grad school, replicating the grad school approach may not be the most effective way.

Quora answer I was under that impression because of that answer.

The short answer is: you can't replicate it.
The longer answer is: yes, you might be able to talk intelligently to someone who has a background in the field, but as previous poster mentioned, the reason why one goes to grad school is not just to learn the material, but to have access to resources. These resources are physical, but they are also mental. Part of what grad school gives you is access to people who have extensive knowledge in the field, can help direct you in your research, as well as provide crucial feedback. Without this one-on-one and group interaction, it is IMO impossible to become a researcher on par with a professional academic.

Is it possible to become a researcher on your own? In theory, yes, but in practice there are many obstacles for unaffiliated scientists without PhDs. It also depends on what you mean by independent research.
First of all, Gerard 't Hooft spends a significant amount of space on that website encouraging aspiring physicists to go to school. He's not advocating independent science without formal education. The PhD has been designed to train people to be researchers, and it's difficult to obtain that kind of formal training without an equivalent experience. You can read all the books in the world about theoretical physics; that doesn't make you a researcher. That just means you know a lot about theoretical physics. Researchers don't just consume knowledge; they produce it using a specific set of methodologies and communicate it to other scientists in pretty specific ways.
Second, there are structures in place that make it difficult even for independent scientists with a PhD to do research. First, there's the cost of the work itself. Theoretical physics and pure math may be pretty inexpensive without the need for fancy equipment, but you'd still need a small budget - and a salary to provide you with the time to do the research. But nobody is going to pay or give a grant to an unaffiliated non-PhD holding person to do theoretical physics research. Universities aren't going to hire you as a faculty member. The PhD is the qualification for that. And part of NSF grant evaluations is the environment in which you do the work. So you'd have to hold another full-time job to pay the bills, limiting your time to do research. Then there's the background reading. Academic journals are very expensive, and most scientists access them through subscriptions their university or institutional library has paid for. I know physics has a tradition on arXiv, but not everything is on there - especially the foundational work. Speaking on the lecture circuit will also be difficult without an institutional affiliation: people won't invite you to speak places, and submitting to conferences as an independent scholar will likely be a challenge.
So contributing to the formal conversation of science is going to be nigh impossible without the formal training of a PhD program and an apprenticeship with a practicing physicist (which is essentially what it is). If you wanted to do science as a hobbyist, there's more possibility for that. You could blog about your findings, or post them on arXiv yourself, or find some other way to disseminate. If you live nearby a university, you could audit graduate classes and attend seminars and lectures. You could read a lot on your own. It won't be the same as a career as a researcher, but only you can determine what level of participation is acceptable for you.


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Does the personal life of a researcher interfere with their work?
I came across this, this, this and this.
This professor at IIT is very well known for his books on physics in India. I can't find the exact link on Quora, but the answer said that he didn't marry because he loved his research too much.
I'm specifically asking if personal (family) life hinders or holds a person back from reaching one's full research potential.
Just a speculation - maybe a person could achieve a Nobel or likewise in his field if he could have spent more time on research than taking care or be there for his family. Maybe not.
I'm not asking strategies to balance work-life.

I've never met anyone in academia or other research institution around the world having troubles balancing personal and professional lives. My friends in industry have much more trouble, instead.

Isn't industry just a 9-5 job? You go, do certain work, come back home - right? That is, unless you're doing something along the lines of research there too where you'd have to meet deadlines.

The situation is very different between male and female academics. Male academics often have wives to act as support staff, female faculty not only have to do family duties but also their academic ones.

@RoboKaren that's not really academia-specific, though.

@RoboKaren Is it possible to support your claim with something?

@vkv: No, industry it's not a 9-5 job, especially if you hold a high level position. I have friends in industry who work around the clock and that are sent around the globe with little notice to work in harsh environments 12-14 hours a day. And I'm talking of engineers or PhDs.

@MassimoOrtolano I would say there are lots of such people, both in and out of academia.

The highest-voted answer to your first link gives a very good answer. Personally, I'm doing my PhD now and have two beautiful daughters. If anything, they help me focus when I'm at work, so I put in a solid 8 hours and then go home and play with them. My fellow PhD students without kids are much less efficient with their time at work.

@RoboKaren, your comment about male versus female academics may be statistically accurate, all the more in the past, and perhaps more strongly so in some cultures, but it is not universal.

@RoboKaren: what you say is not easy to assess and can depend on the country and the age of the people considered. Most of the people I know in their forties and fifties, in and out of academia, are divorced, so there's no really "support staff", in either sense. Moreover, it can depend on the kind of support provided by the university (e.g. we have an internal kindergarten for the university employees).

This is why I added it as a comment and not an answer.

In many countries, employers have a legal obligation to monitor the working hours and enforce that nobody works too much. As a result, most "industry" jobs are really 9-to-5 jobs, at least for those who are considered employees. In academia, people often work like freelancers even though they are technically employees, and nobody seems to care about their working hours. As a result, many people end up working more than people in comparable level jobs in the "industry".

It's not clear to me what your actual question is. There's already a question asking for specific strategies for work-life balance, which you know (you linked to it.) Right now, this seems like a poll to me, which is off topic per the [help/dont-ask]. If it's not, please [edit] the post to clarify your specific, answerable question and I'll reopen. (Ping me with an @ comment if you edit it so I'll know.)

@vkv Example you gave is a exception but not the norm. Yes Newton was not married but Einstein married twice. Stephen Hawking have also married 2 times (till now :) . I once met Nobel Prize winner "Eric Kandel" who also have written one of the great textbook in "Neuroscience". During his talk he rightfully mentioned role of his wife in his career and success and thanked her in public. Oh and in year 2014 the Nobel Prize was given to scientist couple. To Marry or Not to Marry is a personal choice AND not a formula for academic success. However 1 should choose a partner wisely :P

http://phys.org/news/2014-10-couples-won-nobels.html

@ff524 I've edited the question. I'm not asking for strategies. I'm rather asking how one impacts the other.

Everybody's personal life is different. There is no general answer to this question.

As @scaaahu says, the answer is almost certainly "Yes" for some people and "no" for others. That's why I call it a "poll" - there isn't a right answer, just everybody describing what their own life is like, and that's off topic here.


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Does anybody know why some journals have "Topical Collections"?
What does it mean "Topical collection" within a journal? Are the papers published under "Topical Collections" better promoted?

Can you provide an example?

I have the feeling it is a way to curate different subfields within the same journal but not sure how they can help authors or researchers. As an example: https://link.springer.com/journal/volumesAndIssues/12665?tabName=topicalCollections

Why don't you think grouping similar articles under (useful) subheadings is effective to authors or researchers?

These are just ways to allow folks to find articles of interest within larger (less focused) journals.
Good examples are topical collections within a larger Mathematical Biology journal like the Bulletin of Mathematical Biology that correspond to subgroups within the society: https://www.smb.org/subgroups/
I think this will become more and more popular as journals get broader and broader.  Think about a journal like Nature Communications that takes science from any field... it's hard to 'browse' this journal in the way that you might browse a journal IN YOUR SUBFIELD, because the vast majority of the stuff is completely unrelated.  In a topical collection however, you might find things of interest.

A good example is using tags on questions on here ...

Thank you so much for your answers. They are very useful for me.

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


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Can I rearrange the given names of authors in Pubmed for importing to EndNote?
When viewing a Pubmed citation, author names are listed in the format Surname Initial Initial.  This means that when I am inputting a citation into EndNote I have to either type the names in manually or copy and paste then edit the order of the names into the Initial Initial Surname format that EndNote accepts.
E.g. the Pubmed author list:

Frayling TM, Timpson NJ, Weedon MN

Would need to be rearranged to

TM Frayling
NJ Timpson
MN Weedon

by hand in EndNote.
Is there a way that I can do this more efficiently?  Perhaps by

Using a preference on PubMed to have authors displayed in the second way
Modifying a preference in EndNote to have it accept the first way
Using a more efficient way to record new items to the EndNote database

I do not understand the problem. Why would anyone enter reference from PubMed into EndNote by hand? You can connect EndNote to PubMed and download the reference, and the author list should be arrange as Surename, initials.

Just import the reference as Pubmed outputs it and then change the output style within Endnote to match your preferred format. If it's a standard format for a well known journal, you should be able to directly select that output style, otherwise, you can make a custom format using the formatting code for the style you want. There are several online guides out there that give details how to do that.  Examples:
http://libguides.usd.edu/content.php?pid=63203&sid=755800
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbq-naXl8r4  (see ~8mins in)


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Does working in a project without being a first author of any of its papers help my career path in academia
This question is related to my previous one. Basically, I'm working in the research project as the only PhD student, other members are post-doc and lecturers. After discussing with my supervisor and other investigators, it is clear that there is no funding left for me even though they want to. My supervisor wants me to continue working but lets me decide if it is what I want or not.
Personally, I want to continue working because:

It's nice to mention about working in the funded project in my CV.
I have an opportunity to work with many senior researchers and lecturers who can write reference letters for me.

However, since I'm only in charge of performing experiments to test/evaluate ideas of others, there is no chance for me to be the first author of any papers produced by the project. For all the papers that I help writing, I only write the experiment section, while other sections are written by more senior members.
So, I want to ask if it helps for my career path in academia if I work in a project with no chance to be the first author of any papers produced by it.
Update:

My field is computer science in which the order of authors matters.
The project will take more than a year to finish, so I wonder if it's better
if I focus all my time on my PhD and private life instead. Because at
the moment, working in it is like doing a part time job without
salary.

Yes, it helps you. It's better to be one of the authors of the paper than to not be. I find this rather self-evident, however, so I'm curious if you have something else in mind with your question?

The author order depends on your discipline (where authors are routinely alphabetically ordered, this question is less important). I assume yours is one of the disciplines where order does matter. And I would assume that potential postdoc supervisors would worry about a Ph.D. who does not have any first author publications to his name. This may again depend on your field. It may be helpful if you could edit your question to include this info.

I guess its not so much a question of whether it is useful (it clearly doesn't hurt), but whether it is more useful than whatever else you could do with your time (other projects etc.). This will depend on lots of stuff only you know - what else is available, how much time the project will take, etc.

"My field is computer science in which the order of authors matters." Note that this is not true for all of CS. For example, in theoretical CS, almost all author lists are alphabetical

Does working in a project without being a first author of any of its papers help my career path in academia

Yes, it helps, but first-author publications help more. Find a way to leverage your work on this project towards a first-author publication, talk to your advisor about switching projects, or find a new advisor.


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Is it allowable to use an organization's name to publish a paper in a conference, even after I graduate from it?
I just graduated from my university, and I have a paper to submit to a conference. I was filling out the information to submit my work to them, but I am not sure what to put as my organization. Since I have now graduated from the university, can I still use their name to publish my work? If the answer is no, is there any solution to get my work published?

You should specify if you will have co-authors. Presumably at least one of those would be from your previous institution, which means it is no longer necessary to worry about the institution itself being worried in any way about being associated with the paper.

The affiliation to your name on a publication should reflect where most of the work was done and where most of the funding came from.
Scenario 1
You just graduated and you want to publish your results in a paper. The manuscript will be written after graduation, but essentially all the results come from pre-graduation work. The affiliation is clearly the university where you graduated.
Scenario 2
You just graduated and continue researching on the topic. The new paper is an extension of your previous work, but all the work has been done by you after graduation. The affiliation is clearly not the university where you graduated. All the previous work should be cited accordingly. You can submit a paper independently, but it will be easier with a university affiliation. Talk to your former supervisor for advice.
Scenario 3 (in between 1 and 2)
You just graduated and you did some new research after graduation. However, a non-neglible part of the manuscript is from before graduation. In this case, you should talk to your former supervisor and ask for their opinion. In my opinion, they will be more than happy to have the paper submitted under their affiliation.
This answer is an extension of what Vladimir F said in the comments.

This is the main answer, but a small addendum: There are two different things a conference may want your affiliation for — for the publication, and for you as a conference participant (e.g. on your name badge).  As this and other answers say, the “publication affiliation” is a bit subtle but could be either the old or the new.  The “name badge” affiliation should generally be your current one, though, so even if they don’t already ask for e.g. “affiliation on publication” and “current affiliation” separately, I would recommend giving them both, with a note about the publication one.

To broaden the answer a little. I am not aware of any university that requires approval prior to publication, but some organizations (e.g., US government labs) have policies regarding what work can be published and the steps the authors need to take regarding dissemination of the work. If your prior university/organization had such a policy, you should still follow them.

Same for coauthors, if any.

I am aware of such a university - my own. If you are not a current student supervised by permanent staff, permanent staff, or temporary staff on a >1 year contract, a "research committee" has to approve your use of the affiliation for a paper. If you publish in Science or Nature without asking first no one will care. The point of this is to stop people from publishing in very low IF journals as it takes the university's average down when considering how to distribute federal funding.

The affiliation can be the one that you are currently with (eg a company/new university), or the old one if you’re still looking around for a job. What’s important is that
a. You offer an email address that will be active for a reasonable amount of time.
b. That you mention that most of the work was done when you were in your former university.

Both choices here could prove to be seriously wrong. If you use the affiliation, you could be seen as misrepresenting yourself and the institution. If you don't use it, you could be seen as failing to give credit where it is due (especially if you received funding or other support to perform the work that you are now publishing). So, the only correct course of action is to ask your former supervisor (or other appropriate contact) at the university, what you should do.

Unless the research is highly controversial, I have a hard time envisioning a scenario where listing the university affiliation would prove seriously wrong.

@Underminer if the author is no longer actually affiliated with the institution, the claim could be seen as dishonest -- and the work needn't be controversial for the institution to want to distance itself from it, it can simply be (considered to be) of poor quality

One option would be to get a visitor or guest affiliation with your old university. These are usually easy to get, and my experience has been you just need to fill a form out with basic contact details. This let's you still put your old University as your affliaition. Usually you will also get to keep your old email address for another year which can be helpful as people don't always update their address books straight away.


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Is it ethical for a professor to reuse exam questions annually without changes?
I'm facing a situation at my university that raises some ethical concerns and I'd like to get your perspective on it. One of our professors has a consistent practice of reusing the same exam questions every year for their course. The questions remain unchanged from year to year. Additionally, this professor does not share either the questions or the solutions with students.
My concerns are twofold. Firstly, this approach could potentially benefit students who have access to previous years' exams through their peers, creating an uneven playing field. Secondly, the lack of transparency and the repetitive nature of the exams could impact the overall learning experience and assessment integrity.
I am unsure about the ethical implications of this practice in an academic setting. Is this approach considered acceptable in academia? Are there ethical standards or guidelines that address such practices?

If it is broadly known, which it seems to be, why does anyone have difficulty in finding the information?

Why would the class I took this term being the same as the class taught this term matter?

Frankly, it is obviously unfair (to some extent), but how exactly to justify that is really a matter of your own ethical principles, and not academic norms. It is also common to find professors who requires students to buy rather expensive textbooks written by themselves. Obviously unfair too, but common too.

It isn't unethical unless the school has a rule against it. It's sloppy. It's probably unwise. But it is not inherently evil.

@JonCuster At some universities, only wealthy students will benefit.  For example, expensive Fraternities and Sororities may keep copies of prior exams for their paying members, and not make them available to any other students (or make them available only to other students paying to be part of the pay-to-play "Greek" system).

@EndAnti-SemiticHate - so only frat members have friends?

@JonCuster - Not every student has equal access to past exams. Why would anyone have problems accessing them? They are poor/neurodivergent/have poorer networking skills/have fewer friends/etc.

Isn't the idea to make access to past exams equal? Since you can't stop some from getting access it's more fair to ensure all have access. Some schools keep past exams on file in the library.

@JonCuster Please read what I wrote again.  It has nothing to do with having friends.  It's about many students not having access to expensive pay-to-play organizations that systematically collect tests and answers over a period of years for the exclusive use of their wealthy paid members.

@EndAnti-SemiticHate Using a new textbook every year is in fact tackling what Iman thinks is unethical ... using the same materials year over year.

@AzorAhai-him- Whether intentional or not, that's a tremendous misrepresentation.

@End Am I wrong? Clearly some choices are in tension here.

It may be ethical if the teacher has now more time to make the world a better place, instead of inventing useless exam questions.

The ethical concern is that a professor needs to provide an environment in which every student can learn. This practice, which I consider foolish, isn't necessarily contradictory to that ethical concern. We are supposed to be educators, not graders.
The fairness concern may be misplaced. Certainly students will be aware of this (most students). Old exam questions might be a good way for students to review what has been given otherwise. Some student organizations (in the US) have kept files of old exams along with answers for (more than?) a hundred years. They may give some students a grading advantage, and they may give some students a learning advantage. The latter is fine. But whether the overall learning environment is proper and fair is beyond such a narrow concern.
It is considered "acceptable" in the sense that it is common enough and that there are few rules that prevent it. I don't adhere to that practice, not condone it, but look deeper. I'd recommend other practices, but, at base, it is the learning that is the important thing.

Personal note: When I was a student (previous century) there were student organizations that kept files of old questions along with (correct/acceptable) answers. These were open to members, which I was not. I never considered this to be a problem as I was willing to work hard to learn things. If someone else got a good grade not working hard, it didn't affect me if I also got a good grade.
It is one reason, however, that I've become an opponent of grading "on the curve" which is, in effect, making the grades of one student dependent in some (any) way on the grades of another. Just as we need to be educators, we need to judge students individually as needed. I told students at the beginning of important courses that everyone could earn an A and that everyone could earn an F. And, no, not everyone wanted to hear that.

When&where I was a student (this century, central Europe), these collections were open to any student and professors actually encouraged updating these collections since they reflect the actual course contents. I may add that we did not have courses that really followed a given textbook, we had courses and book recommendations.

At the university I went to, all past examination papers were available in the library. (They probably had to be by law -- the university library was a copyright library, so if the exam papers were copyrighted, this follows. )

@nigel222 in general for the last 50 years or so (worldwide, earlier for many countries) if something is written down and moderately novel (i.e. more than a list of things) it's probably under copyright (or explicitly gone into the public domain. Most of the versions of legal deposit I'm aware of are based on publication.

While such an archive might not have effected you, it has an impact for students where a major reason they are seeking a degree is to obtain employment.  Many companies have strict GPA cutoffs for internships, and when comparing new hires the difference in GPA between two candidates from the same school is something that is looked at.

"We are supposed to be educators, not graders." Supposed by whom? Most people (e.g. future employers) certainly expect a person with a university degree to have passed some kind of scrutiny on what they have learned, not just have been in an environment in which they can learn for N years.

"If someone else got a good grade not working hard, it didn't affect me if I also got a good grade."
That is true if and only if there is no curved grading. Otherwise, other students being better or as good as you by virtue of simply having the answers will worsen your grade. But I guess thats more an argument against curved grading than reusing old questions.

@JiK Future Employers can expect all they like. My job description talks about Education, not credentialing. Same goes for my University's missions statement - it talks about providing the skills students need, not proving to others they have them, and the student agreement that students sign when they come is the same.

"it is the learning that is the important thing" -- the students who had to learn the boring course and who could not go to the great party instead (as opposed to the ones who had the questions) would like to have a word.

I had one course where the same (pool of questions) was used in a way that I think fair. I may add that the course was considered rather hard to pass.
The teacher openly announced that they'd  use the very same question pool (which I guess did not have more than 5 variants of each question) they had used for some decades, and that old exams are available.
The course had a large number of exams (> 10 in 1 semester) and they said the idea is "to ask everything" (to rule out good/bad luck with the subtopics), and that even if someone would try to "just" memorize the questions and their answers, there's a sufficient number of questions in the pool that one really cannot help learning the principles behind the answers as a side effect also that way.
I guess their real purpose was less to grade us but rather to make us work through a sufficient number of practice questions (exercises) in order to learn.

Not sharing solutions with students would not really be possible where I am since students have a right to see their graded exams and they can ask questions why exactly they lost points - at which point the solution will be revealed.

This is a brilliant strategy. Trick 'cheaters' into learning.

@seldon: we actually had a lot of professors who rather than ban on certain types of "cheating" used exam modes where those cheating strategies don't help: open book exams (with the recommendation to prepare cheat sheets as making those summaries is very good for learning), exams like the described, an excercise course where excercises were done in groups during course time, and if the average grade across all groups for the whole semester was sufficiently good (high bar), no separate exam needed. Lots of oral exams. A/B series of exam questions (no use trying to look at neighbour's solutions)

Trying to forbid students to speak about the exam questions they met was something that never crossed my mind as something that could possibly be done... Even with oral exams, if the candidate approved, other people could attend and listen to the exam. Some professors actually recommended to listen as part of the preparation of the important oral exams, or to bring a friend if you thought it would help against exam anxiety. (But as I remember, that rarely actually happened)

Continuing on the theme of preempting cheating by making it not effective... I definitely have colleagues that just tell everyone what the exam questions will be ahead of time. One even did a controlled trial over several years where some years they told the students and other years they didn't - it made no difference to average grades.

I'm going to offer a different perspective here, offering that how negligent the practice is depends highly on the institution, classroom size, grading practices, and course content, along with a host of other factors
The main factor in determining how problematic this is is the probability that there will be students who both want to and have the ability to cheat on the exams. The relevant factors in this are:

Classroom Size - Larger classrooms will naturally have a larger likelihood of someone recording the questions and sharing it with future students.

Cultural Background - In some cultures, cheating is more accepted and/or widespread. This is especially true of cultures that place a heavy emphasis on examination. More of these types of students in your classroom will also increase the likelihood of questions being recorded in passed on.

University Selectivity - In general, anecdotally, it seems that more selective universities have more cheating. I would guess that this is because students are more likely to cheat their way to a good GPA in high school, because they are more likely to have merit-based scholarships which require a certain GPA, and because the average student is more likely to care about their grade than, for example, a student in a regional state college with an over 90% acceptance rate.

Grading Structure - Does the course use a "traditional" grading system? Or an alternative one? If you have a course that, for example, uses a mastery system, where students can continue to retry a topic until they pass, then they are less incentivized to cheat, since if they fail, they can just try again.

Course Difficulty - What is the average student grade in the course? If its an "easy A" course, students are less likely to feel the need to cheat, but if its a "filter" course for a major where over a third of students routinely fail, students are much more likely to feel pressured to cheat.

Grade Importance - How vital is getting a good grade in the course to the student? If it is a gen-ed class, then the answer is probably pretty low, beyond keeping the grade high enough for merit-based scholarships. If it is a course where a good grade is required to declare their major, then the incentive to cheat is going to be high.

Future Relevance - If a class imparts a skillset which is going to be particularly relevant for later coursework, and for after college (e.g. on a job search), and the instructor actively ensures students know this, then students are more likely to view learning the skillset as important (and thus not cheat).

Attitudes Towards Professor - When students particularly respect and like a professor, they are less likely to cheat. Similarly, if they detest and don't respect a professor, then they are more likely to view cheating as acceptable. As an anecdote, I remember in my undergrad a student using Chegg to cheat on some homework for a disliked professor, while this student also mentioned how they would never cheat for a specific other professor's class, who was known for being kind, passionate about teaching, and a good educator in general (it is worth noting despite these qualities the professor did not give easy As).

Cheating Punishment - When professors use systems to identify cheating, and institutions take it seriously and exact strong punishments on students, students are less likely to cheat than when professors don't pay attention and where students only get a slap on the wrist when caught.

Institutional Culture - Related to all of the above, if students generally recognize that cheating is rampant, then they are more likely to join in.

The second factor is, upon questions being shared, how easy is it for students to cheat? The main factors for this are:

Number of Questions - If you have a database of, let's say, 500 questions, and each student will be asked only 20 questions a year, than memorizing each answer is much more difficult and less rewarding.

Answer Involvement - As Oбжорoв's answer indicated, if your questions are, let's say, an essay question, it is much more difficult to cheat on it than, let's say, multiple choice.

Exam Format - An unproctored exam is much easy to cheat on than a proctored one, and a digital exam is easier to cheat on than one with a paper and pencil.

Finally, I suppose one could also consider how "equal opportunity" the cheating will be. If it is likely answers will be posted online and distributed to the entire class, it's probably less discriminatory than a group sharing it among themselves, though I would think this is only a little solace for an already bad scenario. Beyond that, it's difficult to tell what would lead to more "public" cheating, beyond large class sizes and more homogenous students.
So, putting this altogether with two scenarios:
Most Problematic - A professor is teaching a very large course (i.e.: 100's to 1000's of students) where at least a B is required to declare some (popular) major. The institution is an extremely selective university, and many of the students in the class come from cultures where cheating is more acceptable. In fact, most of them are close friends with people that took the class last year with similar descriptions. There are also students, particularly those from poorer backgrounds, that don't have any network within the university.  The university famously does nothing to cheaters, and even students caught several times continue to be enrolled in the institution. Despite the course grade importance, the content is of little relevance for students after passing the class. The professor is a jerk and is hated for it. Its also a very difficult class, with more students failing than passing. Exams only have a single opportunity, and a poor performance cannot be made up for. Despite the difficulty, exams are multiple choice and taken online at home alone, and the exact same questions are used every year, for every student, with absolutely no variation.
Least Problematic - A professor is teaching a course at a public regional university with very high acceptance rates. The classroom is very small with less than 10 students, who are all from similar local backgrounds. The instructor is beloved and respected by the students, as both a great educator and a kind soul. The instructor uses a grading system which lets students in some way make up failed exams, and almost everyone gets an A in this course. The professor and institution take cheating seriously, with first offenses  resulting in failing the course and second offenses resulting in expulsion. The course grade isn't relevant for their futures, but the content of the course is of tremendous significance, and the students know this. The professor has a large database they pull from, but may be repeated in multiple years by chance. These questions are challenging, involving writing an essay, writing a mathematical proof, or writing a computer program. Exams are always proctored in person and done via paper and pencil.
Where the cutoff for being "unethical" between the least problematic and most problematic scenario is depends on your own sense of metaethics.
I will note that, ironically, the most "valuable" institutions to have on one's résumé are much more likely to have courses which sound like that problematic scenario, while the least "valuable" ones are going to sound like the environment where cheating is rare. If I can get on a pedestal for a moment, the fact that generally R1s systematically disincentivize their tenure track professors from caring about teaching in general, have giant course sizes that depersonalizes everything, and that many R1s refuse to hire teaching-track professors and give them salary, job security, and college governance parity with their research-oriented counterparts, is a large reason for many of the issues in higher ed, including this cheating one.

In a difficult Biology course that was also required for pre-meds (in the days when med schools were very hard to get into), during an exam, a student in the row next to me introduced himself to me, followed by, "What's the answer to number 3?" I later found out that his nickname was Cheatin' Ed. Can one imagine that this had no effect on the patient care he gave?

I agree that all students should have equal access to past exams, and if I were in charge of your program, I would hope students would bring their concerns to me.
I would never repeat the exact same exam every year, but how bad it is from a pedagogical perspective answer depends somewhat on the subject matter, the type of questions, and whether the exam is written or oral.
For example, there is old joke that some economics professors "don't change the questions, they just change the answers". I have heard recent versions of this joke about professors in fast moving fields (e.g. computer science, biotech, …) doing this since the answers this year may actually be somewhat different from last year.
More seriously, occasionally a final exam is essentially a project presentation.  Here is an example of a political science course whose final exam was always a single question: "Propose a solution to a major social problem. The answer must incorporate political ideology, economic impact, and media representation". In that case, however, it is best to use an oral exam format where the examiner(s) can pose follow-up questions based on what is presented, so even though the main question is always the same, the follow-up questions are not identical and can quickly establish how well the student understands what they have just presented.

My feeling is it's totally wrong and unethical.
Some students are better at memorization than others, and could just regurgitate verbatim an answer composed at leisure before the exam. This, even if the pool of possible questions is quite large. Some would get their prepared answers checked over by another person and incorporate their corrections and suggestions. Some would go even further, and pay someone else to write the answers for them. That would be cheating, but only if the person writing the answer for them plagiarised a known text could that be proved.
The only way the examination system can be fair is if none of the students have ever seen the question before the exam. (Or, they could be marked on coursework, but there is then a risk of plagiarism and other cheating as above).

I'd be less concerned about "fairness of grading" and more concerned about "learning opportunity". Practicing past exams is usually a great way to learn. But if there is only one past exam and the teacher has to make it unavailable to the students because they plan on reusing it, then the teacher is actively removing a studying opportunity from the students.

The only way I see this system could be considered "unfair" was if the course was grading on a curve, in which case cheaters getting a perfect score knocking down the grade of everyone else would indeed be unfair. But seeing how grading on a curve is an ethically dubious practice in itself, I'd argue that that doesn't make that big of a difference in the grand scheme of things. And otherwise, why would students successfully cheating affect the "fairness" of the other students? Education is about learning, not competition, and students that are cheating are ultimately only hurting themselves.

@Abion47: Cheating is not a victimless offense.  It diminishes the value of the degree / harms the reputation of the school when half its graduates show up to interviews knowing nothing at all.

@BenVoigt - But the specific form of cheating here doesn't mean that students without the requisite skills can pass, only that students with the requisite skills are more likely not to.

@IanSudbery: You must have read a different question and answer that I did.  This one specifically points out that students can pass the exam (with a perfect score) using memorization alone and no other skills.

@BenVoigt - yes, it seems we are reading different questions. As I read it, a student needs to work out what the answers are before they can memorise them. If the answers do not require any figuring out, and are just information recall (itself poor practice), then presumably the student memorising the answer is the same as the student learning what they were supposed to learn from the course.

@DanielHatton - They still have to come up with those explanatory text or verbal-reasoning arguments (I can't comment on algebraic derivations) before they memorise them.

@DanielHatton I tend to ask questions for which there arn't (at least exact) answers in textbooks or even in the literature. My questions tend to either involve asking for some sort of creativity (what experiements would you do next and why), or some sort of judgement: evaluate the arguments for and against some controversial (possibly invented) hypothesis etc.

@IanSudbery: The answer specifically says "Some students would ... regurgitate verbatim an answer composed at leisure before the exam.  Some would get their prepared answers checked over by another person and incorporate their corrections and suggestions. Some would go even further, and pay someone else to write the answers for them."  Or wherever they got a copy of the old exam (frat house files?) might have included correct answers with it.  And today you can add "Generative AI" into the mix.  In none of these cases is there any evidence the student came up with the answer.

@BenVoigt I don't see someone reguritating an answer they have composed at leisure as being particularly problematic. They have still demonstrated the skills they supposedly needed for the exam. Obviously paying someone else to compose the answer in its entirety is problematic, but I suspect this is rare enough (at least in my context) that it wouldn't bring down the value of the degree any more than is already the case with people paying for their dissertations (40% of their degree here) to be ghost written.

People are probably divided over feedback. But to me, if someone incorporates feedback, that's still them demonstrating something - they still need to understand and integrate the feedback, and then learn it.  I'm not saying its totally fair, but rather the unfairness is that those that don't see it are not getting an opportunity that those do are getting, rather than that those that do are able to pass without the requisite skills.

It is somewhat unethical, particularly if the professors know that there are students in the class who can't join the 'group' to get previous exam answers, for example, due to racial and language barriers.
This practice was common in Hong Kong 15 years ago. The worst aspects of it were reusing exams and grading on a curve. So, students who had access to previous years' answers could answer perfectly and all receive A's, while those who didn't have access would get C's or D's, even though they performed well in class and exam.

It is not unethical.
Profs often do it because it is a good question, and because they are busy, and because they have different priorities than students do.
Profs can do what they want... unfortunately.
Professors are experts in their field. Their field is usually not teaching. Few professors bother to take any teaching training. Though of course, some do and there are entire departments at universities devoted to helping professors teach.
Looking at past exams is a good study technique. So are reading, attending class, discussing with classmates, meeting with the professor, doing research online, and asking questions.
The "problem" is likely as old as education itself, and is likely not going away.

My background: Taught very large courses in-person for over 16 years and then got a Masters of Education.

@DanielHatton - Its still the case at my university and all the universities my friends work at.

I think "unethical" is an odd word to use here. It's arguably lazy and foolish, but I don't see how it would be "unethical".
One could argue that there's nothing wrong with this practice at all. A good test should presumably test the student's knowledge of the material taught in class. A reasonably intelligent and insightful student should be able to figure out what likely questions on the test are going to be. For example, if a history class spent a lot of time on the causes of the US Civil War, a student would reasonably expect there to be questions on the causes of the US Civil War. I wouldn't expect a test for this class to ask me to find the derivative of the sine function. Indeed, I've taken many classes where, before a major test, the teacher would flat out say, "There will be questions on the test about ..."
I suppose in some classes you could say, Yes, there would have to be questions about X, but you wouldn't know the details of the question. To make a trivial example, I'd expect a class in arithmetic to have addition problems on the test. But whether it asks for 17+29 or 32+97, you wouldn't know. And if you did know in advance, you can spend hours working out the answer if necessary and memorize it. (Of course I wouldn't expect a college class in arithmetic, but you get the idea I hope.)
I could readily see a professor saying, Any reasonable test for this class is going to have to ask these 20 things. I have to ask about all of them or I won't be covering all the material in the class, and I can't fairly ask about other things because those other things were not covered in class. Depending on the class, maybe you could construct questions that asked about the same subject in different ways. But in many classes this would be impractical. I think the wise and diligent professor in such a case would have a pool of questions, select some number from the pool each year, and present them in a different order. Then a student couldn't just study a previous year's test, memorize the answers, and come in and write them down. He'd have to at least understand enough to recognize which question was which. Preferably to have some understanding of what the question is asking, so he knows which answer to give. And at that point, that's basically what you're testing for.

Doesn't this depend on the field? Compare these three questions:

What are the ethical consequences, if any, of slaughtering animals without sedation?
What is the influence of Aristotle in Hegel's philosophy?
State and prove the fundamental theorem of linear algebra.

These three questions probe different knowledge of the students, so they may be more or less appropriate.

why the downvotes?


text:
How to answer questions in a conference talk that I should know the answer to, but don't?
In a few days, I will be giving my first conference talk. I have only spent less than a year in the field, and the talk will be attended by several well-known researches, who are familiar with all of my advisor's work and all of the other literature in the area as well. Of the people in the room, it is probably them who will be listening most intently -- but it is also them who I feel the least well-equipped to answer questions from.
The questions I am most worried about will be about related work. Take it as a given that:

I clearly should know the answer to the question, because the related work is very relevant at a surface-level. Indeed, my advisor is familiar with the work and has told me to try to be prepared for any questions about it.
But I don't know the answer, because I failed to sufficiently prepare. Or, to make some excuses, maybe I am relatively new to the field and have not had a chance to read every paper in full detail. Of course I have tried some to read through this work, and I have gotten from my advisor some idea of how it compares, but I am not nearly so familiar as I should be.

It seems likely that a poor response to such a question will make me come across as incompetent, unfamiliar with related work in the field, and even unfamiliar with the context of our own work. Similarly, this may damage the reputation of our research itself. How can I best respond to such a question, so as to minimize the damage?

I have found helpful advice here on how to prepare in general, and I have also found this question relevant.

To add to an already good accepted answer, here's to maybe calm your nerves a little bit: The majority tend to go easy on young researchers giving their first talk. Few people attend conferences to ask gotcha' questions to Ph.D. students, and the few who do, are usually frowned upon by other researchers.
More directed to your question: Not knowing the answer up front is ok. I actually disagree with the answer above stating that no one asks questions exam-style, because the above mentioned few actually tend to do. I vividly remember having been asked such exam-style questions a few times, usually by older, Russian professors. If the situation should arise, know that both the chairperson and the audience will be on your side, if you simply say: 'I do not know the answer by heart, let us take this discussion afterwards.' No one wants to sit and hear a lengthy cross examination, they might have a question which is actually interesting, and there is usually some degree of time pressure.
Good luck with your first talk!


text:
Publishing no-longer state-of-the-art results in machine learning
I co-authored a method, which yielded state-of-the-art results in several machine learning benchmarks.
However, the paper got rejected from two conferences and then from a super slow journal.
With the time for improvements, it all took 3 years.
The method is no longer state-of-the-art, but I'd still like to publish the article.
The question is: what's the most elegant way to write (e.g. in the abstract or contributions section) that the method was state at the moment of creating it, but it's no longer anymore? If that matters, there's an old pre-print on the arXiv, so at least there's some proof that it was SOTA.
In other words: I want to make it clear to reviewers that it was SOTA, but I can't brag about it like it's SOTA anymore.
EDIT: The previous rejection reasons were mostly connected to not being novel enough (it's an incremental work rather than a revolution, but we'll aim at less prestigious place to publish it) and some missing things like additional ablations (which are intended to be included in the journal version).
We won't aim at any A* conference anymore, I just want it to make it through to a decent place, since anything that I don't publish is invisible for academia in my country.
It wasn't a desk reject, we just aimed too high at first.

I cab see why you would like to publish something but I don't see what you could do to attract a publisher now if publishers weren't interested when (by your estimate) it was SOTA.

The issue is that publishing this now does not advance the state of the art. Why would a (reputable) publisher take such a paper?

@EthanBolker because there's still some contributions - it was not enough for the initial venues, but we aimed too high. Please see the edited question.

@WolfgangBangerth Please see the updated question

What exactly does it mean that the method is no longer SOTA? Is it just that better results on benchmarks have been achieved by recent approaches, or have people done something that makes what you did itself redundant because for example people have solved a specific issue that made your method strong in a better way, so people would read your paper and immediately think that the issues should be dealt with in the way a now available other method does? In the first case your method can still be of methodological interest.

I think for publication chances in the present and also for the interest of the paper it is rather irrelevant that the method was SOTA at some point, and as a reviewer I wouldn't want to see such a statement in the paper. Authors need to convince me that it is worthwhile to have this in the literature now, and a performance that people improved upon in the meantime doesn't do that. Methodological interest on the other hand can do it; maybe potential to inspire further improvements etc.

That's a crummy situation to be in, and I'm sorry you have to deal with it.
I'm assuming that your "state of the art" statement is based on model performance compared to the field at the time you made it. If that's the case, your best bet is probably to emphasize what advantage/contribution your method brings to the table that make it worth publishing now despite the fact that it is a step back from what current SOTA ML methods are now capable of.
For example - is your method easier to use/install than current SOTA? Does it require less data? Is it a smaller/lighterweight model? Did you do something cool in the model construction that other people would be interested in building off of? Basically you need to demonstrate in some way that the loss in performance compared to current SOTA is outweighed by other factors.
Also, as you're probably aware, you're going to have a much better chance of getting this published at all in a lower tier journal, as most of the journals with a high impact factor are going to have reviewers that will not be impressed if the method isn't CURRENTLY better than what's already out there, regardless of any non-performance-related reasons that people would be interested in the mode.

The answer to your question will critically depend upon why your original conference and journal submissions were rejected. You mention that your methods were "state of the art" but it is not clear whether that was only a self-assessed view, or whether there were other indicators that it was indeed state of the art.
If the material was considered to be uninteresting or significantly flawed even a few years ago, then that obviously weighs against the likelihood of now finding a journal that would want to publish it. On the other hand, if you got rejections for reasons that indicated that the work was good but the submission required revision before re-submission, that is an entirely different matter but it changes the kind of journal to which you might now consider sending your paper.
Response to comment
Don't get misled. There is a great deal of difference between:

"advancing the state of the art" (which refers to whether a study or method contributes to the the whole body of knowledge about a domain), and
being state-of-the-art, which is a kind of synonym for *current bleeding edge, and frequently represents a fusion of fashion together with the currently preferred trade-off between competing resources (e.g., availability and required size of the training corpus, memory, speed of execution and speed of training).

I recall a time in the 1990s when RISC architecture was the hot-new thing. If you wanted to look "state-of-the-art" at conferences on hardware architecture, you'd want to be presenting  work on RISC. Sure, RISC is dominant in mobile embedded systems, but Intel and AMD are still making significant progress in CISC systems ... and I imagine researchers are still publishing about them.
It sounds as if your own study might at one stage have both advanced the state of the art, and been SoA. The fact that it is no longer SoA does not mean that it couldn't, if you were to publish it, advance the state of the art. Look, for example at this answer to a recent question about "failing ideas".

It's rather the second case (not being good enough for the venue). I've edited the question to provide some additional background.

If you can afford the publication fee, just send it off to Scientific Reports, which reviews for correct methods and interpretation but not for novelty and impact, and be done with it. Scientific Reports has surprisingly good citation metrics despite that.

nice idea. Won't it be considered as an MDPI-equivalent though (that is, "pay-to-win")? Not sure what's the perception of SR in academia, never published there.

Scientific Reports is a Nature journal, so it gets a bit of glow for that. It also has a fast turn-around which helps make it popular. A lot of my colleagues, some of whom also publish in Nature's flagship journal and have very high h-indices, send their good but less-exciting work to Scientific Reports.


text:
What to do when visa application requires disclosure of the titles of articles I have reviewed?
I am applying for some kind of Visa. Part of the application is to prove my contributions to the research community and one of these contributions is the list of papers I reviewed. Not just the number of articles but the titles, emails from editors inviting me, screenshots from editorial management websites, etc. I feel uncomfortable doing so where these reviews were intended to be anonymous. Is it unethical to do so? Is it a bad thing to do? Should I refuse to do so and just include the number of articles I reviewed per journal/conference?
Update: I have consulted a lawyer and she said that "there should not be any privacy issues with that, at least to what I am aware of".

This seems like an unreasonable request. Providing names of journals and editors and anonymized screenshots/email seems ok, though (although I haven't heard of such a request before). Who requests such information?

Is it ethical to expect uncompensated reviewers to abide by bizarre ethical restrictions?

It seems like whoever is asking this has a poor understanding of the academic publishing process. Reviews are anonymous and should stay so unless they are disclosed by the journal.

@emory "Bizarre"?

@CapeCode This may be so, but I doubt that this observation is helpful to the OP. Visa processes are from the applicant's side pretty much always "abide by the rules or don't get a visa", there usually is very little wiggle room to negotiate, explain, or clarify.

Is 'contribution to the research community' going to hang on these details? Perhaps it would be worth the effort of emailing the editors asking if you can release this info, and attaching their 'no' replies.

You could just have the letter of invitation with a clear cover on the title of the article. So, date, editor, journal would be visible but not the actual title. And then you could mention that this is confidential information.

If this is for NIW, then you can do that. A part of the (visa granting "complicated" process) is to provide that you have contributed to academia through peer reviewing research studies/proposals (although other criteria are still needed too).

I don't really see a problem, personally.  It's not like your identity as a reviewer is some critical state secret, it's just information that shouldn't be spread unnecessarily.  Presumably you can trust the visa office to keep these titles confidential, just like you have to trust them with your bank records, passport, etc.

Immigration officers are unlikely to care about academic ethics.

I believe that this sort of disclosure can be ethical, especially to a neutral third party, and when only discussing papers that have already been accepted and/or published elsewhere. (Papers still in the process somewhere else might be different.). Anonymity of referees isn't a deep ethical good in its own right - it has very clear and specific reasons, and this doesn't seem like a relevant violation.
Consider the reasons why referees are often given anonymity: 1) to allow referees to give honest feedback without fear of (real or imagined) retaliation, 2) to encourage authors to engage with the referee's arguments, not their personality or status, 3) to avoid the appearance/possibility of quid pro quo reviews, and 4) to ensure that broader perceptions of the article are not influenced by knowledge of its referees.
None of these problems would occur by giving the names of articles to a (I'm going to assume) completely uninterested immigration clerk. If you want to be very conscientious, google your contact to make sure they aren't doing immigration processing to make ends meet while an adjunct professor :)

It's just unethical, but, no one will be mad if you reveal those details, provided that the papers are already been published.