text:
Can offers to international students be rescinded if grades received following the application slightly lower their GPA?
I am an international student who has been accepted into mathematics department at UCLA.
In my application for the last semester I gave my grade point average as 9.5/10. I was taking two courses and was hoping that I would get a 10 and a 9, making the average 9.5.
But unfortunately the grades in both the courses slipped up to a 9 and a 8 , making the average 8.5/10.
I haven't informed them of this, and I was hoping that it wouldn't matter. I am going to get my visa next week, and I am really paranoid that my admission may get rescinded.
What do you guys think ?

It's not clear to me (not being familiar with the US system) what level your acceptance is at. Undergraduate or postgrad? If it's undergrad, I'm afraid that makes it off-topic on this site.

You should probably inform them. The longer you wait, the worse the consequences are going to be. IMO, the offer is unlikely to be rescinded, but if it is and they find out it later, it will reflect very badly on you. Also, are you prepared to spend 5 years being paranoid that someone somehow finds out your grade?

@OlgaK this is wrong advice.  You only need to send in the grades you get after you apply if your offer letter (or other relevant document) explicitly says it is required.

I'm a little confused - shouldn't your GPA involve more than just your final semester of courses? If you got a 1 pt lower grade on just those two courses, that wouldn't have nearly as big of an influence on your overall GPA.

@OlgaK I think the idea that you would need to be paranoid about this after starting the program is ridiculous. Who would care?  Once the OP is established in the program, no one will give the least thought to his/her undergraduate grades.

@BenWebster I didn't say OP would "need" to be paranoid. I doubt polling on stack exchange will relieve his current paranoia completely. Only the school can do that.

@OlgaK You said "The longer you wait, the worse the consequences are going to be."  If that's not arguing for the need to be paranoid, what is?  This is totally wrong; one the OP starts the program, no one will care in the least was his/her undergraduate grades were for better or worse.

@BenWebster you are right, I should have phrased it differently.

As someone with some experience on the other end of math graduate admissions, let me preface this by saying I really doubt that anyone cares; a program like UCLA looks at a lot more than grades (especially for foreign students).  At this point it would be really disruptive for them to drop a student from the program (it's not like there are other students of the same caliber waiting around to be admitted), so they are not looking for reasons to do so.  This is probably hard to imagine after many years of people telling your grades are the most important thing, but for math grad school, they are really actually not.  They are a proxy for the ability to do good research in math, and the people running the program know they are a bad proxy and take them with a grain of salt.
So, the important thing to do here is calm down.  Imagine this from the perspective of the department; all the people making these decisions have a lot of other things to worry about, you are one of many grad students they admitted this year, and these grades are a very small part of why. Your grades are not something they want to expend energy paying attention to.   Even if your offer is conditional, I think this condition would only be used in really dramatic cases; I've never heard of this happening.
Look carefully at your offer letter.  Either it will say the offer is contingent on your grades this semester, or it won't.  (Incidentally, this info should have been in your post; answering questions well on this site is hard enough without people withholding obviously important information).  If it doesn't, and they haven't asked about your grades, then drop the subject from your mind and never speak of it again.  If it does, I would probably still not do anything unless they ask.  If they really want that information they'll ask for it.  If they ask, just write back saying "I got an 8/10 in X and 9/10 in Y.  Looking forward to meeting you in August." Don't try to explain why your grades are not what you expected. Just act as if everything is normal, and I'm sure things will be fine.

The offer (which you have accepted) itself cannot be reasonably rescinded. However, the offer should clearly spell out whether it was conditional (to you obtaining certain minimum marks) or not. If it was conditional, then obviously failing to obtain the marks required (which may be lower than what you told them) implies that you have not secured a place.
If the offer contained a vague condition (such as obtaining good marks), then you should inform them about your actual marks as soon as possible and ask for clarification.
One problem with international students is that the marks cannot be easily compared to those of home students or students from other countries, simply because the teaching and grading systems vary.
Having said all that, 8.5/10 is still a very good mark (in most grading systems) and you should not worry too much at this moment, but don't delay clarifying your position.

I am not sure this really answers the question.  My impression is that it's common for US grad school admissions to be conditional on maintaining good grades, without explicitly stating a required minimum; it would be reviewed on a case-by-case basis.  So reading the offer won't resolve the OP's question.  Personally I don't think OP's situation would be likely to lead to rescission, but I am not the one making the decision.

@NateEldredge Well, the offer should state the condition, even if vague. The answer is still correct: the offer as such cannot be rescinded, but may have a, possibly vague, condition.


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When is it appropriate for a PhD student to discuss personal problems affecting his productivity with his advisor?
I had a very difficult personal problem. My head was not in the right place, and outside of getting through my administrative duties, my brain just couldn't function the right way to run wet lab experiments and come up with good research ideas. As a result, I did not work as much as I should have, and when I did I was all over the place. I concealed my emotional pain pretty well, and put up a good face while in the office/lab, so no one suspected personal problems, but my work definitely suffered. My parent's illness looks to be getting better now and after some counseling I feel like my life is back on track.
However, I feel like it is possible that my advisor's opinion of me has greatly declined due to my lack of productivity in the past. Would telling your advisor about personal problems, after they are over, with the intent of the advisor understanding a lack of productivity be appropriate? Would doing so just sound like excuses and make things worse?  I assume it would have probably been better if I had mentioned it back when I was going through the problems, but is it a good idea to mention it now, or just cut my losses, work hard and hope he forgets about those unproductive years.
So my question is. When is it appropriate to bring up personal problems with an advisor? In this case and in general?

I have faced the same problem... and it has its cummulative effects on me... plus my guide is on a stricter side and I am just not able to get rid of the effects...

If your advisor's going to have a declining opinion of your productivity, then it's probably better that they know your current personal situation is extremely stressful rather than letting them assume that you suddenly became lazy.

MHH, let us know how you handled the situation :D

Basically did as you suggested, the conversation appeared awkward on both ends but I think overall it was a net positive. He said "that you for letting me know" and agreed I should have told him sooner.

@EdgarSalazar Here's a follow up from 6 years later. I'm now in a tenure track position at a pretty darn good university. I would have never guessed I'd end up doing as well as I am today. I feel incredibly lucky, but it just goes to show, it is never too late, and we all go through bad spells. Thanks for all of the support.

@WetlabStudent this is incredible. Keep doing what you want and you will go pretty much as far as possible.

As soon as possible. Problems are made to be transcended, not pushed over time. You already said your adviser is a cool guy, right? Go ahead and talk with him, say the truth.
It's a long said term, even cliche sometimes, but the first step to change is recognizing that you have a problem. You already recognized you have it, so now it's time to fix it. Don't be afraid of what he'll think about you, what really matters is that it's true. If he can't understand your situation, then he doesn't really know how to be a adviser.
Also, you're a student, you're there to learn. Better learn now where you can be mistaken with no serious consequences, then out there, where your problem can really damage you financially and/or much more emotionally, since people don't know how to handle with other people's problems, or know and just don't care.

Well look at it from the point of view of an academic, most of understand that students have problems in their lives outside the lab which can affect their performance in the lab.
The student has a choice.

Fix their problem themselves, if they can do this then fine all is sorted.
Seek help from someone / somewhere such as student health services and then fix their problem there nice and quick, maybe even their supervisor might not notice.
Ask their supervisor for help (or tell them about the problem). Their supervisor may be able to help them, they might not be able to help directly but will point you in the right direction or they might be no help.
Fail to fix problem and then your work will take a nose dive, you may appear to the supervisor as a lazy toad if you disappear from the workplace and do not tell them that you are ill or have a problem.

Now consider the following,

My student has not appeared in the department for two weeks, none of the rest of the group have any idea of where they are. What do I start thinking (hint "lazy toad").
Student has not appeared in the lab for three days, on day three I get a email explaining that they are very ill. They are laid up in hospital and will not be back for over a week. What do I start thinking (hint "Oh dear, my student is ill")
Student comes to me and tells me my child is sick or my dad has just died. Unless I am a totally evil toad, I will give the student some time off and try to help as much as I can.

My advice is to try to establish and maintain a honest and open relationship with your PhD supervisor. They are not the evil toad enemy ! There are somethings you might not feel happy talking about with your supervisor, somethings might not be suitable topics of discussion with your supervisor.
Rather than telling your supervisor that you have embrassing problems like relationship problems (like your partner has just run off with your best friend). You can tell them "I have a serious problem in my life, I will need two weeks to deal with it". While it is not going to be music to the supervisors ears it is better than just vanishing off the face of the earth for two weeks.

Try to communicate with your Phd supervisor and explain the situation. It might be that they might have useful advice and be also able ot help you adjust to the situation and become productive again- some supervisors are really great in also taking care of PhDs issues and nurturing them to fruition, so try to speak to them as soon as possible. This will also help establish a more direct relationship when you might need more emotional support if the issues continue.

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How should one interpret a requirement that a proposal in pure math be "jargon-free?"
I'm applying for a fellowship wherein they ask for a long proposal about what I'm working on (a PhD thesis in pure math).  Then they advise me that some of those evaluating me will be from non-math departments, so the proposal "should be jargon-free."
Right off the bat I guess [PSL2(Od):Γ] < ∞ is out of the question...  I could explain what a manifold is to a mixed audience, but I think they'd need to do some homework before they followed what it might have to do with finite index subgroups of Bianchi groups (or whatever topic you might be studying).  Without the "jargon" I feel like my whole language for it is gone. Afterall the reason we have so many definitions is because each one refers to a distinctly defined thing that we previously had no name for!
I can see that I could take a more historical, conceptual perspective, but I'd still be dancing around what I'm actually doing.  It's especially hard to summarize something that is not even fully developed.  I think that for people who don't study math, the only reference point is science applications, but those don't really exist here because then it would be applied math and not pure math.
I'm coming up short looking for anyone addressing this online.  There are multidisciplinary tips about writing proposals, but I think the accessibility problem is at its biggest with pure math.

You might find this recent blog post interesting or semi-relevant: https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2014/12/can_one_explain_schemes_to_a_b.html

Insist your proposal will promote synergy? No, wait...

It's a shame that this question was migrated so that the OP may not see the comments.  I would be interested to know what the fellowship actually is.  This helps to figure out who is reading it, which seems at least very helpful and perhaps necessary in properly calibrating the level of technicality.

I'm a little annoyed that this couldn't stay on Mathoverflow.  Before deciding to post it I had noticed for instance these:
http://mathoverflow.net/questions/39242/broader-impacts-and-synergistic-activities
http://mathoverflow.net/questions/39168/are-there-examples-of-successful-nsf-mathematics-proposals-available-anywhere

To answer @PeteL.Clark it's a dissertation fellowship, meant to provide support to PhD candidates so they can devote more time to their research/writing, as opposed to taking on an oppressive amount of teaching responsibilities.  So the applicants are not established mathematicians, they are doctoral students in the final stages of their degree.

I didn't get the fellowship. I didn't get any feedback on what I wrote either, the only justification given being that there were a lot of applicants which made their decision difficult.

Jargon free is simply describing something with out the usage of 'lingo' or other styles that are not based in the discipline, but are found in a more relaxed non formal discussion. it is to avoid confusion and enhance clarity.

@SkipBerne Using terminology associated to more informal discussion is definitely not the problem here. If I wrote the document in rigorous mathematics, there would not be any point of even showing it to non-math faculty.

What I did in that position:

Explain some "motivation", even if it is far-fetched, from physics, economics, computer science ... for the general field of study.
Try to paint some geometric picture of some (very simplified) version of your field.
Make sure you stress that there are unsolved questions and that the solution would contribute to a general picture.
Give some "hard" mathematical details at the end, coming with some disclaimer, to convince any mathematicians on the committee.

Generally, I would try to give an overview of the general aim and direction of the field and stress that there are "important problems in it".

I think this speaks the most to my concerns.  If you don't mind my asking, did you have success with the strategy you suggest?

I tried twice and won once.

I think that the key idea here is that they want to know why you are doing what you are doing more than what you are doing.
Let's say you're diligently working towards establishing an isomorphism between soliton elves and the christmas-tree singularity.  That's all well and good, but:

There are lots of properties in the world.  Why is isomorphism between soliton elves and the christmas-tree singularity an interesting property to try to establish?
Is there a higher-level strategy to your approach than "just do lots of math until the problem is solved"?
Why is the approach that you are taking a good one?
If you establish this property, what are the consequences, and what comes next?

A really good and clearly written proposal should be able to have its logic grasped by pretty much any scientist, whether or not they are capable of judging its originality, plausibility, and significance in detail.

What about the question of why I might be successful?  Obviously they don't want to give the money to someone who isn't cut out for the project they proposed, but should I be including anything about how I've prepared myself to study the particular topic?  Or is the transcript supposed to take care of that entirely?

@j0equ1nn In general, it is the combination of the CV (showing a track record of success) and the explanation of approach (showing why this is a good bet too) that is used for judging likelihood of success.

I'm adding a different answer based on the advice I got from my adviser, which is the method I ended up going with since after all he is my adviser.  If I do end up getting the fellowship I will most likely change my selected answer to this one (though as you'll see the other strategies suggested are actually a part of this one).  Here's what he told me:
Mainly, don't worry about the idea of it being accessible to people from other departments.  When they say to write it that way and keep it "jargon-free" it really is kind of misleading compared to what they're actually looking for.
The important thing is that it look serious and professional, and writing in a more friendly tone can give the impression that the project is elementary.  The evaluators (especially those not from the math department) will pay the most attention to the introductory portion of the proposal, so that is really the place to include the type of content suggested in the other answers.  In particular, @J._Fabian_Meier's itemized list would end up with the first 3 items done quickly at the beginning, and the 4th item would take up the remaining majority.
After setting up the general motivation and context in the first couple of pages, go ahead and get into the mathematical details as though writing for a mathematician to read it.  The other people on the evaluating committee will be looking for the math representative to confirm that what you are proposing is well considered and properly formulated.  Moreover the more complicated and confusing the explanation looks to them the better.  After all most people not in the math world gauge mathematical sophistication by their own inability to understand it, so just go ahead and scare them!
I will add though that I think the process of trying to explain my research to a mixed audience was really good for me in developing a broader perspective, even though my adviser had me start over again after that.  I think that in the future, even if I don't end up using it (like what happened this time) I might take some time to write an outreach-style exposition of my project first, just to get that farther-reaching view of things.

"...after all most people not in the math world gauge mathematical sophistication by their own inability to understand it, so just go ahead and scare them..." And I get down voted?!?!?

I respect your dissent and that is not a philosophy I live by, but it is a real and very common tactic (though perhaps unspoken).  Most of the time I strive to combat people's tendency to respect something just because it's confusing.  But if doing the opposite is what it takes to get the fellowship, well you have to choose your battles in this life, and I won't get very far with anything else if I can't get funding.

My only suggestion would be to describe how the work you do could eventually be applied to improve the human condition. I simply don't accept that pure mathematics can't be of benefit to humankind.

By nature, it is unknown how pure mathematics will effect anything other than mathematics.  My favorite example would be the fact that the imaginary number (so-named as an insult) was discovered in the 1700s and remained an intellectual curiosity until we found out that it models electricity and aerodynamics.  I absolutely believe pure math benefits mankind, and that it's extremely important, but the moment you project to applications is the moment pure math becomes applied math.

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Is it acceptable to ask a professor who is not your supervisor to provide comments on your thesis draft?
I want my thesis to be the best it possibly can be. My supervisor is away for one month right before my thesis submission. Is it inappropriate or poor etiquette to ask another professor in the field who has shown interest in the topic to read the paper and offer any suggestions? This other professor teaches at a different institution, and will not be part of the panel or defence process.

At my university they had associate supervisors who could help you if the main supervisor was unavailable.

What about the other members of your committee?

Did you ask your current supervisor about this?

I would ask for help from another academic at your institution, but as soon as you circulate your work to anybody external you are at risk of breaking the university's rules on copyright/IP.

If you have an existing relationship with this professor, you could ask, but be prepared to hear "sorry, I don't have time".
If this professor is a stranger to you, this is probably an unreasonable request.

In addition to this, I would first consult my supervisor. I would say that having the thesis read by someone else without the supervisor's knowledge is a bad idea.

I would ask the other professor, but I would phrase it in a way that makes it clear that I'm not expecting them to proofread the entire thesis. Perhaps you could say something like "You expressed an interest in my research, so I wanted to give you a draft of my thesis. Perhaps it might be of interest to you or one of your students. And of course, If you have any comments or suggestions, I'd be glad to hear them." They probably will read it and give you some comments, but they won't feel under pressure to do so.

This strategy might avoid discomfort if the potential reviewer declines, but it also feels vaguely misleading, or at least unnecessarily indirect. Asking for what you want clearly and politely should always be acceptable, and I would suggest the reviewer will be more likely to outright decline as opposed to forgetting or doing a partial job, which is a good thing.

If you phrase it like that, the professor will think he's being offered the opportunity to read it and comment, rather than being requested to read it and comment. Something like "I'm sure you must be really busy but if you had time to read this and give me some feedback before I hand it in on date X, I'd be really grateful" makes it clear that you are asking for something, while still giving the professor the chance to say no.

If the other professor has expressed his interest in reading your thesis and is willing to do it, I don't see why not. It is better to have someone read your work out of interest rather than obligation. But it is also a good idea to let your supervisor know about it.

I depends what that "lack of knowledge" means:

is it an attempt to hide the fact? Then it is fishy
or just "I will not bother my supervisor with this".

I have been on all the sides of this situation.
As a student I did not tell my supervisor that I was showing my thesis to someone else because I knew he would not care to know and would have encouraged me to do so (to get comments, ideas, ...). He was an excellent supervisor: present and active when I needed him and siding away when I was moving full speed ahead, sometimes against his recommendations. When one of these "without his recommendation" ("against" is maybe too strong a word) turned out to be a good idea he wrote himself off the paper I was publishing (he was second author) because he said he was not convinced at the time and that I should get all the praise. I am glad I met him.
I was also asked several times to have a look at a thesis. To be frank I never thought of asking the student whether his supervisor was OK or not with that  because I did not think about the possibility of being against (and the associated reason).


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Paper status changed to “Decision in Process” rapidly after initial submission
I submitted a paper to one of Elsevier’s journals. After a couple of days, its status changed to “with editor”. But now after about ten days from the submission date, it changed to “Decision in Process”. Is there any hope that it will not be rejected?

What makes you think that it would be rejected?

@Peaceful some links mentioned that there are some other status between these two steps. For example please see: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12497/how-much-time-does-each-stage-of-paper-in-elsevier-editorial-system-ees-take

Maybe because "Decision in progess" is described on Elsevier's support website as: "The final Handling Editor in a journal with split decision and author notification tasks has submitted a decision but the Administrative Editor has not yet notified the author". And it seems to be one of the last steps of the process.

You are lucky that the process is quick, only about ten days. You cannot imagine a desk reject after two months!

If there is a decision before it was sent to reviewers, it usually means a desk-rejection.  This is not necessarily a bad outcome! It means you won't waste time on a review process that is not likely to be favorable and you can move straight ahead to another journal.
Other more rare outcomes are possible, though: they could issue a "reject and resubmit" if they think the paper would be a good candidate for review after some major changes were made.  They could also be inviting you to a special issue etc.
But most likely outcome is desk rejection.

A "resubmit to journal X" is also possible, if editor thinks it fits better. But the most likely outcome is desk rejection.

@ZeroTheHero Anything is possible! I'm sure it depends on the journal.  The journals I know have never accepted a regular submission without going through the R&R process.

Any publication where that can happen is a publication not worth publishing in, IMHO.  [referring to the editor acting as referee.  It's possible all reviewers act really really quickly and agree to accept, but that's extremely unlikely.]

Just "An editor has begun a decision but chosen to save and resume later."

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If you make changes to paper after initial conference submission, should you present updated version at conference?
I am a PhD student in computer science and have submitted a paper to a conference which details my proposed architecture. However in the month or so since this paper has been submitted my architecture has undergone changes (relatively major), how is this normally dealt with?
If the paper is accepted do I present the work as it was at the time of submission or do I openly state that changes have been made and present the updated version of the architecture?

Can you clarify (because I think I misunderstood initially), are you asking about (1) what to submit in the final camera ready version for the conference proceedings or (2) what to present in your talk at the conference? (1) has been addressed already on this site

I've just noticed this comment, for any future use I was asking for situation (2). The camera ready version was already sent and I was preparing my presentation at the time of asking this question.

I believe you should do what is better to the audience.
In some disciplines/communities it is strongly assumed that conference participants read the abstracts/papers before the presentation, and expect the discussion to follow precisely the material that is published. In this case, of course, you could only comment briefly on the recent changes you've made.
In other fields (such as mine), the abstracts are used only as a means to (roughly) describe the topic of the presentation. It is quite normal to extend the actual talk beyond the scope of the abstract, or reduce the role of some pieces of research advertised in the abstract. In this case, I'd advise you to make a talk that is simply interesting for you and the audience. It can probably include both the original design and your contribution to its recent development. Make sure people in the room understand why  the changes were needed, how you have worked them out, and what is the benefits of your new architecture.

In computer science, you have 2 options:

In case your paper is accepted, you can update the paper for the final camera-ready version. If the changes are not too big, this can be a viable possibility and is actually no too uncommon.
If the changes are too major, you can prepare an extended version of the conference paper for submission to a journal.

I agree with @dmitry-savostyanov in that you should do what's best for your audience.
They've come to hear something interesting and if your work changed, then that seems to indicate that information on why and how it changed would be very relevant to their interests.
In CS, conference papers have a different status from conference papers or abstracts in other fields: they're long, they are actually considered publications, they're usually not published before the event, and most people in the audience will not have read them.
So your audience probably won't be surprised to hear something that's not in the paper.
On the other hand, if you really pique their interest, they may read your paper and feel disoriented or disappointed.
I would say report on the best results you have while being clear about what they'll find in the paper.


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Whether to complete revise and resubmit that requires major changes or submit to lower impact factor journal?
I have just received an email from the editor of a major journal in my field (engineering). He's rejected the paper, but advised me to do some modifications. These are his words:
"..thanks for submitting your paper to "...". While the paper is well written and structured I see several limitations in the assessment of the method. I am rejecting it for now, but it could be reconsidered if the following issues can be addressed:
MAJOR
1.
2.
.
.
MINOR
1.
2.
.
.
..."
Minor items can be done easily. Major items, I believe, are not necessary. Most of relevant articles do not include them.
My question is: should I do these modifications and resubmit the paper to the same journal, or consider submitting the article to another less IF journal to save my time? What are the chances to get published if I did these modifications.

General Issues
Presumably this depends on your perceptions of:

The time and resources required to make the major changes
The probability of acceptance should you make the major changes
The degree to which the paper will be improved by the changes and the value you place on that improvement
The probability of acceptance in another journal were you to not make the changes (or just the minor changes), and how much work any future journal might request from you as part of making changes, and any cost assigned to the delay in publication that this may involve
How much lower impact the alternate journals are  (and how much you care about impact factors and rankings)?

General advice
If I get a revise and resubmit from a high ranking journal, I would almost always try to make the changes requested. There is a little bit of luck involved with publishing in good journals. If you go on to submit elsewhere, these other journals may reject, or they may have equally onerous edits. However, once you get a revise and resubmit, if you do a good job of implementing the requested changes, then the editor will typically accept the manuscript. Furthermore, at least in my world, publishing in prestigious high-impact journals has many broader benefits (e.g., increased exposure for your idea, and improved cv which helps for grants, promotions, job security, etc.).
That said, I can think of a few exceptions where I might not make the changes.

The editor says something about liking the broad topic, but is basically requesting a whole new study (e.g., collecting a whole new dataset with a bigger sample, better measures, different design, etc.). In particular, this is often combined by comments suggesting that the editor would be happy to consider such a study: i.e., not really offering a commitment to publish even if such a study was implemented well.
Sometimes, I'm working on a paper that is not my core focus: e.g., perhaps converting a student thesis for publication, or helping out a colleague. The paper might be fine as is. I understand that it could be even better were we to collect whole new datasets or invest substantial time in some other respect. But in such a case, this time and these resources may feel like a distraction from my core program of research.

Ultimately, it's up to you to weigh the issues up. But I would assign a high-value to publishing in high impact journals and taking advantage of the opportunity that you have been given to make revisions.


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How to reduce negative consequence for the person I plagiarized my assignment from?
Due to some personal reasons, I didn't get to complete my semester end project. So I copied my friend's project and submitted it without major changes (I know I was a fool to do that). Now we are caught and my TA told us that both of our scores will be zero. I have begged the TA to give my friend his score, at least. I don't know what is going to happen. I am obviously going to fail this class, but I don't want my friend to fail it because of me. What should I do?

Did your friend hand you his project under the assumption that you would change large parts of the content? I think this changes the situation and should be brought up in the discussion with your professor as well.

Need way more details , like whether your friend knew you were going to copy his work.

It says the one who plagiarized and the one who helped in such action will get zero in the project and 5% of the scores will be reduced fro the final class score. The language problem wasn't for the rules, but for the whole class itself. I don't know if I should even continue studying here or not.

I don't know if I should even continue studying here or not. — No, you probably shouldn't. By your own admission, you are having serious difficulty understanding a required class—not just in accomplishing the work, but in understanding what is being asked. ("I have no idea about this where this class is going.")  This difficulty will not magically go away; you have to address it, either by moving to another institution that teaches in your native language, or by first spending significant time improving your grasp of the local language.

Deleted flagged comments that were just moral judgements. Comments aren't for judging.

@Martijn: that would still be cheating. Picking a text and re-wording it, or picking a program and changing the names of variables or functions is still plagiarizing.

Whether your friend deserves a grade or not depends whether he was a willing accomplice or an innocent victim.  If he was a willing accomplice, then probably both of you failing the class is the best thing you can hope for (at least for most US universities, where there are consequences besides failing if the professor or TA chooses to report it).  If he was a victim (he did not share his project with you with the intent that you could just copy it), then he certainly merits a grade.
In any case, the proper thing to do is for you to arrange to meet the professor in person, explain the situation, and apologize.  If your friend was a knowing accomplice, both you and your friend should go together.  Then it is up to the professor.

See also: http://academia.stackexchange.com/a/44203/19607

This is a class totally out of y head. Actually I am a foreigner student studying in China. So because of language problems, I have no idea about this where this class is going, but it's a class I must take. So for this project, I asked help from my friend so that I can take his material as a guide. But it was too difficult for me to work with and due to time limit, I just thought of copying it.

Both of us have talked to the TAs. One of them is considering to give him some marks but the other one has not given any decision yet. I am really worried. And I am going to fail this class for sure. I will take this class again next semester but will this have a huge impact on my overall life and career?

@srugglingmate Unless the professor is really hands off, the professor should make the final decision.  (I would never let my TAs make these kinds of decisions.)  Most professors, I think, are pretty understanding for a single cheating offense, particularly if the cheater confesses and seems genuinely sorry.  Stress has made most people, including professors, do one thing or another in their life they later regret.  So, I can't guarantee it, but I think your situation is one in which most professors would give you a 0, but take no further disciplinary actions.

@srugglingmate You need to check your school policies to be sure, but even if your professor reports it to the university, for a single offense, you will probably just have to have some unpleasant conversations and get a warning (in addition to failing the class).  It's students who have a history of cheating that need to be dealt with more seriously.

Accept full responsibility. Ensure the professor is aware that no other parties aided or were aware of your actions.

@srugglingmate - What Kimball said.  How this impacts upon anyone's marks is up to the professor, not the TA's (in any academic context I've ever experienced, at least).  You and your friend should take the matter to the professor, and they should hand down a decision that both/all of the TA's will follow.

The only thing you could really do is go talk to the professor and confess.
As far as your friend's grade goes, that is up to the professor. If you stole your friend's work then he certainly shouldn't be affected. If he was just helping you (which it doesn't sound like) then the professor might also take that into account.
You should expect to get a zero but I have seen a situation where the professor gave the student another chance (e.g., extended the deadline and allowed the student to redo the assignment) and didn't penalize the person who originally did the work.
Of course, you shouldn't expect any of these favorable outcomes since you admitted you are in the wrong but it is still good to always talk things through.

You don't give us enough info about your friend's role in it.
If he knew/helped/whatever and didn't stop it then he will get (and deserves) the zero right along with you.
If not then he may still get the zero, though he doesn't fully deserve it, and that would basically put you on the "worst friends ever" list for doing that behind his back.
If the friend didn't know you were doing it then you need to be not only confessing that you cheated, but also confessing that you stole it from him without his knowledge or consent and making sure they know he was totally innocent all around. Then and only then is there a shot of him not getting a zero.

Your friend isn't failing because of you; they are failing because they committed a serious breach of academic ethics in giving you their assignment to copy or even to use as a guide. By acting as your accomplice they are as much a party to your cheating as you are and, as such, they do not deserve any marks.
You and your friend can do little but beg for leniency this time. In future, do not put your friends in the position of choosing between acting ethically and helping you out by cheating.

I think this is going to affect our friendship greatly, I don't even have guts to face him now. Moreover I am going to fail this course. I am so much depressed about it. But I will make sure that i will never in my life commit such misconduct.

but I don't want my friend to fail it because of me
Glad to see you repent your action. If you are looking for a safe play, I can assure you there is none if your TA is sincere in their words. The ideal thing to do is to

Submit the case before a competent authority (your professor in this case) and be truthful to the investigation.

If the premise is correct in the question, your friend will be granted with the grade he deserves. Bear in mind that there will be consequences for you, severity of which depends on the particular country or the university and your professor.

authors: Денис Гончаров


text:
How to obtain a copy of my own article from an APS (American Physical Society) journal?
I recently published an article in one of the journals of the American Physical Society (APS). Our university library does not have a subscription to this particular journal, so I don't have access to the published version of the article.
On the other hand, APS allows to share the published version of the paper with colleagues and even to put it on the university website (see FAQ at APS, also this question).
In the past, other journals have provided me with an (electronic) copy of my article after publication, which I'm not allowed to share. However, it seems that APS won't give me automatic access to my paper. At least I haven't found any option on the authors page and no email was sent to me.
Is there a way to obtain a (electronic) copy of my article from APS?
I know that I could buy the article, either through the library service or our own group budget. But it feels kind of strange to buy one's own paper back from the publisher.
I could also ask someone from another university who does have access to it to send me a copy.
But is there an official way to obtain the paper?

Have you tried contacting APS?

@ dimpol I haven't contacted APS yet, since I was first curious what my options are.

Don’t they send you the article anyway or allow you to download it via their submission system?

@Wrzlprmft Well, no. Otherwise I wouldn't be asking this question. Have made an edit, to make that clearer.

Not that I know of, though I'm sure that the editor would send it to you if you asked. In this case, I'd feel pretty dang justified in using #icanhazpdf or scihub.

@AJK in the present, scihub does not work anymore for APS journals, and the journal does not offer published version of the paper to the author. Perhaps the best option would be to ask a friend with a subscription.

You could ask the journal editor directly to send a copy of your publication. I will help to clearly summarise your situation. This will be something they encounter on a regular basis and if the editor replies with a strict "no", you can still ask a colleague for the download. It is your work, so the editor will likely be understanding. Hope this helps!


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What are the potential ramifications of a student intentionally deanonymizing his/her class evaluation?
Presumably, evaluations are anonymized to protect the students from possible retaliation by the instructor or institution.
Is there anything in the reverse direction (keeping that information hidden is beneficial to the instructor)?
What are potential consequences if a student chooses to place identifying information (e.g. knowledge of a particular conversation) onto an evaluation?

The exact situation is that one of my friends was considering discussing a very long conversation she'd had with the professor on the class evaluation, and how it exemplified issues she'd had with the class. She's taking a class with that professor next semester, which is a big issue for the student. That issue aside, I'm wondering if there would be good reaons to avoid this even if she would never take another class with this instructor.

..."if a student chooses to place identifying information onto an evaluation?". That is plain stupid. There is a good reason these evaluations are anonymous and there should stay that way.

I would say, instead, that evaluations are anonymous to allow students to respond honestly.  This prevents not just "retaliation" at specific students but "rewards" as well (i.e., professors cannot give bonus points for good evaluations).

She's taking a class with that professor next semester (a big potential issue) — Unless I'm missing something, this still seems like an "issue" for the student, not the instructor.

@MadJack Yes, I advised her against doing that for that reason. I was wondering if there were any other reasons to avoid it, either for the student or for the instructor. Thanks for pointing that out, will update question to clarify.

The only ramnifications I can think of is that whoever handles, edits or publishes that class evaluation may recognise the deanonymisation, consider it accidental and thus decides not to pass it for that reason.
As you can always pass deanonymised criticism to an instructor, be it by mail or by putting it on public display, there seems little point to me to protect the instructor from it on this particular medium.
Something else you might consider though is that even if the professor does not want to retaliate that criticism, they will have more difficulties to fairly evaluate the critic, which may have effects in either direction. While this is some annoyance you could spare the professor, it would also happen with non-anonymous critique made in other ways.

Also note that in some systems, written comments are rewritten/summarized as part of the data collection process so what reaches the professor may be anonymous no matter what you do.

I think OP is referring to the conversation references as being something the professor would recognize, and thus conclude that the author was the only other participant in that conversation.  This might not be evident to any third-party reader.

On the flipside, I was going to write a very nice teaching evaluation about my advisor.  Part of the reason I respect him so much as a teacher is because I've had conversations with him that reveal that he cares deeply about his teaching and puts a huge amount of effort into his class.
But I didn't write any of those details in my evaluation, because I didn't want him thinking I was sucking up to him, and I thought it would mean more to him if it came from a student who was not his.  So I just gave him good numeric scores and a few comments that could have come from any student.

When you are ready to graduate, send a note to the dean.  that cannot be interpreted as suck-uppage (because graduating) and may help the professor.

In general, class evaluations correlate pretty strongly with the grade the student received in the class, so evaluations aren't given much weight by the department, and most faculty are not likely to change the course based on them.
Given your specific situation, where the student will be taking another class, it would probably be best not to out yourself on a negative evaluation.  He is not likely to change is teaching style (the good outcome), but if the professor is vindictive, it may make the next class more difficult for your friend.  I don't see anything positive coming from outing herself, but I could see a potential for abuse from the prof.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that evals correlate strongly with the grade, but I am still skeptical. Do you have a source for that?

You can google it, but Duke did a fairly interesting study on the correlation (https://stat.duke.edu/~dalene/chance/chanceweb/153.johnson.pdf).  As usual, its not cut-and-dry, and spends quite a bit of time pouring over the data.


text:
How to deal with this rejection email from the journal Mathematics of Computation?
I am an undergraduate student, and i had submitted a paper manuscript to Mathematics of Computation, I choose this journal because of my supervisor, who advised me to submit my paper to this journal, but 2 weaks after the submission I received the following email.

Dear Professor XXX,
This message concerns the manuscript
XXXX by XXX
submitted to Mathematics of Computation.
We regret that we cannot consider it, in part because at present we have a large backlog of excellent articles awaiting publication. We are thus forced to return articles that might otherwise be considered. Thank you for considering Mathematics of Computation.
Sincerely,
XXXX Managing Editor, Mathematics of Computation
--- Sent via EditFlow by XXXX mathcomp@math.lsu.edu }}

So, how to deal with this situation ?
Are there any positives/negatives that can be taken ?
Should I submit the paper to another journal?   Or just submit it to the same journal at a later time?
Note that I informed the editors and the referees that I am an undergraduate student.

That letter contains almost no information other than the rejection.

Note that I informed the editors and the referees that I am an undergraduate student. Why? If you were expecting to be treated differently than anyone else submitting papers to the journal, that’s not how it works.

@DanRomik actually, this is what I expected

@AnonymousPhysicist this is the only message I received

In your next submission, I wouldn't mention your status as an undergraduate student. There's no need for it or benefit to it, and there's at least a chance that they might take the submission less seriously.

@DanRomik Would mentioning the undergrad status be acceptable in the frame of being referred to with the proper title ("Mr."/"Mrs." instead of "Professor")?

@AlexandreAubrey I didn’t say it’s not acceptable to mention. It’s just not a good idea, and to do it with the expectation that it would help in some way suggests a misguided understanding of how journals operate.

"My supervisor advised me to submit my paper to this journal" - what did they say about the rejection email?

It's very hard to give you advice without knowing whether your paper was brilliant or hopeless or somewhere in between. Or perhaps it was brilliant technically but written in very poor English. You should really be seeking advice from someone who has access to the paper and can give you their own assessment of whether it meets the required standard.

It is just a nice way to say no. Submit elsewhere.
This is called a desk reject; you will find more in this question What does the typical workflow of a journal look like? .
Note that Math Comp is one of the top journals in its field, so unless the paper was extremely good this was the expected outcome.

Considering the pandemic, reviewer shortages could be an additional factor.

@AnonymousPhysicist Why is the pandemic causing reviewer shortages?

@FedericoPoloni thank you sir, actually I have another question, what do you think about submitting my paper to arxiv, and then trying to submit it to a peer-reviewed journal ?

@عبدالرحمنرمزيمحمود It seems a good idea to me. That is a common approach in mathematics and physics. You can read more about Arxiv by searching in this site.

To complement what @FedericoPoloni said, uploading your paper to arXiv may also be a bad idea. It really depends on the contents of your preprint. If the paper might be incorrect or of very low quality or contains results that have been known for a long time, do not upload it.

This answer could be made more explicit about interpreting the one seemingly substantive part of the letter: "at present we have a large backlog of excellent articles awaiting publication". You seem to be saying that its surface meaning (that this backlog is a meaningful factor in the rejection, and is a contingent and temporary circumstance) should be disregarded, that it is empty verbiage to soften the true message "the paper is not suitable for this journal". But it can happen that a journal...

...develops an actual backlog due to receiving and accepting an unusual burst of good papers that will take a long time to publish due to finite capacity, and therefore becomes more selective than usual while it works through the backlog. An author whose rejection is truly for this reason shouldn't assume that their paper falls short of the typical standards of that type of journal. The answer would be better if it addressed this head-on -- e.g., if you know that these desk rejects routinely mention a "backlog" year-in, year-out, and it truly means nothing.

@عبدالرحمنرمزيمحمود I'm sorry if this comes off as bristly, but if you don't know which to which journal you should submit your work, you may want to reconsider whether you should be submitting the work to a journal at this time and whether there is more literature review needed on your part. Further, since you are undergraduate, I highly recommend seeking out an advisor who is familiar with your work that can help to answer the questions you are asking here.

@nanoman you’re overthinking the issue. There’s nothing to address, the rejection looks like boilerplate and gives no useful information to OP, either negative or positive, about the quality of their submission. As Federico said, it is just a nice way of saying no.

@DanRomik Sure, I'm overthinking it, but so is OP -- I'm pretty sure OP's idea "submit it to the same journal at a later time" was derived from the idea that there may be a genuine, temporary backlog per the plain words of the letter. So explaining this explicitly ("I know it sounds like it means they would consider your paper at another more 'normal' time, but it actually doesn't mean that") would help OP and others in a similar position.

@Chester OP writes that they took the advice of their supervisor for the journal. That is the correct thing to do, in my view.

@Chester: I’d strongly disagree — one can do plenty of relevant literature review, and still be very unsure where to submit.  Different people find and retain information in different ways; and at least for me, when I’m focusing on the content of papers while lit-searching, their journal metadata goes in one ear and out the other.  Additionally, a lot of relevant factors about a journal are very difficult to infer just from its contents — for an outsider or a newcomer to a field, without insider connections, it can be very difficult indeed.

@nanoman: Given that Federico doesn't seem interested in extending their answer (which is, of course, their choice and perfectly OK), perhaps you should post your own. It seems a shame for your explanation to stay hidden here in the comments.

It's totally normal to get a first paper rejected, especially if you are dealing with a top notch journal (receiving lots of submissions) in a time of reviewer shortages. Don't take it personally or feel bad about it.
I would encourage you to submit your article to another journal. You can research potential journals by looking at what journals your citations were published in as well as looking at lists of journal rankings (e.g. SJR, list of these ranking websites). Note: don't get too hung up on exact rankings - think of these lists more as a tool where you can search journals by keyword and try to get an understanding of who has a history of being being a reputable journal versus who is a potential scam. Come up with a list of a few suggestions, and then go talk your ideas over with your supervisor. They may have other suggestions too, but it's good to start learning about how to pick a journal.

@Roland I was referring to the phrasing in the Journal's response in the OP's original question. Yes, excellent point that there are never enough reviewers available.

Don't think counter-logically! The fact that there are never enough reviewers available does not counter, but only strengthens the conclusion that, this is a time of reviewer shortage.

Even if the backlog answer was true, it could take many months to clear it out. I would submit to another journal.

authors: عبد الرحمن رمزي محمود


text:
Is it common for a mathematics Master's student to have no publications?
As the title suggests, I am a Master's student with no publications. I will apply for a PhD in the USA next year so I am a bit worried that most applicants with a Master's degree have a publication. Is this (no publications in Master's) common within mathematics?

Is your masters outside the US, or within?

@Buffy outside US

What area of math? Also, most people applying to math PhDs in the US that did their bachelors in the US will not have a masters degree.

Your country? In mine, the majority of students do a master studies direct after the bachelor studies. Almost none has a paper.

@BryanKrause My area is pure math and mathematical physics

@user111388 I am in Germany. But I receive Bachelor in Asia

@Ken.Wong: Definitely not normal for German master students to have publications (before/after the end of master study)

I have a masters degree and zero publications.  I do not feel inadequate.

I don't think it's been mentioned yet, but it's probably less likely for master's students in math to have published papers than in other fields (such as biology). Doing an original research project is more accessible/realistic for master's students, or even advanced undergraduates, in more empirically based fields.

Are you asking about people who already have a Master's degree or people who are currently studying to earn a Master's degree? Your question seems to conflate the two back and forth.

Getting a paper published from first submission to camera-ready final accepted version in print, can take longer than a Masters degree.

@TylerH I don't know the rules of publication, so my question refers to both

I cannot speak for the whole world, but for a master student in Europe, it would be exceptional to have a published paper already. A preprint is perhaps not completely unheard of but still extremely uncommon.

Some people publish their thesis as a paper, most the time short before or after finishing the thesis itself. But this is still an exception and nothing that's expected from a student.

@allo: ... if there is something to publish from the master thesis. Usually this is a formality with pretty much useless content.

What does "exceptional"/"extremely uncommon" mean?  I would say that this applies to at least 10% of students (but certainly a clear minority).

I would also add that publishing a paper these days takes a lot of time. I am in a different field, but am still in the process of publishing papers from my PhD, which I finished over a year ago. Where Masters students already have a publication, it is most often a (relatively) small contribution to a larger project that was already in its late stages.

Don't worry about it. Having a publication on entry to a (US) Ph.D. is unusual (though not unheard of), regardless of whether you're coming in with a master's or a bachelor's degree. In fact, in most subfields of mathematics, most of those completing a Ph.D. will not yet have a paper submitted, much less accepted or published (though many will have turned all or part of their thesis into a preprint by then.)
That being said, for admission to a competitive Ph.D. program, it is very helpful to show some evidence of excellence in mathematics beyond coursework. A publication/preprint is one way to do that; good competition results in math contests another; great reference from a professor a third, etc. etc. So figure out what is your excellence calling card.
Good luck!

In the US, there are diffent kinds of masters degrees. Some are mostly course based and some have a research component. Of those, not all will require formal publication outside the university. This guides the decisions of those on admissions committees for doctoral programs.
Having a publication in a good journal is a strong plus, but lacking one isn't necessarily a strong minus. At the top schools it would be likely to count for more than otherwise, but still, not likely to be essential.
I suspect that for students applying it is not especially common to already have publications. This is partly because of the short and time-limited nature of most US masters programs. Research tends to be open ended, hence the long time it can take to get a doctorate.

No, a Master's degree is a "post baccalaureate," not a "pre PhD.
Many master's programs have a "capstone" requirement consisting of a paper or a project, but it is uncommon for it to be of publishable quality.
Basically, you are usually not qualified to do "research" until toward the end of the of PhD program, and your thesis may well be your first publication.

It is very unusual to have a paper -- further, it would be extremely unusual to have a solo-author paper, and whether you have a paper with one of the project supervisors you had in your undergraduate or Masters depends more on them that it does on you.
Having a paper is a (small) positive, but not at all a requirement. Appearing interested and knowledgable at your interview is much more important.


text:
Is it okay to mention we're citing an article only because a reviewer told us to?
In a recent review, one reviewer said we must rework the paper in light of two other papers.  One paper was a highly valuable suggestion, and we've enthusiastically taken it on board.  However, the second paper seems to be an ultra-specific paper (one example among thousands) and not applicable to our work.
I'm thinking of writing something like:

There are many methods for XYZ (and an anonymous reviewer of this paper seemed fond of QRST [26]), and a survey was given in [15].  In this paper, we take the approach ABC for our specific problem.

(Here, I leave off "...since QRST does not actually apply to our problem".)
In this example, we (fairly politely) highlight that we're citing [26] at the reviewer's request.  But I'm a bit worried it would be perceived as a passive-aggressive slight.
Question: Is it okay to mention we're citing an article only because a reviewer told us to?
I'm also considering two alternatives:
Alternative 1:

There are many methods for XYZ, such as QRST [26], LMNOP [4], and QRSTUV [5]; a survey is given in [15].  In this paper, we take the approach ABC.

But this seems like I'm adding even more virtually irrelevant citations.
Alternative 2:

Acknowledgment
  A helpful anonymous reviewer suggested citing [26].

But while accurate, it might be considered provocative (and rude) and get the paper rejected.
This question is related to: How to deal with an unreasonable reviewer asking to cite irrelevant articles?  But in our case, the reviewer is not being unreasonable, maybe just fond of this particular paper.  And it's just one additional citation that's being requested.

Update: Thanks for everyone's help!  To let you know what's going on (and maybe this will help someone who winds up in the same situation):
(TL;DR: The reviewer's suggested paper is related to an "in-between" paper which is related to our work; we feel it's not off-topic to cite it while discussing this in-between paper.  It wasn't as off-topic as originally thought.)

We generally agreed with the advice in the answers (don't cite it).  We also found the editor's email specifically said not to cite irrelevant papers suggested by reviewers.  But we dug deeper to ensure we're not perceived as being dismissive.  What happened next:
Upon more careful inspection, the reviewer described it as an "example".  Eventually, we concluded that the reviewer was not giving us a list of papers to cite, but to generally say "look at papers like these".
This turned out to be a gold mine: it gave many papers which we could use to put our work into a broader context; none of our paper's predecessors do this.  In fact, we found a paper which almost identically states the motivation for our paper, but in a broader context (which empowers our justification for working on this topic).
We looked into the suggested paper's references and papers citing that paper.  We found another paper is a kind of "in-between" paper (related to both our paper, and the paper that was mentioned by the reviewer).  We now discuss this in-between paper in detail, and explain how our method deviates from it.  In the context of discussing this in-between paper, we feel it's not irrelevant to quickly cite the paper that was mentioned by the reviewer, without giving it undue weight.

(PS. In this particular instance, I feel this is not the reviewer's paper: other papers by the same authors (e.g. the in-between paper) are more natural to cite.)

How about citing the review paper, but not the specialized paper? Seems more useful for a reader, and one would hope that a reasonable reviewer would accept it, especially if the review describes the method used by the specialized paper.

How do you think readers of your paper will think about such remarks?

When a seemingly random paper is proposed by a reviewer, there's a high chance that the reviewer is one its authors.

"seemed fond" --> "pointed out". Maybe the anonymous reviewer has a point and you're still learning, so no need to be snarky. IMHO. :-)

Relevant idea: http://janlo.de/wp/2010/04/04/scientific-citation-markup/

"Compare and Contrast" the ideas in your paper with the cited paper, and 'make it fit' -- generally it is bad form to say anything about the reviewers, EXCEPT to thank them, especially for specific ideas.  If there was a significant contrasting (they do this, we do that), one could thank them for pointing this out....

Leaving the paper out altogether might not be a perfect solution, but I'm confused why you think that this approach could possibly be better.

I think you should avoid writing "...an anonymous reviewer of this paper seemed fond of..." unless you want to put that person off.

you are afraid it may come off as passive aggressive because it is passive aggressive.

As it turns out, not every comment or suggestion forwarded by a reviewer needs to be necessarily accommodated in your manuscript. Hence, as you seem to have a convincing argument against citing the suggested paper in your manuscript, in your rebuttal letter state that you have considered the suggested comment but you didn't find that paper to merit citation. (However, compose your argument politely, thanking the reviewer for the suggestion.)

Agree completely, reviewer comments are suggestions for improvement, not ironclad mandates. If the reviewer suggested that you to change your methodology to something you didn't agree with, or run a statistical test that you didn't think applied, including it anyway with the footnote "because the reviewer told me to" would be a poor argument indeed.

And this may be particularly effective since you ended up (enthusiastically!) using the first paper the reviewer suggested

No, it's completely inappropriate to cite something while making snarky remarks about how you don't think you should. There is no upside whatsoever: it makes you look petty and obnoxious, and it looks like you're disparaging the authors of the paper being cited, even though you're actually disparaging the referee, which is hardly better. Either cite the paper respectfully or don't cite it at all.
If the suggested paper is not relevant, then you shouldn't cite it at all and your response to the referee should justify that decision. If the referee insists and the editor concurs, then just cite the paper in as neutral a way as possible.
Given that there seem to be multiple possible approaches to solve your problem, perhaps the best solution would be to write a short paragraph addressing them. Something along the lines of your "alternative 1" but with explanation of why you chose the method you did, instead of one of the others. Wouldn't that improve the paper?

To complement the other answers, most of which seem to take as granted the assumption that the reviewer's request is indeed pointless and made by mistake (or possibly to pad their own citation count, as some answers allude to), let me take the charitable view towards the reviewer and assume that they actually think, correctly or not, that the method QRST described in the paper they suggested you cite is appropriate for your problem, and possibly even better suited for it than the method ABC that you're currently using.
If so, it's plausible that this particular reviewer may not be the only reader who will think so.
Perhaps method QRST is considered by many to be "the state of the art" for solving similar problems, while method ABC is older and often considered to be less efficient and/or less accurate.  Thus, other readers might plausibly also look at your paper and think "why did they use ABC, when QRST would surely have worked better?"  In the worst case, they might assume that you're only using ABC because your knowledge of the field is years or decades out of date and you're not aware of any newer and better methods, making the overall quality of your research suspect, or even that any unexpected results you've obtained are probably just errors caused by the inaccuracy of the ABC method.
If that's indeed the case (or if you have even the slightest reason to suspect that it might be the case for some readers), you ought to demonstrate that you're indeed aware of the current state of the art in your field, and explain why method ABC is, in fact, better suited for your problem than QRST or other more recent methods.  In some cases, this might indeed mean citing the suggested QRST reference just to show that you're aware of it and have considered that method before choosing not to use it.
Depending on how you choose to phrase this, the result might end up looking somewhat similar to your first alternative suggestion, e.g.:

There are many methods for XYZ, of which a recent survey is given in [15]. Unfortunately, some of the more advanced methods, such as QRST [26], LMNOP [4], and QRSTUV [5], are not well suited to this particular problem, because <insert explanation why>. In this paper, we instead take the classic approach ABC [2], which does not suffer from the limitations described above, and can still provide accurate results in a reasonable time, provided that [...].

More generally, the point I'm trying to argue here is that review comments may be mistaken, but they're rarely if ever completely without cause.  If a reviewer thinks there is an issue with some part of your paper, then it's likely that other readers will also think so.  That means that you should do something to address the perceived issue, even if it's only to clarify your writing so that others are less likely to misunderstand it the same way as the reviewer did.
(Of course, there are occasional exceptions to this rule.  Sometimes reviewers are poorly chosen, and sometimes you may just have to accept that a particular reviewer does not actually belong to the target audience of your paper, or that their suggestions might have an inappropriate ulterior motive.  But in general, it's still best to start from an assumption of competence and good faith, until and unless there is clear and unescapable evidence to the contrary.)

+1 This. Very true that if a reviewer thinks that a paper should be cited, other readers will think so as well and might wonder why it's being ignored in the paper. Cite within context.

I agree with this anwer, though the OP stating QRST “seems to be an ultra-specific paper (one example among thousands)” makes it unlikely that it would be “considered by many to be ‘the state of the art’ ”.

There is no reason or regulation that you have to include the citation at all in a case like this. The reviewer's comments are just that: comments. The editor may take them as requirements or not, but the paper is still yours and you should use your judgement about what to include.
But to avoid problems that may arise with the editor, include your reasons in a note to him/her. We didn't include x because y. The editor may send it back, but I doubt it. The editor may also send it out for additional review but likely to a different set of reviewers. Even if it is reviewed again by the same person, as long as they don't have a particular motive for the suggestion, they should evaluate your paper as a whole. But your paper contains nothing provocative if you just omit the citation.
Let the editor work for you and explain why you haven't taken a particular suggestion among many that you did find helpful.

There is a tension between two motivations, which seem implicit in your question and approach:

You want to accommodate the request, although it is perhaps
unreasonable, to make sure your paper gets published.
You want to include only what's relevant and reasonable, so as not to compromise the paper's quality for the sake of "review politics".

You propose to resolve the tension by including the requested citation but distancing yourself from it at the same time. However, this comes across as either rude and petty or as perfunctory. Chances are, this won't get the job done: The reviewer may be less inclined to recommend acceptance of your paper if your tone is rude or his request is served perfunctorily; and you don't really stand your ground either.
My suggestion would be to treat the superfluous reference as a mere suggestion and to not include it. I would point out the reasons in the accompanying letter to the editor, in which you also detail the other changes you made to the draft. This helps both of your goals while being upfront: It maintains your integrity and the quality of the paper, but it also improves your chance of acceptance, since in the last instance, the editor makes the decision, and your argument for not including the reference sounds persuasive.

ALWAYS put the reader first. What would you like to read as a reader? Comment "method QRST [16] is irrelevant here but reviewer wanted it included" or nothing at all? Out of your suggestions, only 2nd one is viable even though you don't like it.
If such statement doesn't already rub the editor the wrong way and he demands removal of the statement or simply rejects your paper, reviewer is likely to be offended too - he will try hard to find reasons to reject the paper or at least demand this statement removal. (Well, unless he is only after that citation, but I doubt it - as you said, he recommended a valuable paper too, so he seems to know the field).
Finally, considering there are multiple approaches to solve the problem - enough of them to warrant a review article - there is absolutely no harm in adding yet another reference to yet another method solving the problem. After all, you surely have a section of introduction dedicated to other approaches and showing why you are better. It will be just another citation in the section mainly used to pad the reference list.


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How can I write a book about paper writing which contains real examples without violating copyright?
I'm teaching a course on computer-science paper writing, and I aim to turn my notes into a book for publication.  It's designed specifically for Chinese postgraduate students who are writing their first paper.
In my course (and thus in the book), I use examples from real publications by Chinese authors.  Moreover, I use LaTeX's \includegraphics{...} so my quote is visually identical to what's in the paper.  I then critique the writing: explaining what I feel is poor, and how I would improve it.
My feeling is that doing this for a paragraph or two with attribution is unproblematic, but:

I'm using a large number of snippets, totaling maybe hundreds from different papers.
I'm aiming to include a section along the lines of "how to proofread and optimize writing", where I take a single (short) paper, and painstakingly revise a large portion of it.  I'm tempted to go through the entire paper, because it contains many examples of writing issues I see repeatedly, and because it's not possible to write one part of a paper in isolation from the other parts.

So...
Question: How can I write a book about paper writing which contains real examples without violating copyright?
I'm not sure what I need to know about this---it'd be my first book.

Update: Thanks for the responses!  Virtually all the papers come from the ACM, and each paper lists the copyright; maybe 90% have an ACM copyright.  The ACM's policies page says:

Course Material - Permission granted without fee if the course material is produced without charge to the student. (See Commercially produced Course Packs below)

So I'm confident I haven't done anything wrong so far; there's no concerns about me handing out ACM-copyrighted papers.  And our university has institutional access, so the students have access anyway.
Also, at this point, I'm only just starting to put a book together, and I need to do this for the course whether or not a book eventualizes.  I can simply keep copyright in mind as the book develops.  Asking permission from the ACM seems to be a matter of sending an email; I don't know what they will say.  (The authors might not be happy about me criticizing their writing.)

Is it feasible to rewrite the example passages in such a way that they still demonstrate the issues you want to discuss, but are no longer in the authors' original words? e.g. "We studied yellow-backed finches" -> "We studied blue-backed gulls". Copyright aside, this might be more tactful than using the original text as an example of poor writing.

I am aware that I might make a bunch of Chinese computer scientists grumpy, but I fear the message won't have the same impact if I paraphrase.  Basically I want to say "Don't do [foo].  Here are some actual examples of [foo] by Chinese authors.  The consequences are [blah]."  I want to demonstrate that the problem occurs repeatedly by Chinese authors.  I also have "identify the problem" and "fix this snipppet" style exercises.

The best solution would be to get permission from each copyright holder for each paper/snippet you use. This is often seen in books ie a list of figures and a statement of permission from each author X and Y and Z.
Using the material may be ok at the moment because it is for an educational purpose, but to put that into a book is probably going to be more a business/profit purpose which is different for copyright...
But I get the impression that you don’t want to do this as you mention “I have hundreds....”
You will need to check this properly with a copyright lawyer / legal team...

Usually the copyright is not of the authors, and the permission should be asked to the copyright's owner, typically the publisher.

I doubt that there is any exception anywhere that would let you reprint an entire paper without permission for any reason. So, for that case, at least, get permission first.

@MassimoOrtolano edited to copyright holder, but the basic advice is the same...

Unfortunately, the best time to address such concerns would have been before collecting hundreds of examples, but there's no point in crying over spilled milk. Solar Mike is correct in that it's best to get express permission from each copyright holder. Yes, you are probably allowed quoting a certain amount, but as far as I know there's no international standard as to how much. If you publish a book and want it distributed worldwide, it's probably significantly more straightforward to get permission than to ensure compliance with different countries' copyright laws. I would certainly consult with a copyright lawyer or publisher before attempting the latter.
A second option would be to stick to materials available under public licenses, such as (some of the) Creative Commons licenses. These explicitly allow you to adapt the source material. Specifically, the CC-BY license that is commonly used in open access publishing should work for your purposes, as there is no clause stopping commercial use.
I think this option is particularly useful for your plan of revising a large portion of a single paper. While I don't have any examples specific to academic writing, this approach has been used to great effect in R. Martin's book Clean Code, where long examples of real-life open-source code are iteratively improved and refined.


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Are there some fields where having skills in a language other than English is necessary to perform research at an international level?
When I went to college, an old-schooled teacher of mine insisted that, because I was interested in chemistry, I needed to work on my German as it was the lingua franca of that trade. It turns out, there is absolutely no need to speak German anymore to be a successful researcher in chemistry.
I somewhat thought that, since at least two decades, English was the only language required to be a researcher in any field (excepting, maybe, literature). However, seeing this question made it apparent that some graduate programs still have requirements for other languages. How useful are they?
In a word: are there some fields where reading/writing/speaking a language other than English is necessary to perform research at an international level?
(Let's exclude fields related to literature and linguistics. Let's also forget about teaching, and focus the question on research.)

I was under the impression that most PhD language requirements focused entirely on reading skills.

Are there some fields where speaking a language other than English is necessary to perform research at an international level?

It depends on what you mean by "speaking" and "necessary".  In mathematics, there is no need to speak any language but English and the language of the country you are working in, but there's a real benefit to being able to read other languages.  It's not strictly necessary, and its importance varies between fields.  In my case, I don't use other languages on a daily or even weekly basis, but probably read French on a monthly basis and German a little less frequently.
In my view, the reason for language exams isn't that these languages are required to be a researcher, but rather that they are helpful.  The best argument I've heard for requiring language exams is as follows.  Learning how to read mathematics in French or German is not very difficult, but it's still a burden if you just want to read one paper.  Usually you can get around it by finding another exposition, finding someone to explain the paper to you, or just deciding the paper is not relevant enough to bother with.  However, even though this is a rational solution to a one-time dilemma, it's a bad idea if you are going to be faced with these dilemmas repeatedly.  At that point, you'll gain a lot in flexibility and convenience if you can read the papers you want to read.  The purpose of language exams is to keep people from repeatedly making short-sighted choices.
I'd guess that language skills are more important in mathematics than in most scientific fields, because the mathematics literature has an enormously longer half-life.  In my work, I frequently use and refer to papers that are 50 years old, and sometimes quite a bit more.  These results have not always made it into textbooks, and even when they have the original papers sometimes contain valuable insights.

I understand that many good and important mathematical papers are still being published in French, including those by Canadian authors.

I'm going to cherry pick a bit.
In the area of robotics, the Japanese have one of the best journals and conferences (their journals were about 10%-20% acceptance rate about 3 years ago).
Yet, many of those journals are written in Japanese. Here in Japan, students in robotics do not need to present their work at international conferences or journals, since they consider theirs good enough.
Many of the best robotics work in things like ICRA and IROS (from the Japanese) was presented in some form about 1-2 years ago.
That said, I do not think knowing Japanese is necessary for a successful tenure in robotics, but it certainly can help to have some competitive advantage.

In my field (mathematical physics), it is certainly true that most research is published in English, although there certainly is a non-trivial amount published in French, for example. Although being able to read French might not be required in many institutions, it still is very useful. I expect that for the other sciences the picture is similar (for the humanities on the other hand, I expect it may be very different).
Another issue however that becomes more important when looking for tenure(d) (track) positions are the teaching requirements. In many countries almost all teaching is done in the native language, at least at the undergraduate level. So it is important that you will be able to teach in this language, or at least be willing to learn the language in the near future.

Some universities allow new-hired foreign professors to teach only English (graduate) classes for 1-2 years to let them learn the local language properly. That said, it takes quite some effort to go from 0 to "can give a lecture" in a new language in 1-2 years.

Let's exclude fields related to literature and linguistics.

I would say that in most Academic Departments you can find a research topics that can be done exclusively in English, but that in many departments you could also find topics that cannot be done exclusively with English. Even with Computer Science (e.g., speech recognition in a non-English language) and Biology (genetic mutation common in a foreign country where you need to collect samples) there are projects where a foreign languages is required. I would venture to say there are more departments where a foreign language could be critical than ones where it couldn't. I am hard pressed to think of a Chemistry or Pyshics research question that would require a foreign language.
Choosing the College of Arts and Sciences at UPenn as a random sample of research fields the following broad categories become apparent. There are language studies (e.g., French, Spanish, German), which to me do not fall into the literature category, where there is an obvious need for a foreign language. There are cultural studies (e.g., Asian Studies and Latin American Studies, but also things like Anthropology, Archeology, Art History) where you are likely required to live in a non-English speaking country for at least a while. I would expect language studies and cultural studies to have language requirements. Then there are research areas in which you may be studying a non-English speaking culture (e.g., Criminology, Economics, Environmental Studies), for which languages are essential for some individuals, but unlikely to be required for all. There are also art topics (e.g., Fine Arts, Cinema studies, Music) where your research topics may not be in English and foreign language skills may be required. There are "old" topics (e.g., History, Classics, and Folklore) where sources are unlikely to be in English so programs often have language exams.

If it can be "critical" to speak the language of a country from which you need DNA samples, then presumably it can be "critical" to speak the language of a country in which you're operating a telescope (e.g. Spanish for Chile) or to stretch a point where you're launching a micro-gravity chemistry experiment (I presume Russian rather than Kazakh for launch via Baikonur). I suppose a telescope is a large enough project to hire people to deal with the local authorities, whereas grabbing the local DNA might be for a very small project that's simply a no-go if the researcher can't do it?

@SteveJessop I think your examples are little bit of a stretch, but reasonable enough, and I would never have thought of them with my narrow view of chemistry and physics.

It depends on the field.
My ongoing PhD work is in applied mathematics, where English is pretty much all you need.  Sure, knowing some Russian, French and German can be useful, if you want to read various older seminal papers in their original form, but the actual results from those papers have usually been widely reproduced (often in a more modern and readable form) in textbooks written in English.  For more modern research in my field, English is pretty much the universal choice of language, perhaps the only halfway significant contender being Chinese.
(In pure mathematics, the situation is somewhat different, partly due to the "longer half-life" of pure math papers noted by Anonymous Mathematician in their answer.  Indeed, typically the non-English papers one occasionally encounters in applied math tend to be on the theoretical side.)
I'm also an amateur cryptographer, and within that field the dominance of English in academic writing is even more complete.  This is partly due to historical reasons: the modern academic study of cryptography, as opposed to clandestine military research and occasional hobbyist dabbling, is a relatively new field, and emerged from applied mathematics and computer science at a time when especially the latter field was strongly dominated by the U.S. and other English-speaking countries.  Basically, within crypto, the only thing you may need languages other than English for is historical (meta)research.
On the other hand, in the last few years I've also dabbled in the humanities, specifically in assyriology.  Within that field, at least rudimentary knowledge of French and German is all but essential (some of the central reference works and dictionaries are written in those languages), and Latin isn't completely useless either.  And of course, you also need to learn the ancient languages that you're studying (for me, that's Akkadian, some Sumerian and a bit of Hittite so far), and familiarity with their neighbors and (ancient or modern) relatives can be pretty useful, too.
So, yes, that's at least one field where knowing only English would be a significant impediment.  I'm not saying it would completely prevent you from studying the field, but it does deprive you of access to some fairly useful sources and references.  And besides, the general attitude in assyriology seems to be that a researcher should be polyglot as a matter of course.  For example, the Reallexikon der Assyriologie (an important encyclopedia of the field) happily mixes together entries written in German, English and French, depending on each contributor's preferred language, and expects the reader to be able to make sense of any of them.

Ps. I noticed after writing this answer that you wanted to "exclude fields related to literature and linguistics." Still, even if you discount the fact that you (obviously) need to learn e.g. ancient Sumerian in order to study it, the point remains that you also really do want to know some French and German too (which, just to be clear, are no more related to Sumerian than English is) just to be able to understand modern academic papers and reference works written in those languages.

Let's approach this question from another direction: When is it ever a disadvantage to know more languages?
Every translation is already an interpretation and beyond mathematics I don't see any field where interpretation would not matter. In other words: You are always closer to the original meaning when reading a paper in its original language than when reading a translation of it.
I'm in philosophy and theology right now and it is for either a must to know English, German, French, Italian, Latin and Ancient Greek. The works of Plato, Nietzsche, Luther, Macchiavelli, Sueton, etc. are simply not the same anymore once you translate them.
As an academic you should never wonder why you should put any effort into learning something new - learning new things is your daily job! That's what you chose to do. Therefore the need to learn a new language should be seen as a chance. Expand your horizon!

It's like financial investments: You have to invest to earn.
Sciolism is a particularly big problem in our area. E.g. somebody writes an article about what he thinks of certain Nietzschean thoughts based upon a translation. Then you have already two steps of interpretation: The translators and the article author's. Beside mathematics there is nothing really free from interpretations coloured by one's personal background. Cutting out as many of these interpretation steps as possible is of high importance and enhances outputs to an extent where it makes the initial efforts worth it.

It's likely financial.investmens. yes, indeed, and in both cases it is possible that there are better things to invest in.

History
Without any access to first-hand translations one is sentenced to rely only on other translators' interpretations.
Even for english history one needs to look for foreign resources either to fact-check the record or understand the topic from others' perspective.


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Do non-native English speakers appreciate it when I carefully correct their English in peer reviews?
As a native English speaker, when I review papers I sometimes carefully go through the English and list my proposed changes, which adds a fair amount of time to the review process.
The most extreme case of this was for a good paper I reviewed for a top computer-science journal, but with fairly poor English.  I went through everything in detail, marking proposed changes on a hard copy, then sent back a scan with my review.  This kind of review typically adds hours, possibly even days.
It makes me wonder if it's at all appreciated.  Perhaps the authors groan when they see such reviews, thinking there's a lot of tedious legwork to do.  Or, as I hope, they actually learn something meaningful from this effort.  I don't really know.
Question: Do non-native English speakers appreciate it when I carefully correct their English in peer reviews?

Why do I do this is basically the question.  If the authors on the other end find it useful or helpful, then I feel it's worthwhile.

As a non-native English speaker, I generally appreciate corrections, but too many times I've seen native speakers suggesting wrong or useless corrections (e. g. American English speakers not recognising the British spelling of a word). So, do it if you really wish, but do it humbly.

This varies greatly. I know some non-native speakers who are eager to improve their English and grateful for any corrections you give them. I know others who couldn't care less.

Thread carefully.  If it was done because you think the authors are non-native speakers just because of their name, then it will be offensive.

I think it is a good idea.  Yes, even in mathematics.  And even papers by native English speakers.
Sometimes, if the English has many errors, I just note that in my review, and suggest the author have the paper corrected by an English speaker before re-submitting.
Journals should have their own people to correct English after papers are accepted.  But who knows what happens with modern free-access no-fee journals who cannot afford such luxuries?

+1. Yes it is an editor's job, not a reviewers, but if you want to take it on, and are correct in your changes, it can only improve the outcome. It should be greatly appreciated.

"I just note that in my review, and suggest the author have the paper corrected by an English speaker before re-submitting."  Just don't be the obnoxious reviewer who assumes based on a name that someone is not an English speaker.

As someone who was exposed to the British "Programme" English early in his life. Then moved to American "Program" English, I much appreciate feedback on my English as I have no time for Tutoring and I do not like "special editing services" (mainly because the manuscript will be edited by someone not expert in the field).
In fact, I usually memorize reviewers' suggestions and criticism over my English because they are coming from "peers" that are likely to judge my future manuscripts.

Whatever you do, and for the benefit of anyone looking who might have done so: please stop writing that we should have our manuscript checked by a native speaker.
I am referring to those who do write that, not you in particular.
Do not "gatekeep" the knowledge of the English language behind a nationality. It's a matter of proficiency, it's not about the country in which one was born. We are perfectly capable of reaching C1/C2 level in English (advanced fluency) even though we might not have been born in an anglosaxon country.
Something like "please have someone fluent in English proof read the manuscript" would be better.

Suggesting that your manuscript is checked by a native speaker is a good suggestion to improve the quality of the paper.

Maybe my point didn't come across. Being native doesn't guarantee that the person has expert knowledge of the grammar of their own lamguage. That's why it would be better to ask someone more fluent, regardless of their nationality.

I know many “fluent” in English, but you would not want them editing your manuscript...

@SolarMike Watch out when making that suggestion; some reviewers jump to conclusions when in reality the authors actually are native speakers.

@AnonymousPhysicist  a broad scouser editing your doc... good luck... Spent many hours helping my friends with their docs for exactly that reason...

@SolarMike I know many native speakers in English that you wouldn't want to edit your manuscript.

Flagging this for deletion as it seems to answer a completely different question.

@Wrzlprmft thanks for your input. OP asked how we feel when someone corrects. Writing that is a form of "correction" that some reviewers do. I wrote how I feel when I see that.

@TheWanderer: You are not explicitly talking about what you (or anybody else) feels at all. You are just giving recommendation that is about a different situation on top.

That might depend on the field. In mathematics I wouldn't say that this is a good idea, as it will annoy the authors more than anything. If there is only one error or two, you can of course mention them, but if there are lots and lots of errors, I would just mention that in a general statement, not list them all.
I think that everyone makes mistakes when writing a long text (I'm sure there are some even in my relatively short answer here), so if there are way too many, that is most likely due to a wrong use (or no use at all) of a spell checker. Thus, an author that cares about that can go over his file again after reading your comment and will know how to properly spell check for upcoming papers.
If, on the other hand, you list all the errors, he will most likely just correct them without learning anything for the future.
Of course that is assuming that authors do care about spelling.

"In mathematics I wouldn't say that this is a good idea, as it will annoy the authors more than anything." I don't definitively disagree, but could you explain why you think so?