text:
My advisor demands second authorship, but my collaborator contributed much more than him. I don't want to be unethical, what should I do?
My PhD supervisor has contributed 0% to my research and he even does not know the basics of my research. On the other hand, I have a collaborator from another university who has contributed significantly to my work. Now that the manuscript is ready to submit, my supervisor demands to be the second author, after me as the first author and before my collaborator. My colleagues recommended that I do whatever he asks because he can easily screw up my life for few years by delaying my graduation. The reason he claims for the second position is that my university pays my scholarship, not my collaborator's university.
I am confused and worried. I do not want to be unethical .... Any idea?
Just and update :
According to my university authorship guidelines
"Acquisition of funding, the collection of data, or general supervision of the research group, by themselves, DO NOT JUSTIFY authorship. "
But if I remind him the ethical issues, it's like a declaration of war!

There's several different things to consider and its sounds terrible, but before that it's really helpful to know what field you're working in (specifically to know if the professor is say funding a lab and whether your funding is generically from the school or from a grant).

What do your other coauthors think?

I am funded by the school not my supervisor and I have not used any lab equipment for my research. My field is engineering

The other co-authors are reputable professors and they strongly disagree because of all the time they have spent on this project and all their efforts

Depends on the customs of the field.  In my field (mathematics) authors are listed in alphabetical order.  I guess your field is different.  Maybe the source of your funding should be the second author, according to conventions in your field.

The convention in my field is the technical contribution in building the idea and content

Given what you've said to Pete L. Clark in comments, I suggest that you edit your question to clarify what the actual situation is

Why do you have a collaborator who is more involved than your advisor? In engineering, the most important "guy" is the advisor! I have seen many cases where a co-advisor contributes more than the main advisor, but still the main advisor takes full credit. In many cases, there will be some sort of agreement between the adviosr/co-advisor. Why did you advisor allow you to have a collaborator (I'm assuming not s/he is not your co-advisor)? Is the other guy in the same country as you and your advisor? How many papers are you expecting to publish?

@TheFireGuy "In engineering, the most important "guy" is the advisor! " - uh, major [citation needed]. Many students in engineering collaborate with people besides for their advisors, with the collaborators sometimes contributing more (especially if e.g. the work is closer to the collaborators' expertise than the advisor's).

@ff524 "I have seen many cases where a co-advisor contributes more than the main advisor" - I did not say that does not happen! If the advisor does not sign the graduation form, does not want to let the student graduate, the student suffers => hence the importance of the advisor. He does not have to be the most knowledgeable guy, but his importance rise from being the "guy with the signature".

In my field, putting the supervisor second and the collaborator last is giving more weight to the collaborator.

Ask yourself: if getting your desired degree requires you to be unethical, what does that say of people who have gotten it? In that situation, I would directly confront my supervisor and inform him that his name will not be on my paper, and I would record the conversation. If this causes problems for you, I would send that recording to his peers and anyone who has authority over him. If that doesn't work, go to the press. In my opinion, your supervisor's behavior is not befitting of any honest human being and that won't change until it is brought out for everyone to see.

Agreed with @Fomite - not sure which engineering discipline this is, but eng/sci (physics, eng-chem, materials eng, etc), typically, the last author is the group leader, primary coordinator, or otherwise the author with most seniority in the group or collab.  They're not typically the largest contributors, and are often those who have materially contributed the least, but this isn't always the case.  Last author is usually the "elder" and most established name on the paper, though.  Your specific engineering field may be different, of course.

You could check your faculty's rules. Mine has a strict rule that providing money does not give you co-authorship.

Publishing may be important to your advisors performance report. In other words this might not be related to you or your report, but to him doing his job.

Your supervisor sounds most unreasonable.  "The reason he claims for the second position is that my university pays my scholarship not my colloborators's school." Perhaps you should add the president of your university as the second author.  (Of course, don't actually do that: it would expose your supervisor's immature behavior in a very passive-aggressive way.)
My feeling is that given the callowness of your supervisor, you should consider yourself fortunate that you are first author. Isn't that what really matters?  That's not a rhetorical question, because in my field ordering of authors is strictly alphabetical, but I don't know of a field in which being second author means much.  So it may well be that your supervisor is just being petty without really harming any of your collaborators.  Anyway, it seems to me that you have already discharged your ethical responsibilities by suggesting what you think is a good ordering of the coauthors.  If the coauthors other than you disagree with the ordering among non-first-authors, isn't it really up to them?  If your other coauthors are among the ones who are advising you to put Professor Immature as second author: under the circumstances, I would go with that.  If on the other hand they object: well, of course they have that right, and they should hash it out with your supervisor.

The problem is that I have been the link between my advisor and my collaborators, so my advisor forces me to convince them and I really feel bad to ask them, also I am afraid that this will discourage them to continue collaboration with me. Especially I think that my supervisor will demand the same thing for all my future papers

@LoLo: It sounds like a very tough situation.  But I don't know what it means to force you to convince someone else to do something.  Authors of a paper have to be able to talk to each other about issues of coauthorship, so if one of your coauthors is unhappy about your supervisor being second author, they need to discuss it with your advisor and your advisor needs to listen.  By the way, if you really do have a valuable continuing collaboration with these other professors: have you considered transferring to be their student?  Your advisor sounds like an ogre to me.

They have suggested me to transfer to their school but I am in my last year of my PhD and by transferring I will lose two years.

The problem is that there is no one to protect and defend PhD students, some supervisors they act like they are the God and student should just obey them in any way,

Upon reflection I find it slightly strange that your external collaborators are (i) professors and (ii) highly invested on their ordering among non-first authors.  You use the plural, so I guess there are at least two of them.  So each one's position is "It is not acceptable for me to be either third or fourth author -- I was expecting to be either second or third author."  Really?  I don't quite get it.

I have only one collaborate, I used just plural form just to mention the issue in general!

Concerning your last two comments: it takes at least two to play God.  You simply don't have to accept that role.  For me personally, you have already accepted way too much bad behavior from your supervisor: he doesn't have any expertise in your field, and he doesn't have your interests at heart.  What else is there?  If it is a question of spending a year longer and working with people who can actually mentor you and have a good relationship with you....isn't that why you're in a PhD program?  If you can get a formal offer from another department, maybe your supervisor will straighten up.

I think it's a matter of ego, my supervisor wants to be the second author to show he has been the one who has guided and supervised  my research.

"I have only one collaborate, I used just plural form just to mention the issue in general!" Wait, what?  Please do not obfuscate. Describe the situation as it actually exists, otherwise you're wasting people's (e.g. my) time.

@LoLo It sounds like your collaborator is understanding of your situation, as they advice you not to challenge your advisor on this. I would therefore be surprised if they were reluctant to work with you in the future, as long as this future collaboration would be completely without your advisor (and why would you collaborate any more with this advisor than you have to anyway?)

I agree with others that your advisor is somewhat despicable, but as a graduate student it is just not worth playing the hero. You should say to your collaborators: "Look, this guy wants to be a second author and there is not much I can do." and they will understand (they already seem to pretty understanding) and won't notch a minus to your name because it is not your fault. So just relax and don't behave like that once you get up the pole.

Right, let's not play hero now - let's put that off until some other time.

I agree, especially since the O.P. elaborates in a comment under the question,: The other co-authors are reputable professors and they strongly disagree because of all the time they have spent on this project and all their efforts. I think that's the key: this should be a matter between the professors to sort out amongst themselves, and the student shouldn't be the one caught in the middle of it, trying to figure it out.

Authorship discussions should be had out in the open, as early as possible, as often as needed, and always with the involvement of all authors. While your advisor may or may not be correct in asking to be second named author, they are certainly not correct in pushing for this change without the knowledge of the third person involved. They are now putting you in a difficult position and they probably know it.
Hard to say what's best without knowing more about the situation (how is your relation in general? has authorship been discussed previously?). But one way to play it would be to just be honest about your own discomfort and say something like:

"Thanks for your suggestion, let's see how we can work this out. Given the involvement of X, I had assumed 2nd authorship would be fitting for them, and they may assume the same. So I feel a bit uncomfortable unilaterally pushing them back to 3rd position. If you think authorship should be renegotiated, it's probably best if we involve them in the discussion. That way everybody can speak for themselves."

Finally, authorship conventions differ a lot by field. In my field (cognitive science), last author usually implies "this is the lab the work was done in", so I am usually fine with final position for projects on which I am involved as an advisor.

Your suggestion cannot work when you are facing with bad human beings, they pretend to be nice to people who are in the same level as them but so mean to people who are at the bottom of the food chain, if those two discuss it and that hurts my supervisor's ego, I am the one who will pay the price.

Well it seems you've already made up your mind then: your advisor is a bad human being and you'll accept his suggestion to bump down the other one to 3d and move him up to 2nd authorship. You may have already agreed, in which case our suggestions here are moot, but I think you may be too much motivated by fear. People "up the food chain" may try to get as much as they can as long as there is no resistance, but they are also sensitive to reasonable suggestions and worries. The point is to at least make the suggestion in a clever way, not to go along silently, whatever the final outcome.

Since your advisor is asking you to convince the collaborators, just tell him that they disagree strongly and that you don't want to ruffle their feathers since "you'll work with them in the future." But you tried, oh, so very hard to convince them. Tweak as needed.

There may be a way out, depending on the journal that you intend to submit to. Some journals, such as those associated with the American Physical Society, have very clearly delineated ethical rules about who qualifies for authorship. As I recall, in those journals (e.g., Physical Review Letters) to not violate ethical considerations, authorship requires "substantial" participation. Your supervisor does not meet that requirement so, in principle, should not be among the authors.
However, no one on the reviewing end is going to ask pointed questions about who did what, so, in the end, it will depend on how far you are willing to stick out your neck.

It could help the advisor see that what they're doing is wrong, in a less confrontational, "I don't hate you and it's not my fault, but you're not the 2nd author" way

In my university authorship rules it's clearly mentioned that "Acquisition of funding, the collection of data, or general supervision of the research group, by themselves, DO NOT JUSTIFY authorship.
"

There are two issues that need to be addressed. The first is has your supervisor done enough to warrant authorship. While these rules depend slightly on field and journal, they are usually well documented and no field allows gift authorship.
The second issue, assuming your supervisor has done enough to warrant authorship, is author order. As far as I know, the conventions of order are field depend and not generally well documented. If you are in a field that list authors based on contribution, then it is a difficult situation. As your coauthors are willing to accept the ordering, it is not a huge issue. One thing to consider is writing author contribution statements.

All Australian universities adhere to the 'Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research'; you can search for this.  This document spells out who can be co-authors.  All universities should have a page on co-authorship policies.  Perhaps you could kindly make your supervisor aware of such policies.  Maybe then he/she will think twice.

My colleagues say he definitely knows the policies but he also knows I need his signature for graduation. If I remind him the ethical issues, it is like declaration of war for him!

In my university authorship rules it's clearly mentioned that "Acquisition of funding, the collection of data, or general supervision of the research group, by themselves, DO NOT JUSTIFY authorship. "

@LoLo on the signature comment: at my university, a student can go up to the Dean of Research to overrule the supervisor.  This is made possible to protect students against their supervisor(s).

In my field, Chem and EE, it was and is considered "normal" and ethical to list authors in the order of their contribution. In your specific case, I would list you first, your collaborator second, and always the advisor(in my case, major professor) last. it is then obvious who contributed what and in what amount. your "boss" gives you credibility, he is, after all, your advisor and your supporter. Once you graduate you will have plenty of opportunity to be the single author of papers you generate but you will find that the source of your funding may still desire recognition. Same rules apply.

This doesn't answer the question at all. The OP wants to know what to do, given that the advisor is insisting on an authorship order that violates conventions in OP's field.

There's an adage my supervisor told me when I had an issue with her. You heard this before it goes "don't bite the hand that feeds you".
Whoever controls the purse has the power. Getting lead is pretty good. If any body should be fighting it's the second and third author. It's better for you to stay out of this one.

Sorry but this is terrible advice. "Don't bite the hand that feeds you" means "Don't abuse the person who provides for you" not "Accept abuse from the person who provides for you."

Fair enough. However, if you retaliate against the abuse, the provider might perceive that as biting back.

Certainly, one should consider the consequences of one's actions and whether this is a fight worth winning. It may be that, in this particular case, accepting the supervisor's demands is the best course of action; without knowing more about the situation, it's hard to say.

OP is trying to make an ethical decision. Ideally, that weighs more than just the ideal of self-interest/-protection. If so, any answer should engage his ethical considerations.

It sounds like you want to fight this, the best way is always through a lawyer.

Are you suggesting that the advisor's actions are illegal? What law has he broken?

@ff524 Beats me im not a lawyer. Thats why im suggesting he speaks to a professional to protect his rights on his own works. So IP lawyer would be a good place to start.

This is a matter of assigning academic authorship credit, not ownership of IP. The two concerns are orthogonal: it's possible to deserve academic authorship credit for a paper involving IP you don't own, and it's possible to not deserve academic authorship credit for a paper describing IP you do own. Academic authorship credit is not a legal matter.

If anything he should discuss the situation with the department chair or someone in the research office or grad studies office like a Dean if available.


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Tenured professor’s husband convicted of a drugs-trafficking felony – are there any career implications?
At the university I work at in the US, a tenured professor’s husband has been convicted of drugs trafficking. Would there be any likely (career) implications for the professor?
Obviously, their personal life will be affected, but is it likely to have implications otherwise?

Does the professor use the same professional name as the husband? Some use their maiden name which may help...

They use a different name, but the name of the husband is a pretty common name anyway - not a name that would stick out

What does this have to do with academia?  Is this boat programming?  https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/14470/what-is-the-boat-programming-meme-about

I'm not sure I understand the boat programming reference, but the question is definitely about academia. The question is asking whether there would be career consequences for a professor whose husband had been convicted of a felony. If the Professor herself had been convicted, I think the answer would be clear. In this case, the connection between the felony and the professor is less direct. However, the nature of the crime (compared to say, assaulting someone) makes the link a little stronger than it might otherwise be

you are innocent until proven guilty, so a "somewhat stronger link to a felony" still equals innocent.

I'll note that drug laws in the US are insane. People get charged with "drug trafficking felonies" when they are nothing more than addicts sharing drugs with friends. The jails/prisons are full of such people.

Your ‘assumption’ is a baseless accusation wrapped up to look pretty.

@MaartenBuis  Innocent unless proven guilty.

this may be better generalised (what are the effects on a employee instead of professor)  and asked on the workplace stack exchange, though the answers there will probably also be very vague due to the nature of the question

This is a question which can only the respective university can answer. (I assume in my answer that the police has not proven involvement of the professor in the drug thing.)
Ideally (and most likely also by law, but you do not specify your location), husband and wife (or husband and husband, wife and wife) are treated as two separate people -- if one does a crime, it does not mean that both are involved. That the professor is not involved should also be the default assumption of the university unless the police proved otherwise.
Of course, people often talk and make decisions which are not backed up by the law. It may be of course that there are implications for the professor -- most likely, it's not explicitly said that they are connected to the drug thing.
For implications outside of the university, the same holds. Ideally, nobody treats the prof differently, but people sometimes do.

If you need security clearance of some sort (think nuclear physics) spouses might count though.

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sort: votes


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I have to read a paper for my PhD qualifying exams but I don't understand any of it. Does that mean I fail?
My committee assigned me to read a paper.  But there is a lot of notation I don't understand.  I tried looking at papers in the reference list and I can't really find anything that explains all the notation and concepts.  I also tried looking for talks that the author gave, but they don't go into as much detail as the paper.
What should I do?  I have no background in this field so I'm not really sure where to start.  I also have about three weeks to figure this out.
Edit: Please stop answering this question because apparently it might be cheating.

Go to whichever member of your committee suggested this paper and tell him or her exactly what you've told us.

See if there's a review paper that cites this one. The capsule summary and context might be helpful.

@user53076: You haven't gotten any content-related information about the paper you want to read, so I wouldn't worry that you have cheated on the project.

It's definitely not cheating to ask for how to approach a situation where you don't understand a particular paper!

How is learning for an exam cheating? The more information you shov into your head the better. That's the overall goal. How could learning with papers be cheating?

If you had asked "What does $r^2=x^2+y^2$ mean?", that might have been cheating according to some people.  Your very general question cannot be considered cheating.

I agree with the general advice to go to your committee and talk to them about this. And I would say that you should stress the part about the notation being undefined in the paper itself. This indicates the sort of paper that someone already familiar with the field can read but nobody else can, and this seems like a poor choice of paper for this purpose (if you had plenty of time to read and understand the paper, it might make for a good way to get familiar with the field, tracking down the notation).

If you are unsure of your ability to complete the task, you should go immediately to your advisor and/or the other committee members to get as much help as they can give you.
That is not much of an answer, but I want to supplement it with this: in this case, asking for help on the internet is potentially problematic.  Being assigned a paper and asked to read and understand it in three weeks sounds like a situation which is close to a "take-home exam".  (Maybe it isn't, and maybe you are not understanding the assignment.  Find out.) If so, getting help on the internet on your exam may not be kosher.
Anyway, most graduate students in most graduate programs in most fields do not automatically or easily understand cutting edge papers.  The whole point of the graduate programs is to give them the help and training they need to do this.  So you should be doing what you can to get that help and training, not worrying about whether you are worthy in some cosmic sense.
Good luck.
Added: For those who are confused by the discrepancy between the answer and my comment above: the original version of the question included a lot of content-related information, including the title and author of the paper itself.  I was worried that could lead to getting content-related help from the internet.  The current version of the question is totally unproblematic in that regard.

Hmm, you may be right.  Let me delete the question.

I can't delete it so I just flagged it.

@user53076 asking for specific help might be cheating,. Asking for general help, like you have, is unlikely to be cheating.

Nothing wrong with the question now.

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Professor used the same exam as last year. Is it considered an unfair advantage?
I took an exam which was very difficult. I am a senior in college and this is the first time I failed an exam. I was surprised to find out most of my classmates, which usually don't do as well, got an A on the exam.
Apparently, I found out after the exam that they got their hands on the solutions from last years exam, which happened to be exactly the same. Nothing was changed. It seemed that a little more than half the class had the solutions to the exam since everyone was talking about how it was exactly the same as the review. The review was never online or posted by the professor, he only gave us a review which was very different than the exam and didn't include solutions.
Is it fine for me to feel upset, I feel like I put in so much effort studying for nothing. I was planning on talking to the professor, bring it up slowly and tell him how I feel. I know my university has an honor code but, I'm not sure if professors can do this since I have never seen it done before. Is it okay for me to talk to him, or am I exaggerating? I feel like he is going to go against me.

I agree, I doubt he would do anything but, at least it will let him know some students notice what he is doing.

@user37208 I think it would cause a huge amount of backlash if a department chair told someone to change a grade in the absence of any rules being broken.

Ask yourself this question => Would you still post this question if you were one of the students that got a very good grade? or if you were one of those who had the questions before hand?

@TheFireGuy Does that really matter? I mean, from how the question is written, it does feel that OP is just upset because he wasn't one of the students that got the answers beforehand, but anyway, I feel that what the professor did was really dishonest, at the lack of a better word. It is standard in my country, and really advised, to practice with old exams. Had this happened to me, I would take it with the highest authority in the subject.

@YoTengoUnLCD with all do respect, and I'm not trying to be negative, if you have read the above comments and answers, you would have seen my point! As for doing things in you country, it is common sense that each country/school has its own rules/standards. Sadly, I don't think that the OP's institution carries similar "high" standards, otherwise his professor wouldn't have done that!

If the class is graded on a fixed scale (e.g., 90% is an A, 80% is a B, ...) then I do not see how you have a complaint. Your grade is simply a reflection of what you know (or in this case didn't know). The behavior of the other students (studying the past exam solutions) means their grades are not necessarily a reflection of what they know, but that is not your concern.
If the class is graded on a curve, then your grade would be unfairly influenced by the students who had the exam ahead of time. I would be concerned if I graded on a curve. If everyone had access to the exam in advance, but not necessarily the solutions, I do not see this as manifestly unfair. That said, I would suggest mentioning your concerns to the teacher. If only some students had prior access to the exam (and possibly the solutions), than this is manifestly unfair. I would mention your concerns to the teacher and escalate from there.
As for possible outcomes, this is messy. If the teacher is unaware that only some students had access to the prior exams, they may attempt to fix the issue. What they can do depends on the department/university regulations and what the syllabus says (e.g., they might invalidate the exam, grade on a fixed scale, identify students who may have colluded). If the teacher is aware and does not care, going over their head, is likely not going to be productive, but should still be done. For example, if no rules were broken by the professor, the department chair would likely face major backlash from the faculty if they attempted to interfere with the teaching of another faculty member. More likely the chair might through out the exam or attempt to punish students for colluding. In reality, it would likely just go as a little unwritten black mark against the teacher.

Thanks for the response. I agree that it is not manifestly unfair but, since the class is graded on a curve and half the class had access to the exam and solutions, I feel like it is unfair for the other half of the class. Do you suggest I talk to the professor about it or stay in silence?

"As other students may have cheated" - the question merely describes other students knowing the questions and their solutions because the questions were used in a past exam. Rather than as "cheating", I'd consider informing oneself about the previous iterations of a given exam as due diligence of every student in exam preparation. (Of course, as a result, this mirrors a comment above, in that it's really a bad idea from the professor's side to exactly reuse any exam questions.)

@O.R.Mapper you are right, I didn't mean to cheat to imply academic misconduct as much as reducing (destroying) the validity of the exam.

@O.R.Mapper to an extent.  I'd consider it due diligence if if the tests are presumed to be available to everyone (that is, the professor posts the previous year's tests online or makes them available to all who request it).  OTOH, if the only way to access an old test is to convince someone from a previous semester to give it to you, that's not really fair because it relies on knowing certain people on campus and having them be willing to provide you with such tests (advantage: greek life).

@guifa: I doubt that notion of "fairness" exists. For instance, students whose elder sibling studied the same subject a year before will inherently have a better access to some information than other students (e.g. handwritten notes from the previous iteration of a lecture). Likewise, having a friend who can explain a certain unclear topic is inherently advantageous over having no such friend. That is not a kind of unfairness that a professor should prevent, and often one that a professor cannot even possibly compensate for. Often enough, it's not so much about convincing other students ...

... students to provide you with something anyway, but simply about making the effort of asking. After all, why would any student be opposed to providing another student with a copy of some material they happen to have? Of course, directly getting in touch with the respective people can be a bit cumbersome. At least where I studied, the student representative board therefore invited all students to provide copies of past exam sheets and also write reports about oral exams, in order to provide a fairly complete collection of material for other students. Students who failed to look into that ...

... collection (and that includes students who (at least claimed they) didn't know about the collection) were not treated "unfairly", but simply failed to prepare the way they should have.

please take this to [chat]

Your comment "I didn't mean to imply academic misconduct" is in direct opposition to the wording in your answer of "punish students for colluding".  Also, you likely meant "throw out the exam" not "throughout".

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What is the purpose of dissertation embargo periods?
I just heard about "dissertation embargoes".  My institution recommends that every graduating student place an embargo on their dissertation.
What is a dissertation embargo, and what is its purpose?

This is the first time I have ever heard of such a thing. Could you provide a link please?

What institution is it?

An embargo effectively withholds your dissertation from being placed on your institution's open-access dissertation archive (from which anyone can view/download your dissertation).
I have placed an embargo on my dissertation so that I may attempt to get a few more papers published without my dissertation being searchable on the web. It is a common practice in the department where I did my PhD (though, I wondered sometimes if it was really necessary).
For a more complete list of reasons why one would choose to place an embargo on their dissertation, I'm listing here an excerpt taken from a University of New Mexico page:

Embargos may be appropriate for authors
  1) who are seeking patents,
  2) who want to publish their work through a traditional press that considers open access publication to be equivalent to prior publication,
  3) who have published material from their work with a publisher that does not allow open access release for a certain period of time, or
  4) who need to protect sensitive data or information.

Pardon my question: it is not meant to be combative; this practice is all but unheard of to me.  You write "I have placed an embargo on my dissertation so that I may attempt to get a few more papers published without my dissertation being searchable on the web." Could you explain why placing your thesis on the web stops you from publishing papers based on it?  Doesn't restricting access to your thesis augment inequity (i.e., some people have obviously seen your thesis work; why doesn't the field as a whole have a right to see it?) and retard progress in your field?

@PeteL.Clark My advisor and another committee member (both EEs) suggested that I place an embargo on my dissertation mainly due to point 2 above in the UNM excerpt (I had an applied math faculty member on my committee who didn't think it was necessary). At the time that I requested the embargo, I was not absolutely convinced that it was necessary for this reason; however, I also needed to request an embargo as my research was partly supported by DoD funds, and I was required to clear my dissertation with the DoD for "public release," a process which (from my experience) can be somewhat slow.

My case was 3), I have included a previously published paper and the Springer forbid that part of the thesis to be accessible online.

A "dissertation embargo" means that access to the dissertation is restricted for a limited period of time (typically one or two years, but possibly longer).
Possible reasons to embargo a dissertation include:

You would like to patent some of the work described in the dissertation. The published dissertation would constitute prior art.
The dissertation includes data covered by a nondisclosure agreement for a limited period of time.
You intend to publish the dissertation as a book, with a publisher that restricts consideration of manuscripts based on publicly available dissertations.

Not only books, papers too in some journals I think. Otherwise +1 :)

Not only books, but both journals and some conferences in my field have embargo periods.

I know of one dissertation that has been on embargo.  The person who wrote it has not said why, but I suspect it may be related to the content. It sets forth new and well-tested scientific methods to detect the secret burials of crime victims and mass graves associated with human genocide. A number of dictatorial regimes on this planet would love to get their hands on the contents of this dissertation because they could be used to make their mass burial dirty work less detectable and make it less likely that they would someday be put on trial at The Hague for crimes against humanity (see Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, etc.).  Sometimes there are very good reasons to withhold a dissertation — even for many years.

authors: Vladimir F Героям слава


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How to grade students' lab worksheets to prepare them for a final lab exam?
I am a physics lab TA and I was recently informed that my engineering students will receive a lab final at the end of the semester worth 50 percent of their grade. The final exam is not personally created by me, but is decided amongst all of the lab TA's teaching the same course in the same semester. The meeting amongst the TA's will occur next week, however I am attempting to prepare for whatever will come, for better or worse for my students. I want my engineering students to succeed, and I want to give them all of my resources to give them the preparation to pass the final exam. I assume that I will not be allowed to tell my students what the lab final will be, or what types of questions will be asked. My students are required to complete 9 weekly lab worksheets corresponding to their specific lab of the week. All sum total of all lab worksheets are worth the other 50 percent of the lab grade.
One issue I am currently weighing in my head is how to grade the lab worksheets. Should I go easy on the grading to soften the blow of the final exam, or should I grade harshly to force them to correct every mistake they make in prepration for the final exam?

While I don't TA physics, but Geology, our labs tend to have the same structure. Luckily the labs are small enough that I can get to know the groups ect, So I can determine how hard they are working on the labs ect, so I generally grade 70% effort and 30% correctness. The difference is though, that you are teaching engineering majors, where I tend to teach non geology or STEM majors. Getting something in the lab 100% correct for my students isn't as important and following the scientific process, but, for a class of engineers, I would have higher expectations since the content they are learning is helpful for their careers later. IE, they should have a vested interest beyond the grade.
My experience with the Lab exams is that the students either do very well or very poorly. I would be somewhat lax on the labs, especially on first time mistakes. But there isn't much you can do if they aren't working hard and aren't completing the labs correctly and they will likely fail the test if thats the case anyway.

People learn physics (and many other things) by making mistakes, and then trying to correct those mistakes. With that in mind, I would always grade activities in a way that was supposed to motivate my students to fix their mistakes. However, it's also useful not to penalize them too much for making mistakes when they are first learning the material. Usually what I wound up doing was grading in a way such that students had to basically know what they were doing to get a 90% or higher, and they would have to really get everything right to get a 100% on an activity, but even if they didn't understand some concepts they would still get around 80%.
Of course, this grading scheme was specified by the administrators I was working for, so I don't really have any data comparing this with alternate grading schemes. I can offer the anecdotal evidence that when I was taking physics classes as an undergraduate, it was understood among the physics students that the grading would be harsh and thus grades as low as 60% or so could still be taken as an indicator that you were basically getting it.

One of my lab instructors would force us to correct the mistakes until the report was of sufficient quality. Sometimes, the problem would be forgotten units on a table, or a numerical error in a formula (fixable in a few minutes); others would be conceptual mistakes (requiring more work).
On another similar lab, the instructor would clearly indicate any errors and discuss them with us to make sure we understood them. There was then no need to rewrite the report, and the grade was only affected mildly. But, on the following reports, you better not make the same mistake, because it will then be penalised.
With the first option you can give them an opportunity to correct the mistakes without harming their grades, albeit at the cost of more work for all parties. On the second, you can make sure they learn from their mistakes, while being nice when they do it for the first time.


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Do publications in machine learning help for admissions into a statistics PhD program?
I am an undergraduate mathematics student who is looking to apply to a Statistics Phd program. I am published, however, my publication is in applied machine learning. While the paper does not contain any theoretical developments, the foundations of machine learning are very statistical in nature. I posed this question to a two professors the responses were the following:

The fact you are published is excellent, this shows ability to do research. This is an important factor when applying to a program.

and

They won't care at all. If someone is applying to a stat program, would I care if they have publication in say, History? or Literature? The publication will not hurt, but they likely won't even care. If it were in a statistics journal, they would.

To clarify both professors knew that the publication was in machine learning and that I am applying to a stat program.
Which answer seems more accurate? Would the publication be a big plus or just ignored?

Lower bound is that they won't hurt. :)

It is difficult to give a "global" answer to this question.
There is a very wide variety of PhD programs in statistics throughout the world, so much so that the overlap between two given programs can end up being surprisingly small.
The closest thing to a short answer is: Yes, it helps. (Or, should!)
Now, for some nuances.
Any scholarly peer-reviewed publication should be viewed favorably. Obviously, the closer your publications are to the field that you're applying to, the more weight they are likely to receive. People – even academics – tend to go with what they know and are familiar with. If the journal/conference is recognizable to them, then that will help, but it's not a prerequisite.
If, for example, you apply to any top-tier PhD programs in statistics, you'll mostly be competing against other applicants with undergraduate degrees in mathematics, so a publication in a reputable journal/conference can help set you apart.
Personally, I disagree with your second professor: I'd be very happy to see a publication in history or literature (or whatever) if accompanied by an otherwise strong application. But, I may also be in the minority there.
It depends on the departments you apply to. Many statistics departments in the US, e.g., have become increasingly attuned to the overlap in statistics, machine learning, and computer science, in general, over the last many years. Some have very active research groups in this area and regularly interact (and collaborate) with machine-learning researchers from other departments and publish in NIPS, ICML, JMLR and other like venues. And, some departments simply have more active research programs, generally speaking, than others.
Applying to departments that have focused research programs in statistical machine learning will improve the chance that your publication will be given greater weight, especially if it is published in a high-profile venue. Other departments that are either more traditional or have different research foci may weigh such a publication differently. In any event, you should try to be aware of how well aligned your interests are to those of the departments you're applying to, assuming your interests are at all well-defined at this stage.
Talk about your research. If your application includes a personal research statement of some sort, discuss your work and describe the statistical content in a concise, matter-of-fact way. If it genuinely led to your interest in applying to PhD programs in statistics, then you can describe this as well, but it should be natural and not forced.


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Am I allowed to write an essay about a scientific theory without violating the copyright?
I have in project to write an essay on the Special Theory of Relativity. My idea is then to publish it as an ebook.
I would like to know if I can freely write about this topic or I need to take into account some problems related to royalties or copyright. Can I write about a topic like that without any problems of this kind? Can I include quotes and information about Einstein's life?
Thanks in advance!

What do you mean by freely? Don't you want to provide references in your publication?

With freely I mean without having issues in term of royalties; I obviously would like to provide references or the source of every quote.

Yes.
Scientific principles are never subject to copyright—you cannot copyright a scientific idea, theory, equation, or concept.
That said, you do have to worry about copyright if you extensively quote from copyrighted primary or secondary resources as part of your text. If you are not directly using their language, then you need only cite the works, and no royalty or copyright issues should arise.
(Note that in the particular case of the special theory of relativity, it is more than 95 years old (as it was announced in 1905), and thus is no longer under US copyright protection in any event, so you could in principle reuse or even reprint the entire text of his article.)

Note that Einstein’s works (if published in Germany) are still under German copyright protection until 01.01.2026 (70 calendar years after his death), if I am not fully mistaken.

Your unequivocal answer is muddled by your appeal to the age of the theory, rather than the age of the paper.  The content of the theory is never subject to copyright.  The text of any article written about it is subject to copyright, but that copyright may have expired by now.

you could in principle reuse or even reprint the entire text of his article, but you still need to make clear it's not your text, or you are guilty of plagiarism.

@gerrit: True, but the question was about royalty or copyright issues, not plagiarism issues.


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If Thomson Reuters says it indexes a journal but it's not mentioned on the journal's web site, who should I trust?
On the Thomson Reuters Master Journal list is stated that the given journal is indexed in Science Citation Index and Current Contents. However, on the official journal's web page, there is no such information.
In addition, the journal has Impact Factor. I also checked on the Thomson Journal Citation Report to be sure.
Who should I trust in this case?

You should trust the results of a search for the journal in Science Citation Index.  If the search is successful, then it's indexed; if your search is unsuccessful, then it isn't.

Out of curiosity, is it a subscription-based journal?

Trust Thomson Reuters, of course. It has all its JCR impact factors up to date.
Beware that there are many journals that print impact factors on their own site with their own definitions making a facade impression to prospective readers and authors. Do not confuse them with JCR impact factors.

Yes, I am aware of this. But this is Elsevier journal and on the journal's webpage, under the IF, there is copyright mark of Thompson Reuters. So I guess I could be pretty confident that this is the real IF.

Yes @Navi, but there is always the up-to-date aspect of Reuters.


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Why do we put names first in bibliographies?
While adding references to a .bib file the other day I found myself putting the title field first as it provided more information about the citations than the author names. After some thought, I wondered why most bibliography formats don't do that to begin with; if the primary goal of references is to provide support for the topic at hand while also giving proper attribution to existing works and to provide avenues for further research by readers, would it not make more sense to put the titles of papers/articles/etc. first and then the author names? It seems to me that the important thing (in terms of the work being written) is not who wrote the cited works but the works themselves, and if citing multiple papers by the same person putting the name first provides somewhat of a distraction from the actual content of the citations. Particularly in the case of collaborative efforts, where a work may have been written by a multitude of people, the title of the work can get pushed aside by the multitude of names (at least when using a format that doesn't just collapse the names to "et al"). What are the underlying reasons for this, or is it just a social thing that happened because researchers like having a significant effect in their fields/their careers depend on it?

If I am looking for a certain paper in the bibliography, I know the author name, not the title of the paper (in most cases).  If I want to discuss the choice of a textbook for a certain course, I refer to them by author name, since the titles are pretty much interchangeable.

@GEdgar Your first statement assumes the paper is cited by author name (and possibly year) rather than by number (the latter seems to be more common in computer engineering) or that, if citations are numeric, the name is explicitly mentioned in the text (which again seems to differ by field).

So many titles starting by "The impact of...". Longer to read than author's name

What @GEdgar says. Most people find it a lot easier to remember ideas by the names of those from which they've learnt them rather than by the (often uninspired and random) titles that have been chosen to convey them.

Usually people will write multiple papers exploring one overarching theme, each paper building on the previous ones and looking into a new aspect. The papers will be connected by one or more common authors, not by their titles. I know a couple of papers on certain topics that I recommend over and over - I know their authors, but not the titles, and I always go back to my .bib file to find the exact references.

Because people deserve credit for their work more than papers deserve credit for the results they contain.

This Question makes sense in practical terms, but includes a misconception in the area of academic culture, when you say, 'if the primary goal of references is to provide support for the topic at hand [...]'.  That is not quite right.
Also, disciplined academic writing tends to take the form of a dialogue (or in simple cases a dialectic), where differing perspectives are chucked into an arena and required to fight it out.  None of them necessarily has to 'win':  finding them all to be wrong is a positive result.
It is very often useful to label a view primarily as emerging historically from the body of some identifiable person's work, rather than hovering it vaguely in conceptual space.
Referencing has two primary goals.
The first is to help interested readers to identify and follow-up the material that you have recruited for your argument, so that they can, if they wish, follow your evidence in detail and, perhaps, find the stuff that you left out.  The idea is (partly) that you have openly saved a reader time in either embracing or challenging your position.  Under present archival conventions, the tracking-down of sources for this purpose (or any other) is almost always most efficiently done by starting with author name.  Scrambling for titles on the web, although I now do it every day, does not (yet) count as an archival convention.
Second, referencing is part of the process of locating yourself in the critical discourse of whatever discipline you are working in.  Your writing is in some sense an act of positioning your view in relation to others', even (or perhaps especially) if some other person's view has shifted over time.
For example...  In film studies it would seem rather ignorant to talk about 'the male gaze' as a convention of camerawork and editing without (a) attributing the expression to Laura Mulvey and (b) noting that she changed her view over time (see Wikipedia, for shorthand).
Merely referring to ideas from published articles, blog posts or even comments by anyone is fine in its place (e.g. my doctoral thesis, here and there).  For the most part, however, it usually works best to say something like, 'Aristotle proposes [an impressive idea].  Hitler disagrees [here, because of this].
Colonel Sanders inadvertently resolves that conceptual conflict by suggesting [that surprising thing].
That is also why we use the present tense:  'Roland Barthes says [something].  Michel Foucault (while never identifying Barthes) responds by saying [something that works far better in the real world].'  You are taking part in a present debate, with points of view that are most efficiently located by identifying their authors.

I apologize for the confusing wording; I didn't really mean "support" in the sense of supporting an argument but more of supporting a concept and providing background information, which I guess would most closely match your self-locating aspect. That said, your response is nicely enlightening for someone still relatively new to academia.

Your mention of film studies makes me wonder: Do academic texts in film studies refer to films primarily by title or by their director, actors, etc.?

@O.R.Mapper Referencing films is something of a fraught issue. (You tell me which version of Metropolis we are talking about... and who 'created' it... and when...) TV episodes are usually a bit easier because they are (usually...) more reliably identifiable. Fan films, YouTube vlogs and other relatively informal material introduce all sorts of complications. (I am suddenly a bit swamped, but nag me at the weekend and I will give a fuller answer.)

If I compile a bibliography and ask myself what to cite my thoughts are "There was this work by X in 1995..." and sometimes "There was this work by X in journal Y..." but really never "There was this paper Z...". I guess many people's minds work like this. In fact in conference chat people usually refer to the "Smith paper from the 90s" or something like that.
So when I read a paper and look up a reference in the bibliography and see that the respective work is by Smith and Jones I usually know the paper from the context. So I don't wonder why the authors often come first but why the year often comes last at the same time because these two things are what I find most useful. At second thought this is not the worst solution since beginning and end are somehow more easily to spot than first and second place.
I'd like to add that I read some papers in Physics where the bibliography did not contain the title at all, but only author, journal, number, pages and year.

If X wrote more than one interesting paper in 1995, do you just add on the subject?

@JAB If you cite Smith's two 1995 papers, exact referencing details vary but in general the alphabetical first is Smith (1995 a), and the second is Smith (1995 b).  Your university/publisher/employer will always be able to tell you the adopted citation format. Many are available, but all are quite well understood and fairly easy to follow. Making up your own will just make it hard for people, and you might have to go back and amend your work in future. This Question is resolving into a matter of academic style, where seeking local advice on preferred format is always the way to go.

@CaptainCranium I was referring to Dirk's mental model, not to the citation format (which I prefer to generate rather than manually format these days now that I've been working with LaTeX for a while and don't have to try to mess with the limited bibliography management in most WYSIWYG word processors.)

Usually "Smith 1995" boils it down enough.

@Dirk Not if you have referred to two, three or twelve papers/books/songs by Smith from 1995.  Forcing the reader to guess and hunt is basically lazy and rude, when you obviously imply that you have the information right in front of you... or you might be trying to hide the fact that you are guessing yourself and your 'research' did not really occur at all. Referencing is always about helping an imagined reader to replicate your project shelf for this stuff (whatever it is), as far and as clearly as possible.

@captaincranium I can follow... You seem to be writing about citations in written text while I wrote about how I remember articles.

I have often wondered about the same question and cannot help but speculate that it is mainly due to historical developments. Maybe, in times when research was only a dialogue between a handful of people in each field, rather than hundreds to thousands of researchers worldwide, as it is nowadays, strongly tying concepts and findings to people seemed like a good idea.
Indeed, referring to papers by authors is quite impractical in various ways:

Often, the same group of authors publishes several papers on different stages or aspects of the same topic. Thus, the author names are always the same and distinguishing the papers based on their author names is impossible. The titles usually serve better to highlight which parts of the work are described in the respective paper.
Another usual occurrence is for the same group of authors (e.g. from the same lab) to produce joint papers on several different topics. Once again, using author names to distinguish the works is pointless. In fact, it could actively contribute to misunderstandings, as readers may know the respective group of researchers, but they might think of a different project by the same researchers than what the paper author is referring to.
Projects and concepts tend to be gradually extended by different groups of authors. Such papers on the different extensions are usually connected by their titles, but not by the names of their authors. Just compare how many papers building upon treemaps mention treemap in their title (along with some specification of the novel extension of the concept), and how many mention Shneiderman in their title.
Titles are chosen, whereas names are not. Sane authors in a given field will not intentionally try to pick a paper title that is the same as another paper title very closely related to their work. On the other hand, it is absolutely possible that several authors in the same subfield share a common surname. (I have more than once read papers where I had no idea (based on just the name) which (w.l.o.g.) Mr. Chen and which Ms. Li of the various possible ones the paper was talking about.)
In general, of course, an author name can only carry information if the reader has heard about the person's research before. A (well-chosen) title carries information in itself, and thus lowers the hurdle to understanding the text.

So, the question remains why many bibliography formats nowadays still put authors into the foreground. I can see several possible reasons:

Despite the aforementioned drawbacks, the benefit of changing (e.g. the formatting of established publication channels) is not worth the perceived risk of abandoning traditions. Established venues might also simply fear unnecessarily creating some chaos until authors have adapted to and become used to the change, whereas new venues may be more likely to replicate established practices as closely as possible in order to appear "serious", comparable to the established venues.
While they carry less information, names are usually shorter than titles. Many titles can be shortened to a few words, but not in a systematical way that would work equally well for all titles.
Bibliography entries are often not referenced by full names, but sometimes by abbreviations of author names. While titles are more meaningful than author names, the first letter of each word in the title (i.e. including articles and such) is rather less meaningful than the first letter of each author name. Furthermore, at least in fields with contribution-based author ordering, using the first letters of the first few author names is guaranteed to also include the "main" authors, whereas the first few words of the title are not guaranteed to be more important than the last ones.

I like this answer and its alternate viewpoint in addition to Captain Cranium's; it's unfortunate that choice of "official" answer can't be split between multiple ones.

To put it another way, you could cite 'What Is An Author?', but that would not give me much of a clue as to the thrust of the article (which might well be the opposite of what I first assume). If you refer in-text to 'Foucault (1969)', however, then you have located the piece in a way that helps me to remember its relationship to 'Barthes (1967)' -- a piece that happens to be entitled 'The Death of the Author'. The point seems to be to create a universe or continuum of identifiable viewpoints (not just ideas) and thus position oneself in the dialogue, to help the reader make sense of it all.

@CaptainCranium: But then, the mention of Barthes (1967) and Foucault (1969) might just as well refer to two unrelated works, which just happened to have been published in close succession. If you do not happen to know already what the respective authors wrote about in the stated years, your guess is as good as mine. In contrast, if The Death of the Author (1967) and What Is An Author? (1969) are cited, all readers - including those who did not know one or both of the referenced works beforehand - can immediately see the connection and thus make sense of the statement.

@O.R.Mapper Apologies for my huge delay in responding with an important subpoint. I still feel that participation in an academic discourse is primarily a matter of locating one's present view in the existing debate. By far my preferred supporting convention has two parts. First, brief references with titles and specific page numbers in numbered footnotes, which also gives an opportunity to include a note if that might help some less informed readers to stay there on the page. Second is an alphabetical gathering of all references, with full publication information, at the end of the piece.

In mathematics, in each of the several general areas of interest to me, the possible titles are so poor in information-content that they are nearly worthless, while the number of authors making the most meaningful contributions is small-enough so that author+year (with possible suffix "a,b,...") is vastly more effective than giving titles.
Coming at it from the opposite end, "new" authors who've written relatively few things are still far better distinguished by name+year (in terms of information content with the goal of distinguishing them, etc) than titles (once one knows the general field).
Thus, operationally, I look at author first. If recognizable, then I look at year. If author is not recognizable, then I look at the title as guide for general subject area, then year (for an idea of where-in-the-progression it is).
(Also, the bibliographic style of [number] is really not helpful in reading, since the number itself has essentially zero information content...)

I find that the number style works fine when using rich text documents that include hyperlinks between citations in text and the full references at the end, such as those generated by hyperref. Of course, we're not yet at the point where hard copies offer the same functionality, so that only really works for electronic versions.

@JAB, oh, indeed, rich-text possibilities are another thing entirely!

I assume that the [number] format would also be potentially confusing in mathematics papers, as it looks a little too much like maths.

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Necessity of MoU for researcher exchange or collaboration
In my research institute, there is a fair amount of discussion around wanting to collaborate or create exchanges with other labs, especially outside of the country (we are in Asia).  From myself and a few other researchers, we have connections to labs in the US from graduate school and previous research.
On my own initiative, I exchanged interns and research assistants between my lab and one in the states.  It was specific on the people we had, such that a student interning in my lab would benefit from going to the lab in the states and vice versa, as we worked on a common project.
The higher-ups want to make some "official" exchange, which may be some asian culture at play.  From this, the conversations are always around signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU).  For the exchange I worked on, we had specific people and specific goal, so a general Lab to Lab MoU did not seem as relevant as a mutual agreement of what the purpose of the exchange was.
My question is, how important or useful is an MoU, are there pros and cons to this?  I don't think it has any legal weight, so does anyone have experience with this type of collaboration and see why it is necessary in an overall scale?  Is signing an MoU the only way for an institute to call an exchange 'official'?

MOUs serve several purposes in my experience. First, they put down in writing what the two labs have agreed to do together. This formalizes the relationship a little and allows the participants to refer back to their commitments. Sometimes people get busy and forget to do some parts of the agreement. The MOU allows the other side to gently remind their partners that everyone committed to something and ask them when they will start on their part. People don't generally intend to shirk their responsibilities, but academics and researchers get busy, so informal and unpaid promises are first to slip. MOUs which formalize the relationship are often enough to make sure each side holds up its end.
Second, they allow others inside and outside the respective organizations to recognize that the relationship exists. Labs have directors, their directors have bosses (often department chairs, deans, or research vice presidents), and their bosses have bosses on up the chain. Having an MOU between labs establishes a formal relationship that can be recognized by these people. In fact, depending on the organization, the boss of the lab director may have to sign off on the MOU (not just the lab director themselves), which gives the agreement some level of officialness.
This official recognition generally doesn't get used for much more than promotion of the relationship between the labs. Though, it may also serve as the first step in a deepening relationship between larger parts of the overall organizations (departments, colleges/schools, and even whole universities or government entities). These formal relationships can also be helpful in pursuing government funding in some countries to help support the collaboration.
I've never used an MOU to formalize a simple summer student exchange. Those, in my experience, were always done with a verbal or email agreement. However, everything longer than a summer or more complicated than a student exchange that I've been involved in has had a written MOU. They lay out the expectations and give the signers cover with their higher-ups when the questions come about what two groups are doing together.
It's not generally seen as a contract, but does up the seriousness of the relationship to have an MOU.

The tl;dr version: An MOU is a "high-volume," longer-term cooperation agreement between research organizations. It won't make much difference in setting up a single exchange, but it will make it a lot easier for large numbers of personnel to do exchange visits.

@aeismail I don't think that's a good tl;dr. MOUs get used for lots of things besides personnel exchange. Also, characterizing them as a contracts is misleading since MOUs are usually non-binding statements of mutual intent.

Fair enough. I've edited slightly.


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How to "keep in touch" with a potential advisor?
I contacted a professor by email in order to introduce myself to him and ask for a research position in his group at some point in the future. He expressed interest in me, but, when we finished our email discussions, he said "keep in touch."
I'm confused about what this means. Specifically, I mean, what should I talk to him about prior to me getting any kind of offer, etc.? How often should I contact him? Basically, I would like to know:

How do I "keep in touch" with a potential advisor prior to getting any kind of research offer?

Isn't "Keep in touch" a common english parting phrase? I personally wouldn't read anything more into this than that the prof. is interested in hearing from you again at some point in the future.

@MadJack That's what I mean. Thanks. Is there any suggestions?

Professors are just people. They mean the same thing by ordinary English phrases as everybody else does.

@DavidRicherby Which, to be fair, is often not all that discernible!

Please make sure that my edit maintains the spirit of your original question. If you don't like it, you can always roll back to a previous version.

@MadJackM It seems great and that's what I want to know. I believe I should largely improve my writing skill. Thanks.

When a member of academic staff says "Keep in touch" to a leaving student or researcher it often means "Keep me informed with major events in your career or family". Yes, it probably has the expectation of an email, but not too regularly.
They are probably interested in where you might be working when you have left and want to be informed of how to contact you when your contact details change. I sometimes get an email from students who have left 5, 10, 15, 20 years in the past. They tell me "I now work for XYZ corp as VP of ABC, how are things back at the University?", or "My child is applying to study with you, is Prof. PQR still there?". It is all good to know.
There are other times† I might used the phrase in an email with someone. If I was telling them that I was the wrong person to contact about an issue, or that this is the wrong time to discuss an issue; in other words, if I was refusing an answer, I might add "Let's stay in touch" to indicate I was not refusing all contact for all time. Sometimes students mistake a refusal to answer with an end to all communication. For example, at this precise moment in time I know all graduates results but could not answer any questions about progression to a Phd programme as that might imply what the grades may be‡. In that case it would mean, "At the appropriate time you will have the information you need.." or similar.

†This paragraph added based  on further details in the comments.
‡Result discussions are currently embargoed till transcripts are officially released.

Thanks. But he mentioned that on the condition that I want to be a Phd student with him.

@zhangwfjh I'm not sure that I understood you......

I am not a student of him who's gonna leave, instead, I plan to be his student and also he shows his interest. Then he told me to "keep in touch"

@zhangwfjh - I've added another paragraph.

OP is seeking answers about how to "keep in touch" with a potential advisor, not someone they've already worked with.

As a professor, I am always happy to know when my students are successful, and this is a great time to "keep in touch".
If you are start graduate school or a good job, I definitely recommend e-mailing professors who wrote you recommendation letters or who were otherwise especially helpful. You don't have to, but it will be appreciated. This goes especially if you would be willing to talk to younger, current students with an interest in following your footsteps!

OP is seeking answers about how to "keep in touch" with a potential advisor, not someone they've already worked with.

In which country is this? What kind of research position are you talking about? How far in your studies are you?
For example, in the USA it is common practice that you are not directly involved with your advisor in the first few years of your PhD study, isn't it? In that case "keep in touch" could mean something like "let me know if you have been accepted for the PhD study at my university, and if so, come early in your first year to discuss how you could best get involved with my research group and to get advice about the subjects you should take in addition to the compulsory ones".
On the other hand, in my country, people apply to do a PhD with a specific advisor. "Keep in touch" could mean "come back with a draft of a thesis proposal (and do not submit your thesis proposal without consulting it with me first)". Or it could mean "let me know if your interest is serious (it's OK if you have been just asking)". Or if you still have a year or more of your Masters to go, then "keep in touch" could mean something like "feel free to turn to me for advice on the kind of experience that you should gather before entering my research group; finish your Masters as quickly as you can and turn back to me when you are ready to discuss the actual thesis proposal". (For example, if you are unsure whether you should rather take subject A or subject B in the final year of your Masters, you could send an e-mail asking which would be more relevant to the kind of work you would be doing with your future advisor.)
If you are already doing research, maybe you could send some interesting bits of your research before it gets published. And reading the papers of your chosen advisor and asking good questions about them (you will have to do this anyway if you are about to start working in their research group, so why not show some initiative?)

I'm not in academia, but if I received this kind of request, I would ask if there is a social media outlet they subscribe to.  If the relationship was purely professional, I would probably lean toward LinkedIn.  If there was more friendship in the relationship, I would lean toward Facebook (or both).

I'm not sure that connecting with a potential student on a social networking site would be considered a "good idea."

@MadJack Of course the usual caveats of using social media would apply.


text:
What should you do when your supervisor suffers from Dunning Kruger effect?
My supervisor wants to borrow some ideas from another sub-discipline into his own sub-discipline. The problem is he is suffering from Dunning Kruger effect. He just has some very basic knowledge about that sub-discipline. He thinks he has a very deep understanding of that sub-discipline and he doesn't need to invest time as they are too low level details to spend his time. As a result, he comes up with some wild hypotheses (anyone who has good understanding of that domain will simply know it doesn't make sense) or something that's obviously true. And he keeps arguing that his hypotheses are true and noble. As he doesn't have good understanding of that domain and he thinks it's too low level detail to spend his time. So after some time, the whole argument turns into opinion based arguments, no longer fact based or reasoning based arguments. Then he becomes very rude and keeps demeaning us (me and another PhD student).
He doesn't allow us to work on or discuss our own hypotheses, he simply discards them without giving any constructive feedback or any reason why we shouldn't work on or discuss them.
At the end of meeting, after long arguments and rectifying my supervisor's hypotheses, he claims he is the one who came up with these amazing hypotheses and we didn't contribute anything in the research, we just did the experiments.
Now meeting with my supervisor has become emotionally exhausting and unproductive for me. We are wasting time because he thinks he has deep understanding of this new domain.
Just to make it clear, I am not saying he is not smart. He is a smart person. But he doesn't understand this new domain and thinks he has deep understanding.

This seems on the border of a "Here's my story, now what do I do?" type question.  But the title question seems reasonable.
If you feel like your advisor does not have enough knowledge about something to usefully direct you: first, try to get some independent confirmation that that's true.  The Dunning-Kruger effect may not be cutting in the direction that you think.  But assuming it is: you either need to direct your research towards your advisor's expertise -- this is, by the way, a quite normal process in most student/advisor relationships, as academic knowledge is vast but in order to make progress most academics are highly specialized -- or you need to find a different advisor.  In your case

At the end of meeting, after long arguments and rectifying my supervisor's hypothesis's, he claims he is the one who came up with these amazing hypothesis's and we didn't contribute anything in the research, we just did the experiments.
Now meeting with my supervisor has become emotionally exhausting and unproductive for me.

it sounds like you have lost faith in your advisor.  Consider looking for someone else.

I'd like to add that if you do go the route of working outside your advisor's specialty, you need not always find a different advisor, but you certainly must find another researcher who has expertise in the subfield and is willing to either be a co-advisor or willing to serve on your committee as a highly involved member, not just the kind of committee member who meets with you once a year (or even worse only at your defense and candidacy exams) to assess your progress, but the kind that you actually collaborate with and write papers with.


text:
In Elsevier Editorial System, how do I resend a paper with "Submission needing revisions" status?
I've received a letter from the editor about minor revision to my paper and, if I want, that I can resend revised manuscript. The paper is currently under "Submissions needing revision" in Elsevier Editorial System (EES).
Do I need to notify the editor by mail or somehow through EES that I will resend the revised version or just send it again right after making changes/replying to reviewers' comments?

The expected action would be for you to quickly but thoroughly make the necessary revisions to your paper. Sometimes the journal, through the electronic submission system or through the decision mail, provides a time frame for revisions. in my environment minor revisions is commonly expected within 3 weeks and major revisions within 6 weeks of receiving the comments. This is by no means a universal time frame so you should try to figure out what applies in "your" journal.
What is important is that you address each of the comments received and provide a clear account for how you have done so. You should make the revisions as quickly as you can. If you are uncertain about the time frame, send an e-mail to the editor and ask. Since a minor revision is likely to be follow by acceptance if revisions are made successfully, also go through and make sure your manuscript adheres to journal style requirements. This is usually given by an "Instruction for Authors" (or equiv.) but can also be gathered from looking at a recently published paper in the journal. Pay particular attention to the reference system.

I asked the editor about the time frame because I didn't received any explicit deadline. He said the sooner, the better; the maximum is 6 months.

Good, then sooner is better. The time frame is clear and the sooner you complete the revisions, thesooner the paper can be published (given that your revisions are deemed sufficient)


text:
How important are independent undergrad projects in grad school applications for CS?
This may be a particularly specific question, but I am at a point where I can choose to take additional mathematics courses in the final year of my degree to strengthen my transcript for grad school applications to Computer Science, but I am also able to choose to do an 8 month supervised research/project course (essentially an undergrad capstone/thesis equivalent).
Of course it depends on the schools, but in terms of general grad school admissions, would a personal project that requires a large amount of independent work show more strength than a few additional (but still important, some schools I've looked into list these as preferred prerequisites) math classes?

This seems like an important question.  I think the results would be the dictating factor (but you cant know it until you try).  As in, does your supervised research use some of the math that you should learn in the class but have been able to figure out yourself, or does it result in a publication?  Both of these would show to me that a student is capable of research and a fit for graduate school.  *Assuming the graduate school you are applying to is for research and not a terminal engineering degree of applied skill.

The goal of a PhD is to become a successful independent researcher.  The admissions committee will be looking for evidence that you are likely to become a successful independent researcher.  Actually doing successful independent research provides that evidence.  Taking more classes may not.

I should have mentioned that I am actually only considering my MSc./5 the moment, however I trust your logic applies the same in both scenarios

The short answer, at least in my opinion, is definitely to do the independent project if you're considering graduate school. But an important consideration is making sure it contributes to a strong application package.
If you chose to take the additional classes, their grades would be reflected on your transcript and in your GPA, and so there would be an objective measure of how you had mastered their content and in so doing had become a better candidate for admission.
If you do the independent project, you want to consider carefully how its results will be communicated so as to strengthen your application package. You might at some point discuss this with the project supervisor. If publishable output is a possibility, that's great, but I'm assuming that's unlikely. But if things go well (AFTER it's established that things are going well), you should approach your supervisor about providing a reference letter that you can include with your applications. You don't want to just have that project listed in your application alongside all your other classes; you want to be able to demonstrate how doing independent research as an undergrad made you more likely to succeed as a graduate student (thereby making it easier for the admissions committees to justify offering you a place in their incoming class).


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Is it advisable to continue with a research project if I'm not learning much from it?
I’m an undergrad involved in a research project with a professor that has potential to lead to a publication in a good journal. The field concerned is a relatively new field of biology and this project is completely voluntary. My work till now has been brunt work- monotonous, painstaking work. There’s more in the future just like that. My concern is that I don’t seem to be learning much. I don’t understand everything that’s going on. My advisor doesn’t seem too concerned to acquaint me completely. His attitude is this: This stuff is something beyond the scope of my understanding right now, so I shouldn’t be very worried.
On one hand that seems reasonable- I’m only an undergrad who obviously cannot understand everything that’s going on simply because I don’t have the background for it. But I’m not too eager to quit either because I know that a good publication in the undergrad level will have a huge impact on my chances of getting into grad school. On the other hand, if I don’t understand everything going on, what does a publication mean? It will be pointless I think to continue with this project just because it will boost my chances of getting into grad school (but I don’t know yet how easy or difficult it is to land a project and if I can just throw this away so easily).So the question is whether I should be continuing the project (since this is voluntary, I can quit anytime if I feel the need to).

When you say you "don't understand everything," do you mean that there are some things you don't understand? Or that you don't understand anything about the project?

I understand the basic idea behind the project and the logic behind our approach, but things like interpreting results from experiments make no sense to me. My advisor is the one who's been doing that.

@Guest "things like interpreting results from experiments make no sense to me" That sounds worrisome to me. I think if you are volunteering your time, the minimum you should be able to ask for is that the senior people teach you what they are doing, and why.

You don't need to understand everything that's going on.
But if you don't know enough to interpret what you're doing and why it's important, then you're right: there's no point in doing it.
Having said that, this doesn't necessarily mean you should quit right now. Ask your advisor to suggest some papers, textbooks, or other resources that can help you understand the background necessary for your experiment. There is no such thing as a topic that undergrads are not capable of understanding. There may be topics that would require a great deal of work for an undergrad to understand, but if you're willing to put in the work your advisor should be willing to point you in the right direction.
However, if your advisor is not willing to help you learn (or at least suggest ways for you to learn independently), then you're better off volunteering your efforts to someone you can learn from; it's time to leave.
(If your work does not represent a meaningful intellectual contribution to the research (as per your description), then your advisor will not be able to write a compelling letter of recommendation that speaks of your research ability for admissions to graduate school.)

"There is no such thing as a topic that undergrads are not capable of understanding." That alone requires a +1.


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How to take the endorsement request for arXiv?
Very recently, I received an email from a student (probably, undergrad) from some country asking me for an endorsement for his/her paper to be submitted to arXiv. I do not know the student. I have never cited his/her work in my publications and possibly not vice-versa. Basically, there is no link at all.
The mail to me was also cc-ed to some big persons in top-ranked universities. The email was similar to the following along with the forwarded mail from arXiv.

Hello,
I would kindly like to ask your help to endorse me to submit an
  article. My research is already published on [some unknown journal].
I appreciate your  kindness,
Thanks in advance
---forwarded message from arXiv.

However, I didn’t understand how it works? Somewhere in arXiv page, it was mentioned that we are not supposed to review the article. – Then, how am I going to take this endorsement request?
Is it somewhat based on the hypothesis that if you know a person A and you have already published in arXiv before, then the work of A is also publishable in arXiv?

I take endorsement on the arXiv to mean "I know enough about this person's work to reasonably expect that the submitted paper is appropriate for the arXiv." If the person and the submitted paper are unknown to me, then the only way to arrive at such a reasonable expectation would be to read at least part of the paper. In other situations, the decision to endorse could be trivial.

I would think the point of this kind of personal endorsement is partly to figure out if this person is who they say they are to root out obvious plagarism and spam. These seems very hard to do if you do not know who they are.

I removed the "endorsement" tag that was newly created on this question because it's ambiguous and highly likely to be misused. A less ambiguous tag "arxiv-endorsement" might be better, but it's not clear whether that would be useful given the small volume of questions related to that (see chat transcript). If you want to make a case for the tag, I suggest asking for community feedback first on [meta].

First of all

The mail to me was also cc-ed to some big persons in top-ranked universities.

For me this would already be a red flag and result in not endorsing them. The Arχiv explicitly instructs you not to spam when seeking endorsement:

Please note, however, that it is inappropriate to email large numbers of potential endorsers at once, or to repeatedly email the same endorser with a request for endorsement.

Endorsing somebody you do not know
Endorsing somebody you do not know is somewhat equivalent to saying that the article would pass the initial check of some (reputable) journal, i.e., with endorsing you confirm:

That the article adheres to basic standards of scientific writing.
The article is not complete bogus (e.g. neglecting well-established facts).

From the Arχiv’s help pages:

We don't expect you to read the paper in detail, or verify that the work is correct, but you should check that the paper is appropriate for the subject area. You should not endorse the author if the author is unfamiliar with the basic facts of the field, or if the work is entirely disconnected with current work in the area.

Endorsing somebody you know

Is it somewhat based on the hypothesis that if you know a person A and you have already published in arXiv before, then the work of A is also publishable in arXiv.

Not exactly; it is based on the assumption that if you have published on the Arχiv and know person A, you are qualified to judge whether person A is likely to attempt to publish sub-standard content on the Arχiv. If you know person A and also know that person A is not remotely capable of proper scientific writing (and research), you should not endorse them. For example, you should probably not endorse the ghost-healer who happens to live next to you.
Explicitly not endorsing somebody
It may be helpful to explicitly not endorse (instead of doing nothing) if you think that somebody should not be allowed to publish on the Arχiv. Otherwise some sloppy endorser may unilaterally allow them to do so.
If you do not want to endorse somebody, you have to select either “I do know […] personally” or “I have read the paper […] intends to submit” (at least this was the case half a year ago), even if neither applies and you refuse endorsement due to them spamming their endorsement request, publishing in predatory journals, or similar. (This was confirmed to me by the Arχiv when I had this problem.)

+1. Thank you for such an wonderful answers. I am waiting for few more suggestions.

And obviously yes, we can always do that "I don't know...". But, I was more interested in know how this endorsement is different from peer-review. It seems like endorsement is just the initial desk check, if we summarize.

I would say the default response should be the same as your default response to any other spam: just ignore, as you don't know the requester and owe them nothing. Your response may be different if the topic of the requester's article is of some interest for you.