text:
Collaborator remade all the figures of our results. How to proceed?
We are in a collaboration with another group, and our PIs have several papers and ongoing projects together (I am a 3rd year PhD student). They are experimental, we are computational. Around 1.5 years ago, they asked me to model something, which I did. Based on the model, several very cool and important observations were made, and since also I did not stop at only what I was asked for, but dug deeper, I managed to set up several interesting hypotheses. All of them are being tested, as they found them to be important questions.
On one of the first things we wrote a paper (I have shared co-authorship). I made all the figures of our models and several other panels, which were all to support or analyze these models. I spent days over a few weeks developing them (I am picky with colors, making sure they are accessible for colorblind people, things are aligned, fonts, etc.). Everybody said they were beautiful.
Fast forward, this paper came back from review. We agreed how we will rearrange some of the panels, move to supplementary or add. I again spent a day just to recolor things (one of the reviewers did not like one of the colors, and although exporting the figure in higher resolution would have solved the problem, we decided to make sure that they will like it, and changed it. But since these colors are used consistently across panels, almost all of them needed to be changed to accommodate this.) After the weekend, I needed to spend 2 days with preparing for a one-day retreat, so I could not immediately make everything.
After I came back, the collaborating PI asked me to meet with him. In the meeting, he showed me new figures - where he changed almost all of the panels that I have made (not just recolored, but remade from scratch using my models, except for one, that he also wants to alter). I did not confront him, as I felt very uncomfortable and quite upset and also realized that he does not have the slightest clue that this might be a problem. I needed to tell him however that the colors that he chose are almost indistinguishable from each other. His intention of remaking the panels was not discussed beforehand.
I told this to my PI, who immediately said that this is not okay, she knows that I have spent tons of time on this (this is a side project, but took away quite significant time from my main one). Later the day, she told me that she spoke with the other PI and told him that at least he should apologize. I met with him in the corridor later, but he did not mention anything about this, just asked me to send an editable format of the last of the former panels. I did not yet tell this to my PI, I do not want to tell on somebody else anymore.
I do not know what to do. We have several ongoing projects but I feel micromanaged and my time and effort disrespected. Honestly, I am very upset and feel like being used as a kind of a result producing machine. I also do not think that from a management point of view this is okay from a PI, especially if he is from another group, altering the representation of results that is coming from outside his group.
I would like to ask for suggestions. Should I just drop this matter, and at most only dump the future results on him and let him do whatever he wants? I can make more drastic measures e.g. dropping all the future collaborations but I would feel that I am overreacting. What do people think?
EDIT: His figures are not of better quality. He removed information from the figures (both scientific, and e.g. labels that help the reader to understand the figure by a glance). We needed to convince him not to use red-green on the same figures to highlight differences. For the results, that came from our lab, we need to fight for every label and legend to get them included and consistently colored, and his colors to be explained in the legend. He feels free to just simply neglect our comments and requests on the visualization on our own results (especially when I and not my supervisor is asking, but sometimes he also tries "not to hear hers).

I'd personally think the best figures should be used, regardless of who put how much time into doing them. You seem convinced that yours are best, and you may well be right (I can't know of course). But it's not clear to me whether you properly tried to discuss and defend your figures? Did the collaborator give you reasons why they think their figures are better? Did you ask for the reasons?

"[T]the colors that he chose are almost indistuingishable from each other." This can be a big problem for the approximately 1/6 of men who have some extent of red-green color-blindness. If the OP has this and the person who changed the figures does not, that issue needs to be addressed. People without color-blindness often do not understand this problem.

My experience with joint papers is: multiple people are involved and everyone gets an input.  In theory anyone can change anything.  Even if it's annoying, just grit your teeth and go with it if it improves the paper.  If you think their figures make the paper worse, discuss it with them.  I had a similar experience where a collaborator kept insisting on re-writing the article in poor English, at least you don't have to deal with that.

His figures are not of better quality. He removed information from the figures (both scientific, and e.g. labels that help the reader to understand the figure by a glance). We needed to convince him not to use red-green on the same figures to highlight differences. For the results, that came from our lab, we need to fight for every label and legend to get them included and consistently colored, and his colors to be explained in the legend. He feels free to just simply neglect our comments and requests on the visualization on our own results.

There are both technical and emotional aspects to this question, I fully empathize with both.
I agree with answers that you should push to better communicate all of the aspects of your work that minimize problems with publication, respond to reviewers' comments and are likely to help likelihood and speed of acceptance, as well as the readability aspects.

But in addition to all of that, @WolfgangBangerth's

You aren't the "owner" of the figures.

Nicely isolates the tension between the lauded and encouraged concept of ownership in a place of work and just how much like sausage-making publishing collaborative research can be sometimes.
It also offers a way forward - the OP will no doubt be making many, many more figures (and of course actual scientific contributions!) in the future, and if things don't end up the way they would like this time for one reason or another, remembering that will allow the OP to find a way to let it go and move on to the next challenge.
If that does happen, then consider the Chinese finger trap. One can't move on to the next great things as long as one is focused on the tension at hand.

Joint papers are just that: They are collaborations where, ultimately, everyone is responsible for everything. My take on this is that if I write some text, then it's fair game for every one of my co-authors to edit it. The same is true for figures, which just like text is just a means to convey information -- which is best done if everyone has input, and nobody is the "owner".
So, in my perspective, the failure in the collaboration is one of communication, not of management. You aren't the "owner" of the figures. You happen to be the one who has spent the most time on them, and so everyone who wants to edit them should probably talk to you about it (and explain their reasons), but just because you made them does not mean that you are best at doing so or have the experience how this kind of data is typically shown in your community -- things your PIs may well have more experience in.
So rather than spending your time feeling peeved and not wanting to talk to anyone about it, move your fingers to the keyboard and write an email to all the authors (or just the other PI) and explain your process in choosing colors, styles, etc., and how you think the figures should be changed in response to the reviewer comments. Then let others provide their perspective. It isn't a collaboration if you treat your figures as your property that nobody can touch -- of course, it isn't a collaboration either if the other PI just changes things, but give them a chance to explain themselves: you might actually learn something in the exchange.

I think the best figures should be used irrespective who made the final touch on them.
But on the other hand be careful because your collaborator may act like this because they are trying to steal your co-authorship and become a single first author.
As a background story as a pre-PhD, I was writting a paper with the results of my Master thesis, where I was sharing co-authorship with a PhD student who was VERY manipulative. Since he was far longer in the group than I was, he knew that before submission the professor asked who made which figure to take a final decision on the author list/order.
While preparing the manuscript we split the plots that had to be done half and half, since we were both co-first authors.
However during the revisions, he decided to move half of the plots I prepared to the appendix, and re-plot my plots in the main text.
Then he went on trying to change my co-authorship to a middle author position, claiming that he did all the plots in the main text alone. (Although these were the results of my thesis and I developed the method, the code etc.)
For the story he didn't succeed, but I had to change group to be able to fight him.
So to return to your story, be a little careful with that collaborator and try to find out why he decided to redo your work himself.

I do not like this answer since it seems to convey malicious intent. The last paragraph however, is the key. I once was the guy who re-did all the figures because the original ones were horrible. While they surely did convey all information properly, they disregarded all rules of typesetting and style: Different fonts, different sizes, red-blue color-scheme, impossible to print raster plots,… rather than to educate the original author on how to improve their figures, I decided it would be quicker just to redo it myself.

‘ But on the other hand be careful because your collaborator may act like this because they are trying to steal your co-authorship and become a single first author.’ that just seems to be scaremongering, nothing in the questions implies that’s the case.

@Hermann Replotting the figures is perfectly ok if you can polish them! Rerunning the simulations as is mentioned here ('not just recolored, but remade from scratch using my models, except for one, that he also wants to alter') is more probable to have malicious intent. Since the problem was the color he could have just replotted the data.

@user438383 "not just recolored, but remade from scratch using my models, except for one, that he also wants to alter".

@can'tstopmenow yes, so they still used the OP's original model and still kept one of the figures. Under no circumstances would you drop an author because you dropped some, but not all, of their figures and they still contributed the model.

@user438383 not drop! But change order/ shared co-authorship sure you can.

@can'tstopmenow To me, "remade from scratch" is the obvious choice if I consider figures non-salvageable. Running calculations again "using my models" is also something I would do if I did not have access to the raw data. To me, the behavior describes someone who does not like talking about what they want to do, they just go for it. By Hanlon's Razor, I assume an error in communication on both sides rather than malicious intent on either side. However personally I never was in a situation where authorship was so important that it came down to figures, so I might see this too relaxed.

@Hermann I find that approach as overstepping one's position. If one has issues with the figures, first discuss the issue and then let the responsible person work on this. By stepping in and (re-)doing other's people work shows that you don't respect their work and expertise (and probably trying to show that you can do everything alone or better).

@can'tstopmenow I concur. Except for the last bit in parenthesis. There is a difference between "I will not waste my time talking to you, I would rather do it myself". This is a frustrated person working towards a common goal. The other is "I can do this better than you in particular". This is a competitive person working to humiliate his peers. Since OP does not know, we can only speculate what is going on here.

His figures are not of better quality. He removed information from the figures (both scientific, and e.g. labels that help the reader to understand the figure by a glance). We needed to convince him not to use red-green on the same figures to highlight differences. For the results, that came from our lab, we need to fight for every label and legend to get them included and consistently colored, and his colors to be explained in the legend. He feels free to just simply neglect our comments and requests on the visualization on our own results.

@aqua This seems something that your advisor has to step in and resolve. Are the two advisors involved (yours and his) of approximately the same seniority/status?

she told me that she spoke with the other PI and told him that at least he should apologize. I met with him in the corridor later, but he did not mention anything about this
The very next thing you must do is call a simultaneous meeting of all three of you. This meeting cannot end until you all agree on which figures  will be used in the final publication.


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Department not allowing me to take courses from another department even though everyone else is allowed
I am a graduate student here. There are two set of rules applying to the degree I am seeking:

rules from the university
rules from my department

Using the above sets of rules, you have to make a plan of study (POS) which would be the list of coursework you complete towards your degree.
I followed all those rules, but a few days ago the administrative assistant who’s in charge of all this suddenly said that I was not allowed to take courses from a certain department.
I asked them for the reason for this and got varying responses which included:

The university office raised an objection.
The department in question raised an objection.
There was some new rule which has been in power since last year.
(I found this hard to believe because as long as you follow the university and department rules to the letter, which I did, you're basically allowed to take whatever courses you want to fill in your additional requirements.)

After some digging in, it turns out there’s no such rule. In fact many people from my department have taken courses from that certain department this semester.
What should I do? I feel like I’m being singled out here. I feel this is also unfair if I’m the only one who’s forced to follow this non-existing rule.
This just happened:
I kept asking them about it and the reason for all this changed to the CSCI department again.
They denied singling me out, this was a lie, due to the reason highlighted below.
Finally, I revealed how other students in the my dept are also taking these courses and how people typically busy with research would only do so  for courses which they can use towards their degree (so they were not taking them to fill in credits only).
In the end, get this, this person tells me that the whole ordeal was just a 'mistake' which also suggests that this would have gone unnoticed if I hadn't asked.

This is an issue for you to take with your department chair (and possibly up the line to your graduate dean.)  It's really not possible to answer this question without specific knowledge of the rules of your institution.

Any idea why they would do this? Who do you think would have power to make the administrative assistant write this nonsense?

My point is that I can't answer the question because I'm not familiar with the institution or its specific rules.  You haven't provided enough context, and even if you did provide information about your degree program requirements, university requirements for the graduate degree, and the courses that you want to take, I couldn't determine whether or not such a rule had recently been added.

At my institution, for example, my graduate advisees can't take any course without my approval.  I could clearly prevent you from taking a course from the department in question.

Are you suggesting that it is my advisor who did this? If he did, then he's being highly covert about this, since he basically said he knew nothing when I asked him about all of this

I'm not suggesting that at all, just giving you an example of a rule (at my institution) which might prevent a student from taking a course that he/she wants to take.

Is the course you want to take from the other department relevant for your degree? Or are you taking it for fun?

Sounds like you're having a stressful situation.  Still, it'd seem best to avoid the rant stuff at the end of the question.

@Nick S, You don't take courses for fun, sadly it's not like that. Each course is challenging and worthwhile in it's own way (point is to learn something), I guess being a student (hope you are too), I guess it's one of the sole reasons at the university right? Say for example, there are people who don't see the point in someone working on their education, then it seems like they don't carry the spirit of academica and should not be there at all, right? If all they do is try to push people out, then they must really be struggling with their own shit, I feel sad for them.

I get that you're upset, but this is a Q&A site where we aim to compile a library of high quality questions and answers, not a "Here's my story, my department sucks amirite" site. We try to keep questions focused on the actual question, professional in tone, and in a form where they'll be most useful to other readers in the future.

I added in the end result for future reference (and how I came to that conclusion)

@ff524 I never said that my 'department sucks' but what this one person did was wrong (at behest of whomsoever they did so)

@pong In theory you are right, but in practice I know students who took or tried to take courses from other departments because that particular course was labeled as easy or the the instructor was known to be more lenient. And yes some students are trying to learn, but sadly there are lots and lots of students taking a class only because it is mandatory for their degree, and they are going to class just to get a (passing) grade. And I met students which only went to University because their parents forced them. So, no, it is not always true that students take classes because they want to learn

@Nick S I see all the points you're listing out (although majorly branched out through your imagination, maybe a bit too much)a, but none of them validates as marking the student as doing something wrong. In an academic sense, they're a student, so say for example, mobbing (or for that matter any form of unnecessary 'fix' on anyone) any student for being a student would count as harassment (probably maybe even a unlawful if you want to be a part of it). Nor can I understand how this helps the argument how all courses are courses in their own right, but whatever

Also important to mention, if the rules all line up, like anything in life, it's not really anybody's business what someone else might be doing (I mean gossip may be spicy, but after a point there's that point which is typically why laws exist, i.e., animalistic instincts don't overpower human nature ). Many countries have privacy laws protecting people's information, many don't. To each their own, but the crux of the matter is that people do their own thing and one keeps to oneself. I mean, that is how it usually goes, unless someone else may have some other abnormality in mind.

@pong The sad part is that I met students which took courses from other departments just because they thought they were "fluffy". I wish students like this would be only part of my imagination, but in reality people are not perfect. While many students are going to University to learn, the reality is that in some situations the GPA can become more important than the learning itself: the students could lose his/her scolarship because of the GPA, and in some cases they cannot afford school anymore, or the student could be on probabion and be thrown out if they don\t get a certain grade.

My comment typically doesn't apply to strong students, and I agree strong students would most of the time not do such things. But it only takes some weak students doing this for a rule, even if sometimes unwritten, to be added, and then the rule affects everyone.

You seem to be good at looking up university policy and rules, and reading them carefully.  So I suggest your next step would be to look up procedures for appealing academic decisions.  Also, get to know your university hierarchy.
Universities vary in how decision making is done, so it’s impossible for me to be more specific about your university.
But I will give you a trick that I’ve had good success with in a variety of educational institutions: Phone or visit the secretary of the highest-level dean you can find that sits above your department, and ask his or her advice for where in the hierarchy to bring your problem.  This secretary is often the most competent, knowledgeable person about university hierarchy in the whole institution.
And a general tip: Tell your story concisely and with a neutral tone of voice.  Begin by stating the problem.  Initially, leave out the numbered list of crazy reasons you were given (but be prepared to provide them if they ask you why the department rejected your proposal).

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Ill Recommender Gave Me Letter To Submit
I'll be on the job market this year for teaching positions at very small schools or lecturer positions at large schools. I took a class about two years ago now that was focused on teaching pedagogy. It was great, and I had good rapport with my teacher. After the semester, I asked her if she would mind writing a recommendation letter for me in advance, despite almost two years until I would be on the job market. The intent was that I could contact her when I was actually on the market, and she would already have something prepared from when I was in more regular contact with her.
My professor did write me the letter. However, she also let me know that she had recently received a diagnosis for a debilitating illness that would be demanding her time and attention, and sent me the letter she completed. She's still alive, although on leave indefinitely from the school to concentrate on her health and spending time with family.
I'm wondering what the protocol is for whether I should use her letter or not, particularly given that many schools prefer to contact the letter writers directly. I come from a big research school, and while other professors would be a great testament to my character and research, none have any real awareness about my teaching. A few schools I'm considering applying to actually specifically ask for one letter that focuses on teaching.
Given how teaching-centric my job search is, I think her letter would be a great asset. But I'm not sure whether I should use it, and if so, the best way to get the letter to schools.
Note: This is for the US academic system.

You should write the country of your university and the country you intend to work in as letter protocols vary widely depending on the country.

This is always a very tough situation. Ideally if you had known of her sickness ahead of time, you could have asked her to use a dossier service (such as interfolio.com;  note that I have no connection with this service except being a user). She could send them a single letter and they would send this to other schools on your request. This way the contents of her letter would remain confidential from you.
It would have also been great if the letter contained language such as "I apologize for not sending a personalized letter but my current health conditions preclude me from doing so, please do not take this as any indication of my high regard for this candidate."
But this would have been an ideal situation. If she's still healthy and you have good relations, you can ask her if you can set up something with a dossier service (your university might have one itself) with a letter with an apology for generic language.
Otherwise, you could add a similar note to your list of references:
References

Prof. John Doe
Prof. Alice Smith
Prof. Jane Roe

Prof Jane Roe apologies that due to medical issues she is unable to send personalized letters. A signed generic letter will be sent with her sincerest apologies to the search committee. Verification of the contents of the letter may be made by contacting the department chair, Prof. Bob Ajar, at xxxxx@xxxx.edu

[Aside: I have used letters with similar language when I have been engaged in field research and unable to write personalized letters for my students. So it's not just for sickness but for other conditions where letter writing is difficult.]

Another issue is that of confidentiality. Because the letter has not been sent directly from your teacher, there is no guarantee that you have not read or altered the content. Perhaps using the dossier service would still be possible. The letter has already been written: she may still be willing to do this (that probably depends on whether or not the illness is terminal).

@Moriarty: Isn't the alteration issue handled by "the department chair can verify the authenticity"?

Thanks for the advice. I'll check with the University and see how painless it would be to get a service set up, and then see if she'll be willing/able to send her letter there with a brief note.

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text:
Submit a paper even if you know it will be rejected
Your student is writing a paper and you think it will be rejected with a probability of 99%.
Your student would like to submit it anyway.
Would you submit it? Why?
More specifically:

Is it ok to submit it? Isn't this "bad behavior" because you are wasting the reviewers' time?
Is it worth to submit it? Can reviews help you improve your paper even when the paper is not ready for submission?
Is it safe to submit it? Can this damage your reputation if the reviews will be public after the decision is out?

EDIT
In the case above your name would also be on the paper. Would you have the same opinion / give the same advice to the student even if you are not on the paper?

Are you an author, or just the student?

@FedericoPoloni Author. The student is not within my lab anymore and wants to submit a paper about an idea we had before he left. He wrote the paper alone after he left and was kind enough to add me as author. However, the paper is not ready for a publication.
I already have my opinion on the matter, I am more curious about what other people think regardless of my situation :)

Not that it changes much, but if the paper is really clearly not good enough, a good editor should desk reject it and you only waste editor's time, not reviewers'. Unfortunately not all editors would do this...

Is there any way to improve the paper together so that it becomes OK?

@ChristianHennig The paper is not terrible, research-wise it's ok. But it needs more experiments, discussion of related work, and overall make it clearer why this work is important. The student wants to submit to a top venue, that's why I am sure it will be rejected. If it would have been a 2nd tier conference chances would have been higher.
The paper can be improved and we'll see if we can make it :)

Is the paper absolutely not ready for publication or do you just not think it will get into the student's target journal? It sounds like maybe it would be more appropriate for a lower tier journal. There are always more experiments that could be added, edits that can be made etc... It (like most papers) will certainly benefit from polishing but maybe it does not actually need as extensive of revisions as you think? In any case, you should not let an unfinished paper out the door. You are well within your rights as an author to put a hold on things.

@sErISaNo It is not ready for a publication, but with some fixes it could go through a lower tier conference. The problem is that the student wants to submit ASAP because they already missed a deadline. I explained them that this will not make any difference, because if it's rejected (which is very likely) they will still have to work on it. I made myself clear, but I am not their supervisor anymore so I won't insist further. The paper is not going to damage my reputation, so I'll let them do whatever they want. I tried to make the question broader by considering also reputation consequences.

Thank you for the clarification. I think, as others have said, you should not let the paper go out the door, since it is unfinished. Have pity on the editors and/or reviewers that will have to deal with it. You do not need to be this students supervisor to but a halt to publication, since you are an author. Simply put your foot down and insist that they polish it to whatever standard you set. I would assume that they would not simply go around you and publish anyway, as this is a serious ethical violation.

Your concern is certainly honorable, however reading the last few comments, I think that these days many decisions regarding application, promotion etc. rely on publications in the top venues, and in many situations lower ranked venues don't count. Given that this is so, very many authors deliberately aim too high initially, and often more than once. This is deplorable and probably bad for science in general, but that said, what your ex-student wants to do is pretty standard these days, so disapproval can only be mild in my view. Still good luck pushing them in a better direction!

@Simon If the main objective is to publish an idea, rather than to develop it, the Journal of brief ideas may be suitable.

@Nemo I didn't know about this journal, thanks!

No, it's not okay - yes, it is bad behavior to waste reviewers' (and the editor's) time.
Maybe reviewers would help improve the paper, but that's not really their job for a paper in the stage you describe. If you want other people to help improve a paper, bring the paper to them directly and ask for that, rather than surreptitiously soliciting advice by pretending to submit a paper.
No, it's not safe to submit it - not because the reviews are public as they typically are not (are you actually someone who has a student in this case? or are you the student?) but because the editors and potential reviewers are all people in your field, and they'll certainly judge and notice if you have a tendency to submit junk.
I would give this advice equally a) to a student who insisted on submitting their own single-author paper, and b) as reasoning to a student explaining why I do not give permission to submit a paper coauthored with me.

Answer to question 1 and to the second sentence of question 2 (based on one of the OP's comments, which says "However, the paper is not ready for a publication."):
No, it is certainly not ok to submit a paper which you don't think is ready for publication and hope that the reviewer(s) will do your job for you (namely, figuring out how to improve the paper).
If even the authors can't be bothered to polish their own paper, then why should the reviewer(s) do so?

Note that "very likely to be rejected" doesn't imply "not ready for publication", though your assumption seems correct in light of the OP's comments. But for completeness for future readers: you can have a ready-to-publish paper rejected because it was sent to a publication so prestigious that they won't just publish a non-groundbreaking result, no matter how good the paper is. Shooting your shot in that case isn't exactly the most unethical thing you do - people routinely and knowingly aim higher than their leagues in more important aspects of life...

@user541686: Good point. I've added a brief qualification where I point out that my answer is based on the OP's comment that the paper is not ready for publication.

@user541686 what do you mean, "more important aspects of life"?

@CorneliusBrand Presumably he means 'things that are important enough to justify trying a long shot that you otherwise might not have'

@user541686 Excellent point. Some highly selective journals have single-digit acceptance rates. Anything submitted to such a venue is a priori very likely to be rejected, but that doesn't make it unethical for anyone to submit anything to a top-tier journal.

OP did not say the paper was not ready for publication, but rather than it was not likely to be accepted; and those are two different things.

@einpoklum: OP's first comment under the question contains the sentence "However, the paper is not ready for a publication.".

If I were you, I would tell the student that in the present (unready) form you simply cannot allow your name to be on the paper; if the student then wants to publish this paper solo, it is their business, you cannot stop them.
Here would be my reason: In commercial terms, think of your name as a brand. Submitting a substandard paper would damage your brand, by undermining the trust that many people in your area (by now) have in your judgement, thoroughness, seriousness, etc. This might not immediately affect you adversely (e.g. regarding grants, refereeing/evaluation requests, treatment of your other submitted papers), but, if your brand is undermined repeatedly, it will definitely happen.
You should never underestimate how much things in academia run on trust (and on flattery, but that's another story).

you cannot stop them - this is not correct. If the OP's contribution merits co-authorship, they may very well say that they do want to be a co-author, but do not consent to submitting in the present form.

@Kostya_I: Yes, but I would not want to be such a co-author.

Can one forfeit their rights to authorship in this way? This seems problematic, because it hides credit.

@FedericoPoloni: of course one can. I have done this myself several times, the authors simply thanked me in the paper.

@FedericoPoloni: See https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/19454/if-an-author-declines-authorship-may-her-co-authors-publish-without-her, especially Pete's answer.

@Kostya_I: That is ethically problematic; and, in fact, one can work around it. That is, one can in principle submit a paper of which they are the sole author, but credit someone else with the idea or the method or what-not. That is not something you can object to (unless you also want to disown credit...) ; of course, such a paper will have trouble being accepted regardless of anything...

It is considered an abuse of peer review to knowingly submit papers that you know are not ready for a journal. The peer review process should be exactly that, a review of one's PEERS, peers implying that you actually are a peer of the authors in the sense that you both do same quality work. If a student who's not ready submits, they're essentially counting on the reviewer to do the work and proofreading, and that's not okay.
When I review, I give two documents. My marked up version of the PDF and my report. My report contains my main issues, and if I only have major comments that I don't like, it won't help the student because it'll just sound like I'm being mean or uncharitable.

I believe you're asking us the wrong question. You said:

You think it will be rejected.
Your student would like to submit it anyway.

That tells me that issue at hand is not whether to submit, but that of mis-communication/mis-understanding between you two. You did not indicate whether the student believes the paper is likely to be accepted; you did not indicate whether you and the student have had a talk about this; you did not indicate whether the student has a motivation for submitting even if assuming failure.
You likely need to have a talk with that student - not just an email exchange - for you both to understand where each is coming from and why. In or after such a talk, additional alternative courses of action other than "do nothing" or "submit paper" are likely to arise.
Just a couple of hypothetical examples:

Suppose it is important for the student to submit their work in some form, somewhere; but that's the only relevant journal. In that case, perhaps a non-peer-reviewed version uploaded to some place like ArXiv.org may satisfy the student's desire to have a paper "up" somewhere.
Perhaps the student believes you are under-estimating the chances of approval. Do they know something you don't? Or is it the other way around, perhaps they are mis-informed somehow by rumors from their friends/colleagues, which you could dispel?

etc.

Thanks for your reply.
Here's a bit more context. He is an ex-student and the paper is based on an idea we had years ago. It has already been rejected once and the student did little improvements. It is not a bad paper, but definitely not good enough for top-tier conferences. I clearly told him that over a call. His supervisor thinks the paper is good enough but he is not an expert on the topic. In the end I didn't want to insist too much since I am not his supervisor anymore and the paper is not that bad. With my question I tried to be as generic as possible.

Why do they want to publish the paper and why are you certain of its rejection?
If you think the paper will be rejected for lack of novelty or other reasons of popularity and prestige, rather than for its soundness, you can pick some publication venues which prioritise soundness (like eLife).
If you think the paper is "not ready yet", but the author still believes it's worth sharing in order to get feedback, get the word out etc. (or just because they need to move on in their life and aren't interested in building a shiny publication CV), just recommend them to publish it as a preprint in a suitable repository. The limitations section can provide any needed caveats about the work as is.

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


text:
Wrong references in research paper
I came across around 10 wrong references in a medical research paper (still reading). How many citation errors (wrong references) are acceptable? Or: how many wrong references are still ok to be rectified in the erratum section of a journal? Is there a point where there have other actions to be taken? What needs to happen if there are too many reference errors? Thank you

How are these references "wrong"?

Agreed. Unclear what's "wrong" with the references. Were the references formatted incorrectly?

Some are referencing completely unrelated papers, other reference papers that briefly touch on the topic but give no details to the topic at hand and reference again. This looks to me like referencing references if that mkes sense. Other references are books that deal with the general topc. The specifics of the reference, though, is not clear and it looks like I would have to read the whole book to find more specific information to that reference. Is that common practice? Jut to add: I have contacted the author but there was no reply. Thanks

Please edit your question with the clarifications. Comments can disappear.

A reference to a (text) book that gives general background for a paper is sometimes helpful.

There is a difference between being irrelevant and being wrong. To prove that the references are wrong, you've to present a solid explanation to that. I also suggest clarifying the question in a broader context with something like: Suppose Paper A talks about Topic A, however the pointed to reference does not entail anything regarding Topic A, so on and so forth!

If "wrong references" are links to papers not supporting the claims made in any sensible way, contact the editorial office. If you are not completely sure about that, reach out to authors first and ask for clarifications.

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


text:
Getting into maths PhD program
I would like to get into a mathematics MSc or PhD program. My undergraduate degree is in physics and I have completed the most basic mathematics courses, like calculus, linear algebra.
In the final year of my physics degree I found a new interest in differential geometry. I even completed a graduate course on the subject and have been studying on my own. This eventually resulted in getting bad grades for my physics modules (few Fs).
What can I do to improve my chances on getting into a graduate program in mathematics? I don't really want to take any courses on analysis, or topology as I've studied them on my own.

What country is this?

Maldives. My general preference for a program is in North America or Europe including Russia.

See the following about graduate admissions. But a "few Fs" isn't helping. https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/176908/75368

You've studied analysis and topology on your own. Is there someone (a professor) who can confirm that you've learned these topics at a level that corresponds to the classes that you don't want to take? An admissions committee won't be impressed by your saying what you've studied on your own, but they might be impressed if there's evidence that you've really learned the material.

I don't really want to take any courses on analysis, or topology as I've studied them on my own - I think this is the wrong attitude to take if you want to continue your mathematical studies.  Yes, it may not all be new, but making sure you learn the foundations properly (in courses, with feedback mechanisms) is vital to pursuing higher math, and having official records is very useful for admissions.

You have to consider your competition -- that is, the people schools can choose from as they are applying at the same time as you are.
First, they will generally not have "a few Fs" -- that's going to look rather bad on your transcript, in particular since it is at the end of your studies. If you had had a semester of this sort at the beginning, it would be possible to explain it away in your essay as "I needed to grow up, but as you can see in my transcript, I have gotten through this phase of my life and my recent semesters were all As". So that is an issue you have to think about how you can address or remedy.
Second, most of your competition is from people who were math undergraduates, have taken all foundational math courses with good grades, and have typically taken a few graduate math courses. You have taken one -- that's good --, but it will remain unclear to anyone looking at your application how broad your math undergraduate education really is, and how you would do with the graduate math breadth requirement most departments have.
So, long story short, I'm afraid what you currently have isn't particularly safe as far as getting admitted is concerned. I would see whether you can stay at your home institution for another year, for example, to fill in the holes in your transcript (more breadth in your math courses, maybe more graduate math courses, good grades).

I generally agree, but I would add that, at least in the US, admission standards are pretty low for lower-tier Master's programs, especially if one doesn't need funding.

Impressive GPA
If your GPA is really impressive, then many universities will give you admission.
Pre-requisites
Mathematics MSc or PhD program may require you to take some undergraduate math courses as pre-requisite and then you can carry on with the program.
I would suggest that you contact the math department and ask them about your situation. Contact with more than one universities.

The best thing for you to do is apply to a Master's program abroad to raise your competitiveness for PhD programs down the line--and sadly, you can expect to fund it yourself. Simply consider that there are very few graduate schools that would fund a student from a foreign university in a small country, who has a few failing grades on their transcript (even if in a different field; after all, physics and math are very closely related). If you can get into a master's, you have the opportunity to really build up your mathematical background and make up for this deficit, hopefully making yourself more competitive. It will be a significant struggle, but it is possible.
To me, the most alarming part of your question is the fact that you don't wish to take analysis or topology. You should absolutely be looking to strengthen your math background, especially in such fundamental topics--I would suspect that, like any young student self-studying these topics, your background in them is not as strong as you expect. And if your background truly is very strong, and these classes prove easy, that's great! They will be a useful review and an easy A to add to your transcript (you need proof somehow that you know these topics, as no one will believe you've read the book), and you can use the extra time to focus on less familiar topics like algebra.


text:
Paper will be rejected on one conference, can I "show intend to submit"/register to another?
I have submitted a paper to a conference, but the reviews are not good and the rebuttal is not going well either. So the paper will most likely not be accepted later on.
The "intend to submit"/register deadline for another conference will be in a short time, which requires a title and abstract that can be changed later on.
The final decision on my paper from the first conference is a few days before the final submission of the second conference.
Is it unethical to register to the second conference and show my intend to submit, while the first conference has not made their final decision on my paper yet?
I could still cancel my submission intention on the second conference in case the first conference accepts my paper.

Related: Ethical implications of withdrawing a paper during the rebuttal phase and submitting it somewhere else

For your situation, the actual ethical judgement of the situation is not 100% obvious, but there is a workaround: use a different title and a very vague/high-level abstract for the initial registration at the second conference. It's then not a duplicate submission, because the abstract could, in principle, still materialize in a very different way. Once the paper is rejected at A, you can submit it at B.

@lighthousekeeper Being more vague or changing the title changes nothing about the ethics of this situation.

@Louic I believe it does, because the ethical code in question is the double-submission policy, and titles and abstracts of submissions affect whether two submissions are indeed the same and fall under that policy.

Withdraw for the first conference and then submit to the second. Avoids any suspicion of you trying to double-dip and resolves the problem entirely over-the-table (I have done this myself on multiple occasions).

If the paper would be accepted at the first conference, do you have no further work planned that could be presented at the second (presumably later) conference?

"Intend to submit" does not sound like you are promising that you will definitely submit. So in your case, given the timings you mention, I would say it is OK to tell the second conference that you intend to submit, while still waiting for the final decision from the first conference.
But you need to read the rules for both conferences and follow them. If they are unclear or don't mention this scenario, I suppose you could email the organizers, but I would say it is OK to go ahead with the "intend to submit."

For the moment, register for the other conference with slightly different title and abstract. Change it or keep the same later on.
When the paper is rejected from the first conference, then revise the paper considering the comments/opinions of the reviewers. Include/exclude things that come to your mind in the mean time. Read the paper again and see if some improvements could be made. Then submit the paper to the second conference.


text:
Why are academians so easily offended?
Often here I read questions like "Should professors intervene if a student is wearing offensive clothing in their classroom?" and I don't understand why such things happen so often.
While I did my A-levels, I often wore "offensive" T-Shirts (maybe just to get some attention by moral-hypocrites [which rarely happened] as a teen, but what does it matter?), and right now, I still like band-t-shirts which happen to have offensive contents, just because I like the bands and the images. I was kind of a creep as a person, but still, I was quite popular and noone ever talked to anyone about offensive stuff. Not to me, and not to the teachers or the principial, with which I had quite a good friendship. And still now, in university, nobody ever came to me saying anything about that, neither teachers nor students, feeling offended.
Sure, if they don't tell me doesn't mean they are not, but I believe then they decided they can live with ignoring it.
So, my question is: why are academians so easily offended by just a t-shirt or such things. These are easy to ignore and there are way more important things. Academians should be intelligent enough to understand this, I believe.
(I certainly understand why sexism, racism, violence etc. in action are detested. In any way, I would try to stop everything of these (and other) things if I ever were to see them! But just an image is not an action and, in my experience, often people wear these things as "shadows" of their personality (i. e. the subconsciousness of what they aren't, just to put attention on those problems.)
It might be neccessary to say that I grep up and still live in germany; the extreme "political correctness" positions may be attributed to this. But the question still stays.

As it stands your question is at best opinion-based, at worst based on false premises. I see no evidence that academics are easily offended (in fact, my experience suggests the opposite, but that’s admittedly as unsubstantiated as your claims). The post you link does not allow to derive such a conclusion even about the asker because we do not know what the shirt in question was saying (and it is not relevant for the question either). What makes you think that you can compare it to what you have been wearing? I see no reason to believe that such posts are overly frequent here.

"Often here I read questions like..." could you link a few other posts (say: 5) that you feel support your premise? Otherwise this discussion is bound to focus on your 1 example, which I won't expect to have fruitful results.

This question really leads nowhere. I don't think OP can expect a real answer here. Since there is no possible helpful answer here or any value for readers, I vote to close.

As a non-academic outsider, this question reminds me of Sayre's law: "Academic politics are so bitter because the stakes are so low".

You say that you enjoy offensive music and content; essentially admitting that the t-shirts are offensive in some way. And you don't understand why others would take offense? Am I missing something?

I suspect you wanted this to be your answer the other question, but, because that question was protected, you didn't have the necessary rep to do so. Unfortunately, what you wrote here comes across as a rant disguised as a question.

So you dressed offensively, no academic ever told you they were offended and now you want to know why academics are so easily offended? Am I getting this right?

Well, here in germany, things seem to be different. That was my point. I just don't get why people can't just ignore this. Even if the t-shirt in the linked question was a picture of Adolf Hitler and a swastika with the person wearing the t-shirt giving her thumbs up on the image, I'd only think: "well, I do not want to have anything to do with this person". But I'd neither feel offended directly (as it's her own choice not to be liked) nor anything else, and this I'm saying as a homosexual, someone who the person in question might hate very much.

The picture of Hitler example in Germany is complicated, because there are also legal implications. I teach in (southern) Germany, so my experience that this is a rare phenomenon, applies to that context. Also, you seem to assume that if an academic takes action, then that implies (s)he is personally offended. That assumption is not correct, as I stated in my answer.

I have never had to take action, so the kind of "problem" you are referring to is in my experience, fortunately, very rare.
However, I will take action when needed, and a sufficiently offensive T-shirt does qualify. Not because I would be offended, but because as an educator I am in a position of power. With power comes responsibility, in this case a responsibility that everybody in the room feels secure. It does not matter whether you think that somebody can easily look away. If a person feels intimidated by your T-shirt, then the damage is done, and it is my responsibility to prevent that from happening or at least prevent it from happening again. This is a moral obligation I, and others I know, feel very strongly about. Moreover, depending on your jurisdiction it could also be a legal obligation.
So I don't think that the relevant distinction is between academics and non-academics, but between those who have power (and with that, responsibility) and those who don't. For example, also in the private sector you could easily get into trouble for wearing offensive T-shirts, even if you did not have contact with customers, and the reasoning would be the same.


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Which license should be chosen in arXiv for a paper to be published in Elsevier?
I would like to know what license needs to be chosen in arXiv for a paper that is to be sent to an Elsevier journal. I have read the terms of both arXiv and Elsevier attentively, but I'm still in doubt.
arXiv has the following choices for licenses (from their website):

grant arXiv.org a non-exclusive and irrevocable license to distribute the article, and certify that he/she has the right to grant
  this license;
certify that the work is available under one of the following Creative Commons licenses and that he/she has the right to assign this
  license:

Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY 4.0)
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0);

or dedicate the work to the public domain by associating the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0 1.0) with the
  submission.

On the other hand, Elsevier explicitly allows to publish accepted manuscripts in arXiv, provided it's "updating a preprint", not creating a new one (a really strange requirement in my view, whose motivation I've never understood, but that is the subject of a different question) and provided that this is done with a CC-BY-NC-ND license, which is none of the above. From their website:

Authors can share their accepted manuscript:
Immediately (...) by updating a preprint in arXiv or RePEc with the
  accepted manuscript (...) In all cases accepted manuscripts should
  (...) bear a CC-BY-NC-ND license.

How are those two things reconciled, as arXiv doesn't have the option of using a CC-BY-NC-ND license? There should be a way, as otherwise the mentions of arXiv in the Elsevier policy would be totally pointless - allowing you explicitly to publish on a site with a license that that site won't allow! Is it legal to choose "grant arXiv.org a non-exclusive and irrevocable license" and upload the manuscript with a CC-BY-NC-ND license? Would this mean that the first license is for arXiv and the second license is for the rest of the world? This is the only solution to the puzzle I can think of, but I don't know if it stands (it seems that one needs a degree in law to understand these kind of copyright conditions...)

How to add another Creative Commons license to an arXiv paper:

We currently support three of the Creative Commons licenses. If you wish to use a different CC license, then select arXiv's non-exclusive license to distribute in the arXiv submission process and indicate the desired Creative Commons license in the actual article.

From the arXiv webpage about licenses.
How to indicate the desired Creative Commons license according to Elsevier:

Elsevier requires authors posting their accepted manuscript to attach a non-commercial Creative Commons user license (CC-BY-NC-ND).  This is easy to do. On your accepted manuscript add the following to the title page, copyright information page, or header /footer: © YEAR. Licensed under the Creative Commons [insert license details and URL].

From Elsevier's sharing webpage.

The top option, allowing only the arXiv to distribute what has been submitted to them, is more restrictive than any of the Creative Commons licences, as they are designed to allow others to use the work in some form. That one would therefore be within the rules stated by Elsevier.


text:
Is there a standard for translating grades across Erasmus universities?
I've just finished my Erasmus period in the Netherlands. I'm still waiting for one result from my guest academy, then the Transcript of Record will reach my home university and, somehow, the results will be translated from Netherlands marks to Italian marks.
Is there an Erasmus standard on how to predictably translate results between ranking systems?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECTS_grading_scale ?

@Enthusiastic This (and another question you just retagged) are about translation in the sense of "mapping one thing to another thing", not "translating from one language to another" as defined in the tag excerpt.

As far as I know, the translation is up to the universities who do the conversion. I think that it is unlikely that there are is one set of guidelines as even within a country not all universities have necessarily the same ranking systems.
I have found this table on Google though that gives some idea on what grades are roughly equivalent.

Like host Drew Carey used to puts it on his old quiz show:

"Welcome to Whose Line Is It Anyway?", the show where everything is made up and the points don't matter!

Grades are not consistent, nor consistently translatable, across departments, courses, professors, semesters - all within a single university. So you want to have that across different universities in different countries?


text:
What role do professors on a graduate student's PhD committee serve?
Do they discuss the graduate student in meetings with each other? Or do they have any obligations to interact with the graduate student in other ways?

You'll find this out once you finally start graduate school. I don't think strangers on the internet can necessarily answer this for you and your particular program.

I think the variations here are national rather than by discipline.
In the U.S., the thesis committee's primary role is that of a review panel when all is going well, and as a neutral arbiter between student and advisor when it isn't. Again, there is no formal obligation on the part of the committee—except when convened by the student or advisor, but this typically occurs on a more frequent basis (every one to two years or so). As individuals, however, committee members may be consulted with on various topics (job placement and career strategies, suggestions for future research directions, and so on); however, this is voluntary and, again, not very frequent—probably one or two times per year.
In Germany, by comparison, the primary obligation occurs at the time of the thesis defense, when they serve as evaluators. Outside of this, you might never meet with the professors on your committee, other  than your primary advisor.

"a neutral arbiter between student and advisor" — This framing suggests that by default, the student and the advisor are in conflict (need arbitration), which is utterly inconsistent with my experience.

@JeffE: Fair enough, I've revised the statement to make it a little bit more inclusive. However, I believe that the role of arbiter is perhaps the most significant role it can play, as it can really make a lot of difference to a graduate student who is not getting along with an advisor (for whatever reason).

@JeffE, I believe that "providing an outside opinion" may be an appropriate euphemism.

To also complement the answers given, here's how it works at my institution:
Committee 1:
There is a small committee of faculty members, chosen by the student but with particular rules established by the department (Three total, choose one member from List A, two faculty members, two must be tenured professors in the dept. etc) who determine whether you are ready or not to transition from coursework to working on your dissertation proposal, and the dissertation itself. This is often, but not always, a subset of committee #2.
Committee #2:
The dissertation committee. This committee has several formal obligations toward the student:

They meet with the student when they submit their dissertation proposal, to provide comments, criticism and ideas in order to strengthen the proposal, (theoretically) stop doomed projects from ever being started by the student, and identify any areas they believe the student may need additional coursework or expertise in order to complete their project. They also meet independently without the student during the same meeting to have a candid discussion of said student. This is usually about the project, but can range to cover mentorship concerns, thoughts on their job search, etc.
The student is obligated to meet with each member of their committee every 6 months or so to keep them updated on their progress, and the committee as a whole meets at ~the midpoint of the dissertation project to make sure any problems are addressed before they have a chance to "go too far" and stall the defense itself.
They then meet at the dissertation defense, evaluate the student, and make the determination as to whether or not they have successfully completed their program.

Certain members of the committee do have certain roles, beyond the usual advisor/chair role, but these are usually informal. For example, there is often a statistician on the committee, with the informal understanding that this is the person the student can turn to for questions re: statistical methods.


text:
How can I encourage/incentivize students to do lab work early?
Normally, my computer architecture class has 10-15 students. This year, there are 35 students, not all of whom could fit in our small lab, much less be helped by our few lab assistants. I am thinking I will need to skew deadlines, with half of the students turning in an assignment at the ends of weeks 1, 3, and 5, while half will have deadlines at the ends of weeks 2, 4, and 6.
While I could randomly assign students to the earlier or later group, I'd rather incentivize students so the ones in the earlier group don't feel disadvantaged. One idea I had was letting anyone in the early group turn in one assignment of their choice at the time of the later group. I would like to solicit additional ideas on what has worked well for other classes.

You need to jump to a model with multiple assigned sessions, like recitation sections, in the lab.

@ScottSeidman Assigning them to weeks is a crude version of that. We don't assign them to specific lab hours, since some people need more time than others or need flexibility in their schedules. I hope we don't have to move to that.

Assuming that cheating/collaboration isn't an issue, just create a sign up sheet at the beginning of the semester, breaking each assignment into two blocks. The students will most likely self-select into groups: those who want to get the work done and out of the way, and those who want to put it off as long as possible. While the relative size of the groups may be imperfect, this will just urge them to fill out the signup sheet as early as possible as well. Then you could probably handle a few case by case switches as needed and thusly manage the resources.


text:
Conference vs Congress vs Symposium vs Meeting
What is the distinction between the following scientific events:

conference,
congress,
symposium,
meeting?

While I have some idea about differences (e.g. congress - large and serious, meeting - by a certain organization, ...) I have an impression that sometimes the terms are used interchangeably.
Is it safe to assume that the three later are variants of a scientific conference?

I downvoted: There is no universal answer, each community has its own idea of what is what.

@SylvainPeyronnet - Of course, but isn't there at least a notion of what is what? You'd hardly think the definition of a "journal publication" would vary widely from field to field, would you?

@SylvainPeyronnet: Well, I guess I don't understand the downvote. Is the question unclear of off-topic? It is perfectly fine to answer with it depends by field: in hard sciences ..., in medicine ..., whereas in engineering ... .

@shan23: even for a journal paper it is not the same field by field. At least this is my conclusion after seeing papers of relatives in other fields.

@PiotrMigdal: in this case, I think we should wrote a question by field. Otherwise it is too confusing for occasional users of SE. For me the question is (somehow) clear and on topic, but is not constructive.

@SylvainPeyronnet The question is asked in that way on purpose. I exactly interested in the common ground for many fields. Moreover, the current answers are constructive. On the other hand, asking 20 questions with appended "in [discipline]" would be really counterproductive.

Simple but interestin' question!

Reading the answers, I think the terminology is (partly) country specific as well.

There are certain (informal) nuances I believe:

Symposium - Prestigious conferences, generally leading venues in their respective fields. Example: Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, European Test Symposium, Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS) etc
Conference - Regular venues for publications, may range from established venues to the archaic. I understand the bulk of publications of most researchers are in one conference or other, as symposiums tend to have a very low acceptance rate.
Meeting - I'm not so sure there are many of these, but I understand that it is more of a forum for interaction/surveys/posters than for publication of full papers. (I based my answer on the description for SIAM Annual Meeting 2012, which describes itself as providing "a broad view of the state of the art in applied mathematics, computational science, and their applications through invited presentation, prize lectures, minisymposia, and contributed papers and posters".)
Congress - This would typically be held once a year per discipline, highlighting the achievements, notable results in that field. These are typically attended by leaders in that field, and feature a series of invited talks (for example, look at Mathematical Congress of the Americas 2013).

I agree that congresses are usually big, but otherwise I think the distinctions are pretty arbitrary.  Basically, the name is whatever the organizers choose to call it.  Any constraints come just because it would feel a little silly to call a twenty-person workshop a congress, for example.  I don't see symposia as being particularly prestigious, but maybe organizers aiming for prestige are more likely to choose that name (because of the classical etymology).

Were symposia actually believed to be universally more prestigious, the hacks who run fake conferences would immediately start calling their venues "symposia."  Perhaps they already do...

A couple of examples to keep in mind: The International Congress of Mathematicians is not held every year but every four years (with one slight deviation from periodicity, caused by martial law in Poland).  The Boise Extravaganza in Set Theory is, as far as I know, the only meeting called an extravaganza; the name was chosen for the acronym.

Nothing.  They're synonyms.  See also "Workshop".

"Conference" or "meeting" are catch-all terms that can refer to any scientific gathering. However, I'd argue that a "Symposium" tends to be smaller than the others, and more narrowly focused. "Conferences," "Congresses," and "Meetings" can all be huge affairs, but it's hard to think of many "Symposium" with a similar size. A "workshop" is also an event of somewhat smaller size than a "congress" (which generally implies a huge attending audience).

Agreed, the only thing I would add is that "scientific gathering" is himself a bit of a limiting term, historians, librarians, etc all have academic conferences, meetings, workshops and congresses but are not scientists. So might be best to say "scholarly gatherings" or "academic gatherings"

Fair enough. I was following the original poster's question. Although I don't recall historical "congresses" (not a statement that there aren't any—just hadn't heard about them from my historian professor colleagues).

I suppose it depends on the field, because in mine, symposiums are actually the biggest by far, with multiple tracks running at the same time, and thousands of attendants.

@DSVA The Society of Neuroscience Annual Meeting is enormous and icnredibly broad

Congress: A very big meeting (more than 10,000 or at least several thousands of attendees), usually held every few years.
Conference: A big meeting (hundreds or a couple of thousands of attendees), usually held annually.
Symposium: A meeting on a specific interest/topic. Due to the focused field, usually not very big meetings. Often, conferences or congresses run symposia under them (to help the people in the same field find each other in those large meetings). Some symposia run annually at the same location but on a different topic, and some run on the same topic at a fixed time-interval (annual, every other year, etc.).
Meeting: Any gathering to share and discuss the latest findings in a field (all of the above are meetings).
None of these are strict definitions, but general guidelines.

This also fits much better with my experience with symposia than the accepted answer. Fun fact: symposium in both old and modern Greek loosely means "an event to get together with food and drink" and academic symposia I attended were not far off -- annual meetings of (relatively small and focused) sub-fields, where researchers on that topic can come together and catch up on each others work, often over food and drinks :) Oh and I'd often still say to my colleagues "I'm off for a conference." "Which one?" "Oh, Symposium on Such and Such." (as you say, they are guidelines)

Such differences also depend on the development of scientific associations and how they named their annual conference/congress/meeting in the first place. For instance the general conference of the ECPR and the IPSA World Congress Might use different terms, but they all are organised and work quite similarly.  Plus, sometimes, it is just a way of naming a gathering of academics more fancy ;) , see http://phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1704

Congress- Conference- Colloquium- Symposium- Seminar- Workshop;
have the following differences if one proceeds from Congress to workshop:

Informality decreases
Number of participants decreases
One theme and many sub-themes with a large scope to one narrow theme, scope narrows down
A number of papers and key note addresses to limited number of papers and key note addresses.
Informal discussion to hands on job training
Colloquium is limited to a group of researchers concerned with  a few themes mostly to review progress.
workshop means something job training, do it yourself.

Can you please provide some evidence or documentation for your assertions?  This doesn't agree with my own experiences.


text:
Using images with CC-BY-SA license in slides or a thesis
If I am using images with a copyleft license (e.g. CC-BY-SA), each of them as a separate, properly attributed piece, does it mean that the whole work (be it slides, a thesis or a book) need to be licensed in the same way?
Reasoning 1
This work uses images, so it's a derivative work and it needs to bear the same license.
Reasoning 2
This work is a collection. So, as long as I keep the images separate, and properly attributed/licensed, they do not affect the collection license.
Practical implications

Using Wikipedia images in a presentation - does it mean that it need to be released as CC-BY-SA?
Is it possible to use images from two non-compatible copyleft licenses (e.g. CC-BY-SA and GPL) in a single book?

Comment: My question is on what is legal according to these licenses, not what "won't put me in jail" or what can be waived by the law of a particular country.

Are there any any examples of images which are licensed under GPL? I don't think the FSF recommends this practice.

@MJeffryes My friend had this issue (photos of some rare ant species; whether recommended or not - they were under GPL). In any case, I am changing this question to focus on CC-BY-SA, which is my main concern. (And I guess, answer may vary by license.)

@MJeffryes: If you don't believe in the existence of images subject to GPL, simply pretend the other embedded thing is not a figure, but a code listing subject to the GPL.

Including CC-licensed images as discrete elements in your work does not require the overall work to be CC-licensed. Reasoning 2 is correct here.
(See a similar discussion on opendata.se)
The BY-SA license works in terms of "collective works" and "derivative works":

1a. "Collective Work" means a work, such as a periodical issue,
  anthology or encyclopedia, in which the Work in its entirety in
  unmodified form, along with one or more other contributions,
  constituting separate and independent works in themselves, are
  assembled into a collective whole. A work that constitutes a
  Collective Work will not be considered a Derivative Work (as defined
  below) for the purposes of this License.
1c. "Derivative Work" means a work based upon the Work or upon the
  Work and other pre-existing works, such as a translation, musical
  arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version,
  sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any
  other form in which the Work may be recast, transformed, or adapted,
  except that a work that constitutes a Collective Work will not be
  considered a Derivative Work for the purpose of this License. (...)

An image reproduced as part of a larger document ("see Figure 17...") falls under 1a as a collective work. You have to comply with the formalities of the licensing (4a, identify the license, 4c, identify the author), but section 4b is explicit that it "...does not require the Collective Work apart from the Work itself to be made subject to the terms of this License."
If you do modify the image (eg by adding a new element to a chart, making a composite of two photos, etc), then you have to release that new image as CC-BY-SA, but you can still incorporate it into your non-SA book as a single collective-work element.
Having said all that, 1a could certainly do with some broader examples of what constitutes a collective work, to avoid ambiguity...

Edit (October 2015): a US district court has recently discussed a similar issue (a CC-BY-SA image being used as the cover of a book) and held that that situation clearly constitutes a "collective work":

Because this 112-page book of maps is not in any way "based upon"” the Photograph, and because defendant did not "recast, transform[], or adapt[]" the Photograph when it used it as the cover art for the Atlas, see License § 1(b), the Court finds that neither the Atlas nor its cover constitutes a derivative work subject to the ShareAlike requirement. Rather, the Atlas is more akin to a collective work, because the Photograph was placed "in its entirety in unmodified form" alongside "other contributions, constituting separate and independent works" – that is, the maps."

The term "Collective Work" is gone in CC 4.0 and "Derivative Work" has been renamed to "Adapted Material."  Since "Adapted Material" does not contain an exemption for "Collective Work[s]," it is not immediately clear to me that your analysis extends to 4.0.

@Kevin - interesting. You're right that they seem to have dropped the clear description of this use; however, I think it still applies. General conditions for the use of "licensed material" are covered by 3a, and 3b (the share-alike clause) only applies to "Adapted Material". While there's no exception, the examples given to define 'adapted' all involve transforming the underlying work, not merely reproducing it.

I imagine they changed it for internationalization purposes.  The new wording seems to be tied to the local definition of "derivative work," which IMHO means the best answer would be "ask a lawyer."

An image reproduced as part of a larger document ("see Figure 17...") falls under 1a as a collective work. I'm not sure that this interpretation of "collective work" is correct, as I have difficulties seeing a thesis as collection of independent images. In most cases, images are tightly integrated with the text of the thesis. Do you have a legal reference for your interpretation?

@silvado as it happens, a court has just ruled on the compilation/derivative question :-) Not perfectly analogous to this situation, but pretty close. http://www.technollama.co.uk/us-court-interprets-copyleft-clause-in-creative-commons-licenses

Thanks, that's an interesting link. It seems to support the interpretation as "collective work". It would certainly be good to add that link to the answer as an example.

@silvado done! (should've thought to do that when I first commented...)

I'm going to ignore the GPL case, since the licence is not intended for images. For the CC licences, one interpretation is that incorporating a CC licensed image in your presentation or thesis does not make your presentation or thesis a derivative work of the image. You only create a derivative work when you modify the image itself. As such, it is not required that you redistribute the entire work under the licence. This also affects share-alike. Share-alike is only invoked if you create a derivative work, so as long as you do not modify the image you are using, you do not need to redistribute it. Here is a series of blog posts by a librarian which discusses the use of no-derivative work and share-alike work. Her interpretation is that these are examples of cases which are not derivatives:

Including a short story in a collection of short stories

Reproducing an unedited image on a website

Using an unedited video in the background of a live concert

This is not the only possible interpretation of the licences, but your use might fall under an exemption or fair use of the images in your jurisdiction regardless of the licence.

Can you link to an interpretation on the Creative Commons website that supports this? I haven't looked into this in awhile, so my recollection is fuzzy, but the main BY-SA page says "ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original." I think "build upon" and "remix" are broad enough to include OP's question about incorporation.

@BillBarth My interpretation (and that of the librarian I've linked to) is that a derivative work only occurs when you modify the work itself. Simply including it unmodified in part of a larger work doesn't make the larger work a derivative.

Uh, that covers ND not SA directly. There is a link to what that librarian thinks of SA at the bottom, and then there is disagreement in the comments about whether collective works are covered or not. I wouldn't take this as gospel.

@BillBarth Both ND and SA have the same concept of derivative works, but I take your point that this does seem controversial. It's actually quite surprising that the CC people don't make it clear if they intend this use to be allowed.

If you read the license itself, I think things are much clearer and that you are right: "The above applies to the Work as incorporated in a Collective Work, but this does not require the Collective Work apart from the Work itself to be made subject to the terms of this License."  I withdraw my objection.


text:
Mentioning that my paper extends my project X: compatible with double-blind review?
I am going to submit a paper to a conference that uses double-blind review. The paper extends my project X, which was published somewhere else last year. In order not to break the anonymity, in the paper shall I hide the fact that project X was mine? (If I don't they could simply look at the reference associated with project X to identify the authors.)

Yes, refer to Project X without stating that it is yours.
In my field, instructions to authors for conferences that are double-blind reviewed often say:

Do not omit references to provide anonymity, as this leaves the reviewer unable to grasp the context. Instead, a good solution is to reference your past work in the third person, just as you would any other piece of related work.

In reality, of course it is often obvious that the paper under review is likely to be an extension of the cited work by the same author. However, as an author, it is not your responsibility to make sure that the reviewers can never identify you. It is only your responsibility to

make a good-faith effort to preserve the anonymity of your submission, while at the same time allowing the reader to fully grasp the context of related past work, including your own.

Citing your own previous work in the third person is a good faith effort to preserve anonymity, and (at least in my field) that's all that's required.

+1 for "In reality, of course it is often obvious that the paper under review is likely to be an extension of the cited work by the same author."

Citing your own work in the third person is often the norm anyway.

@ChrisH: It can also be something to avoid - especially when the text is not supposed to be blinded, speaking of one's own prior work as if it had been done by someone else can come across as a stealthy way to increase one's own citation count, or as a way to hide one's affiliation with the cited authors and unfairly create the impression that the topic discussed enjoys a wider attention than it actually does.

@O.R.Mapper, that's true, though in single-blind paper reviewing the reviewers (and editor) have your name at the top of the paper as well as on the reference.


text:
Publish a Book Through a Research-Based or Industrial-Based Publisher?
I'm in the middle of writing a book on a subject matter that covers both aspects of the research and general practice knowledge. I'm wondering to submit it to a publishing company that mainly publishes journals; or send it to a book publisher which is very respectable in the industry. There are two aspects to this:
Price: Generally speaking, the books that are published by research-based publishers (e.g., Springer) are way more expensive than normal reference books.
Reputation Vs. Reaching the Masses: Obviously in terms of reputation in academia, research-based books are considered more seriously; however I'm losing reaching the masses of people who can benefit from it, as a normal reference book.

What is your exact question? Also think of what kind of answer we could give. If you want to know which type of publisher you should go for, the answer can only be "it depends on what you want".

@MaartenBuis I found the topic dilemmatic, and I pointed out the two factors on this. As an academic, do we we care about reputation or we want to reach the masses through our book publications.

Different academics aim at different things, even the same academic aims at different things at different times. Both are valid aims. Pragmatically, it also depends on the state of your carreer. If you don't have tenure yet, I would choose to focus on projects that increase my academic reputation. When you have tenure you can afford to make more balanced decisions...

@MaartenBuis Can you please turn this into an answer so that I can vote it up?

Both are valid aims:

Academics are paid for doing academic research, that is our job.
Academics are often (partially) paid for by tax money, so it is perfectly legitimate to communicate what you did with that money back to the general public.

There is usually some specialization: Some academics are good researchers but awful comunicators, so they won't write books for the general public and that is a good thing. Even those academics that are good comunicators will also publish more narrow academic works: the point of communicating with the general public is to communicate what scientific work you have done, so some scientific work needs to preceed the work aimed at the general public. Finally, it also depends on the state of your carreer: If you don't have tenure yet, I would choose to focus on projects that increase my academic reputation. When you have tenure you can afford to make more balanced decisions.


text:
Should I point out typos on students' important forms that I am signing?
A prior student of mine is applying for a prestigious certificate in her field. She is asked to list relevant accomplishments. I was asked by the student to sign a verification form since I am in a position to do just that: verify the accomplishments. Upon reading the accomplishments, I noticed a misspelled word. It's one of those words that is commonly misspelled, and I suspect this will limit her chances of being accepted.
Should I mention this to the student prior to signing my name? I am torn between wanting this student to succeed and having the student be self-reliant.
This student is only a "student" in that she was in a professional development course that I had a hand in teaching. She is actually a practicing K-12 teacher.
There was some discussion about the nature of the misspelling. The two words confused were colleague and college.
I suppose the term self-reliant was a poor choice by me in my original question. My question is more accurately stated as Should I point out the typos when the student was not directly asking for such feedback. It is not my intention to teach the student a lesson, as my question seems to have come across.

Everyone produces a typo once in a while. Please don't be that guy... You can even miss typos after double-checking the text, because at some point you start reading what you believe to have written, not what actually is written.

In terms of self-reliance, she would not learn that she was not accepted due to that misspelling. The only way she would learn from the mistake is if you pointed it out.

So let me get this straight. You are considering potentially damaging this student's career in other to teach her a lesson about spelling? Of one word? I think this question is two days late.

@badroit And teach the lesson badly, too! (Given that, as Mike A. says, she'd never know that the lesson even happened.)

What does "this question is two days late" mean?

@badroit: If I interprete the question correctly, this is not about teaching the student a lesson but about not meddling with stuff you are unsure whether you should meddle with.

@BMS: badroit is referring to the date two days ago. Read as, "you must be joking".

@BMS Remove the teacher/student dynamic from the picture and just follow common courtesy; if a friend/coworker/acquaintance handed you something they were considering sharing and you noticed a misspelling, wouldn't you just tell them?

I'm disheartened to think that an adult in a position of authority needs someone else to reason this out for them and the question is reduced to an analytical topic rather than one of good conscience. (And I couldn't type that without the red line appearing at least once.) Can you find your own error in this statement? I was asked by the student to sign a this verification form since I am in a position to do just that: verify the accomplishments.

Wow, are "college" and "colleague" seriously that commonly interchanged?! :/

BMS is long gone, but there was some pronoun mismatch, I switched all usages to "she/her," the first pronoun used.

I would point out the error, especially if you have a reason to believe it will be taken into account in some nontrivial way.
I don't really understand why doing this goes against the student's "self-reliance".  I point out errors of this kind in papers that I am refereeing, for instance, and when people read my own papers or course notes or whatever, they sometimes point out my own typos including spelling errors.* I don't think that either I or these other adult academic professionals are failing to show self-reliance.
*: I do all my writing on a version of LaTeX with disabled spell-checking, so I have to spell my words correctly "the old-fashioned way".  Mistakes do sometimes creep in.  I could be setting things up better, but anyway the New York Times occasionally has spelling mistakes.

The "self-reliance" could be addressed by expressing disappointment that the student hadn't caught the error, along with a reminder that "You won't always have me to catch your mistakes."

@Ben: Your suggested quotation sounds possibly a bit obnoxious to me.  Yes, the OP will not always personally be around, but in general we do get our work checked by others, especially when it is important.  It is true that the OP's student would be well served by increased mastery of spelling, grammar and punctuation.  To my mind, pointing out the error implicitly makes this point already, and the sentiment that the student cannot in general count on her mistakes to be corrected by the OP seems to go without saying.

In this day and age when practically every software that allows editing text comes with a handy spellchecker, it is really a no-brainer to just take 2 minutes to go through the list and check all the words with red squiggles under them.

@Pete: Well, it depends on the relationship.  That would be ok for a close mentor to say, who'd been involved in the student's education for quite some time.  Not so much for the professor of one class.  Although, I was thinking more in terms of a student about to move on to bigger things, and the question makes it pretty clear this is a former student who has already done so.  So perhaps less good in that case.

@Superbest: Most of the time, that won't catch a misspelling which forms a homograph of another word (some editors also have grammar checking, which catches a few of the latter).  Without knowing what the word and incorrect spelling were, it's hard to know how obvious it should have been.

@BenVoigt I find that generic spellchecker cuts down the number of words that I must spellcheck by a factor of 2-4, then I am able to go through the handful of flagged words manually, and Google them to quickly confirm the spelling. With modern computers, it is very difficult to miss a spelling (or basic grammar) error even with a minimal effort to check - unless you forego checking entirely. (I'm not arguing that you shouldn't tell the student, though.)

@Superbest: for example misspelling the verb "affect" as "effect" is common and will not be caught by any automated spelling or grammar checker that I know of, since both are transitive verbs. You could argue that by definition it's not a "misspelling", it's "not knowing the difference between two words", so I readily accept that you don't have to accept it as an example if you don't want to...

Another problem arises if a misspelling occurs in the middle of a slew of text that's not in the dictionary, which might be the case in a "list of achievements" due to jargon, proper nouns, and abbreviations. But the questioner of course is entitled to make a judgement whether or not the error should have been obvious given what spelling and grammar checkers do with the actual text. I'd always advise proofreading important copy, even after use of a spellchecker. I often notice errors in text that you'd think has been spellchecked.

I think that level of "self-reliance" is a false goal. How far are you going to take it? If you saw her drop her wallet in the street, would you leave it there so that she learns self-reliance? ;-)
If the student handed you something riddled with errors, expecting you to proof-read it before signing, then maybe there would be a problem and maybe you could teach a lesson by saying, "there are 12 spelling errors in this document, but because you should know better than to leave it to me to proof-read, I'm not going to tell you what they are". Assuming you believe that cruelty can be a kindness.
A simple error doesn't say to me, "this person unreasonably battens on others" or even "this person should be left to succeed or fail alone". The rest of the application is OK, right? Self-reliant people still make mistakes. So I don't think there's a question about her self-reliance, it's about her spelling. Having one's occasional mistakes pointed out doesn't harm self-reliance.
Suppose you could teach her a lesson by leaving the error in (perhaps wait until she's rejected and then casually mention to her that in your view it could have been because of the error). Would you really prefer her to be a better speller without a certificate, rather than a worse speller with one? If not you're almost morally obliged to help her. You may draw conclusions about my politics, but I question absolute self-reliance anyway:

Any man's death diminishes me,
  Because I am involved in mankind,
  And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
  It tolls for thee.

I agree with most of this, but I don't think that the OP is (under any circumstances) "morally obliged" to help the student with her spelling.  It would be nice to help, and it seems obnoxious to try to spin the lack of help into some sort of "life lesson", but we are not morally obliged to do nice/helpful things.  It sounds good at first, but when you chew on it for a little while this becomes a quite unsustainable position.

@PeteL.Clark: fair enough. I said "almost" because I can't set someone else's standard for them. I think most people  feel some obligation to try to be nice/helpful within reason, especially toward students, former students and in general anyone who has been in our care. I won't go any further than that towards moral absolutism because ultimately I don't believe in it. I suppose actually I could have said that given my precondition ("if you don't prefer a better speller with no certificate") you're rationally obliged to correct it :-) Not correcting it contradicts that alleged preference.

And, to be honest, the morality and the Donne quote are intended slightly tongue-in-cheek anyway. I'm not really trying to make the case on the basis that no student is an island, and that everyone has a constant social obligation to everyone else. Besides, missing an opportunity for a certificate is not death. I think the case is made by the nature of the student's error and a reasonable standard of "self-reliance". The rest is just a good rule of thumb that points to the same conclusion.

You should point it out to her seeing as she is a former student - on another note I'd like to point out that in your query, you wrote 'I was asked by the student to sign a this verification form ' - errors can happens to anyone :)

A misspelled word doesn't jump off the paper and bite the offending student. Because of this, learning may not take place as easily as it would in touching a hot stove.
The embarrassment caused to the student by your telling the student about the misspelled word and how it could very easily be counterproductive to the student's goal might qualify as a very good learning experience that could lend itself to teaching self reliance regardless of the age of the student.
It's in the tact of your approach. For example, I've seen some people offering help on the math and physics sites in ways that really approach berating levels. They may be very smart, but they have no clue how to interact with other people. And when I say "no clue", I mean they literally have no idea how arrogant they are.

Yes, by all means tactfully point out the spelling error. As you would do for any friend or colleague. Be helpful, especially when it requires so little of you, for avoidance of potentially large disadvantage to the other.
Also, "being self-reliant" can easily become a bad goal... thinking that no one will help you? And feeling no responsibility to help others?