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Encouraging questions during lectures yet handling particular student asking too many questions
I teach an advanced engineering undergrad class online and typically I love and encourage students to ask questions both by unmuting as well as over chat.
I have never had this problem in earlier years, but this time around I have a student who asks so many questions that it's almost disruptive to the lecture flow. Many of his questions are also either simplistic / irrelevant / repetitive.
On the one hand, we have this precept that there is no such thing as a stupid or silly question. On the other hand I feel the amount and quality of questions this particular student is asking is not helping the class.
Meanwhile, I don't want to discourage the rest of the class from asking questions. I already offered to spend as much time is needed to answer any student questions at the end of the lecture. I would be happy if this student would ask his questions at the end but I don't want to make this a general policy since I do actually love taking most other questions during the class as they pop up.
Any ideas on how one could tackle this sort of situation diplomatically? I don't want to be unfair to this student, but also have the most positive experience for the rest of the class.
Of course, there's no good way I can think of to get the perspective of the rest of the students.

This sonds very similar to the situation in this question: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/63915/how-to-deal-with-a-student-who-most-likely-has-a-mental-condition-and-keeps-arg/63919#63919

Perhaps helpful: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/83628/asking-questions-in-class-how-can-i-exit-a-qa-when-i-havent-really-understo/83636#83636

"we have this precept" You mean you've specifically introduced this idea in class?

@Azor Ahai no. I meant it's a generally mentioned line. Not something I have announced.

While there are no stupid questions, there are stupid people...

This student will for sure be driving the other students mad and disrupting their learning experience.

"I already offered to spend as much time is needed to answer any student questions at the end of the lecture." -- Think through whether you really mean this or not. E.g., if a student one term wants 4+ hours of question time after every lecture, do you really have that much time to give? Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/80524/limits-on-one-student-using-all-of-ones-office-hours

@PatrickT - yes and no: there are stupid people, and there also are stupid questions.  I don't know why everyone repeats this as if it was one of the ten commandments, unless it is simply used as a shorthand to encourage people to ask non-stupid questions, but I'm sure everybody has actually had experience with getting (or even asking), yes, a stupid question.

@davidbak I guess the idea is that everyone at some point is allowed to ask a stupid question: typically as a result of misunderstanding something that is otherwise basic, so yes the adage "there are no stupid questions" is intended to encourage tolerance for the occasional slip-up; also, you can often reinterpret stupid questions to make them smart. But if someone keeps asking stupid questions, that's evidence stacking up against them!

@davidbak While there might occasionally be a small number of stupid questions, there is also an overwhelming number of people who preface all their questions with "This might be a stupid question, but..." and probably an even larger number of people who don't ask their questions at all because they're too shy or too afraid of sounding stupid. You might call "there are no stupid questions" a hyperbole if you wish, but it's still a very good principle.

@davidbak The adage is intended to persuade students to ask questions when they are being quiet due - very commonly - to thinking their own question is stupid, it's usually followed by some aphorism about how some other number of students "... will have exactly the same question as you";  also, the customer is always right.   ;-)

As both a prolific question asker and someone aware of potential monopolization, I always limited myself to a couple immediate questions and then waited until nobody else had questions to ask more. I think this is fairly reasonable. Just make a rule that generally people get a couple questions a lecture and afterwards if nobody has more questions they can ask again.

Been there.  Talk to the student offline and explain your request that they limit their questions in class and come to office hours if they have additional questions.  If that doesn't work, you may have to cut them off publicly in lecture, asking that they give other students a chance.  If you don't address the problem, you are sure to get dinged by other students in your course evals.

Do you have a rule of thumb for the student to decide whether the question would be appropriate during the lecture or should be asked in office hours instead? As a student myself, I find some "stupid questions" asked by other students very helpful because they make me realize that I didn't know the answer either, so need to pay more attention

@lucidbrot No.  I treat every question as appropriate.  (I never, never, never respond as if I think a question is stupid.) What's not appropriate is asking so many questions during lecture that it becomes disruptive and likely to annoy others in the class.  (My objective is purely to avoid complaints on my course evals that I didn't properly control the class.)

Thanks for the reply! I think you slightly misunderstood me though: I was wondering if you had a rule of thumb to tell the disruptive student. Because if a lecturer were to ask me to please ask less questions, without given a clear statement what or how many would be okay, I would probably stop asking any questions at all during the lecture. Unless I was very very certain that it was a good question.

@lucidbrot Thankfully, I've only had one such student. I knew it was a problem but didn't take action until after I got complaints on my mid-semester course evals.  I talked to the student offline, explained that other students found him disruptive and I agreed, and suggested he try to limit himself to perhaps 2, 3, maybe 4 questions per lecture.  I think I might have had to ask publicly once, maybe twice in lecture that he give other students a chance.  Problem was solved and students remarked on my final evals that they'd noticed the lectures in the second half were much better.

Yes, that's a conflict. One thing you could do is having "question breaks" every now and then. The rule is: one question per student (at any given break), and you let the students know of this rule and stick to it. This way would allow more students to ask questions, while keep answering (some) of this particular student's questions.
Of course, you set the timings of these breaks according to your pace in your lecture. If there's a lot of time left, make a break every 15 min. If you need to cover more material (or, if you have already answered too many questions), delay the next break until appropriate. It's now in your control.

Thanks! That's a good idea. I just get the feeling that the conduct of just ONE student is forcing me to change the rules in a way that affects EVERYONE! It's like having to meter the coffee machine or printer just because one user abuses the privilege!

I see what you are saying. All I can think of is this analogy, that once upon a time, when we were young, people never locked their house doors (at nights, etc.). It took one only person to convert an entire village.  :(
At least, next semester you'll be able to get back to your habits...

I think this amounts to putting unhelpful limits on all the students when only one is a problem.  I would try to solve the problem with the one student.

Maybe this problem could be addressed my setting clearer expectations. This is important because

Your student might not be aware that his questions are disruptive, and in that case he would benefit from having clear guidelines on what constitutes a good question.
It's a disservice to the other students to allow one student to hijack the class
Speaking from my own experience as a student, I think that the shy students will actually be more likely to speak up if you give them a way to evaluate their questions. No one is going to believe that there's no such thing as a bad question. We've all had experiences with disruptive classmates, and no one wants to be like that. I often avoided asking questions because I worried about how they would be perceived. If you give students clear guidelines, they will know when they have a good question that it is okay to ask.

Some ideas for guidelines:

It's always okay to ask a question when you don't understand something. If you're really struggling with a particular point, we can always continue these discussions in office hours.
If a question is off-topic, I might tell you to save it for office hours (but it's okay to ask).
Make sure you're paying attention in lecture. If you miss something every now and then, it's okay to ask, but if you need me to repeat myself several times per lecture, we should talk in office hours about how to fix that problem.
I know asking questions can be scary, but you'll learn much better if you can be brave enough to speak up when something's not clear. It's an important skill that will help you even beyond the classroom.

And of course, the final aspect of this is to apply these guidelines in class and tell your students to come to office hours for questions that derail the lectures.

My main tactic (mostly in the in-person context) is that after about the 3rd question from a given student within one lecture period, I start polling the rest of the class on whether I should spend time answering it right then or not.
Usually if I get 3 or more "yes" responses then I go ahead and do it; otherwise I say, "we can cycle on that after class". Among other things, I look at this as an honest attempt to gauge how the rest of the class wants to use our available time together.

if the response to a "is this relevant for everyone?" is "no", it is also provides a pretext to explain to the student: "I like that you ask so many questions and would like others to take you as an example there, but I also want to make sure that everyone else benefits from the lecture as well so let us discuss this after class".

Perhaps you can provide a separate channel for questions, even email or a chat app.
In face to face teaching a student will normally raise their hand to get your attention and you can ignore it at the moment if you need to continue. Hopefully you discourage shouting out then.
A separate channel that you watch lets you do the same thing. It even gives you a written (depending on the medium) list of student questions that you can answer when you like, during the lecture, or afterwards using the separate channel. Zoom, I think, has such a feature, but running another application on the side is usually possible in online teaching.
The student can then "ask" whenever they like and you can answer whenever it is appropriate without interruption.
In a somewhat different context I generally used a simple mailing list to which all students and course staff were subscribed. All questions to the list and all answers were seen by all. I found this advantageous over office hours since some questions from one student are actually unasked questions by others.

Piazza is great for dealing with questions offline, outside of the lecture, especially for the fact that it lets students answer each other's questions.  And Zoom's chat feature can be helpful during a live lecture. But I don't think these are substitutes for letting students speak up to ask anything they like during the lecture.

Similarly, Slack is a great way to provide constructive responses asynchronously when "live" lecture time is short. Setting expectations from the outset is key, e.g., "I have 40 minutes of material to present, leaving 20 minutes for questions. I'll try to give everyone a chance to get one question in. Any questions we can't cover today we'll handle via Slack"

I'm not a teacher, so this could be way off mark, but - I think that other students will have noticed this guy too and be moderately annoyed at him. I think it's safe for you to single him out and give him special rules, without having the rest of the class worry if they're next. Just make it clear that you've been patient with him for a long while now, but even you have some limits.
As for the special rule, I think a "cooldown" would be effective and not very harsh. Basically, after he asks a question, he needs to wait for at least 5 minutes before asking another. Or maybe you give him 2 or 3 questions, and after he's out, then he needs to wait.
In addition you could make it clear that he can write them all down and you'll answer them after the lesson in private.
Having the questions rationed like that will make him think twice about what is really important to ask. Making him write them down will help notice the repetitive ones.
Or maybe he's just too lazy to bother, in which case nothing will help him anyway and the cooldown will just keep the rest of the group running smoothly.
Or, as suggested in another answer, he might have some sort of mental disability - it's probably worth checking that out too, before taking any other action.

Yes, if a student is asking so many questions as to be disruptive, other students will definitely notice, they'll be annoyed at the instructor for not controlling the classroom, and they will definitely complain on their course evals.  I speak from experience!

I agree with the other comments that you shouldn't let one student ruin it/change everything for the whole group (and for you), I suggest talking to them privately and not having to change your class routine too much to accommodate this student.   You can always try changing the rules up a bit and be honest to the class and say you want to try changing the question time/rules etc for one day and see how it goes.   Have you looked into their file/school history? I have an autistic student that has similar behaviours online so I chatted with them and they are working on it.

I had a class that had a similar-ish problem. People were asking questions that were already answered during this or a previous lecture or were just trivial. This lecture was streamed on twitch and most of the time trivial questions were just answered by fellow students but if a question was deemed interesting or new then they were forwarded to the Prof.
So I'd advise the students to use the chat function more often, so that other students could answer the question and if that does not result in a satisfying answer then you should answer the question.

This is a Zoom-specific answer, so I apologize if it isn't applicable.
In this case, I would disallow use of the chat function (or tell students they can use it to ask each other questions, but you can't keep up monitoring it), and instead have students raise their hand or use the question feature. I like the raising hands feature because it keeps hands in the order they were raised. You can always put off calling on raised hands, just like in-person.
I think the question feature is restricted to webinars, which is a bummer, but it allows others to vote on questions so you can see which questions a lot of people have.

Apart from the other good answers: are you 100% sure the other students know the answers? Flip back the question to the class. So ask either the whole class that question, or ask specific persons like row by row (since the top 20% of your class probably will know everything which is asked).
Also, announce that new format, to avoid people feeling punished.

Here's what I would do in this situation.
At the start of your next lecture, announce a new rule.  Each student is allowed to ask up to three questions per lecture; and if they have any more questions than that, they should ask them in your office hours (or by email, or the class discussion forum, or however else you prefer).
That way, you're not singling anyone out - everyone has to follow the same rules.  You're also allowing the student to ask decent questions if he/she has any.  But most importantly, you're putting a lid on him/her hijacking the class.

The set limit for the number of questions can vary depending on a number of factors. Other than that, I see this as a win-win solution.

You are a lecturer. Not an analog copy machine. Make your script / lecture material publicly available and give students reading assignments for the content of the upcoming lecture beforehand. This way you can make sure that even if you can't go through all of your material, everyone is on the same page. In any way: Thinking that presenting your material to the students is enough to teach them something is unrealistic. Students have to reread and study the material many times over. Don't constrain questions and interactivity in your lecture as this is more important to the learning process of your students than the pure act of them writing it down (analog copying) or hearing it from you first.

Maybe there are no silly questions, but there are plenty of thoughtless ones! I'm certain your student could answer 90% of those questions with 5 seconds of thought.
Remember, the primary goal of higher ed is to teach people to learn and to think -- not to spoon-feed them with easy answers & facts.
You're actively doing students a disservice by answering thoughtless question. You should not answer those as it deprives the student of the mental exercise and habit of answering it for themselves.
You can explain this to the class. Even though you won't name names, everybody will know exactly who and what you're talking about.
When you get those questions, you can just say "thoughtless" or "think about that 2 secs" (depends on your style, but always exactly the same words) and move on without skipping a beat. If they insist, remind them you keep office hours, move on. You can periodically ask the class for feedback to see if you're being too stringent with your thoughtlessness threshold. I guarantee the class is majorly annoyed and will only be too happy to cooperate with your program.
I remember a guy at school who was exactly the type the OP describes. Teacher didn't control him and I hated that class. My friends wanted to grab him in the parking lot! I ran across him many years later. Still interrupts and asks unthinking questions. Hasn't yet figured out that he's not listening when he's talking.

Definitely DO NOT DO THIS unless you're tenured and don't care about your course evals!  Students will crucify you if start labeling questions as thoughtless or ridicule them by asking they "think about it 2 secs".

I agree with the Nicole Hamilton's comment for the most part. I would rather say "DO NOT DO THIS" (because students may feel belittled with this approach; not because students will give bad evaluation for your course).

@CyriacAntony I agree with that.  I pay attention to my evals because I care about my students being happy with my performance.  I want to know that I was accessible, answered all questions and did it well, and that I always treated students with respect.  As a former entrepreneur, I come to teaching with the attitude that my students are my customers and "the customer is always right".  (Well, maybe not always, but you get the idea.) If they complain about anything, I want to fix it if I can because that's what they deserve.

As a student who constantly had their class disrupted by thoughtless questions, I gave my instructor a bad eval for letting that nonsense continue. I would have given him a medal for shutting down that rogue student, as would have my classmates.


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What is your affiliation when publishing as a student?
As a professor/postdoc, when you submit an article to a journal you note your department, school, and city:

Department of History, Barnett College, Fairfield, New York

But when you are in a PhD program, do you need to explicitly mention it in your address and if so how?

Is there a reason why you wouldn't want to?

Also related: Rules for affiliation for student doing unpaid research in their free time? (the answers of which aren't restricted to undergraduate students).

@Buffy There is no reason. I want to as long as it is appropriate.

It is entirely appropriate, highly recommended, and possibly mandatory if this is part of your PhD work.
The format you have mentioned should be adequate.

Yes, an enrolled student can use the university (and the department) as an affiliation. It is probably a good idea to also note that you are a student so that people will realize that the affiliation will change within a few years (or less). So, add "(Doctoral Student)" or similar when possible.
When you use an affiliation you want the institution to be able to verify it if needed.

I've never seen a note like that, is it common in your fields?

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Ethics application: secondary analysis of anonymous data without "future use" consent
I am submitting an ethics approval application for secondary analysis of 3 existing (anonymized but not public) datasets. The consent forms for these 3 studies made no mention of "future data use" like the secondary analyses I'm proposing.
Could this be a reason for my ethics application to be rejected (permanently)? I imagine this situation could arise often. The risks to participants seem minor due to anonymity.

Is it fully or pseudo-anonymised?

You can't do anything without IRB approval anyway, so there is no risk to just asking your IRB folks this question: Either they say that you will likely be approved (in which case you'll write your IRB application) or they say that you will likely not be approved (in which case you haven't lost any time either). In neither case is there any risk in having an informal conversation with your IRB staff.
The only case where there is a risk is if you were planning on doing the analysis anyway but did not want to tip off IRB if you thought they might not approve your application. But I can only assume that that wasn't what you had in mind because that's one way to risk getting fired.

The answer is always "Ask your IRB."

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University promised to announce the application portfolios of the fellowship recipients, but now they choose to not to share
My university has a fellowship open for competition. On the official website, they wrote:

The primary deciding factor is student's research publications. For fairness, the application portfolio of the awardees will be publicized for all our students to verify.

However, now the result is announced and no portfolio is publicized for us to check. I asked the university and they said it was a clerical typo: "No portfolio is going to be shared, only the names of the awardee will be shared".
I feel like the university is being hypocritical. Universities punish people who get caught cheating, but when the university goes back on its promise, it is only a "typo."
I find it fishy, so I searched the top three names of the awardees on Google Scholar and other platforms. None of them have any research publications, while some failed applicants have strong research publications.
What can I do here?
Fighting against the institution is an up-hill battle. I am not intending to reverse their decision, as they create the rubric and even if all portfolios are publicized, they can still make a grading rubric to explain their choices.

which country? the answer depends strongly ...

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I am surprised to see people down-voting your post and calling it a rant.
I think it's very natural to expect academic institution (and any institution fwif) to demonstrate transparency and high ethical standards. Getting back on their promise to share relevant data is a lack of transparency and honesty, and you are right to feel bad about it. If you checked the public evidence and it supports your suspicion that a dishonest act has been committed, it is perfectly fine to seek remedy.
Here's my view of the situation. University wants a good image of itself, because it brings them more students and public funding. To improve the image, they want to give out some scholarships. They don't want to say: "we are going to award scholarships to obscure applicants, likely related to VC or Dept Chair", because they won't get good public image from that. They want to appear  generous, fair and transparent. But someone in the chain of command still want their niece or grandson to get a scholarship, so they go against their own promise.
Of course, they can do whatever they want with their own money, but this is not the issue your question talks about. The issue is that they want to get a good public image for appearing one way, when in fact they act differently. It is in public interest when everyone acts transparently and appears for what they are. It is not a rant to try to get the truth out.
To answer your question: all institutions are prone to corruption and favouritism, but some do much more to fight against it.

Many thanks Dmitry for your understandings! Could you please help me a little bit more by hinting the names or geo-locations of those universities who "do much more to fight against it"?

I had excellent experience with transparency of application process to Universities from Denmark, Sweden and Norway.

As you mention, in Norway there are laws (e.g. Forskrift til forvaltningsloven) that require a certain amount of transparency in hiring processes for government positions. I believe that this would be required for e.g  a university PhD-position. A translation of one of the paragraphs: "A party in a case about appointment has the right to familiarize himself with the applications from applicants who have been nominated for or appointed to the position, and attachments to these applications."

"I think it's very natural to expect academic institution (and any institution fwif) to demonstrate transparency and high ethical standards." I don't think that one should expect particularly high transparency or high ethical standards from universities. That raises wrong expectations. They have their problems and scandals like every other organization of comparable size. They should aim for it of course, but I would not describe or expect the "business" side of universities in general to be highly transparent.

@HansWurst: "expect" in this context means "they should" (e.g. see definition B2 here ).

Alternatively, it could just be that the application is the copyright of the applicant, and in most countries you cannot just publish other people's work without written agreement beforehand. I think the text of the advert probably wouldn't stand up as being enough to allow publication, but IANAL.

@DavidA.Craven Copyright protects creative work. The publication portfolio is a list of papers published by the applicant. It is purely factual, and can hardly be considered a creative work. In the UK, a major funding agency EPSRC routinely publishes abstracts of all funded projects, without any issues of copyright. Where there is a will, there is a way

@DmitrySavostyanov I guess it depends on what a portfolio means. If it's just a list of papers then there's no need to publish it because, of course, it is already freely available. If it contains research statements or other such things then it is protected.
EPSRC does publish a small portion of the submission. That is part of getting a grant, and applicants agree as part of it. If the institution here forgot to get prior approval then they cannot post hoc do so.  Also, abstracts to papers, talks, etc. have weakened copyright protections under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

@DavidA.Craven From the unedited version of the question it was clear that the portfolio is basically a publication list. Your argument of copyright is therefore baseless. I should add that it is not unusual for admins to try to cover institutional wrongdoing by baseless appeals to irrelevant pieces of legislation. When someone says "but GDPR", "but privacy", or "but copyright" without pointing out specifically how it applies to the situation, you can strongly suspect they want to avoid a meaningful and open discussion.

No funding agency and no hiring institution publishes the portfolio of applicants (successful or not). There may be privacy questions involved in this, but in any case, it just isn't done -- and so it does not surprise me that your university came to its senses and decided that it can't publish the application documents. In other words, it does seem like a mistake to promise that they would. Sometimes, what people say is actually what is happening.

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Is it common to review papers assigned to your supervisor?
Is it common to supervisors to email their students papers to review (which were apparently assigned to the supervisor, and not to the student). The field is Computer Science, but I  would also like to hear from the other fields.

Was your supervisor supposed to be the reviewer, or does he ask you to review it in his role as an editor?

@gerrit it is conference papers and my supervisor is a PC member.

I would just take it as a compliment, and a worthwhile experience.

Note that at some conferences, the PC members are not expected to review the papers themselves: one of their roles is to select appropriate reviewers. In this case, it seems perfectly reasonable for a supervisor to request a review from their student. It also seems normal for a reviewer to ask one of their students for comments on a paper (though in some cases there may be confidentiality rules which prevent this).

The academic review process according to Ph.D. comics.

If "review" means "referee": doesn't it violate confidentiality to show papers to someone else, in the first place?

@paulgarrett In the computer science situation described by Max, it is understood that the program committee members need not referee all their assigned papers themselves. Their use of sub-reviewers is analogous to the way editors send papers to referees.  Like referees, sub-reviewers are expected to maintain confidentiality.  (In other situations, though, I've heard of cases where a professor, who is supposed to referee a paper, simply signs a report written by a postdoc. I heartily disapprove, but apparently some cultures disagree with mine about this.)

Reviewing papers is part of academia, and so it is a good thing to learn. I think it is perfectly ethical if the supervisor takes final responsibility and that you are explicitly mentioned as sub-reviewer.

This is partly a response to john k's answer.

In the end, the review will go out only under your advisors [sic] name

Farming out a review to someone else -- especially someone who is subordinate to you -- and then putting only your own name on it is a practice that the vast majority of academics would view as unequivocally unethical.  In fact it is essentially plagiarism.
I wish answerers here would not endorse this practice.  As Jeff E points out in a comment, if this is done only between the student and the adviser then the editor will not even know about it so certainly cannot be viewed as allowing or participating in this.

So, take this as an opportunity to learn and do not worry that you won't get credit for it.

I certainly do worry about the practice of advisers passing off their students' work as their own.

and he's [the advisor] not going to allow it if it is completely shabby.

If the advisor is going to be involved in the refereeing process anyway, then passing it off to the student is not a clear time savings.  However it sounds like a recipe for a bad refereeing job: one very junior, possibly not fully qualified person actually reads the paper, and then the more senior, qualified person mostly looks at the report that the junior person has written.  There's a lot of room for something to fall through the cracks.
Here is what I would suggest instead:
1) If as an adviser you actually feel that your student is fully qualified to referee a paper that you have been sent, and if you feel that it will in some way be more useful for your student to do it than you yourself (e.g. you view it as a learning experience for the student), then contact the editor and suggest your student as an alternate referee, while identifying them as your student.  Most editors will be happy with this because:
(i) Graduate students can make unusually conscientious and quick referees.  I refereed one paper as a graduate student.  I was very flattered to be asked to do so, so I carefully read every line and even spent a substantial amount of time gaining background knowledge [for the mathematicians: I had to read part of SGAVII in order to do what I felt was a thorough job].  I also did this over a period of slightly less than a month.
(ii) It's better than asking a very junior person to do the refereeing job out of the blue [as in fact was the case with me in the above situation] because the student can consult with her adviser if necessary, either to ask a key technical question or just to ask for advice about writing the report and dealing with the editor.
I (formally) passed off a referee job to a PhD student of mine about a year or so ago.  I think it worked out well: he did a good, fast job, and he did consult me a bit for help.  As I recall, most (or all) of the questions he asked me were not about the content of the paper -- on the contrary, after he read it I asked him some stuff out of my own interest and curiosity -- but rather about the mechanics of the referee report: what standards to impose, how to reply to the editor, whether it was okay to request that the authors make a revision doing X and Y, and so forth.  I think this latter part was at least as valuable an experience for him as simply vetting the paper for correctness.
2) If you can identify a part of a paper that is sufficiently independent of the rest so as to make it possible to read and judge only that part, then it seems reasonable to contract a "subreviewer" for that part.  Maybe this subreviewer is your student and asking her to do it is saving you some tedium.  Maybe this subreviewer has expertise that you lack and it is because of them that you feel capable of writing a report at all.  With respect to this, I would say:
(i) Of course you need to identify by name all subreviewers that you use.
(ii) If you take on a subreviewer, it should be very clear exactly what the subreviewer is vouching for.  You are still the one who is vouching for a paper as a whole.  You need to be extra careful that you are not leaving any gaps.  For instance, if a paper concerns arithmetic geometry and spectral graph theory, then there will probably be a part in which problems in arithmetic geometry are translated to problems in spectral graph theory, or vice versa.  There needs to be at least one referee who understands both of these topics sufficiently well in order to do a credible job.
(iii) If the issues in (ii) are at all complicated -- e.g. if you find yourself wanting to enlist more than one subreviewer -- then it may be better to have this subcontracting process done by the editor.  S/he can then, if desired, solicit multiple reports, add/change/remove subreviewers, and so forth.
I have never enlisted subreviewers, and I have refereed more than 30 papers.  But I could imagine for instance being given a paper which had a substantial computational component, and then I might ask to see the code itself and give it to a student of mine who has substantial programming expertise.  The difference here is that doing so would improve the referee process (it is very unlikely that I would look at the code myself in any detail, and even less likely that any good would come of my doing so).  Passing something off to graduate student when you think or know you would do a materially better job already seems slightly ethically suspect.

It's common in neuroscience. In my limited experience (consisting of two such reviews), the idea was that it's a learning experience for me. My supervisor did his own review independently, then we compared notes, and he put together the final version. In both cases, he mentioned me by name to the journal editors. In one of the two cases I also saw that it's part of the journal's policy that any such PhD students should be mentioned. This, I would say, is a strong indicator that it's common practice.

+1: in my area of the life sciences this is also totally unexceptional behavior. In fact, many editors now explicitly suggest that the faculty member involve a postdoc, student, or other "junior colleague" when they are sending out the request for reviews. This is yet another example of how widely field-specific ethical norms vary.

I would never ask someone else to write a review and then put my own name on it, and I don't know of instances of that happening in my field (applied mathematics).  If I am unable to referee a paper, I usually suggest alternative referees to the editor.  Those suggestions might include one of my students, but it would be up to the editor whether to ask the student to referee.

I think the distinctions in field are very important here--applied mathematics is an area where deep knowledge is very important.  In fields which are broader and more shallow, a student can quickly make up for lack of breadth by reading another paper or asking a few questions of an advisor.  In applied math, if you're out of you're depth, you're stuck for a long, long time.

It is also common for mentors to hand off reviewing tasks to specific group members that work in a field related to the manuscript.
That way, a win-win situation is created, since the group member gets to stay on top of current research in their field of interest.

It is definitely common in our group, but it is more seen as an exercise for the PhD student, as we generally discuss the review with our supervisors and they make sure it's suitable. That way, the PhD student gets practice in paper reviewing and the supervisor has less work (hopefully).
I absolutely agree with some of the other answers that sticking your name on an unread review by someone else or having your supervisor send off your review without discussing it first would be negligent.
(Edit: computer science.)

In my experience from applied computer science, this is very common. Typically, the situation seems to be that professors receive a batch of ten or more manuscripts for an upcoming conference, to be reviewed within a few weeks.
From that point, there are two reasons that make it a logical choice to redistribute at least some of the reviews within the lab:

Conferences normally deal with somewhat narrow subfields, yet submissions are normally still diverse enough so different people in the lab are best suited for reviewing some of the manuscripts.
Professors are usually swept with all kinds of different tasks, so expecting a single person to thoroughly referee ten or more papers (when each review takes, say, at least a day) within a few weeks is not realistic, anyway.

Concerning the issue of getting credit addressed in some of the other posts, at least my personal perception is that it is a non-issue. Again, I can see three (possibly field-specific) reasons for this:

In the fields I am most acquainted with, blind reviews are the norm. Consequently, reviewing is perceived as an activity that is performed anonymously (contrary to, e.g., publishing papers that visibly show the authors' names along with the result of the work). The rare occasion where a conference publishes the list of reviewers may be a nice touch, but I have never seen this done in a prominent way. Hence, the general assumption is that no-one (outside one's lab/group and the small circle of conference organizers) will ever learn that researcher X reviewed papers for conference Y. With this in mind, either conferences would provide an obvious way to indicate subreviewers to the editors - which supervisors will then gladly do -, or they wouldn't, in which case the expected gain is simply not sufficient for anyone involved to go through the hassle of even writing an e-mail to inform the editors about the subreviewers.
Connected to the above point, it seems that not only does the fact that X reviewed for conference Y usually remain unknown to the public, no-one is really interested in that piece of information. My impression is that it is simply taken for granted that each doctoral candidate has their share of reviewing experience, as it is expected they get some manuscripts forwarded by their supervisor for reviewing every now and then.
Lastly, mirroring the above points, my impression is that reviewing papers is not one of the activities typically associated with getting credit in the first place. It is rather somewhere between the "chores" that someone has to do (and thus, it is understood that it is both fairer and more comfortable for everyone in the group to spread the workload somewhat evenly across the entire group) on the one hand and a good opportunity for expanding one's experience and thus training to improve one's reviewer skills on the other hand - come to think of it, in both aspects, quite similarly to fulfilling one's teaching duties.

Again, the above reflects my personal impression and is probably quite field-dependent (and maybe even a bit culture-dependent, as internal organisation of groups of researchers differs wildly around the globe).

It is possible to get credit from reviewing. See for example https://publons.com.

@user77791: I do not doubt it is possible to somehow measure the amount of reviewing done by a given researcher. But at least in my field and in my impression, it is not (yet?) a "valuable" kind of credit, simply because the assumption is that anyone is doing a fair amount of reviewing, anyway, with or without a reviewer profile on a site like publons.

There is whole lot of benefits if you are reviewing the manuscript. Your supervisor is a well-known person and active in the field. So he got a paper to review. When you are reviewing the paper you will get the benefits like the following:

Writing style (claims, what to include, what to avoid while writing paper)
How to give negative comments in positive way (although you have to spend some time on this stage)
New methodologies
If you have any confusion or doubts, you can always reach your supervisor for that purpose and learn many things.

Remember, its not always about getting credits. Its about learning something new everytime you do something. Else the whole research world will not grow, given the fact that the PEER-REVIEWERS spend a lot of time for reviewing someone (unseen/unknown) author's works. However, view points might differ. But this is the positive things for me.

You will not get any credit for doing someone else's work.
You might get some knowledge and a little experience working on the project, which some how is good for self satisfaction as you are not getting any thing else
You can ask for some courtesy to the one whom you are shadowing, for bit of your publicity, mentioning your name at end of the day, but again it all depends on him/her.
You can work yourself, put your own name, and at the end of the day you might loose a friendly relationship with a guy.

Ultimately I will conclude : Never get involved in a work that you don't want to do, or the one for which you deserve some credit and you are not getting it. And if somehow if you get indulged in such an activity then forget the credit or forget the relationship, sacrifice needs to be done at that end.

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What is the academic approach when the supervisor attacks student's religion?
What is the academic approach when your supervisor goes off-topic?  In other words, what is the academic reaction for a PhD student when his supervisor starts attacking the student's religion?
I must say the fact that I'm an international student coming from a different culture. I looked over his publications/current students and everything seemed to be fine. He even interviewed me for admission and everything went fine.
When I started my degree and first met him, I thought we would discuss research oriented projects but surprisingly the meeting took another direction when he started discussing with me my religion beliefs and how do I view the world!
Discuting this was the start. In several subsequent occasions, he started to tell me what he sees good to me and why my culture is a bad one .
Right after the interview, I was thinking about withdrawing from the program and finding another supervisor in another school (Yes I answered him in an honest and polite way what I belief).
I have nothing against him and he is a very kind professor but I feel I'm not comfortable in his environment. Now, I'm planning to go somewhere else. If it counts, I pay my tuition fees and he pays me nothing.
The question is:  What to do when your supervisor goes off-topic and discuss your personal issues? Not only this but also send you several emails about it.

Don't walk.  Run.

What general field are you in? My answer will depend on if you are in a field like religious studies, physics, or biology.

There is a big difference between "discuss" and "attack".

@DanielE.Shub Yes. There is nothing in discussing religion/cultural differences. Its actually a plus to know others cultures and I like it.. The issue comes when you see their culture as a BAD one

I agree with @DanielE.Shub that the field you are in could be relevant to the discussion.  For example, if your field is in geology or even computer science the discussions about religion (young earth creationism, intelligent design, etc.) might be relevant.

@JoelReyesNoche: Computer science?  Really???

@JeffE, as I understand it, intelligent design proponents make claims about how information is present in creation, claims that have been debunked by theoretical computer scientists using information theory.  But perhaps this is getting off-topic :)

Sometimes ethics and religion get mixed. I had a graduate student tell me that I was wrong to implicate students in a case of plagiarism, because as brothers of the same religion, they had an obligation to help each other. I didn't want it to become an issue of religion, so I simply reminded him that he was a student at a university whose policy about plagiarism was clear. I also questioned his interpretation of "helping"... but it was never a question of judging a religion or culture.

I was in a similar environment. Everyone were catholic and I am an atheist. The main problem was that everyone assumed that I am catholic too, with no reason actually. When I said, I do not believe in anything, suddenly, I became a bad person and no one wanted to talk to me any more. So yes, the answer is simple: run. If you got this kind of comments at first, probably you dont want to know what will be next. Anyway, good luck, whatever you believe in :)

No matter what the advisor's beliefs are, it's not OK to discuss a student's differing beliefs AND criticize them. It's the criticism that takes this from honest exchange of views into a more dangerous territory: your advisor is in a power relationship with you by definition and it's impossible to have a discussion "as equals" while this relationship is active.
If you think that the relationship and his continuing advising would be beneficial to your career, then you might try to have a chat with him where you indicate that these topics need to stay out of bounds. And I'd erect a high bar for "beneficial".
But if your assessment of value does not cross that high bar, then I'd follow JeffE's advice and run.

In my ming criticizing a personal belief is ALWAYS inappropriate. When that personal belief influences ones research, it is no longer "personal" and needs to be treated as a research bias.

For some scientists religion is hard to mix with science. Science is based on hard facts and on rational thought. Religion on the other hand deals with beliefs which might be impossible to prove. In a scientific environment you can expect to have these kinds of discussions, try to not take remarks too personal and just calmly explain what you believe. If people are respectful the discussion will end with you and the other agreeing to disagree. If you have the feeling your prospective supervisor is not going to stop and will continue to make this a point of discussion, this could be a negative point and play a role in your choice. As an additional test to see what your potential supervisor will do after you are hired is to just confront him with your reservations. If he responds well, you can take that as a postive sign, if not, that confirms that you might not want to work there.

very informative answer; Liked your thought about science and religion..  thanks Paul

+1 for suggesting the direct confrontation, and basing the decision on the reaction.

Actually, if such dicussions take place (without attacks) I think it is a very good sign of an open atmosphere.

Try a general approach to Conflict Management called DAN.

Describe the situation to your supervisor, trying to be as objective as possible. Tell him that you came to his lab to do research, and that you didn't expect him to make comments on your religion.
Assert your feelings, explaining that you feel uncomfortable when he talks about your religion, and that it makes it more difficult for you to work.
Name what you want him to do, telling him that you would like him to stop talking about your religion, and concentrate only on the research aspects of your work.

It is possible that your boss is testing you, to see if you are able to react in a negative situation.
In any case, see this conflict as an opportunity. If you are able to solve the problem, you will become stronger, and your supervisor will learn to respect you.
So, go to your supervisor and remember the three points: Describe, Assert, and Name. Don't let him speak before you finished all of them. Good luck, and be strong :-)

I think this is a great answer and conflict management skills are important for so many things. That said, I disagree with "Don't let him speak before you finished all of them." While later on in the process things might get to that point, initially such an aggressive approach might escalate the problem.

This must be done very quickly, like 5 minutes or less. Let him listen for 5 minutes, then start the discussion. If you let him interrupt, the risk is to not get to the third point, "Name what you want", which is the most important of the three points.

But often the DESCRIBE stage is enough to make someone adjust their behavior. A simple, "I prefer not to talk about my personal beliefs"  might make the problem go away.

well, it may be, but why would you like to be less efficient? If you don't explain how you feel, the other person will not empathize with you, and will be more difficult to convince. If you don't explain what you want, the other person may take a solution that you don't like.

I can tell you as a personal experience that if you do not feel comfortable, and feel you have no future doing research there, you go before is too late.
What is too late? You may realize you've wasted 2-3 years and achieved nothing, or you may realize the research you are doing is not really of interest to you.
Since you are just starting, I do think is intelligent to seriously assess whether staying there is worth your time.

In general I agree with the "run away" advice (the more so, as I don't really understand how the student can perceive a professor at the same time as being nice and attacking cultural/religious roots that are are deeply integrated in the personality, i.e. perceiving a personal attack), however, there are IMHO some points to consider (also to maybe avoid ending up with similar problems again)

There is a possiblity that a particular religion conflicts with certain notions of science or creates a conflict of interest. See e.g. Fuhrmanator's comment at the question.
Or religious notions of one person that are not even necessarily integral parts of the religion. E.g. how will someone cope with doing statistical anayses that try to judge whether an observation occured accidentatlly when (s)he personally and firmly believes everything is predestined?
There can also be cultural difficulties. A famous one:

Chinese students in particular often struggle to adjust to Western notions of plagiarism as deference to expert opinion is a deeply routed cultural norm in Chinese society. Indeed, referencing sources has been seen [in Chinese society/culture] as disrespectful to both reader and 'expert' as it presupposes that the source is not widely known and that the audience is unable to recognize source material.

source
See also e.g. here (lots more papers on these topics).

I think nowadays international student's offices or international student groups know which points can be critical and can name them. This means that the student can ask himself whether these are an issue and how to deal with them. That would in turn allow the student to have a very informed position and tell the (or: a future/prospective) prof that he/she is aware of these points, considered them carefully and they are no problem because...
Or also that (s)he will e.g. not conduct animal studies for ethical reasons (I think there are usually either a) enough alternatives of doing research and b) if there aren't I think the question is why the student did apply for a position that is not compatible with his/her personal ethics in the first place).

Welcome to academia in the U.S.
What most posters here are avoiding mentioning is that what you are describing is pretty common in some departments (Philosophy, Religious Studies, Biology, Cosmology, and most others ending with -ology or "Studies"), and pretty uncommon in others (Physics, Chemistry, Engineering, Mathematics, Linguistics).
Also, on some campuses it is more common than on others.
You should discuss it with other PhD candidates in your department on your campus, just to find out how common it is there.  Only then can you know whether it's a good idea to "make it an issue."  If it is common, making it an issue will almost never improve your situation, and you should either learn to tolerate and minimize it, or else find another place.  If it is not common, you have a chance that making an issue of it might improve the situation, but even then, I suggest trying a gentle approach first, since if it works, the results are better.
Personally, I found that never responding with a judgement of my own about their practice or lack of practice (which certainly seemed silly to me), and as much humor as I could muster, over (a fairly short) time greatly reduced the frequency of obnoxious comments. If you are consistently "classy", most people will sooner or later realize they are being low-class, and at least moderate their behavior.
With humor, be very sure to avoid being even slightly nasty.  Keep it in good taste. Never joke about the other person's religion, no matter how harmless the joke is.  Never.

Do not talk, turn around and start working on computer or the like. Respond immediately if the supervisor changes the topic. This is normally enough. Never start a talk of this kind yourself.

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Tips & Examples for Academic Video Making in CS and Related Fields?
Computer science conferences these days often ask authors to make short videos based on their papers. The short ones might be 30 secs in length. The longer ones might be about 5 min long.
These videos, if made well, can attract people to your talk during the conference, and also serve as a great introduction to your paper for future readers after the conference.
I'd appreciate some tips and advice on how to make these videos good. If you have a favorite example of such videos, I'd love to see it too!

SciFund ran a class last summer on making academic videos.
Some tips from that course that I found helpful:

Start with a "hook" to grab viewers' attention, use dramatic tension to keep it. See e.g. this video. (From Week 2 of the course.)
In your script, emulate the way people speak, not write - it will sound much more natural. (See Week 3 of the course.)
When you record your voice-over, use good equipment (you can get a cheap lav mike that works with a smartphone and has pretty decent quality), record in a quiet place, keep your tone level. (From Week 3 of the course.)

All of the class materials are available online:

Week 0
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5

As for examples of good science videos, Vox has some nice examples of videos that are both appealing and informative. See e.g. this one, or this one. Although theirs are for a general audience, not a specialist audience, a lot of the principles are the same, and I personally find it useful to note things that I think they do well (production-wise) that I can emulate.

Thank you so much this course is absolutely helpful! I learned a lot by reading the content and viewing the examples!


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How should I interpret a journal rejection of "not of sufficient interest" or "does not meet journal standards" without mention of any errors?
How should I interpret a journal rejection of "not of sufficient interest" or "does not meet journal standards"?
This is what happened to me particularly. Papers were rejected for those reasons and the journal never told me that they had found any error or that anything was wrong or inconclusive.
When a paper is rejected, do reviewers let you know if they found any error or they will never tell you even if they found one?

You ask important questions but the one from the title differs substantially from the one from the content. Could you focus one one (you can ask two question in two threads, if you like).

Ok, I edited the question.

The title question and the body question are still very different.

When a journal rejects a paper because it is not of sufficient interest for them or it does not meet the standards of the journal, it generally means exactly what they said.  They thought the paper wasn't interesting or important enough.
Journals vary enormously in how selective or prestigious they are.  Some journals will accept any paper that seems to be correct, original, and at least somewhat interesting. If a journal like that rejects a paper for this reason, then either it's not a very good paper, or they are being unfair (perhaps accidentally - peer review isn't perfect, so occasionally you just have to try again), or you submitted it to the wrong sort of journal (the line between different subfields can be blurry, but if you choose the wrong side it decreases your chances of acceptance).
Other journals impose extremely high standards and only want to publish papers on exciting breakthroughs.  In that case, there might be nothing wrong with the paper at all, and the only issue is that they have received other submissions they like even better.
And, of course, there's a whole range of journals in between these extremes.  Depending on where the journal is in this range, it will shift from a statement about your paper to a statement about the journal's high standards, and there's no way to be more precise without knowing more about the situation.
The best source of advice is a trusted mentor in your field, but I wouldn't get too worried on the basis of one rejection.  Look over the paper again with fresh eyes, make sure the introduction and conclusions are compelling, choose another journal, and resubmit.  If you run into this problem repeatedly, then something's wrong (either the paper needs work or you need to choose more appropriate journals) and that would be a good time to seek more detailed advice.

Another category of papers that are rejected under the rubric "does not meet journal standards" are papers that are really poorly written.  If a paper doesn't follow the standard format (abstract, sections, references), or it has lots of obvious spelling or grammar errors, or it uses too much non-standard terminology or notation for standard things, or it claims to disprove some standard result (like Cantor's theorem) or solve a long-standing open problem using elementary techniques (like a 5-page proof of the 4-color theorem), editors are likely to reject the paper without review.

The short answer is that if a reviewer found an error, the reviewer will generally tell you.  If you get a rejection without any further comments, the likely reason is that the reviewer read the outline and main results, and concluded that it wasn't necessary to go through the paper carefully to decide to reject it, probably because the results weren't significant enough for that journal.  (Some journals specifically request that reviewers do a quick read of the article within a couple weeks of receipt, to see if it has any hope of being published; it often takes reviewers months to do a full read through, and if it has no chance, it's kinder to the author to give a quick rejection so the author can promptly resubmit to a journal which might publish it.)
However sometimes the reviewer has carefully read through the paper before recommending rejecting it, and in that case the reviewer usually (at least in my experience) includes a list of suggestions or comments (including pointing out any errors the reviewer found).

By the way, this is a response to the question in the body of the post, which isn't the same as the title.  Ideally, the two would be asking the same question.

I asked the questions in this way because they are related to each other.

This is what happened to me particularly. Papers were rejected for those reasons and the journal never told me that they had found any error or that anything was wrong or inconclusive.

If a paper is rejected for those reasons, it can often be done quickly, without a need to read the paper carefully to determine if there are any errors.

In my case it took 1 month for the journal to take the decision.

1 month is a pretty quick turn around (again, consistent with the scenario I described above).

Often the decision "not of sufficient interest" is made directly by the editor, before sending the paper out for review at all.

Often, when a paper is rejected by the editor (without being sent out for review), the standard response is along the lines of "not of sufficient interest".
How should you interpret this? One interpretation is to be humble and select another journal that will be interest. Another interpretation is that good and interesting science has been poorly presented.
One possibility that has not yet been covered is that the paper did not present interesting science in an interesting way. I had a paper that was rejected from a number of journals although I felt strongly that these judgements were inconsistent with the work that I had done. I also recognized that such quick judgments can be based on the title and abstract, and on re-reading these, I realized that the main, important points of my paper were not given enough emphasis up front. After minor revisions to focus my readers, my next submission was very warmly received.


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How to select a Master's thesis topic if your advisor won't suggest one?
If a master's degree candidate needs to select a thesis topic, but their advisor is unwilling to offer suggestions on the matter, how should one go about selecting a thesis?

How might one select an area to study?
How can one evaluate if if is a suitable topic?
Does the thesis need to focus on an area which is relatively unexplored by prior research?

Step 1. Get a new advisor.

I find this question odd.  Surely the first question is "What sort of research should I do?", not "How should I satisfy this administrative hurdle?"

One approach is follows:

Find one or two good recent PhD theses in your chosen area. Read these thoroughly. As you read, write down every question that pops into your mind, write down every time the author states that something is left for future work or needs further investigation.
This will have a dual effect. Firstly, you will get a good introduction to a particular research field. Secondly, you will have a bunch of questions that need to be investigated.
Prune trivial questions, non-sensible ones, etc.
Next, organize your questions thematically and see whether you can find a common thread to these questions, something that could form the basis of your research.
Remove any questions that do not fit will with the others.
Based on the remaining questions, formulate a couple of coherent questions that your research could address.
Write a plan to address these questions.
Work through plan.
Write thesis.

You'll be amazed at how much the choice of Master's thesis will influence your long-term interest in the field, prospects for jobs within and outside of academia.
I'd suggest picking up some mainstream journals or magazines in your field and see what is currently trendy in the field, and what are bread and butter topics. Having a birds eye view of what's going on in the field allows you to be strategic about your topic, with the goal of planning a successful career.
Most likely, a successful career is one that will hook into an existing community of researchers in a topic, with a reliable source of funds that pay for conferences, departments, and students to populate them. A strategic topic is one that has the potential to make an impact in the field, and has the potential to cross-over into related disciplines, or even to have practical applications to real people (god forbid).
Finally, and most importantly, choose a topic that gets your blood flowing. Your master's topic could very easily become a PhD topic, which could then become a career focus. A lot of grad student burn-out is the result of students reaching their limit of interest in a topic, and thus deciding they've had enough.
As you survey mainstream and more specific literatures, be aware of what problems and topics get you excited. Choose something that you actually get excited about, that you can't stop thinking and talking about, and that you can even get other people excited about. That's the topic that will keep you going  when you get stuck in the muck of research and don't know if you can keep going for another year.

I would recommend that you read into some area of your Master which your find interesting. After you have an outline of an idea, then see on your university website which of the professors might be a suitable supervisor.

I agree, for a PhD thesis it would be to important who is the supervisor and I guess you can make the same consideration for a master's thesis.

I would look what are the domain of interest of my advisor, see what he dose, and pick a thesis on one of that domain (In case I can run in trouble he can help). But I will take care to be a topic that I can also find interesting.

This is summary of what i got from a blog i read. The link will be provided below
1.Idea generation
Rather than look for one perfect idea, it is better to consider several. In the initial stages, you should be open to all ideas, even if they seem crazy.
The ideas don’t need to be completely unique, you could start with one idea, then consider multiple variations on a theme. However you approach it, take some time to think of as many different topics as you can.
2.Testing
This stage is crucial, and can save you years of pain.
Before you finalise your thesis topic, you need to test potential ideas for viability. Is the project possible? How will you go about it? What do you need?
Ask yourself, what is the simplest first step that would need to be taken, and figure out if it is possible
3. Elimination and refinement
It’s OK to let go of ideas if they don’t work or are impractical (and much easier to do if you start with several possibilities). But others may just need a little refinement to become viable.
Check out this blog by James Hayton (http://jameshaytonphd.com/how-to-choose-a-thesis-topic/).

Pursue the various ideas part way. Maybe you can solve them all (Yay!), or some turn out useless/too hard/boring half way through. Then you can prune them, and haven't painted yourself into a corner.


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What do I do about an unfixable F when I am applying for a graduate program?
I studied three years as a History major, and I received many bad grades. So I transferred out to a different school in its computer science program.
I have completed up to third year (and a little bit more) of my CS degree in the last two years. I recently looked up the available course listing from my previous school and, once again, they are not offering the course that I received an F in.
It is a third year elective course in philosophy and they haven't offered it in the last two years. The school does not offer any course that is similar, and no one (including many advisers I spoke to at both schools) can really say that there is an alternative course that is equivalent to that course.
Basically, I can't fix it. I've retaken some courses that I did poorly in from my previous school, and gotten back positive results. My current GPA (exclusively from my current school) is close to 3.9.
But that F is really freaking me out. I'm not even hopeful that I can get into a top graduate school, but I would at least like to get into a decent one.
What can I do about this?

Possible duplicate of How does the admissions process work for Ph.D. programs in the US, particularly for weak or borderline students?

Computer science professors don't care what grades you got in philosophy. Even more so because this was an advanced philosophy class, not an entry-level course. And even more so because this was 3+ years ago before you started computer science, so it doesn't show an inability to reason or communicate or manage your time.
Better yet, you have a very clear narrative. When your application isn't perfect, it's nice to have a simple, clean, verifiable reason for the imperfection. In your case, it's very simple: you were terrible at philosophy, you're great at computer science. This is a great narrative, and the F only adds to it.
You should focus on computer science. Here's what's going to happen: the committee will look at your transcript and very quickly figure out that you were terrible at philosophy and good at computer science. Then they're going to want to know how good at computer science you are -- merely average? Or amazing? This is where your research, publications, letters of recommendation, advanced coursework, etc. comes in. Further, you should be very careful when writing your statement of purpose -- you'll need to address your previous major, but there's no need to make excuses for it, just say that it wasn't a good fit and then focus on your current work.
Even if you could retake that class and get rid of the F, you shouldn't bother. It just doesn't gain you anything, and there are better uses for your time.

Quit worrying about your GPA and pay attention to the GRE. That's what matters for graduate school. Why would the admissions committee care about a course you took 5 years ago in a different major?
If you are deeply concerned (and you seem to be), trying seeing if the department/professor will arrange a way in which you can re-take the class as a independent study/special seminar. It's unlikely, but possible. Changing the actual grade is very unlikley unless you experienced a personal tragedy such as the loss of a family member, or a major injury or chronic illness.

If you are deeply concerned (and you seem to be), trying doing an independent study with the professor, and see if they will permit a change of grade on that basis. Have you ever heard of anyone doing this? That sounds grossly unfair and a professor in the United States would never do this five years later.

Also, the GRE is not that important in many fields; but I can't speak to CS (assuming the OP is looking into CS grad programs).

Azor, all sorts of weird crap gets done off the record. Formally speaking, it would not be a change of grade, but rather the student re-taking the class.  This would assume that some institutional pressure could be brought to bear on the professor to do it, and then the office of the registrar would then record the independent study as the (no longer existent) class. More likely would be they would just offer the class again, or name another class that is the equivalent to it. Good enough to get you graduated, but unlikely to fix the GPA. Sort of a Hail Mary sort of effort.

Again, have you ever seen anyone do this? 1) This question is explicitly about doing something on the record. 2) Why would the institution pressure a professor to do this? It's very unethical. 3) Why would the registrar record a class you took as one you didn't take? Again, highly unethical. 4) This question is not about getting a high enough GPA to graduate.

As an honors undergrad, I watched students invent all sorts of medical bullshit to fix their grades. Professors don't want the details, and if you have a good relationship, are willing to be generous. 2) shrug. It would have to come from the Dean, likely, for Dean-reasons. If the person could make a persuasive case to the Dean or department chair, the professor would likely go along with it. 3) It would not be recording a class not taken--it would be recording an independent study as an iteration of a class no longer offered. 4) The F can be erased, but only with attenuating circumstances.

I feel like a broken record here. Have you ever seen anyone do this four or five years later?

I agree with @Azor -- changing a grade for no real reason 3-4 years after the fact seems very unlikely.

@AzorAhai. I have seen professors agree to change grades 3+ years later, but only with mitigating circumstances, such as the death of a family member (or similar tragedy), or due to major injury/chronic illness.

I have seen an 'independent study' used to substitute for a class that is no longer being offered, or which is offered irregularly.

I have seen grades changed from 'incomplete' or 'continuing enrollment' to something else five years later. Those automatically become F's, given enough time.


text:
Unclear terms: Statement of Purpose, Academic Statement and Personal Statement
I'm so confused. I can't distinguish between them. It seems to me that sometimes the statement of purpose (SOP) is the personal statement (PS), sometimes it is not the PS, and by the definition I'll give below, academic statement (AS) is the SOP.
Is the SOP a PS (or not)?
I think most people will agree that the SOP is another name for the PS, and you only need one statement beside your CV and research proposal (if necessary) to be written. That explains why in Academia.SE, we only have a sop tag but no PS tag or AS tag. And most of the time I see people ask about a PS question under the SOP tag, and accept the answer only says about the SOP. Except these two questions, where the posters notice that SOP is not the PS (I find them when searching for "personal statement" "statement of purpose"):

Academic Statement of Purpose vs NSF Personal Statement
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34698/how-to-best-answer-the-question-please-provide-us-your-personal-statement-why

To be clear, the first question asks about academic statement of purpose and only localize to the NSF Fellowship application. But the (sole) answer only discusses the SOP, so I understand that ASOP is the other name of the SOP (don't know if it also be the AS as well).
Is the SOP the Academic Statement?
Now, in the announcement for a fellowship I intend to apply for, it requires me to have both an academic statement and a personal statement. It defines them like this:

ACADEMIC AND PERSONAL STATEMENTS. Each applicant must prepare a one-page Academic Statement and a one-page Personal Statement. The first essay addresses the applicant’s academic and scientific background and preparation, previous research, and a description of the study and research proposed at a U.S. graduate school department. The Personal Statement includes information about the applicant’s background, practical experience, special interests, and career goals, with some attention to plans after degree completion. Applicants should also address how they might represent Vietnam as students in the United States and how they might represent the United States and contribute to Vietnam upon return.

More explicit details are provided in the link. Based on the definition of the AS, I think that it is the SOP as we widely know (or at least is this SOP). If then, what is the PS in this case? Is it the place for the "my first trembling steps" stuff?
Or, does the aggregation of AS and PS in this situation equate the SOP as we widely know, and the recruiters just want to make it explicit?

No. There is no place for "my first trembling steps" stuff.

@JeffE: instead of "my first trembling steps" stuff, I would use "when I was young" instead. Is that OK?

It's kinda weak. What they're really asking for is your technical background, your technical experience, your specific technical interests. They're asking for direct evidence that you are prepared to do research, not so much why you find it personally fulfilling.

@JeffE Because the personal statement asks for applicant's background, special interest and career goals (note that technical background is already mentioned in the academic statement). I think that the are personal stuff. PS: I know that you have patiently answer me from time to time about this, and I appreciate that.

I don't understand. Why the downvotes? I have put my effort to make the question as clear as possible.

I agree that the downvotes are misplaced.  This is a perfectly fine question.

At least in the scholarship I'm about to apply, the SOP as we widely know is the academic statement. I still haven't got a satiate answer.

Your application is a chance for you to sell yourself, and prove to the admissions committee that they should give you money to do research.  Your personal statement should address your "background, practical experience, special interests, and career goals," but only in ways that prove you are a good researcher.
You shouldn't waste space talking about your childhood dreams, because usually those say nothing about your research potential.  Instead you should highlight parts of your personal history that would make someone want to hire you for their lab.

Thank you Ben. Although, I think you slightly misunderstand what I ask. My question is: are these terms inconsistent in definition throughout areas of the world? That may affect to my application if I want to apply to many places


text:
Is it common for a journal not to return a revised paper for the reviewer?
Recently I reviewed a submission to a journal. The editor even sent me an email saying the review was received. In my review I suggested correction of several minor mistakes but there were also a couple major ones that in my view needed to be addressed before acceptance for publication. Whenever this happens (at least taking in account the papers I have submitted to other journals) the authors make the first revision, then the revision is sent to the reviewers again, so they can look at the second version of the paper and see if they agree with the revisions, right?
Well... I learned today that the paper was published without returning the second time. I found it weird, is that normal?

'my revision' -- whose paper is it?  It is possible that an editor bypasses you.   I've had my reviews ignored for whatever reason.  At the end of the day, editor has the power.  Reviewers are just advisors.

Oh, I meant 'my review'. Sorry, in my language these words are the same, so I always mix them up =p

I edited slightly because you indicated your native language isn't English. Despite being technically a "periodical," the usual word is "journal," as "periodical" would tend to mean a magazine or something, not a peer-reviewed academic journal.

This can be super-frustrating, but it happens; as the answers below say, it's up to the editor.  Did the authors at least fix the issues to your satisfaction in the published version?

Were the major points which you raised addressed?

This depends very much on the field, the journal, the editor, the amount of revisions requested, etc.  I've reviewed papers that I've seen three or four times, and papers that I saw only once and then they were published.
If this editor asks you to review for the same journal again, you are free to explicitly request to see the paper again after revisions (although the editor is also free to ignore you and publish anyway).

It's the editor's call. If the authors address reviewer comments well and the editor can see that they did, what's the point about sending the paper to the reviewers again, waiting 3...4...5... months before they finally get around to reading the new version and then agreeing that the authors did all the requested revisions? It just drags out the process, eats up everyone's time. If the editor can see that the authors did everything they were asked to, let's just move on and get the paper accepted right there and then!

What is common depends very much on the field. In physical/theoretical chemistry, the standard approach is that reviewers can recommend revising the manuscript in two different ways:

"minor revision": I don't need to see the revised paper again, it's okay if the editor considers the comments sufficiently addressed/incorporated.
"major revision": The revised paper will require a second round of reviews.

What actually happens with the manuscript depends on the editor and editorial policy. Perhaps if just one reviewer recommends a "major revision" while the other(s) ask for just "minor revision", the editor might conclude that a second round of reviews isn't all that necessary.

This is a common misconception (driven by the too strong fetish of review).  You are NOT a gatekeeper.  NO.  Just...NO!  You are an assistant to the editor.  You don't get a vote.  You don't get a final chop.  You don't get "dings".  If the issues were minor, that ALL the more reason, why there's no point in recirculating the paper to you.
However, even if your issues were serious, you STILL don't get a final ding if the editor feels differently.  I once submitted a paper which criticized a Bell Labs big wheel.  I found out long after that he had been a reviewer (and, go figure, panned my paper), but the editor used his own judgment circulated it elsewhere and it was published with no revisions.  Literally (and not how the millenials use that word).  The point (other than "go me") is that the editor is the gatekeeper.  NOT the reviewer.
Authors need to learn this as well.  If you don't like the revisions, move your paper.  Now, 90% of you are complaining about valid critiques and need to suck it up and fix your stuff.  But there's like 10% where you should just tell the system to piss off and go to another journal (there are a metric butt-ton* of them out there).
*SI unit