text:
How can I prove that my students bought their exam answers?
If you google some obvious search phrases, you will find a number of web sites where students can pay people to take their online exams for them.
If I am convinced that a student has used such a service on one of my online exams, how can I prove it? The disciplinary board at my university has fairly strict standards when it comes to proof. When students have cooperated on exams, or copied from each other, there are often obvious similarities between their answers that you can point out to the board, but in a case like this there is nothing to compare to.
These have been open-book exams where any resources, except other people, are allowed. For example, they are allowed to search and read Q&A sites such as Stack Overflow, but not post their own questions. There are no locked browsers or remote video proctoring.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. Please read this FAQ before posting another comment.

Do you have tenure yet?

If a student has used such a service on one of my online exams, how can I prove it?

I don't know if this works for all of them, but for chegg specifically: if you find one of your exam problems on their site, have your Dean write chegg a formal letter indicating this and ask for an investigation.  Chegg will (usually) send you a list of usernames and IP address of the student who originally posted the problem, as well as any students who viewed the problem. This is detailed in their "honor code": https://www.chegg.com/honorcode
I have used this successfully last year to find out who posted copies of my exam to chegg.
Edit: in response to comments, this was in US.  I don't know if this process would work in Europe.
Also, all of the students in question had either used university e-mail addresses, or something like firstname.lastname@gmail.com so I was able to identify all of them.

My department had success contacting Chegg like this. Side note: about 2/3 of the students used their university email address to create their Chegg accounts  :/

@Greg Martin: Hopefully 2/3 of the students with a Chegg account and not 2/3 in total?

For anyone wondering: Chegg's privacy policy explicitly mentions giving away personally identifiable information in cases of "disclosures during academic investigations." It's still unclear to me whether that makes it actually legal and/or ethical.

@ComFreek is "it" Chegg, or the giving info in response to inquiry?  Of course, the latter is legal and ethical, if in the user agreement.

@Keba haha, right 2/3 of the Chegg users

@ScottSeidman I meant Chegg giving out username+IP may be illegal and/or unethical. In some jurisdictions, privacy policies cannot be arbitrary; thus even if you, as a user, agree to it, its legality may be uncertain. And the fact that users agree to something that they have probably never read (nor might have any alternative options for the site in question) doesn't make it ethical. For example, compare this with Facebook.

@Keba So the other 1/3 of the students were smart enough to create their Chegg accounts from a gmail address :)

"It is in the user agreement" is not synonymous with "sharing personal data is legal", in particular in europe with the GDPR.  In particular if they are relying on consent then there must be a mechanism for one to withdraw that consent.

Speaking of legality:  As creator of an exam, I hold copyright.  Chegg is making money posting my copyrighted work without my permission or even knowledge.  So we can ask again, "How is this legal?"   The universities need to step up their game.  Instead of prosecuting all the little criminals, they need to do a class action suit against Chegg.

@ComFreek "And the fact that users agree to something that they have probably never read (nor might have any alternative options for the site in question) doesn't make it ethical." If you don't bother to read it, you don't get to complain about it being ethical or not.

@IanKemp Whether you can complain about it being ethical or not is open to opinion, the fact its illegal under GDPR is not.

@IanSudbery: The students should have no expectation that the details will not be disclosed during academic investigations.  The only question is whether the information is released on the word of university faculty, or requires a judge to order discovery (the civil counterpart to what a search warrant is in criminal cases)

Since no contract has been broken, and no damages incurred I very much doubt a judge is going to do that. Anyway, my point was that the content of any user agreement, or concent is immaterial as to whether the data storage, or the release is legal under GDPR.

At first I was like, "sure, IP address and username is all great and fine but doesn't help anything" but then I finished reading and was left completely baffled. Forget cheating, these students need courses in how not to be complete dummies on the internet and learn to not tie questionable accounts to the "main" e-mail...

Having thought about this issue both from purely academic side, and also from cryptographic protocol side (trying to be clever...), I think there is no way to achieve this goal. So, then, the real questions are about the size of the issue (how many students do this?) and about revising our notions of "exams" to make evaluation be such that it's "easier" for students to study than to hire other people to do their work (whatever that work is decided to be).
(One example of reconsideration of what happens in an "exam": years ago, it occurred to me that, if the goal of a course is to get students to learn something, it may be better to give open-book exams, because then at least they may learn something during the exam, even if they didn't study before. :) No, I do not want to take this toooo far, but this and related points do not seem to be part of some traditional testing cultures...)

On open book exams:  My parents were both teachers and every test they gave was anything-but-other-people.  It made them think more in making test questions but it made for better tests--all of their questions required applying the knowledge of the class, not merely looking it up.  Know the material, it's a piece of cake.  Forget a name or the like, look it up.  Don't know the concept, might as well guess.

+1 The main thrust (first sentence) here I support. But the one hail-mary re: "make evaluation be such that it's 'easier' for students to study than to hire other people to do their work" is frankly one of those feel-good wishes that doesn't get any work done without concrete application steps (and I don't think there are any). There's no lower-bound for incapacity in students (incl. such aspects as logging into a test on time, staying awake through it, etc.) Suggest you reflect on whether that line is really useful here, and maybe snip it out.

@DanielR.Collins, true, there's not lower bound on incapacity, but for (perhaps) the majority, there is, and I do not want to corrupt [sic] policies and procedures that a vast majority have to endure just to (attempt to) cope with a small minority. As you note, that's probably impossible...

All courses I have taken, except the math ones, has been open book exams for me (where many has had 3+ books with ~700 pages each). My experience is that if you do not know the answer, or at least where to find it quickly, then you won't have time to find it and learn during the exam. During my years I've only managed once to solve a problem I had absolutely no clue about on before hand and it was through sheer luck at finding the correct phrasing in the index. However, I was so stressed to figure it out that I completely blocked out any memories of what I read afterwards and learned nothing.

@paulgarrett: With respect, I don't agree that for a clear majority universally there's a lower bound. This varies by institution, of course. Consider that half of U.S. college students now attend open-admissions community colleges, and only about 20% graduate from those schools, can't pass 8th-grade reading/writing/math tests, etc. Again, in these "better way" posts I'd like to see a concrete citation and I don't see any, so I remain in disbelief.

@DanielR.Collins, well, you may be right. I do remember observing my dad teaching high school math 50 years ago, and note-to-self that that was not anything I would want to do... Sigh. But/and, with that model, we (collectively) are somehow "forcing" kids, who are resisting, to learn a few things...? Yikes. But, well, maybe so...

@DanielR.Collins, I suppose with math-as-hurdle/filter/obstacle, which it very often is used as in the U.S., it's almost perverse to pretend that the "victims" should be convinced to embrace and enjoy it. Sigh.

Thanks for reflecting on that. Of course, my long-held thesis is that (honest) math winds up being a filter no matter what the system tries to do, which inspired this question that you commented on in the past. (As predicted there, my institution has in fact abandoned basic algebra as a requirement to graduate as of a few years ago. Have graduation rates spiked upward as a result? No.)

@Daniel R. Collins: But consider that many community colleges aren't limited to strictly academic subjects.  A quick look at my local CC's catalog shows a dozen courses in Air Conditioning, and as many in Welding.

@jamesqf: Not sure what your point is there. I'm talking people enrolled in associate's degree programs, FWIW (not certificates or continuing education).

... "By making a few educated guesses about completion rates and program length, he estimates that total community college enrollment in associate programs dwarfs certificate program enrollment by a ratio of seven to one. Approximately seven million students are enrolled in associate programs versus one million in certificate programs." Inside Higher Ed.

Data point: in the 1960s, a significant fraction (I'd estimate 1/3...) of high school kids of both genders left high school without finishing it, having taken "metal shop" or "auto-shop" or "book-keeping" and other "vocational" courses, and started making good money immediately. The so-called "smart kids" who were aiming at college could/did only do so if they had sufficient family support, I think. Some sort of "long shot". In any case, people who didn't want to take math classes (and other stuff) could avoid it, and very quickly make a good living. I do wonder about analogues these days.

@Daniel R. Collins: My point is that using CC figures without being careful about just which figures could be misleading.  There are a bunch of different CC tracks: Do basic courses and move to university after a year or two, Associate degree as terminal, trade school without much academics, &c.

It is absolutely possible. Assuming student used University network (which is a real possibility), then it would be trivial to see who navigated to certain websites. If you try a bit harder then you can even see who made purchase requests.
But if they didn't, then unless the University manage to subpoena the student's phone records (which I highly doubt) then yeah it is pretty much impossible.

In general, it is always possible to safely cheat via expert in written online exams:
The student can just forward whatever web interface you throw at them to the paid expert and then the expert can do everything the student has to do without you noticing¹.
For whatever it’s worth, I have been a member of huge groups of people with a strong interest to avoid this kind of cheating and nobody could provide a solution.
As a consequence, you can only detect and prove such cheating if the cheaters or hired experts get sloppy (or confess).
And even then it will be difficult to provide sufficiently strong evidence to convince the board.
For example, I can think of the following:

The exam’s handwriting is strikingly different from the student’s usual handwriting and the student fails to reproduce said handwriting under observation. (But of course, a remotely clever cheater would copy the solutions provided by the hired expert by hand.)

The student cannot explain their solution at all. However, if you are probing like this in the first place, just make the interview about the solutions the official actual exam.

The student cannot explain how they accessed the exam interface from an IP address located in a different part of the world.

The exam question appears on a public platform.

If you think that these probably do not apply to your exam, then that’s more or less my previous point:
You can only prove this with help of convenient sloppiness from the other side.

¹ “Locked” browsers and video proctoring can increase the technical hurdle (but not make it insurmountable).
Theoretically you can take extreme measures where you only accept solutions that the student handwrote without touching their keyboard under complete video surveillance, but even then you cannot do anything against an expert in the same room giving hints.
(Also, I do not condone this extreme proctoring because it is a surefire way to trigger a vast array of anxieties in honest students and disadvantage them.)

Comments have been moved to chat; please do not continue the discussion here. Before posting a comment below this one, please review the purposes of comments. Comments that do not request clarification or suggest improvements usually belong as an answer, on [meta], or in [chat]. Comments continuing discussion may be removed.

Sometimes you can say nothing and wait for the cheaters to get overconfident (i.e.: sloppier) in future assignments. They may forget to remove the invoice from the cheating service, or may let a friend turn in a copy ... or something else glaring.
For now, all you should/can do is note the suspected students and move on. Maybe save copies of the suspect assignments (the goal being for when a student says on a later assignment "but I just cheated on this one in a moment of weakness").
My other advice is not to worry too much about it. Sure, a school's reputation goes bad if they graduate only incompetent students, and other students will yell at you if they hear how "everyone else" in the class is cheating; but a few is inevitable. It's not like they dock your salary for it. And these students often go on to fail the next class (where they are so far behind they don't even know how to cheat properly).
It's far too easy to turn catching a few cheating students into one of those movies where the student is a serial killer and you're the only one who can catch them before you retire (at the end of the semester). Focus on the good students. Spend a few hours here and there on academic dishonesty, and then put it out of your mind.

Thanks. This is a useful perspective. Suddenly I see myself as the retired, alcoholic cop in The Pledge.

As others here have noted, proving cheating via technical means can be difficult, if not impossible in some situations.
I've found that a surprising amount of people buckle under pressure and admit to cheating or dishonesty if you simply (gently, but firmly) ask them if any cheating took place. This is especially true if you ask with a kind of calm confidence that says "I know something happened."
Do not throw accusations, show aggression, or insinuate anything. Simply ask an easy-to-answer question or two and take it from there. If they do not admit to anything, call it a day and move on.

Am not a teacher although I do have some experience in sharing knowledge.
Setting aside the thought that this answer may backfire on me in the future :-) , best way would be to select students randomly (or whoever you suspect of not honouring the 'honorcode') and tell them that you are cross-validating that they did indeed answered it by themselves and have them explain how they arrived at that answer.
If the students answer on the lines of -

I googled it and then chose website-a from where I further navigated
to website-b or i took samples from website-a,b and c and made up my
answer

...that may be just fine.
On the other hand if they reply on the lines of -

I am unable to find the links now but was able to do it before ..

would be red-flags (although not impossible given that google/duck-duck-go would rely on scoring and that may change in between student searching once and searching again).
In such cases need to increase the number of samples (if unable to recollect how they answered question-a, ask them to explain answer for question-b).
Given the pandemic, it would not be unexpected and may even give students and parents that some amount of care is being taken from the faculty end.
You'll need to figure out how to do the co-ordination bit across students though.

Having students prove they did their own work is awkward in practice. For one thing, you're accusing them of cheating (saying it's done at random, etc... won't matter) but with no proof, and making them do extra work because of that. Another is that non-cheating students won't remember details -- often I can't find the same website twice, and not if I'm nervous. And it's tough to write up for discipline: "student was unable to explain how they did assignment to my satisfaction"?

Ok. Then may be skip for this exam, re-initiate a 'surprise' one few weeks later and this time around ask them to document the steps used to arrive at the answer or tell them they are being monitored and take screenshots of their screen at random ?


text:
Is it appropriate to give your supervisor an early thesis draft that has informal self-addressed notes?
I will have to show my supervisor a thesis draft soon. It is an early draft, just to see where I am standing. It obviously misses full chapters and some areas contain personal self-addressed notes like, "make a fancy diagram about process A". Should I go through the work of removing these notes, written in an obvious informal style, before handing in the draft?
On one hand, I would like my supervisor to know that I will include a diagram there, but should I at least formalize the notes like in, "process A diagram will be added"?
Edit: I will give a few more examples so that my question is clearer:
My question is more about having an informal approach to the notes than their existence. For example is it fine if I have notes like: "I should spiff this diagram, too ugly", or if I use as a placeholder for the subtitle "Fancy subtitle" instead of "< Subtitle placeholder >", or if instead of a figure that I know I am about to add, I have a placeholder image that says "here comes the really nice and cool image that shows the A-B relation" instead of saying "A-B relation figure placeholder"?
I also feel the need to mention that I would never use such informal writing style in the actual text, nevertheless in a final version.

I'm not really clear on how well you hope to get input on what sounds like a not-at-all near complete draft but if you have a good relationship with your mentor and they know your sense of humor, I certainly don't see the harm in it.

I hope to get other people's experience in such situations and more specifically, if it ever got wrong, like... the professor would consider that the student didn't take the work serious because of this.

Some of my students have given me thesis drafts that contained notes of this sort.  I didn't have any problem with that.

Not an answer, just personal experience: My prof once came in the room when I just had printed my own first draft (not even that, actually) and asked if I had one. I said yes, and vaguely pointed at the pile of paper, which he grabbed and instantly left to read. When I got it back the next day, he really liked it. I think he actually enjoyed the occasional "blabla, add more fancy info here to fill paragraph". Isn't it what we all think while writing?

I would suggest that yes, you should feel comfortable doing that, particularly if this is an early draft. My rationale is simply that, with large documents like this one, the more feedback you can get, the better. The notes show that you've given thought to what should be where and recognize that it's not complete, and will demonstrate that you're thinking that sort of thing through. To that extent point, your own recommendation is spot on; add as many "diagram X should be here" notes as you can, simply to save him from having to add that comment himself.
That said, if your advisor is a very finicky person who wants the drafts to be picture-perfect (yes, those people definitely exist), then don't do this, as you'll just make him annoyed.

Post-edit addition: I would suggest this is entirely dependent on the temperament of your advisor. Personally, I love humor, so as long as you mentioned in your email that the comments are tongue-in-cheek, I would find that entertaining. If he's a stick-in-the-mud, he won't like it. Its really just dependent on his sense of humor.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Pedagogical pros and cons of requiring undergraduate students to follow open/reproducible research practices?
I regularly teach an undergraduate course in which students are expected to complete projects that involve writing code. I also supervise undergraduates in other project and thesis work that involve writing code.
I am considering requiring future students to publicly release their project code, and any other materials needed to reproduce their work, under an open source license. (This would, of course, be stated up front in the syllabus, or before I agree to supervise a thesis student.)
(Fortunately, the research platform on which my students work is very well suited for reproducible research, having been designed specifically with that goal in mind.)
On the one hand, I have this vague idea that it's to the students' benefit to practice participating in open, reproducible science.
On the other hand, students may feel reluctant to release their code (for all of the reasons documented here). Furthermore, I want to avoid things that distract too much from the main goals of the course, which don't directly involve reproducible research.
Are there any specific pedagogical arguments for or against instituting this requirement?
(Note that I'm asking about the pedagogical impact on my students, not the benefit to the broader research community of having my students do open science.)

Would not it be better to learn them to use version control (SVN, git), wikis (e.g. redmine) for documentation, bugzilla for filing bugs and something like trello for collaboration? This will also help them, besides research, in their future work in industry.

@Alexandros Software development practices and reproducible research practices aren't mutually exclusive, there's no need to choose. But this question is specifically about the latter.

If you are in the US, there may be FERPA-related barriers to requiring students to publicly release their code. My university lawyers consider the mere fact that a student is enrolled in my class to be a FERPA-protected educational record.

@JeffE I read this article which suggests ways to avoid FERPA issues in a related scenario

I applaud your willingness to further your student's contributions to open source.
There are lots of pros:

Build student's reputations (ancillary to professor and institution)
Create value for society
Students will have an even greater stake in code they know will reflect on themselves, and as a result will go to greater lengths to ensure they demonstrate learning and excellence.

Con:

Students (and stakeholders) may not wish to publish because of fear of negative impact to reputation.

Well, masters' theses and doctoral dissertations are, in most institutions that I'm aware of, are all supposed to be bound and stored accessible to the public, even if the public never reads it.
In all likelihood, the bad stuff will get rarely read or used. The good stuff will never get enough attention, but it will get far more than the bad.
Conclusion
It's a risk worth taking, but bounce it off your department head and be certain that they agree. They may decide that since they're undergraduates, it's unfair and not proportionate to require them to publish. Or they may insist that the requirement appear ahead of time in the course catalogue description.

I think one good pedagogical reason to not require students to use open/reproducible research is that it forces them to engage in a public display of their scholarship, rather than offering them the opportunity to do so. In a learning situation, trust, risk, and power are always being negotiated. By requiring them to release it to a wider audience, you are setting some significant boundaries on the negotiation. Instead, is there a way you can set it up so they follow standard practices and documentation, but the "openness" is only with you (or their classmates)?
Also, as a feminist researcher, I always consider how my scholarship could be misused or misapplied to achieve someone's agenda. I have done work that I would not publish or want to make openly available. I am not willing to commit to public presentation of my research before I conduct it and therefore, I would not require that of my students.

The suggestion at the end of your first paragraph kind of misses the point; I'm asking about giving my students an experience with openness, not documentation or other practices not directly related to openness. And I think there's a big difference between imposing this requirement on all of a students' research, and imposing it on a single class project (that isn't really anything I would call "research"); your latter point could apply to the thesis students, not so much the class project.

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


text:
Is an automatic copyright transfer clause in publisher's instructions to authors typically enforced/enforceable?
Some publishers have a clause like the following in their author instructions:

Submission of a manuscript implies... that if and when the manuscript is accepted for publication, the authors agree to automatic transfer of the copyright to the publisher.

I found many instances of this among disreputable publishers. But I was surprised to also see this policy at more than one Springer journal and a handful of other, reasonably reputable, venues.
I was also surprised, because we occasionally get questions here about withdrawing a paper after acceptance. The first thing we ask them is generally, "Have you signed a copyright transfer yet?" with the implication that before signing anything, you still hold the copyright to the submitted work.
So, what exactly is the automatic transfer of copyright referred to above?
Has this been enforced, traditionally? Is it even enforceable, generally speaking?
Or is it just a clause that some sketchy publishers put in there to deceive authors into believing that they don't have the right to withdraw their paper from the journal after acceptance?

Thinking about it you could ask the same thing about regular clicked copyright transfers: How can the publisher prove that you actually clicked that button? (I wonder which Stack Exchange is the right place to ask about the legal provableness of web forms in general.)

I suppose the most charitable interpretation is, "read the copyright agreement now, so that if you don't agree with it, you can save everyone's time by not submitting".  They may have had cases where they reviewed and accepted a paper, only to have the author decide the terms of the copyright transfer were unacceptable and scuttle the whole process.

@Nate or (more likely, I think) an author wants to withdraw a paper after acceptance to submit to another journal

A lawyer would be best suited to answer this, but as I have had several business law classes as part of my business education, I'll hold forth based on my understanding of intellectual property and contract law in an educational context.
The answer would be yes, that it should be generally enforceable.
Laws vary by state even in the United States, but in general, qualities that can make a contract unenforceable are:

Lack of capacity of the parties (legal age, sound minds, etc.)
Fraud or misrepresentation
Violation of public policy

None of the above apply to our situation (unless, for example, we have a precocious or senile scholar).
Enforceable contracts also require:

Consideration (exchange of something of value)
Meeting of the Minds (mutual agreement of terms)
Offer and Acceptance

Now let's analyze these requirements. Is there mutual exchange of value? The journal appears to offer that in exchange for copyright, the author gets to be published in a prestigious journal. Does the author agree at the time of offer and acceptance? Then we have an enforceable contract.
So this brings to light a strategy for attempting to retain copyrights of your work. Insist by striking through such language in a contract and make a statement that you, the author, retain copyright, and put your initials by the alteration. If the contract is in electronic form, communicate this through email just prior to and just after submitting your request electronically.
If they do not object, and rather, accept your submission, I would assert that you have established that any possible claim by them to your work is either completely unenforceable (certainly, in the case of a written contract) or (in either case) liable to cost them a great deal in legal fees to pursue.

The journal appears to offer that in exchange for copyright, the author gets to be published - actually, the Springer site says "Submission of a manuscript implies..." which means that publishing is not part of their offer. They are only thinking about publishing your work. I would argue this is "illusory consideration" (consideration which looks like it is there but actually is not there).

Sure, but if they don't accept, they don't have copyright. They only have copyright should they choose to publish it, under their terms, which is why the author may insist on altering the terms. But that's a good point that I did not discuss. Thanks for that, @earthling.

I don't understand "if they don't accept". You mean if they don't accept your modified offer? They have made a offer which you accept by submitting. When you submit it would normally be considered an implied contract (not a written one). I see nothing in their terms about publishing. Although, it's late for me, perhaps I'm just missing something...but we might be going in two different directions here.

@earthling: I believe he means that, if the journal rejects the paper, then the contract is not established.

To my knowledge, in the US, copyright transfers must be specific to the work in question and in writing in order to be legitimate. The hard part is whether the language covers your submission and is included in some terms of service to which you agreed. I have my doubts that a general statement saying that anything you submit automatically implies transfer would hold up in court. Such a statement doesn't properly identify the work being transferred, and "I agree" in this case probably doesn't count as a signature. I'm not saying that electronic signatures can't be done, but go look at the IEEE Copyright Form (PDF) for an example of one that's been created in good faith by a professional society.

My personal opinion only here.  It is a problem that has arisen in the last few years as publishers have started to realize that nobody reads printed journals.  They want to be able to charge for access to the online versions, and seem to think the only way to do this is by taking copyright from the authors. This is an issue at, e.g., US National Labs, where the US government owns the copyright and has no intention of signing it over to a publisher (US or not).
I view it as a particularly irritating, but ultimately temporary, problem.  The moment any publisher goes after an author for hosting a copy of their own publication it will be widely known and the publisher will suffer.  But until the lawyers figure it all out we will have to fight back.

The question isn't about the general practice of requiring authors to sign over copyright, it's specifically about a clause that says that copyright is automatically signed over on acceptance of a paper.

Oh absolutely - you had to give them the right to publish it, but you retained rights as well.  Now they want it all, leaving you with nothing.  There is a big difference in the wording and intent of the copyright form.

There's a misunderstanding here.  The difference isn't the rights that are signed over or retained - it's when that transfer is agreed to.  Normally you are not asked to agree to a copyright transfer until after the paper is accepted.  In the case @ff524 describes, the author is asked to agree in advance, upon submission, that they will sign over the copyright if the paper is accepted.


text:
Is there any field in which applicants to PhD programs (in any part of the world) usually have publications?
We get occasional questions here from people who are applying to PhD programs, and are worried because they have no publications. This is puzzling to me, because most of my friends in PhD programs did not have any publications when they applied.
We've also previous agreed that it is not generally mandatory to have a publication when applying to PhD, although it certainly helps. I am interested in knowing if there are any fields that are exceptions to this rule.
Are there any fields of study where (in some parts of the world, at least) most students have publications already by the time they apply for PhD admissions?
By "most," I mean that publications are common enough that a lack of one is seen as worrying, and possibly indicative of some deficiency in the applicant.

By the time I will apply for a neuroscience PhD, I will have published around five or six papers (mid-tier venues). Perhaps it sounds weird, but I feel having no chances of being hired to any top department.

@mmh Is that standard in neuroscience?

Just anecdotal evidence. I think most students have at least one paper in preparation/submitted/accepted related to their master's when applying. I'm in Europe.

It seems to be cultural. I may be wrong but it seems to me that US undergrads/master students have lot of free time and are expected to produce something of value on the side. Here in France you are not expected at all to publish anything in Math until after your M2. The courseload is expected to fill your time and only the most brilliant of all students sometimes publish tiny things.

In software engineering in central Europe, having a reasonable paper before starting your PhD is uncommon enough to be considered a very good thing to have. So no, it's certainly not common or expected.

Not confident enough to leave an answer, but: I suspect that the expectation of publications is stronger in Europe than in the US.  In Europe: (i) the undergraduate degree is more specialized; in some places and programs it is more similar to the beginning of a US graduate program than a US undergraduate program, whereas many US university students do not study X, they major in it, often taking less than half of their courses in that subject.  (ii) It is common to mandatory to do a separate master's program. So European PhD applicants may have the equivalent of 3-4 more years of training.

In Germany, as far as my (German) spouse knows, all Masters programs require a thesis.

Related: What percentage of admitted phd students have peer-reviewed publications?

@aparente001: Bachelor and Master programs in Germany usually end with a thesis, yes, but that's not usually published in any way comparable to a paper, and the absolute expectation of a scientific contribution therein is debatable.

I know this is different, but many neuroscience/psych/cognitive science masters programs in Canada require a thesis from your undergrad, although it does not need to be published.

You may want to edit your question to make clear whether you're asking about having published something, or having published something peer reviewed.

I'll point toward the Max Planck School for Computer Science,
IMPRS-CS, if I remember correctly they used to have even stronger wording than the current

A successful candidate must...  have performed research and published (or submitted for publication) the results

But the MPIs are not the norm. Mostly, you would be fine with just your Masters thesis in math, comp sci, biology, or chemistry.

I’ve been a part of a PhD admissions committee for a top school in the US in a field of engineering.  Expectations change based on your educational background.
The lack of any accepted/submitted/in process publications is a significant weakness in any applicants that hold an MS.  It is generally expected that during this time you were performing research, and its quality was sufficient for a peer reviewed conference or journal.
In undergraduate applicants who are applying directly to the PhD program, the lack of publications is not worrying whatsoever.  There is generally little opportunity or time for them to be produced.
As has been said elsewhere, applicants are ultimately judged on their ability or potential ability to perform self-driven, impactful research.  An undergraduate who has clearly made good use of their available time (summer internships involving research, extracurricular activities in the sciences, etc.) with no publications will most likely be viewed as a better candidate than an applicant with an MS with no publications.  An MS alone in this context is at best evidence of more successfully completed coursework, which is not what committees are looking for. At worst it can suggest deficiencies exist in their research ability.

"It is generally expected that during [Master studies] you were performing research." - could you add a note about the rough geographic area where this applies? For instance, in Germany, depending on the field, Master students rarely do research; they attend classes, participate in lab sessions and projects, and take exams, just like during their Bachelor studies, but with an increase in depth and difficulty of topics.

This answer is consistent with my experience in computer science in the US.

In the US there are typically two options for Master studies: course-work only, and thesis track.  The latter involves a research project (and a written thesis).

In addendum: In the case of, for example, an applicant with a German MS to a US PhD program, the organization of their typical MS program will likely be considered - but they will very possibly still sit at a disadvantage to their peers with MS publications.  Evidence of research ability remains the most important applicant criteria.

For the context, I'm a Canadian doing a PhD in Biology.
In my University and for most Québec (Canadian?) universities, PhD applicant usually have a publication under way, whether it is published, accepted, submitted or in preparation.
The reason why is that most student have completed a master degree before. Altought publication is usually not mandatory in master degrees, it's becoming the norm.
I would dare say that this answer could fit countries and faculties/department where a master degree is required.

Interesting. Do you have any rough numbers? (Look at the ten people sitting closest to you, how many of them had a publication underway when they applied?)

Hum...all? OK, probably 9/10, accounting for student from foreing countries who didn't do masters. However, some of those publications might take a long time to get accepted and really published. So the student will have it on his cv during his PhD. I would like very much if someone with the same background could back me up or not. It's a question hard to answered unbiaised.

"I would dare say that this answer could fit countries (...) where a master degree is required." - wouldn't this only be a valid assumptions for research-based Master degrees (as opposed to, say, coursework-only Master degrees)?

In most subfields of computer science, most strong applicants will usually have some sort of publication record, usually with one work under submission/review at the time of application. First authorship is usually not common, though.

Perhaps you can give some context, and some numbers to support your assertion. Have you served on a PhD admissions committee in computer science? If not, on what do you base this answer?

This is based mostly on my experience as an applicant this past year, and the context is the traditional top four: Stanford, UCB, MIT, CMU.


text:
How to write summaries for literature survey?
My professor wanted me to write a short summary (one or two paragraphs max) on each paper. Focus on the salient of the method.
could I use the abstract sentences exactly or should I change the words and write with my own words?
I was wondering if you could tell me whether it is necessary to read whole the papers or it is enough to read abstract and conclusion part?

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because we cannot know what your professor wants. However, I'd guess that if your professor asked you to write a summary, they expect you to write the summary in your own words.

He has asked you to write a summary of the works. I expect he wants to assess how you write, as well as your understanding of the papers themselves.
Copying the abstracts verbatim not only obstructs this goal, but is also plagiarism. The ideas and words are not your own and you should not try to pass them off as such.
Read the papers carefully and summarise them in your own words.

should I read whole the papers? What will happen if I just summarize the abstract and conclusion?

@nikki2 If you study with such an attitude, you may be well stop here. Don't you think that by reading those papers you might actually learn something?

@ Massimo Ortolano. I do think so. but I have just started finding articles related to my master thesis and I am going to read 60 articles. I need to find top 10 articles among those 60 articles.

I ask my students to do exactly the same thing.  I use the summaries to assess their writing and technical skills.  By 'copying' or 'paraphrasing' sentences from papers will show that you have a shallow understanding of a paper, and that your English level is poor.  I can very easily tell the technical depth of a student by reading their writing or listening to how they explain technical concepts.


text:
Does your university name matter?
If you are seeking an engineering job, do employers care about which university you attended? Do they look at your grades, or bias their decision based on the college's reputation? There are stories of Ivy League graduates struggling to find employment, while another person at a small, virtually unheard-of college grabbing that opportunity. So if you are attending a prestigious school, and your grades are lower than someone who is attending a small, high-school-like school, how will that affect your employment opportunities?

Questions about non-academic jobs and careers are off-topic here.

@EnthusiasticStudent: Engineer is an academic job and thus this question does relate to academia as it is relevant for career choices of people who are still at the university.

@Wrzlprmft The 'relevant for career choices of people who are still at the university' part of your comment doesn't make this question on-topic. I personally wouldn't label 'engineer' as an academic job, at least not uniformly (I can believe there are research-based engineering jobs, but I suspect there are ones that are not about research too).

If you are asking about research jobs in engineering, then this question may be on-topic and you should edit it to clarify. If you're asking about non-research jobs, I'm afraid that it's outside the scope of this site as defined in the [help/on-topic].

See also "To choose which Masters program to attend, should I favor institution or specialization?"

This question appears to be more on-topic on Workplace SE since it is asking about industry jobs. However, I am not too sure it would be closed as opinion-based there. I persoanlly would not vote to close there.

@MadJack By the time the students graduate, it might be too late and the question would be off-topic here. If the question asks what a professor can do to help the students find their jobs easier during the four years they are in school, then I think it's on-topic here. My personal opinion.

@MadJack I don't really think asking this question as a professor seeking to guide students is more on-topic than asking as a student. An advisor seeking to understand the non-research workplace should ask this question on a site where the non-research workplace is on topic. But, the community is welcome to disagree with my opinion by casting reopen votes.

If you are seeking an engineering job, do employers care about which university you attended? Do they look at your grades, or bias their decision based on the college's reputation?

If you have a solid foundation in the skills that matter for your engineering discipline/sub-field, and can convey that to recruiters in a phone/on-site/on-campus interview, then I would say that to a first-order where you did your degree does not matter so long as you can get the recruiter's attention.
Getting the recruiter's attention is the trickier part for those coming from lesser-known schools. For example, at the engineering schools I'm familiar with, new grads can find a lot of good fresh-out career opportunities by attending on-campus engineering career fairs and the like. The downside of attending a lesser-known engineering school is that they may not have a decent attendance of engineering companies that come to the campus for recruiting purposes in the first place. This puts the burden on the student in getting a recruiter's attention.
Engineering students (and students in other fields, I'm sure) from any institution can greatly benefit from networking with peers at other institutions and those already in industry. For those from lesser-known institutions, networking can be an invaluable tool for opening doors to career opportunities. Also, while obtaining an internship may be equally as difficult as obtaining a full-time position for those from lesser-known schools, participating in several internships along the way to obtaining your degree if at all possible (and performing the duties of the position well) would really go a long way to improving your chances of success.

A top graduate of a second-tier school  may bemore intreesting than a second-tier graduate of a top school. Emphasis on may; it depends on what you've done/learned.

Many firms tend to prefer certain schools -- drawing exclusively from CalTech or from MIT, etc. Some hiring managers tend to feel that this builds coherence and loyalty within the engineering ranks.
(Heavens forbid that you put an MIT engineer with a Caltech engineer on the same team unless you want to have them compete against each other.)
Some hiring managers have intense loyalty towards their own school and want to promote their own.
Others simply choose the best available in a specific domain.
It all boils down to the hiring philosophy of the company.
My own advice is that you should choose the program that you feel has the best fit with your interests. There's no point in going into a 'good' program if it's weak in your own area of study.

+1 for the coherence argument.  I didn't think about that one

It is thought that engineers from the same program tend to think the same way, use the same tools,  come in with pre-existing friendships, get drunk on the same football weekends, and generally get along better. Whether or not this is actually true is unknown.

At least for startups, the coherence argument is utter nonsense.  See http://carlos.bueno.org

As much as we'd like it not to matter, many large employers do have "preferred" schools, whose graduates don't have to go through as much scrutiny.
That said, the effect is diminished when you're applying to smaller firms, where there are less layers of HR involved in the hiring process.

I'm not sure this is limited to big companies. If the boss of a small company is from Caltech, she may tend to bring in other Caltech people. It's just not as visible from the outside since the n is smaller.

Could you please elaborate on your first line?

@iamcreasy: For example, if you are not from a "preferred" school, your future hiring manager may be responsible for providing extra documentation that your degree meets the "standards" for employment. Extra steps and bureaucracy may be involved in such cases.

Does it matter: yes.  Everything matters.  Next question please!  Upvote at your leasure!
The question you should ask is "How much does it matter?"
The answer really depends on how well you know your field.  A brand-name school is most likely to help you get through an initial screening, but unlikely to land you the job.  If you're on the fence, technically, and you need a large number of interviews to land the job, a brand-name school may be the ticket you need.  On the other hand, if you actually know your stuff, you won't be so dependent on "good luck" in the interview, and you can afford to get missed in the screening once or twice... all you need is one interview and you're set!
Alternatively if your activities stand out, you wont need the brand-name school to sell your way past the screening process -- what you've done will speak more than your alma mater.

Traditionally, yes but more and more companies are beginning to move past that. Government jobs however are different. They would select based on school and also background.
But, anyone who has worked in a diverse environment would know all that very surface level. Engineering is all about finding solutions to problems. It always depends on the company's business model, hiring policies, alliances and other factors. It is not as clear cut as school where an A is an A regardless of the person getting it.
The whole "go to a good a school, graduate and get a good job" line is very misleading. It might work out for a lot of people (especially back then when a select few go to college) but do not depend on it to work out for you (unless daddy's the boss, then why are we even discussing this). Depend on yourself first and keep at it till it does work out. It sucks but you will be able appreciate every bit of it much better than you struck gold at first strike.


text:
What is the expectation that one should have from reading a published paper?
Is it just to check that the paper's results are correct?  Should I expect that the authors describe their methods for arriving at the right answers / solving a problem?  I've often found that on a key part of the paper, e.g., the main result, the authors just give you the data without explaining.  I then have to verify that the data is correct and the results are correct but this takes a bit of work on my part, which I am happy to do, but I wonder why these steps aren't shown on the paper itself.
Is what I described the usual expectation when reading a research paper?  That I shouldn't expect researchers to divulge how they arrived at the right answer and perhaps that is a way for them to protect their work, e.g., whatever method they came up with that worked ... could have the potential to be used again and again to publish more papers?
I also tried contacting researchers directly to discuss their work.  All of them are happy to talk - but mostly on a superficial level, e.g., "I've done X,Y, and Z, my co-author has done A,B and C."

Generally, a failure to clearly demonstrate the correctness of  results is a weakness in a paper, and shouldn't be tolerated, but sometimes is. And of course, what is clear to one reader may not be clear to another. But if you could say what your field is, it might be possible to give more specific answers.

I also ran it by my research advisor, as it is my job to update him on what I am reading, what results I am looking at, what I am looking to do with what I've found and read and agreed with @NateEldredge - and my research advisor also thought that we were dealing with "weak" papers.  But some of these papers are published in good journals, since the results in the paper are correct and important.  The explanations / methods are pretty much missing, though, so the paper, although correct, is pretty much useless as a guide to further work on the bigger problem.

"That I shouldn't expect researchers to divulge how they arrived at the right answer": many people -- I'm one of them -- arrive at the right answer through ways that are really insignificant and are not worth publishing. In addition, some of us can't even remember how they arrived to the right idea.

I left that part out of my question but that is certainly a possibility which I have discussed with my advisor, too, @massimoortolano.  Considering this possibility too, these papers don't seem useful; there's no method / explanations that can be extracted from the paper, studied, and generalized / tweaked to solve the bigger problem, which is my (naive?) expectation when reading a paper.

What area are you working in? I think the answers to your questions could differ quite a lot depending on that.

Why are you reading the paper?  Are you a reviewer?  Are you interested primarily in the statements of the results, or in the high-level techniques, the low-level technical details, or the definitions, or the pictures?  Are you interested in the paper because you want to apply it, because you want to teach it, because you're going to be tested on it, or because you want to extend it?

I think there are two uses of the word "expectation" relevant to your question:
1) Expectation as in "standards": this would be the type of "expectations" a teacher might have of students: that they show up to class, complete assignments, read course materials, etc. This is the aspirational sense of the word.
2) Expectation as in "predictions of what is going to happen": a more realistic, perhaps Bayesian understanding of what publications are like in your field as you read more papers.
I don't think you are wrong to have high expectations in the first sense, especially from work published in high tier journals in your field. You should expect results to be presented clearly, empirical and statistical methodology to be detailed, and conclusions drawn to be clearly connected to the actual results and not just the predictions and world view of the authors.
In reality, your expectations in the second sense should not be as lofty. You should expect abstracts to not really tell you what limited scope the paper actually addresses You should expect to need to dig into not just the paper in hand but previous papers by the same authors and others they reference obliquely to figure out their methodology. You should expect to find conclusions that are suggested by but not shown convincingly by the data at hand. You should expect to find statistical approaches that are naive, inappropriate, or misleading.
In my personal experience, you will find authors in your field whose work you really cherish because they meet your Expectations. These won't necessarily be the most famous papers, but you will enjoy and learn from most of the publications they write. The other papers that instead conform to your expectations might be just as important, you will be held just as responsible to understand them and incorporate them into your work, but they won't be as fun, you will wonder how they ever got past peer review, and you might even start to doubt your field in general.
Don't fret! All you can really do is try to meet your own expectations.

Very well said. It's pretty tough in the beginning to reconcile these two expectations, but much important to distinguish both. Bonus points for reminding OP to adhere to his own expectations.

Let's say that you decide to do some work on the same or a related problem, and that you write a paper about your work.  Near the beginning, you get to say:

Previous work by Terse and Succinct addressed such-and-so aspect of my-topic, but their results are not reproducible, because they did not clearly outline their approach.

And then make sure you clearly outline your approach.
I understand your frustration... but do you see that in a way, their terseness makes it easier for you to get your work published?

I'm not sure whether saying something like this at the beginning of a paper makes the paper easier to publish in practice. I agree that it should, wherever it's correct.

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


text:
IEEE journals: how do I find articles published as letters?
In JMEMS there are primarily 3 types of publications: conference proceedings, letters(3 page limit) and articles.
I am trying to find articles published in letter format in JMEMS. I have access to Webofscience and ofcourse google scholar/scopus etc. I can find these articles by manually going to each issue (published quarterly) and looking for 3 page articles. However this is very inefficient, since I am looking for a certain topic published in the letter format, and I will have to go through all the issues to collect these articles and then look through them.
How do I find/search for letters published in JMEMS? Is there a more efficient way?

First things first:
Unless you are searching for IEEE Letter papers in venues which only publish Letters (such as IEEE Communications Letters, IEEE Signal Processing Letters, IEEE Electron Device Letters, etc.), there is, unfortunately, no formal, efficient way to search exclusively for Letter papers in IEEE venues which publish multiple types of papers.
As you stated, your target venue (IEEE JMEMS) publishes multiple paper types, so it seems that some creativity is needed to generate some results which are relevant to you.
One way to get creative here: It is quite common for authors of IEEE Letter papers to refer to the paper as such within the text of the article, e.g., as "This letter ..." or "In this letter ..."
In this case you can use Google Scholar to search for keywords "letter", "this letter", or "in this letter" and restrict your search to your preferred IEEE venue (in your case, IEEE Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems). You can further narrow down the results list in Google Scholar by also providing technical keywords relevant to the papers you are interested in.
While the above is not a silver bullet, I know of no other better way to accomplish what you aim to do.

Thanks MadJack.. thats what I have been doing recently as well.. but I thought there might be a more efficient way. Also, I wasnt sure whether I was missing any articles that might be of interest by searching in this fashion..


text:
What are the benefits of PhD students working on projects where they won't be first-author?
Given that only papers where you are the first-author will contribute to your dissertation, isn't it a poor use of time to be contributing to the projects of other researchers?

If your goal is to graduate with your name associated to many good research works (as it should be), then focussing only on your PhD topic even if other collaborations present themselves is incredibly poor use of time.

This sounds very field-dependent. In my field, for example, authors are ordered alphabetically so the whole first-author thing is moot.

This isn't true for all countries either, it depends on how your Thesis should be created. In my country and my field (Physics) your PhD Thesis has to be an original contribution, which means you can't use anything that's been already published.

In disciplines* where the PhD thesis consists of a set of published articles, the PhD usually - but not always - must be composed of first-author papers. Yet there are many reasons why it might be beneficial to be involved in other projects as well, so long as one is also making reasonable progress toward the dissertation.
Perhaps the two most important reasons are:

Training. Early on in graduate school, it may be valuable to simply have the experience of going through every stage of a research project from conception to publication, without having to be in charge every step of the way. Often a first of second year student will be involved in a research project on which a more senior student or postdoc is first author.
Portfolio-building. For most students the goal is not merely to finish the dissertation, but to do so in a way that positions the student for future success. It may be preferable to graduate with 3 first-author and 4 mid-author papers instead of 4 first-author papers, for example.

Additional reasons include

Research assistantship duties. If one is being paid on an RAship, this often contributes substantially to published research that may not be directly relevant to the dissertation.
Reciprocity. Sometimes students collaborate on a series of papers and alternate first authorships as they go.
Too good a thing to pass up. Sometimes the lab hits on something so cool that one would be a fool not to be part of it, whatever the authorship position.
Networking. By establishing collaborations with researchers beyond one's home lab and institution, one builds up one's professional network.

This is only a partial list, of course, but it should provide a sense of some of the reasons that graduate students should not shy away from projects that will lead to mid-author publications.

Authorship order does not matter in all disciplines. In economics and some subfields of computer science, for example, authorship is alphabetical by convention. Clearly this distinction does not matter in those fields.

[ Edited to include suggestions from the comments and other answers. ]

+1 I think the "Portfolio-building" point is the crux of it. If you apply for post-PhD positions, who will get the job? The OP who finished his PhD in 3 years with a few papers on the same topic and without any collaborations, or his colleague who finished in 5 years with many more papers on a broader set of topics, and with a growing set of well-maintained research relationships?

"In disciplines where the PhD thesis consists of a set of published articles, it is true that these typically must be first-author papers." I don't know about "typically" but in computer science and mathematics, it's common for theses to be essentially a set of articles but there's no concept of "first author" since authors are ordered alphabetically.

@DavidRicherby: Maybe that is subfield dependent, but in areas of computer science that I'm aware of, authors are never ordered alphabetically, and always on the "primary contribution ... lesser contributions ... more senior and high-level contributors" scale. With that said, I wholeheartedly disagree that you can only integrate material from papers where you were the primary author into your PhD thesis; it's not like the secondary or tertiary authors didn't make any conceptual contributions at all (or else they wouldn't be co-authors), so there may still something topically fitting.

Algorithms, complexity, logic and related areas of CS theory seem to be entirely alphabetical authors but AI and machine learning are, I think, ordered by contribution. So, yeah, I should have been more specific.

In addition to Corvus' good answer, it is also worth noting that in many disciplines you can include work from a non-first-author paper in a Ph.D. thesis---you just have to place it in the appropriate context.  For example, if your Ph.D. thesis is about a methodology that you have developed, then papers you participate in where you put that methodology to use would be excellent pieces to include in the thesis as part of the validation of its value, even if you are not the first author.

Another good side is networking. By collaborating with colleagues, especially those in other institutions, you end up with a list of collaborators that will be good for your future projects and career. Maybe next time you will end up writing a proposal with one of the co-authors, or maybe someone recognizes you on the job market since you collaborated with them before.


text:
Grad school, biology, funding?
I am a student of biology at a State school in New York (SUNY), and my school is very liberal arts focused, I am also a racial minority.
I also have a poor GPA, 2.7ish currently, due to failings of a previous major(in computer science i received F's for 2 classes, and a D for one).
I am trying to do undergrad research, but only have 2 potential presentable results up and coming.
Do grad schools typically fund students like me to get their tuition totally waived and a possible small stipend? What can I do to better my odds at securing such a position? It is the only way I could even consider grad school.

Related: How does the admissions process work for US Ph.D. programs, particularly for weak or borderline students?

Most science PhD, and some master's, programs fund all or most students they accept.  Does this, together Mad Jack's link, answer your question?

Most decent PhD programs in biology will guarantee 5 years of funding (tuition plus stipend on the order of 22K-30K / year) , with the provision that you may have to work as a teaching assistant 20 hours/week for some or all of that time.
The challenge will be getting into one of these programs with a 2.7 GPA. Many graduate schools require a minimum GPA, often around 3.0, for admission. Departments can and do petition to admit students with lower GPAs, but it certainly makes things harder. Being an underrepresented minority can be helpful if there are other strong aspects to your application that compensate in part for the low GPA.
As you've indicated, doing research is one possibility. Publishing a result would be great; simply being a lab for an extended period of time working alongside a PI is already a good thing. Why? It shows that you know what research is about, and it enables you to get a letter of recommendation from someone who knows you well in a research capacity.
What else can you do? Letters of recommendation are very important; do you know faculty from who you could get strong letters? If not, start making those connections now. A good GRE score will go a long way toward compensating for poor grades. It's worth preparing thoroughly for the GRE before you take it. Contacting possible advisors at the schools to which you are applying is extremely important. You can find lots of advice about how to go about doing that here on this site.
Good luck. While you're not in an optimal position, we've taken students with GPAs in your range at our top-20 PhD program, so certainly there is hope.


text:
If my paper is accepted in a Springer journal, can I submit my version of the manuscript to arXiv immediately after acceptance?
I have read the Springer copyrights and self-archiving policy, but they are a bit confusing. For example in the first of them, you may find this:

Author may self-archive an author-created version of his/her Contribution on his/her own website and/or the repository of Author’s department or faculty.

And here is the quote from the second source:

Authors may self-archive the author’s accepted manuscript of their articles on their own websites. Authors may also deposit this version of the article in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later. He/ she may not use the publisher's version (the final article), which is posted on SpringerLink and other Springer websites, for the purpose of self-archiving or deposit. Furthermore, the author may only post his/her version provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website.  The link must be provided by inserting the DOI number of the article in the following sentence: “The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/[insert DOI]”.

Do I understand correctly that I can put my own version of the manuscript at my own (or my institute's) website immediately after acceptance, but I can submit it to arXiv only 12 months later after official publication? If so, it seems to me it doesn't make sense. If the manuscript is made publicly available just after acceptance at my own website, why cannot it be made publicly available at the same time at arXiv?

Question in the title is diametrically opposite to question in the body.

You might want to consult the SHERPA/RoMEO database. http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/ . Policies may depend on specific journal in question. But yeah, it seems like that is their default policy.

The short answer is: yes, staggered posting rights like this are very common - many journals distinguish between your own website, your institutional repository, and a broader repository (eg arXiv, pubmed), with different rules about what version of the article can be posted and when; some have also begun to provide a special category for sites like ResearchGate.
The underlying answer -
Why on earth do they do this?
On the one hand, this doesn't make sense - the PDF is the PDF and once it's picked up by a search engine, it's going to be readable wherever it's hosted. But consider it in terms of discoverability and scale:

one hundred papers from the journal on one hundred obscure personal sites;
one hundred papers from the journal on twenty well-organised institutional sites; or
one hundred papers from the journal on one disciplinary repository

From a publisher's perspective, the first option is not something to worry about, while the second & particularly third options look quite scary. Remember, what they really don't want is everyone saying "great, we can get this all from arXiv, cancel next year's subscription please". So an embargo period gets attached to the repository copies - many journals (most prominently PNAS) manage fine on a subscription basis while still making older papers freely accessible after a year or two, and so it's well-understood that allowing delayed access in one form or another will not ruin the subscription income.
Now, mass cancellation because of self-deposited papers being available instantly is a bit of a bogeyman. No-one's really shown it would happen on a large scale (and indeed arXiv suggests otherwise); library budgets are not (yet) squeezed enough that we've had to start thinking seriously about it; and in any case "big deal" subscription models often make it impractical to cancel specific titles. But it's looming as the threat and most publishers simply don't want to risk it... so they produce very conservative guidance on what you're allowed to do, and work from there.
Over the past few years, many of these publisher limits have loosened slightly as they discover the sky didn't fall, which I suppose is something. At the time of writing, at a very loose generalisation, policies for non-medical scientific journals are mostly converging along the lines of "accepted MS immediately on your own site, accepted MS in a repository after a year, publisher/proof PDF never", but there are a thousand variations.

... And the reason for allowing arXiv after the 12 month embargo period may very well be that Springer Heidelberg is subject to German law - and the German copyright law now includes an inalienable right of the authors of publicly funded work to secondary publication of the accepted manuscript after 12 months (e.g. on arXiv). So you'd anyways have this right, they just spell it out, probably to avoid an international legal mess.

Here's a closely related question.
And yes, I think it's a bizarre and inexcusable policy--I was so shocked when I realized that they are demanding this that I asked the question linked above.
I am not a lawyer but it is not clear to me why you could not submit to the arXiv prior to signing the copyright transfer agreement. In the absence of a contract with Springer, I cannot see how they can possibly have any say over what you do with your manuscript. They can refuse to take manuscript that is posted on the arXiv, and they can refuse to do business with you again --  but if you haven't signed a contract, you cannot have violated one.
That said, they leave open a loophole big enough to drive a train through, and seem to me that they do so deliberately. From their policy right after the part you quoted:

Prior versions of the article published on non-commercial pre-print servers like arXiv.org can remain on these servers and/or can be updated with the author’s accepted version.

So it seems to me (again not a lawyer) that provided that you post to the arXiv pre-submission, you are welcome to update it with the accepted version without waiting the 12 months after publication. That seems the obvious course of action, especially given all of the reasons to post to the arXiv at submission time anyway.

The problem is that this loophole is closed by the specific journal that I want to submit my paper to. This journal explicitly states that it does not accept manuscripts which were already posted at online repositories. It seems the only option is to use my own website.

That's infuriating. I would find another journal; I wouldn't want to publish in any journal that disallowed arXiv posting -- doing so is deliberately slowing the pace of science and the dissemination of research.

Is it allowed to upload a paper on arXiv after the submission/acceptance but before signing the copyright transfer agreement? I haven't checked all the small print but in the parts I have read there is nothing against it.

@FedericoPoloni - I would be very cautious about assuming that the journal will be happy with this; the acceptance and CTA are closely linked together and it doesn't really make sense to treat them as seperate events.

I agree with @Andrew, and while the following scenario is very hypothetical, if you were to go and find a loop hole like that, there's no guarantee that the journal will not use the loophole "while we accepted your paper, we never did say which issue we will publish it in; we may get around to printing it in 2055." The point is that there are "reasonable expectations". Based on available information it is pretty darn clear that using this loophole would make somebody unhappy. // That said, if posting on arXiv really were that important to you, you would've submitted to a different journal...

As an update, the loophole "Prior versions of the article published on non-commercial pre-print servers like arXiv.org can remain on these servers and/or can be updated with the author’s accepted version." no longer seems to appear on Springer's current policies on https://www.springernature.com/gp/open-research/policies/journal-policies so it seems that the situation has worsened.

To Willie’s point: Some publishers will even accept a paper and then not publish it for corrupt political reasons. Happened twice with papers on using generic medications to treat CoViD-19. Murderous, or tantamount to, to my .


text:
Why might a journal editor reject a submission, but suggest submission to a sister journal?
We (I with my co-authors) recently had done a high-quality work and submitted to a Journal A (with high impact factor and reputed). A belongs to Wiley Publishers. In its' own site, it displays a set of Associated Journals (which are possibly its sister or new journals).
We had submitted a work which achieved far better results than a recent work published by the journal A. We were hoping about a green signal on acceptance. However, to our surprise, the editor rejected the paper and suggested to submit the work to one of its sister journal, which are new and not having any impact.
It is bit strange, though. Is is just a strategy to promote their sister/new journals? Why would a journal possibly reject a high-quality work just like that?
Note: The present status of the paper in submission system displays recommended for other journals.

Was it rejected by the editor or by the reviewers? (I know you mention the editor, but to make sure)

It was desk reject by the Editor.@George

It’s impossible for us to answer this question: We cannot know whether your paper actually was high-quality work and what the actual motivations of the journal were. Our guess is as good as yours (which seems to be the most plausible one anyway apart from an honest rejection and recomendation).

@Wrzlprmft Good point. Although sometimes it's just general words, what did the editor say in his letter of rejection? I don't think there is a standard reason and whether (you think) your work has higher quality than the other article, there are several reasons why that one made it through and yours didn't. And indeed, your guess is as good as ours. You could always politely ask the editor. Maybe you get a reply (most probably not...)


text:
How not to lose confidence in front of supervisor?
I have been working on my doctoral thesis with a very well known professor in the field. I am going to finish 1 year of my study with him. As usual, we have been meeting every week at least once on the problem.
Problem: No matter how much I do prepare about the possible discussion on any topic, I have been losing confidence in front of him almost in every discussion. This is probably has something to do with me thinking that I am not capable of working with him. My standard is not that much. I don't know whether is this normal? How do I get over this problem? Sometimes, I can't even speak properly when he sends me to the whiteboard for any explanation. This is weird. I feel really bad after that. I keep messing up discussions. However, he gives me time. Can I get a few suggestion on this?
Note: English, which is not my native language, is the language of communication during these discussions.

"No matter how much I do prepare about the possible discussion on any topic": This is the issue, an issue that I see in many students. In principle, you should not need to prepare for a discussion about topics on which you are working on: you should be able to discuss them anytime. If you have to prepare for the discussion, somehow, the topic has not yet sank in.

@MassimoOrtolano: Is it? I will surely work on it. But, why do I think that I should not waste his valuable time for some bad discussion. That is why I used to prepare. May be you are right! (+1)

@MassimoOrtolano, I used to compile a list of questions and open problems for every discussion with my supervisor. It was a great preparation.

@Coder the language issue should be highlighted in the main question text.  I have seen this same situation result in diminished confidence, even at the same time when conversation and intellectual exploration in the native language is still strong.  Somehow this inherent desire cannot be exhibited strongly enough in English for that person.

I may write an answer later but for now I just wanted to let you know that you are NOT alone! I used to feel like an idiot after every meeting with my advisor. I spent the first 3.5 years of grad school feeling this way and it took a lot of practice and reflection to get over this. It all comes down to confidence.

Re: tag edits, generally we try to use existing tags, and create new tags only when you can make a strong case that your question does cover a new topic that nobody else has asked about before on this site.

Read about impostor syndrome.

I experienced something similar at the beginning of my PhD. It was mostly due to the fact that as I was verbalising my ideas, I'd realise their flaws, that they don't quite make sense, or that I hadn't it as figured out as I thought.
I suggest you try to verbally explain your ideas to someone else (if no one else, plushies are great listeners) before you talk to him, that'll give you extra confidence. It is important that you speak out loud, and from the beginning: don't skip right to the meat of the question, your problem may be in the fundamentals.
If this is your problem, once you get the hang of it, you'll quickly learn how to weed out some of these bad ideas, and gain confidence on your explanations.
Something I have seen my students struggle with (and probably myself too, but I don't notice it so much) is that when I ask them a question, they try to answer it as soon as possible, so they get stuck in suboptimal explanations, increase their confusion, get more stressed, and lastly blocked. He is giving you time, so take it, think carefully about what you are going to say, and explore different ways of expressing it before you start saying it. And furthermore, if you find a better way of explaining it, feel free to scratch what you just said and start all over again.
Another option is to set the the ground for a discussion by sending a long email taking your time to explain everything. And if you feel you didn't manage to get your point across, never hesitate to send it after the fact.
Lastly, for a few weeks I got the feeling that my supervisor wasn't really understanding what I am trying to do; but after I gave a 30 min presentation of my work in the department, from the bottom up, he got very excited, and now his comments are, I feel, much more spot on. The presentation included explaining my tools for people completely unfamiliar with them (to be specific, a specific technique built on deep learning for machine [but not deep] learning practitioners).
For your case, consider asking for some time, thinking on it on your own, and coming back with an explanation whenever you have it.

+1. Thanks for the input. However, I have all the explanation for any question does he ask. The problem with me is uttering them out with full confidence. I usually stop talking and just jot down on the whiteboard every single explanation in mathematical ways. He never complained about it till now. But, as a PhD student, I should learn to speak with confidence, because, it is my research and I should be presentable.

@Coder I have added a paragraph in between, number four. That may be what happens to you. As a researcher you should be able to explain your research, but not necessarily beautifully at a moment's notice: take a few moments to think the best way of saying it, and to have a plan of action (and maybe use the mathematical definitions as a guide for your words). I don't mind waiting for you to think of a good explanation, I prefer that to hearing you mumble as you try to come up with something to say.

Yes. I went through it. I must try your suggestion. Thanks.

In software development, this approach is called rubber duck debugging.

What you are lacking is confidence in yourself. What I see commonly is a student who has such respect (rightly so, I'll assume) for their advisor that every debate is interpreted as 'I am wrong'. This isn't correct. Academics love to debate, and fruitful discussions question every answer.  So, when your advisor questions your stance, know that he or she is engaged by you, not necessarily questioning your thesis per se.
Secondly, it is important that you become confident enough to say 'I don't know'. You can't know everything, and your advisors job is to push your boundaries. Feel confident, and admit when you don't know something but retort with 'excellent point, I need to look into that'.
Those who admit a lack of knowledge often glean more respect than those who feign knowledge or become combative.
To gain a foothold, prepare well for your next meeting. Read 5 or so papers on the topic and know them well; refer to them during your discussion. Having that armory will give you more confidence than you think.

This is very true in my case at least the first one: "a student who has such respect (rightly so, I'll assume) for their advisor that every debate is interpreted as 'I am wrong'." -- I should work on this.

I have not tried this, but I have seen that some people are able to increase their confidence in public speaking by taking some acting classes.  I don't mean you would need to make a full hobby of it, but maybe one semester would be helpful.
If you are not very comfortable talking while working out some math on a whiteboard in general, then -- it's time to form a study group!  In my opinion, there are very few things in life as fun as working out math problems on a board with a friend or a small group of friends.  Try out various levels: problems you could do in your sleep, problems where you're just making up nonsense as you go along, and everything in between.
Edit: Food for Thought About the Language Aspect

I had a study partner in grad school who was from China.  One day he mentioned that he had to go home in order to study his Russian before we could get together.  I didn't understand why he had to go home in order to do that.  He explained that when he did his Russian study he would pronounce all his exercises in a very loud voice -- actually, he said that he shouted -- and he wasn't comfortable doing that in his office.
My first six months living in a foreign country I was very quiet.  People who met me at that time thought I was just the quiet type.  Actually, I was still getting comfortable using the language.  Over time my natural personality came to the fore.  It just took time.  Eventually I became completely bilingual.
Some years later my family situation changed and I needed to learn some German in order to communicate with my new in-laws.  But I only saw them twice a year, and without the immersion, my German never really took off.  I've always been a perfectionist, but at some point I decided that German grammar was never going to make sense to me and it was more important to just crash through a sentence and get my point across as best I could.  I decided that functioning in family life during visits was more important than getting it right.  I discovered that you can actually train yourself to allow mistakes.  I was able to come to terms with speaking pidgin German.
In grad school, in the summer, I organized free "English for Public Speaking" classes for my international fellow students and their spouses.  Each student chose a poem to work on and, inspired by my friend's experience studying Russian, I asked them to recite their poems very loudly.  I gave them warm-up exercises to loosen up, such as the following: "Give me a breaaak" while shaking one's head.  We had a short exercise for each vowel sound, such as "How now, brown cow."  Students were supposed to use a small mirror to check proper mouth shape.  Even though they were already using English at a sophisticated level in their studies, I noticed certain patterns of grammar errors.  We practiced those basics quite a bit, so that it would become second nature to form negations, questions, and indirect speech, with the correct auxiliary and the right word order.  By making sure that these grammar basics and pronunciation basics were correct, the students' confidence really grew.  (I'm not sure that they had ever had individualized feedback, when they were learning English in their home countries; and once they were in the U.S., others felt it would be impolite to correct them.)  Another thing we worked on was: in preparation for the thesis defense and job talks, each student wrote a short presentation about a non-science topic, for example, one student wrote a one-page description of his home country, Singapore.  When a student read his presentation to the group, the most important part was the Q & A at the end.  Everyone was encouraged to ask questions.  The presenter was supposed to repeat each question before responding to it.
A conversation partner might be helpful.  Some universities facilitate matching people up, for example, someone from France might want to polish his English, and he would be matched up with someone who wants to improve his French.
Some towns have literacy volunteer programs, and some of these programs are set up for international students who want to improve their English.
Reading equations, and talking about math, involves some special expressions that aren't obvious from looking at what's written on the page, for example, [(x + 3)^2 -1]/x would be read "x plus 3 quantity squared minus 1 all over x."  It's easier to relax when you know you're saying things in a natural way.

Questions: are you more out-going in your first language than you tend to be in English?  Do you sometimes feel doubtful whether you're saying something correctly?  Do you think you have a noticeable foreign accent?  If so, how do you feel about that?

Acting can definitely help: it teaches how to stand, what to avoid, how to control yourself on stage... and it is a lot of fun.

Prepare for the discussions
As Massimo Ortolano points out, ideally you shouldn't have to prepare for a discussion. But we're living in a real world. The following might help you being more confident in front of your supervisor, and at the same time progress in your PhD.
Each time before a discussion, take yourself half an hour and do the following:

Think about what you want to discuss. What have you found out since the last discussion? (Even small things count.) What are the open questions? What did you not understand? Are you missing resources on a particular topic? Do you need your supervisor to explain something to you?
Write it down. Make a list of all your findings and questions. Organise it. If you want, make little tick boxes next to each point, so you can tick them off in the discussion. Sort your topics in a way they can lead you through the discussion. If you have a bigger finding or train of thought, think about how you could present it on a blackboard.
Fix holes. Maybe there is something you didn't understand that you suddenly start grasping now that you've written it down. Maybe you suddenly see a flaw in one of your findings. Being aware of that is already a great step forward for not getting thrown off balance when your supervisor points it out.
Use your cheat sheet. The list you've just written is your friend during the discussion. Bring it, hold it, look at it, write down your supervisor's comments, look up things you can't remember from the top of your head, let yourself guide by it. It will give you confidence and make your discussion more productive.

davidmh has made another good point on which I'd like to elaborate: At some point, you will be the expert on your research topic. No, really. There might be lots of bigger experts in vast areas around yours, but at least in one howsoever small part, you're the expert. Your supervisor might actually understand less about that part than you, even if there are lots of other topics he knows better due to his experience. I had this point in my PhD, and you will reach it as well, or have already reached it. At this point, you need to explain your topic to your supervisor, and explain it well.

To your last point, I'll add: very soon (probably already now) you will be the world's foremost expert in your dataset (or equivalent). My supervisors have suggested things that would make sense in a general case, but they weren't aware of certain specific problems that would invalidate it in our case.

I actually "suffered" from a very similar phenomena - I stressed out way too much over each meeting with my professor, to the extent that I felt that I was developing an obsession to be able to simply pass a meeting without overly stressing and flushing. It even felt like I was defining my self worth (or at least my academic one) not according to my abilities and character, but solely according to these meetings, despite being aware of how silly it was. The thing that made it even more ridiculous is that I didn't even feel that inconfident academically about myself, it was just some kind of weird and depressing dynamic that arose from the situation and that I felt I had no way to stop. It was very depressing.
This is no easy fix, but for me what eventually helped was going to therapy. Talking about it infront of a psychologist helped me frame the problem in words, and eventually helped me treat the interaction with my professor differently, which led to more productive research. In hindsight, I can definitely say it was more about my issues (childhood, parents, etc..) then anything that really related to my abilities or to my professor - I imagine this would probably be the case with most people that have similar reactions. Another thing that helped my overall social confidence towards superiors and large groups of people was doing improvisation acting classes, as someone else suggested in a different answer.

Nice suggestions. Thank you. Instead of talking with psychologist, will it be good to talk with other professors from outside universities?

This should be higher. High anxiety is a problem that can be treated very effectively by a trained counselor/therapist by teaching calming techniques and treatment such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. @Coder No, the strong recommendation here should be to see a mental health professional, not a professor. Your university very likely has mental health services on campus that you can access for free or at low cost.

Yes, this is normal, not only in academics but everywhere you meet a superiour.
Some practical un-academic tips:

Get in the habit of regularly searching for things (in private) that you did very well. For example, make a list of personal successes of the previous week, every Sunday. This will teach you that you are not as bad as you think you are. Of course, don't put in things like "washed laundry in time", but things related to the topic between you and your superiour.
When you start to feel the tension building up, breathe deeply and calmly. If breathing calmly seems to make it worse, practice some basic breathing meditation at home. Buddhists are best at breathing - they are mind specialists after all. If you search for videos on basic buddhist breath meditations, you can get a lot of very practical advice even if you may not subscribe to the religious parts. Here is one I can wholeheartedly endorse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLvU7ppM4vE
Often, if you have "emotional trouble" during such an occasion, you will actually feel something in your body, not only in your mind. Usually in the stomach (butterflies or clenching) or in the shoulders (tensing up as a defensive reaction). Try to breathe "into" that region to relax. I don't know how to really describe it; just try it, you will see. It works for any body part, even where there's no lungs around. ;) If you manage to relax that body part, often the actual mental tension goes away too.
Frequently try to imagine them as a normal person. Imagine yourself and them in normal conversation (maybe not at your meetings, but on a beach or whatever). Remove all aspects of them being superiour to you.
Make pauses before answering; ask back if you didn't understand the question (or even if you did, just to give you time).
Try never ever to impress them. Be yourself, be neutral.

A lot of answers have focused on having confidence in your work, and practicing what you're going to say.  Obviously that's all good, but I'm skeptical that will solve your problem.
This seems to me to be, essentially, feeling nervous while speaking in public.  Plenty of perfectly confident and competent people struggle mightily in front of an audience.  Granted, your audience is 1 instead of one hundred, but I don't think that necessarily makes it different.  Nervousness is this context is largely independent of how confident you are in what you'll be saying, and it's that nervousness that makes you unable to express yourself clearly.  It is, however, entirely normal.
So normal, in fact, that I guarantee there's some sort of presentation group available near you that would allow you to practice in front of an audience.  Either on campus, or via meetup.  Is there a business school, or communications school, on your campus?  They probably have something.  And even if by some long shot there isn't, you could probably make one.  Talk to your fellow grad students and see if they're interested.  Get together and do short presentations of your research to each other, followed by critical commentary.
The only way to get better presenting and speaking to audiences is to practice in front of audiences.

Start writing an email to your supervisor, summarizing what you are going discuss for today's meeting. Whether you will actually send the email to them or not depends on the communication style between you and them. But at least just pretend you will indeed send the email.
Now, as you write, you will start to realize the flows in your argument. As you write, you will naturally get doubts or perceive questions that may arise. Prepare answers for that. This also gives you to think of the potential discussion flow.
As the supervisor sends you to the whiteboard, it is obvious that they expect you draw something, or write something down. If you have already prepared in writing, probably drawing in google draw or a paper, that will help.
Nothing prevents you from taking notes with you to the meeting. We read hundreds of papers. It is not always easy to remember the names and theorems proposed in them. You can write them down in a piece of paper and take them with you to the discussion. By this way, you may support your certain claims when necessary. Also it will help you with your confidence as well.
Just always remember that supervisor is there to help you. You are preparing for a bigger audience - a conference audience or the thesis jury/committee. There is nothing to lose confidence on meeting the supervisor, though it is often normal as the others have already pointed out.

Talk with other people.  Debate with others.  Start working on defending your ideas on a regular basis.  Get used to the idea of defending your ideas and being passionate and articulate about your concepts and thoughts.  Join a debate team if  you want more formal practice, but you can do this with friends, just try to tear each other's arguments apart.  You will learn to build confidence.  Just remember to be cordial and respectful and not get angry or flustered.


text:
Is it a good idea to upload rejected papers in arXiv?
I have a few earlier works which have been rejected from conferences and journals in the past (last 6 months). Now, I and my co-authors are not interested in submitting elsewhere and have no idea on how to improve these papers.
I was thinking, will it be a good idea to upload these papers in arXiv? Will it create any wrong impression in the community? Will it have bad impact on my profile?

Yes, you should upload them.
If you think the works are good and worth reading, but don't see a good opportunity to publish them in a journal or at a conference, then the arXiv is the way to go. Actually, many people have unpublished manuscripts and even some influential work only exists as technical report or preprint. It's not uncommon.
If it would be worth it to pursue "real publication" is a different question...