text:
Is it acceptable to write a reference letter for yourself?
If a student needs a reference letter for graduate admissions or that sort of thing, some profs will ask the student to write a reference letter for themself before sending it off to the prof for minor edits and finalization. This seems to be a somewhat common practice given that some graduate schools ask for several letters of recommendation even when it is not reasonable for the student to have developed deep connections with that many professors, and that most professors are just too busy to write quality letters for all the students that ask them to.
Is it acceptable to write most of the reference letter and have the prof make minor edits? Do academic institutions frown upon this practice? Would it be considered an academic offense if a student wrote a reference letter for themselves and had a prof sign it?

I might even call that fraudulent, given that the professor signs it off as their own writing. It is absolutely unethical. A reference letter is the confidential, honest, and sole opinion of the referee(s). The sacrosanct trust of a confidential reference letter is broken when a student sees, or has direct input towards, the letter.

@scaahu Points to remember when having to write recommendation letter yourself

@Moriarty that's why sometimes references are requested and not reference letters but a contact address, to contact the referers directly. IMHO, that's a much better practice. Specially if contacted by phone, skype or similar methods.

To repeat myself: No. Just...no.

It's called  a "resume" .  :-).  But yeah,  IMHO any prof. who does that is just being lazy.

Personal thought: If the employer decides to call the professor to follow up, how likely are they to recall the contents of a letter they didn't write? Bad position to be in. Frankly, if your prof. doesn't respect you enough to take the time to do it themselves, I'd suggest you might want to find another reference. (Also remember that there is no guarantee that what you write is what they eventually mail...)

@Moriarty the prof isn't signing off that they wrote it, but that they agree with it.  One would hope that if the student made inaccurate claims that the prof would 'edit' that or throw it back to the student to correct.  I would see it more as laziness than a con.

@JamesRyan No. Just... no.

@Moriarty You cannot call it fradulent, because many programs allow the student to request to see the recommendations. So the student seeing it is not necessarily unacceptable. Input is a different matter, though (although I think that is also not as simple as you present it).

I used to meet my referent on average 1 hour every week for one year on work-related matters. When afterwards I asked for a reference letter and was in turn asked for a draft, I was terrified and resolutely replied: "I would be very happy to help you if I could. But that request is against the moral principles." His request also made me feel very bad, as if he had nothing good to write about me after all that time we worked together...

@Moriaty It is not clear that a reference letter is really confidential.  Candidates may be able to access them under various laws in different countries.

If a student needs a reference letter for graduate admissions or that sort of thing, some profs will ask the student to write a reference letter for themself before sending it off to the prof for minor edits and finalization.

Some profs lie, cheat and steal as well... occasionally in their professional life.  Just because a practice is common does not make it right.

This seems to be a somewhat common practice given that some graduate schools ask for several letters of recommendation even when it is not reasonable for the student to have developed deep connections with that many professors, and that most professors are just too busy to write quality letters for all the students that ask them to.

It is certainly "reasonable" to ask for several letters of recommendation for graduate admissions.  That many students will not have had substantial personal contact with faculty is something to keep in mind as one progresses through an undergraduate program.  Also connections need not be especially deep in order to result in a good letter: if the writer can be confident that the student will succeed in the graduate program she is applying for, that is enough.  Often a truly outstanding performance in a single course is sufficient.

Is it acceptable to write most of the reference letter and have the prof make minor edits?

No, this is a form of plagiarism and academic fraud.  What you pass off as your written word must actually be yours except where you explicitly document to the contrary.

Do academic institutions frown upon this practice?

Many of them do, yes.

Would it be considered an academic offense if a student wrote a reference letter for themselves and had a prof sign it?

It depends on the institution and probably the nation in question but in the United States: yes, it certainly could be.  If I found out that this happened in an application that I read, I would at the very least throw out the entire letter; I would probably be inclined to dismiss the entire application. I would probably not contact the faculty member because in my view they are equally culpable (if not more so because they should know better), but I would be much more skeptical of letters coming from that person and even that institution in the future.

The above takes a hard ethical line, as I am very frustrated with other answers to this and related questions that seem resigned that one must accept unethical behavior in this situation.  But here is a different kind of answer:
A graduate admissions letter that a student writes for herself is going to be a bad letter compared to a "real" letter written by a qualified faculty member.  A graduate admissions letter is a communication between one mature academic and another: how would a 22 year-old young adult know how to write such a letter in a convincing way?  Without having read hundreds or thousands of other similar letters, how would she know what the faculty want to hear?  She wouldn't.  If you write your own letter, you are at best forging an ineffectively written letter.  Surely you deserve a better one?
As for faculty being very busy: yes, we are.  As for having lots of letters to write: yes, we do.  But writing such letters is part of our job, so a faculty member who does not take time out to write a good letter is not a good faculty member, at least not in this aspect.  Writing a good recommendation letter usually takes several hours and often more than one sitting.
How can you help your professor write a good letter (on their own!):

Give them lots of time to write the letter.
Academics are busy, and our schedules are uneven.  If you give me something to do six weeks in advance, then maybe in week three I'll find a spare afternoon and be able to do it.  Leaving much less than a month for someone to write a letter is getting off on the wrong foot and already implicitly asking for less than the best possible letter.

Provide information about yourself rather than waiting for the faculty member to ask.
You should not write the letter yourself, but you should certainly include all information that you think might be pertinent, and you are well within your rights to highlight certain information that you think might be especially pertinent.  Preparing something like a CV but tailored for a good letter rather than a job would be ideal.

Do everything in your power to minimize the attendant clerical work in submitting the letter.
Faculty members are busy and also, honestly, a bit lazy/snooty about routine work.  If you tell me to mail a letter to a certain address, then there is going to be a whole day in which I print out the letter and don't get around to correctly putting it in an envelope.  If the letters still need to be mailed (fewer and fewer do, and most but not all faculty members prefer to do things electronically), it would be wise to provide a self-addressed stamped envelope.  If the submission is electronic, again try to ensure that the faculty member needs to do as little as possible.  Ideally we get a website and a password, we enter those in, and we immediately upload the letter.  Much more than that is asking for trouble.  My own university makes faculty members jump through many more hoops to submit a letter, and this worries the hell out of me.

3'. If your letter needs to be sent to multiple locations in a way which requires the faculty member to do something multiple times, see if you can figure out a way for the faculty member to submit the letter only once.  E.g., perhaps there is an administrative assistant (AA) at your institution that will agree to receive the letter and take care of the nitty gritty of sending it to various places.  You may have to ask for this, and you should ask, as nicely as you possibly can.  Given the choice between getting a faculty member to do this clerical work and getting an AA to do it, you want the AA to do it: they are superior in every way.  Always remember to be extra nice to the AA's: you want in fact to be nicer to them than the average person they have to interact with, as then they will notice and do better work for you than the average person they have to interact with.  If you're asking an AA to do something which it is not absolutely clearly part of their job description, go ahead and ask but be extra extra nice: a small gift at the end is a classy move.

Don't be shy about checking up on the faculty member to see whether the letter has been written.
I frankly expect this, to the extent that if you ask me for a letter (including giving me all the information) and never check back again, I almost believe that you changed your mind and didn't really need it after all.  It is totally acceptable to ask multiple times for the faculty to turn in the letter.  I'm afraid that there has been "email alert inflation" in recent years, to the extent that if I only get one email about something, it feels almost optional.  Really important things have a way of resulting in multiple emails coming at shorter and shorter intervals.  Even to get me to write my grant reports they are not shy about sending several.  You should always be nice about this – at any point the faculty member could in theory change their mind – but we are grateful if it is your mental energy which is being spent on making sure it gets done.

I agree that the practice is unethical, but because confidentiality in the letter-writing process has been broken, not because the letter signer is attesting that the work is his own written work the same way that a journal article has to be written by its authors. The author is signaling her support of the ideas contained in the letter. (For example, what if the letter is written in a foreign language and then translated by a co-worker into English? The author didn't "write" the letter anymore, but is it no longer valid?)

@aeismail: I agree that breaking the confidentiality is another serious issue.  I also agree that recommendation letters are not "written work" in the same sense as papers.  But I think plagiarism standards still largely apply: in academia you are never allowed to take someone else's words, ideas and/or opinions and pretend they are your own.  Translation seems like a red herring: if a letter is being translated, then it should perhaps contain a copy of the original and certainly a "translated by Y", and then I see no issue.

I think there are some cultural issues at work here. For instance, in Germany, there are many things where a professor has to officially "sign off" on something. Often times the professor will not have the ability to draft the letter or document themselves—their group members will draft the letter and edit it. (For instance, changes in course outlines, requests for internal funding, grade changes, and so on.) Officially, though the professor is the only one who can sign it. So is the professor committing plagiarism?

@aeismail: The whole thing is highly culturally dependent, which is why I'm trying to be clear that I am speaking about American culture.  In the US there is some sense that certain documents are probably written by more than one person.  One can and (I think) should indicate whether a document is written by a person or a person on behalf of a group of people.  (And a letter which describes actions taken on behalf of a group ought to be viewed as recording the feelings of the group.)   But a recommendation letter is very personal: it's clearly the written work of a single person, right?

I frankly expect this, to the extent that if you ask me for a letter (including giving me all the information) and never check back again, I almost believe that you changed your mind and didn't really need it after all..   People I've asked for reference letters usually sent me a confirmation after they had send them, to which I then replied with a small thank you.

in Germany, there are many things where a professor has to officially "sign off" on something. Often times the professor will not have the ability to draft the letter or document themselves — Also in the US. But a recommendation letter is not one of those things.

@JeffE: I was responding to the claim: "in academia you are never allowed to take someone else's words, ideas and/or opinions and pretend they are your own." And over here, "letters of recommendation" are often treated the way I described. (An underling writes the letter, and the boss signs off on it.) It shouldn't be that way, but it often is.

The grant report thing is pretty ridiculous.  They send you an email saying "Your report is now DUE!" when they mean "The two month period in which you're supposed to write the report has started!"

@PeteL.Clark Thanks for your insights. Do you know if any academic institutions explicitly state that this practice is an academic offense? The thing that I'm unsure about is whether the reference letter must be the professor's views (i.e it would only be wrong for the prof to sign off on something they have not read or do not agree with) or strictly their work. One of my profs has a link to an automated reference letter creator app (referencecreator.com) on his website which he encourages students to use before asking him for a reference letter. Is this prof publicly admitting to fraud?

And just to clarify this is a very well-known and successful prof at the university. And the web app I mentioned only creates a paragraph - I would assume that the prof makes edits and adds more information.

@hesson: It sounds like a bit of a joke to me, to be honest.  If you feel as strongly about this as I do, you will not suggest that your students write even a little bit of their own recommendation letters.  But it is probably best to view this as an idiosyncratic way of providing the information for the letter rather than writing the letter itself.  So in summary: I am not amused by your professor's practice, but without further incriminating information I would not describe it as "academic fraud", no.

"writing such letters is part of our job" As defined by whom? It's not in any job description I have seen (outside the US)  and I have never heard of anyone suffering a detriment from refusing to write them. Is this a US only view?

@Lembik: Most of the components of an academic job are not codified in any job description.  I had a colleague once who had a lot of trouble with the fact that most of the actual expectations for his job were based on a common cultural understanding rather than explicitly enumerated.  He ended up quitting the job after several years.

... "I have never heard of anyone suffering a detriment from refusing to write them." This doesn't seem like a reasonable metric, since there are a lot of ways one can let down the students or the community without explicitly suffering a detriment.  But for my part I have never heard of any tenure track faculty member categorically refusing to write letters for students.  "Is this a US only view?" No, but faculty in the US probably take letters more seriously and spend more time writing them than in most other parts of the academic world.

@PeteL.Clark It seems that the entire culture of how such letters are viewed differs not only based on nationality but also on field. As can be seen from many comment exchanges here, the confidentiality of the letters are not really a thing in Europe (to the extent that "Europe" is a single entity here), but it seems that in math (at least my areas of it), most things are done very much like in the US in this regard.

"how would a 22 year-old young adult know how to write such a letter in a convincing way?" a 22 year-old would not and so edits made wouldn't be minor. hence, if minor edits are unethical, that's fine because minor edits would obviously not be made? (I didn't read the long debates on this page)

I don't think this is a grey zone at all. Senior professionals in all domains, not just acadaemia, routinely sign letters that they did not pen:

Directors signing press releases written by communications managers
Vice-chancellors signing letters to government officials written by deputy vice chancellors
Academics submitting journal articles that were written by a co-author, although the research is shared.

It's completely irrelevant who actually put the words together, unless there is a question over the copyright of the text - which there clearly isn't here. All that matters is that the person signing the letter stands by its content and takes responsibility for it.
If you write a reference letter for yourself that is over the top, they won't sign it. No ethical issues here whatsoever.
(I can't answer whether other institutions would frown on the practice for other reasons though.)

Ok, some research.
Guidance from p. 3 of "Writing a Letter of Recommendation" (an addendum to Making the Right Moves, published by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Burroughs Wellcome Fund):

Tip: Don’t ask the candidate to write a draft of the letter for you. Most heads of labs say this rarely saves time and sometimes leads to a weaker letter. It is better for the candidate to provide you with all the necessary information, from which you can then pick and choose as you write your letter.

...and from p. 9, guidance for the applicant:

You may be asked to write a draft of the letter. As mentioned on page 1, many heads of laboratories say this is not a good idea. However, if you are asked to do it, do it!

From "Letter of Recommendation: Writing One Yourself" on the Peterson's website:

When requesting a letter of recommendation, don't be surprised if your instructor or supervisor hands the forms back to you and says, "Sure, why don't you go ahead and write the first draft yourself, and I'll revise it and sign at the bottom."

From "Writing Your Own Letter of Recommendation" on StudentBranding.com:

The “draft” that you provide to the recommender to sign shouldn’t be a draft at all – it should be a perfectly polished letter ready to be signed, sealed and delivered.
Don’t be insulted when your supervisor decides to edit.  They’ll want to apply their own language and voice to your content.

[...]
In my experience as a supervisor . . .
I’ve been asked to write lots of letters of recommendations for students, but I’ve never felt strongly enough to throw the responsibility back at someone.  That’s not to say I haven’t managed some phenomenal students; I just haven’t had someone come along who I think is up to the task.  So, when he or she does come along, that person will really be top notch.

From "How to Write Your Own Recommendation Letter" on Firsthand.co:

[...] While the standard practice is for references to write their own recommendation letters, it’s becoming increasingly common for time-strapped individuals to ask you to pen the first draft of a letter yourself. [...]

From "Is it OK to Write My Own Letter of Recommendation?" in BusinessMajors.About.com's Recommendation Letter FAQ:

Question: Is it OK to Write My Own Letter of Recommendation?
Answer: The only time it is acceptable to write your own letter of recommendation is when the person you requested the letter from asks you to do it. Even then, it is important to be honest in the letter. Don't write anything the other person wouldn't have written. When you have finished, ask the person to look over the letter, verify the information, and sign. You should never forge someone else's signature.

I don't see much (any) evidence of any ethical quandaries in a professor requesting and submitting a letter of recommendation directly from the student. These examples aren't cherry-picked - they're the first few hits that came up when searching for phrases like "own letter of recommendation" or "letter of recommendation myself".
In summary:

Is it acceptable to write most of the reference letter and have the prof make minor edits?

Clearly, yes - if requested to do so.

Do academic institutions frown upon this practice?

No.

Would it be considered an academic offense if a student wrote a reference letter for themselves and had a prof sign it?

Hell no.

There is a difference between a letter written on behalf of an organization or group and a personal letter.  In American academia, recommendation letters are personal: the author is not speaking for anyone but herself.  The writer is also being asked to use their professional skills and experience to evaluate the student: signing a letter that you didn't write is falsely alleging that you have done some professional task: that's a form of academic fraud.

I don't think it's any different to writing to the Queen and getting a letter back which was obviously not written by her individually. Same for any public figure, or anyone really. Unless the content explicitly says "I'm personally writing this because..." there's no implication that they wrote it. Just endorsement.

By the same token, when a sports person appears in an advertisement saying, "To perform at my best, I drink Mr Fizzy" - does anyone think they wrote that copy themselves? Of course not. They're just endorsing its content without making any claim of authorship.

I was only addressing the ethical side of the question. Most sites are pretty clear that the best reference letters come from a good connection with a professor who thinks highly of you enough to want to spend the time to personally write a good rec. And I'm certainly not "endorsing" the practice - just because something is not prohibited doesn't mean it's a good idea.

Your answer does a good job of summarising your personal experience and opinions. Mine is a summary of the broader US university sector, with links to admissions offices' specific advice on the matter. Now, enough with the interrogation and ad hominems - they're inappropriate.

I think it's the difference between how you would like the system to operate (clearly many people deplore the idea of candidate-written recs) and how the system actually currently operates.

I've provided plenty of evidence from a wide range of institutions that students do not get in trouble for writing their own letters upon request. Feel free to provide evidence supporting your claim.

Let me summarize many now deleted comments: I am distressed by this answer.  I find it irresponsible, and I hope that students (and faculty) are not led astray by it.

@shane: The question whether writing letters of recommendations is an "important professional responsibility" is very culturally dependent. In cultures where letters of recommendation are not usual, the requirement to hand in one is seen as a "pointless formal obstacle" and consequently, spending any time on an exotic wish such as a letter of recommendation has an extremely low priority for many professors. Add to that that depending on the culture, students are anonymous toward teaching staff, and the only way to get a meaningful recommendation letter is by drafting it oneself.

the only way to get a meaningful recommendation letter is by drafting it oneself — That is not what "meaningful" means.

It does not follow from the quoted paragraphs that there is no ethical issue here, just that it's something that does happen. Not to mention that your sources, with the exception of HHMI, your sources do not inspire confidence.

It seems  from the comments here that US academics take their personal endorsement of a candidate much more seriously than others do.  My guess is that this is related to the status of academics in different countries.

I'm writing as an ethicist - it is morally wrong to ask students to write a letter of rec. Most undergrads and recent masters have no idea, at all, what is expected of them in a PhD program and cannot evaluate themselves in a way that is credible to readers. They do not know which qualities to focus on. And, frankly, the style and tone of undergraduate writing is inappropriate for a letter of rec. No amount of faculty "tweaking" can make a text written by an undergrad look like it has been written by an academic professional. If you can't write your own letter, then don't do it. Period.

@SherriLynnConklin But for a student who is asked to do so, it's not morally wrong to comply?

@SteveBennett - No, but it probably will not be very useful unless the recommender really does substantially edit it. A better solution is to self- advocate (which is a skill that takes a lot of practice and is especially hard with this sort of power dynamic) and offer to send a bulleted list instead or ask someone else, even if they don't know you as well.

@O.R.Mapper - Letters are important in the US and especially in certain disciplines. Anyone writing a letter for an applicant to a US program should take it seriously, otherwise they risk ruining the applicant's chances. It's not a formality in the US. I assume this is true in some other parts of the world. It's the responsibility of the prospective writer to, at least, be knowledgeable about the significance of letters in different cultural context and be aware of the impact a poorly written letter can have on an applicant. A good letter will usually be well received regardless.

I have much bigger ethical problems with a system in which the chances of an applicant depend crucially on practices of recommendation letter writing than with people who ask students to draft (draft!) their letter of recommendation.

There are certainly different degrees of flagrancy here.  I know some good professors who will ask for a short paragraph just to "get the juices flowing", but will then modify and expand it into a full letter.  I don't think that is wrong, although I wouldn't do it myself.
If the professor signs a letter written by the student without making any modifications, or if the final letter consists mostly of the student's words, I consider that fraudulent -- but it is primarily the professor's fraud.  After all, the professor is the one signing his name.
When I write letters, I require the student to give me all the relevant records as well as a description of what they think I should emphasize in the letter.  Not a single word of their description would ever be pasted into the letter, and I don't use it as a starting point for the text. It is simply their opportunity to remind me of the impressive things they have done, which I will then write about if I agree.
If I can't write a letter for them in my own words -- for whatever reason -- I will decline to write one at all.

@shane It is often much quicker to edit a document than to write it from scratch.

@shane: I would jump to “dislikes writing” before “moron.” (I’ve known multiple PhD scientists who would rather have a root canal than write a recommendation letter!)

Is it your opinion that anybody who gives a speech not written by themselves is being fraudulent? That speechwriters as an entire profession are a group of frauds?

@JHixson Recommendation letters are not speeches.

In my field, because students often end up going many different directions (academia, industry, government, etc.) and occasionally come from different fields entirely, it's fairly common to ask for a first draft of the letter essentially to make sure that the tone and "message" of the letter reflects what the candidate wants.
For example, one of my letter writers was a clinician, but the positions I was applying for had a large theoretical component. They could have written the type of letter they would for a medical student, but it would have been off-target, and likely would have caused the group reading the letter to go "Wait, what?" Instead, by drafting a letter for them, I could focus on the somewhat subtler point of the translational aspects of my work with them, which was relevant.
The assumption is, no matter how well they know you, that you know you - and what you want/need - better than they do. It's especially helpful for pulling in things they don't know about. For example, do you have a particular publication that's in a journal that's a big deal for the people you're applying to, but less so for them?
A draft allows for such a broad-strokes framework they can then work off of. I would be hesitant if they then don't put their own personal touches in.

While I can believe that some unscrupulous professors would simply take the student's letter and sign it, the one prof that have asked me to write a reference letter have mostly done it as an exercise for me to evaluate myself. I wrote a letter and brought it to him and then he gave me feedback about the letter and what I said about it, and then showed me the entirely different letter that he ended up writing himself.

The question is clearly a grey-zone in that a range of scenarios exist from a self-written letter uncritically signed by someone and sent off to using the self-written text as a base for expansion and critical rewriting by the signee. The former devalues the whole idea of recommendation letters whereas the latter may not be too different from verbally asking about the purpose of the letter. I ask students to provide a text that contains information they think should be in the letter (based on, for example, what information is requested in the application) and then make the changes I see necessary to put my name on the letter. this means I add my valuation of their academic traits. I do this when students apply for money from minor funds but never if they apply for an academic job. A key aspect for me is that the letter will carry my name and I therefore need to stand behind it.
The text I ask a student to provide provides me with details bout the project that I can consider and reject if I deem it not to be possible to support.
Where this becomes problematic, to say the least, is if one would simply sign off on a letter, edits or not and don not even care what it contains. This will be contributing to inflation in the meaning of such letters. I happened to have a very strict advisor in this sense, and as graduate students we always considered whether or not it was useful to get a letter from (in this case ) him. But, the positive in the letter was a real positive. The problem was of course you never knew what sort of letters the "competition" provided in applications. Hence not taking letters of recommendation seriously causes inflation and reduces the worth of them. This is probably why personal references (in the case of job searches) who you contact over conference phone become more important.

"This is clearly a grey-zone."  It is not clear: in my opinion it is a highly -- almost maximally -- unethical practice to pass off your own written words (concerning yourself!) as those of someone else.  Providing information that you think might be help your recommender in writing a letter is not the same thing at all...clearly.

I totally agree, but that is not what the grey-zone in my reply concerned, it concerned whether or not one could take a text written by a student as basis for a recommendation letter at all. The point being that it depends how you use it, as background information or as the finished letter and between those there is a sliding scale from acceptable to unethical.

@PeteL.Clark I think it is not unethical at all, if the one signing does sincerely agree with exactly what is written. I've been approached by students to sign their words, when I did not know much about the student at all...of course I would never do so, because I would not sign my name to something I do not agree with.

@Peter: I am glad to hear that, but the title of the question is "Is it acceptable to write a reference letter for yourself?" and your answer begins "This is clearly a grey-zone." If your "this" does not mean to refer to the title question, perhaps it would be helpful to clarify your answer.

@earthling: Is plagiarism not plagiarism if one "sincerely agrees with exactly what is written"?

@PeteL.Clark I do not believe this is an issue of plagiarism. In plagiarism, you wrote something worthy of writing and I am taking credit for it (stealing an idea). In this case, I am trying to put my words into your mouth. If you agree, then we both agree and there is no plagiaristic conflict.

@earthling: plagiarism includes language as well as ideas: please see e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism.  And a letter of recommendation includes some ideas: it is a reasoned argument for why an important decision should be made.  A letter of recommendation that simply said "I think student X is very good; you should admit them" would be almost worthless.

@PeteL.Clark I think we will have to agree to disagree on this (because this is not a discussion board and this is going on a bit long). If you look at your link, the first words are Plagiarism is the "wrongful appropriation" in other words, you are stealing (words or ideas) from someone. If I ask you to say something on my behalf, how could you consider that you are stealing my words or ideas?

Just because I sign something doesn't mean I've written it.  I've signed plenty of petitions because I agree with the content, without claiming the text is mine in any way.

@earthling: So you think that if a student wrote and published a paper or book entirely on her own and gave permission to her adviser to publish it under his own name, it would not be plagiarism?  Are you not aware that faculty members have been censured for exactly this behavior?  gerrit: Yes, not everything that you sign has the expectation of being personally written by you.  When you sign a lease you don't imply that you have written it.  But that is the distinct implication of letters of reference, and hence ethical standards of academic writing apply.

Even if you don't think it's unethical to write your own draft letter, it can be dangerous:
Most such applications require several letters. If two or more letter-writers all ask you for a first draft, and you send them the same draft document, you don't know which parts they will choose to edit. It's possible that two writers will leave the same paragraph unedited, because they both stand by it... which means their letters will contain identical wording. This will raise serious red flags when the admissions committee notices!
It's much safer to send the letter-writers your CV and perhaps a bulleted list of items or traits you'd like the writers to highlight.


text:
Can we send our research paper to multiple journals at once?
I have heard that if someone sends his paper to two different conferences and is somehow caught, then there would be severe consequences for the researcher.I did not know that before but I heard two supervisors talking about it yesterday.
So is it okay to send a research paper to different journals at once?( I am talking about sending to all,not publishing in all).
My field is computer science.

If your field is very specialized, chances are quite high that the person reviewing your article will be the same, regardless of journal you submit to. (Also, you might have a specific reviewer in mind). This probably gives a bad impression...

Short answer: No. Then to expand on the different aspects of your question, acceptable or not and effects:

It is generally not acceptable to send the same paper to two journals (in your question your title states "journals" but your text talks about "conferences", I will focus on journals). Typically you sign or agree to a statement that the work is not under consieration elsewhere when you submit work. If so then you are clearly violating an understanding you have agreed to. This does not prevent people from doing so. I have experienced (as editor/reviewer) a paper that was submitted to three journals at the same time.
There is no way to provide formal punishment if you break the rules but you will become "known" for this behaviour quite quickly and you do not want a bad reputation. Again, this does not prevent the problem from happening but I guess some authors think the world is too big for anyone to notice and prior to Internet and its search capabilities, this was probably at least partially true; now it is much easier to trace duplicates.

Your final commnet confuses me a bit. why would you send a paper to a journal if you do not intend to try to get it published there? If this is to get free feedback to improve the manuscript, I would strongly advice against such behaviour.
A final comment: I deliberately did not consider the case of a conference since all conferences may not lead to a publication, but then you would submit an abstract and not a complete manuscript.

I was talking about applying to multiple journals and get it published in the first journal which accepts it.Like we apply for job at multiple companies but accept the first good offer.

@iOsBoy I do not know of any journals to which you "apply". In any case, do not send to multiple journals at once. A good strategy is to send to higher end journals first since if they accept your paper it will be more noticed.

"There is no way to provide formal punishment if you break the rules": In principle, your institution could consider double submission a breach of academic ethics and discipline you.  A student could be suspended or expelled; a professor could be censured or fired.  This would probably only happen in egregious cases, but in fact there is a way to "provide formal punishment".

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When writing a letter of reference, is there any reason not to show it to the student?
I only agree to write a reference letter if I can write a positive one. Although it is only hypothetical at this point, I would hesitate to write a reference letter for an individual who chooses not to waive their right to see it. That said, I have sometimes shown students my letters for them since I feel it is useful for them to know what I have written. It also provides them a chance to remind me of things I may have forgotten. I do not do this consistently, but am considering making it a personal policy.
I guess I have two questions. Is there a reason not to show a student their letter of reference? Just to be clear, this is for a letter I have written for the student and not for a reference I have recieved. The second question is, is it reasonable to refuse to write a reference for a student when the student does not waive their right to see the reference.

Would knowing that the subject will read your letter change the way you write it?

Is there a reason not to show a student their letter of reference?

One important reason is if you make direct comparisons with other students, which is one of the most useful things you can do in a letter.  If you say "this student is even more promising than X, and perhaps comparable with Y, but not quite as strong as Z", then it doesn't seem appropriate to tell the student.  Even if your letter doesn't name anyone specific, but instead says "this student was among the top two in a class of twenty-five", it still leaks a little information about how other students performed in the class.
Even aside from direct comparisons, you'll be making implicit comparisons if several students compare the letters you wrote for them to see whose is more enthusiastic.  That doesn't raise the same ethical issues, but it's still awkward.  I have no interest in telling students my private opinion of how they compare with each other.

The second question is, is it reasonable to refuse to write a reference for a student when the student does not waive their right to see the reference.

Why not?  The fundamental question here is whether you ever have an obligation to write a letter.  In general I'd say no, although there are cases in which it would be offensive to refuse to write for anything less than very serious reasons.  (For example, Ph.D. advisors owe letters to graduating students.)  Under most circumstances, refusing to waive the right to see the letter sounds to me like a fine reason to decline to write one.
There are also all sorts of intermediate options you could choose.  For example, you could tell the student you would have to write something like "I warned this student that I could not write a compelling letter if he did not waive the right to see it, because I would be unable to compare him with other students.  He insisted that he needed a letter from me but was unwilling to waive this right, so I will do the best I can.  I can confirm that he received an A in my class and has sufficient preparation for further study in this field."

Yes, that's two questions.
Yes, you can and should decline to write a reference letter if the student does not waive his right to see it because the receiving institution will discount the letter and it will be a waste of your time.
Since you should never write a bad reference letter (you should decline instead) there is no reason not to provide a copy to the student.  Tell them to be cool about having received the copy.
Here is what I tell students: http://ksuweb.kennesaw.edu/faculty/rbrow211/recommendations/index.html#waiver

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How to show interest in a candidate when no positions are available?
I occasionally receive "cold-call" applications from graduate or postdoctoral candidates interested in working in my research group. Most of the time, they are of no interest—it's just a "form letter"-type application. However, once in a while, I get an application from someone who I would consider giving an interview to—if I actually had an open position.
What I want to do is to let people know that I am interested in such candidates, even though I don't have an open job for them. Is there a way to express this interest, and to encourage them to apply again when a new position becomes available. Is there a good way to do this—most of the time, such emails sound very trite, and that's exactly what I'm trying to avoid.

Send good emails, "aeismail" anagrams to "A1 emails" :)

This answer is about faculty candidates, not graduate student or postdoc candidates.  (I misunderstood the original question.)
First, be honest with the candidate, both about your interest and about your ability to hire.  Yes, we are very interested.  No, we don't have any regular faculty slots this year.  Yes, we would love to fly you out, have you give a talk, meet with some of our faculty and students, maybe have a chat with the dean, and see where things go from there.  Make no promises you can't actually keep.
Second, a lack of open slots does not mean it is impossible to hire.  Your college or campus may have finds set aside for "excellence" hires, or for cross-departmental research initiatives (like "clean water" or "computational science"), or for dual-career families.  Some other overlapping department may be willing to give you half a slot for a joint appointment.  Another faculty member in your department or college may have just unexpectedly retired, resigned, moved to administration, failed to get tenure, or died.  Your dean may be impressed enough (or encouraged enough by other senior faculty) to give you an extra slot just for that person next year.
Creating a slot takes a lot of legwork and a lot of political capital—you may burn a future slot even if the candidate doesn't come.  So they'd better really be special, and you'd better know that they'll come if a position is actually offered.
Yes, I have seen this work.

Thanks for the response, but I should have articulated that this was for graduate or postdoctoral positions. So I'm not forced to create a faculty slot—I just need to find some new project funding. I've edited the question accordingly.

Oops!  Sorry I misunderstood.

No problem. It's just a sign that my original question wasn't clear enough.


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How much customization of letters of recommendation is necessary?
While I know that students are encouraged to "tailor" their applications to the particular school or program they're applying to, does the same hold true for the people writing letters of recommendation on their behalf? In other words, is it possible just to change the "addressee" portion, and use a greeting such as "Dear Members of the Admissions Committee," or is more personalization required?
Just to clarify here, I'm referring to the "pro-forma" parts of the letter, rather than the actual content of the recommendation per se.

Since i'm student i'm not in a position to answer this question but I would say it depends to whom you are writing. Top schools usually need strong ( or even exceptional) letter of recommendations which require the Professors to alter their format accordingly. I had a situation applying to Oxford school and the rejection was mainly because of the not exceptional recommendations :)

@seteropere: Thanks for the comment. Of course the content of the letter has to be good; I'm not actually quite so concerned with that portion in my question. I've revised it accordingly to make my intent clear: I'm worried about the "mechanics" (who's the addressee, what's the greeting, and so on).

Depends entirely whether you know the people at the said place or not. If you do know the person, then you can tailor it and it is infinitely more helpful. If you don't know anyone in that department then the tailoring is meaningless.
If a professor really really wants a particular student to do well, then he can call in and discuss the student's strengths with a committee member.

I have two levels of customization. Firstly, if the letter is for an internship at a lab, or an application to grad school or a job, I tailor the qualities that I emphasize and link those qualities to the specific job.
A second level of customization is if I have any connection to the institution (for example, when writing letters of recommendation for AT&T Labs - where I used to work - I might mention this explicitly in order to convey that I understand the local culture)
This is above and beyond the usual pro-forma customizations for the addressee etc.

Although it really depends on the culture you are in and the culture you are applying, tailored recommendation letters are generally 'stronger'.
Especially in the USA it is recommended to put also the university/department/lab name in the recommendation letter instead of just stating that the student is very good. Even changing the addressee requires the author spend some extra time, which means you are valuable for the author of the letter.
Keep in mind that most of the recommendation letters are not really read. They are there to show whether you can get them. In this perspective, tailored letters mean you have stronger relations with 'worthy people'.

"Keep in mind that most of the recommendation letters are not really read" - [citation needed]

Actually, I think @memin is correct, but perhaps not for the reason he is suggesting.  Most recommendation letters are not read, because most applications for most positions are form clearly unsuitable candidates.  One the other hand, recommendation letters for strong applicants are pored over with fine-toothed combs and microscopes.

I agree with @JeffE. Graduate schools need to know something about applicants that they can't learn from test scores and transcripts: "Is this person capable of being successful in the research part of the program?" Test scores and transcripts only weed out the unqualified.


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What to do when you spot a paper on arXiv with the same essential material as yours?
What do you do when you've sent a paper on your fancy new algorithm to a conference, and before the conference has replied to you, you spot a newly submitted paper on arXiv on the same algorithm?
Possible reactions I can imagine:

You immediately submit your work to arXiv and/or open-source your code to "prove" you were working on it too (or at least as much as that might be worth at this point)

You just wait and see if the conference accepts it (but then what?)

You withdraw your paper entirely -- you "lost"

You totally ignore it -- it's not "official" until it's peer-reviewed, so you might still be "first"

Furthermore, who typically gets credit if:

Your paper is accepted, and is first to be published outside of arXiv

Your paper is declined, and is not first to be published outside of arXiv

Update
I'm reading the other group's paper more carefully (I'd only had a chance to glance at it yesterday, and was alarmed because several of the key words and concepts were exactly the same as ours), and it seems like they might not have discovered the same algorithm after all -- it's difficult for me to tell because their notation and terminology varies considerably from ours, but there's a chance that we've found different algorithms, even though several key concepts are the same. I'll continue looking into it, but just thought I'd mention this to add more context. At least now I'm a little bit more hopeful.

Do you have any reason to suspect that your work was stolen, or does it seem to simply be a case of simultaneous invention?

I'll relate a similar recent occurrence from last year in physics: A theoretical paper came out suggesting a new phenomenon. Inspired by this, two research groups ran numerical simulations to probe for the phenomenon and uploaded their results on arXiv. They were four days apart. One of the groups later acknowledged the others' preprint: "At the time of writing this paper, we became aware of a pre-print ... have reached similar conclusions as us." Both got later published in journals. I think uploading to arXiv does get you more visibility especially in case your paper is indeed rejected.

Do you consider contacting people who (re)-produce the same algorithm? Conferences and publications are means to facilitate the communication between researchers, not the opposite.

@Moriarty: No, it's almost certainly simultaneous invention, nothing malicious going on.

@DmitrySavostyanov: That may be a possibility, thanks for the tip.

Weep.

@Lodewijk: Yeah, I'm already doing that...

It happened to me once, when I co-authored a hep-th paper on arXiv the Thursday before Easter. The next Monday, another group published essentially the same paper. On Tuesday, our group did celebrate this event with a round of cake for everyone at our institute :-) The other group had a note in their paper, acknowledging our contribution, and in a second version, we put added a note acknowledging their results.

My advisor was once on the receiving end. He arrived at an informal conference where he and another person in his parallel session both still had to submit their titles (they both were TBA in the program). When he submitted his title, he discovered it was the same as the talk just prior to him. To make it worse: the other group had submitted their talk on arXiv that day. This was on a national holiday in our country, with noone of his collaborators reachable. I think he submitted their work-in-progess within a week after the conference. In the end both papers ended up acknowledging each other.

Anyway, in some fields this happens quite often. I used to be active in the string theory subfield of hep-th, and this used to be quite a fad-driven topic, and simultaneous discoveries were quite common.

It seems to me that the best answer is some combination of 1. and 2.  Because you submitted the paper for review before the other work -- call it paper X -- appeared on the arxiv, the community will readily believe that your work does not rely on paper X.  (At first I wrote "completely clear that your work does not rely", but that's too strong: it's possible that you had some prior contact with the authors of paper X and learned about their work before it was published.  But from your description that didn't actually happen, so no problem there.)
So you are in a fortunate situation: because you submitted the work to the conference before the arxiv posting, you have established your independent priority.  The fact that the report hasn't come back yet has nothing to do with that.  With respect to the submission, it would be reasonable to just wait for the report -- I am assuming that since it is a conference, it will come back within a month or so?  If your paper is accepted, then you should include in the published version and also in your conference talk the information that similar (or the same...) work was independently done in paper X.
However it would be a good idea to write immediately to the authors of paper X and let them know about your work.  If you are in a field where the conference paper will be supplemented by a later journal paper, then depending upon the degree of similarity you may want to consider a joint publication.  If not, then your journal papers should cocite each other: this establishes that "you both have priority", which is certainly possible, and then both works should be publishable.  (But in my opinion a joint paper is the better option if the work is very similar: does the community need two versions of the same work?  Can everyone be counted on to know about and value the two works equally?  Better to join forces: that seals it.)  Depending upon the response you receive and the timing it might be a good idea to post your submission to the arxiv as well, with a note explaining the chronology.
I disagree with both 3. and 4.  First, it does not matter who did the work chronologically first but rather that each work was done independently and before the other was published.  There does not need to be a "winner" and a "loser" here: you can both "win".  It is good that research communities operate in this way, much better than your option 4.: no one has control over which referee report comes back first or which paper goes to press first or anything like that, so if this were the standard it would be at the very least quite unfair and in fact open to all kinds of ethical issues and abuses.
Note: One of the comments asks whether the work was stolen.  It seems that the only plausible way for this to happen is for there to be some collusion between the authors of paper X and either the conference organizers or the chosen referees of your paper.  This type of behavior is in my experience extremely rare, so I don't want to address it in my answer.

+1 for emphasizing that this is not a zero sum game with winners and losers.

Yeah the conference results will come back soon. One thing that complicates things is that they don't take the submissions and publish them directly -- they will ask for a final revision if they accept the paper, which means the PDF won't be timestamped because it'll be different from the one submitted earlier. Would that matter at all? And what happens if it gets rejected?

@Mehrdad: You should include the citation of the other result in any revisions you make, with language that describes the chronology of the situation (e.g. "After this paper was submitted, we learned...").  You don't need timestamped PDFs because you showed your document to actual people before the other work became available.  I would be very surprised if the editors did not keep copies of all the submitted versions; indubitably they will keep the record of when you submitted.

If the paper gets rejected then you can still ensure your priority by including in your next version information about when and where you submitted it, which the editors will certainly be able to corroborate.  However I reiterate that contacting the other authors ASAP would be a very good idea: if they agree that your work was independently done there is really no problem here.  If you feel at all nervous about arriving at such an agreement,  @Mangara's advice to immediately upload your paper to the arxiv seems good.  In general, do that whenever you feel the first pangs of "scoop-worry"!

@PeteL.Clark: I don't quite understand why I need to cite the other result though. Citing the results implicitly acknowledges that our work came "after" theirs and give them some credit for being first, whereas in reality I have no reason to believe they did any of this first -- only that they put it on arXiv before we did. I will definitely try to contact them though -- I don't expect they'll disagree this was independent work. Thanks for the advice. +1

@Mehrdad: I do not agree that you only cite work that comes before yours.  You also cite work which was done at approximately the same time, if you know about it in time to do so; that's what I meant by "cociting".  You seem to be acting as if you don't want to cede the advantage of your work being chronologically first (if in fact it was -- who knows?  what does that even mean, really?).  I am suggesting that you regard the situation as symmetric between you and the other party: wouldn't you want it that way if the roles were reversed?

Another reason to cocite is the obligation of academic honesty: you need to draw the reader's attention to all related work of which you're aware.  Sometimes your awareness changes in the course of the publication/revision process, in which case you do not need to (nor is it necessarily appropriate to) substantially rewrite the paper.  But you still need to inform the reader about the other work, since you now know about it.

@PeteL.Clark: I don't understand how the situation would be symmetric in that case, though. It's not like they cited our work in their paper, so if we cite their work they're implicitly first and we're implicitly acknowledging we're second.

@Mehrdad: They don't have a published paper; they have an arxiv preprint which they can (and should) modify.  The symmetry is that both parties should cocite each other.  Nor do you leave anything implicit: you clearly explain the chronology so the reader understands the situation.  See e.g. http://www.math.uga.edu/~pete/thuelemmav6.pdf and http://www.tcnj.edu/~hagedorn/papers/Geometry%20of%20Convenient%20Numbers.pdf: this is quite common.

@PeteL.Clark: Ok I guess that depends on what they say once we contact them, since I'm not planning on citing them if they're not going to cite us at the same time. Of course if they do then we will too, it wouldn't make sense otherwise. But I'm not really thinking of pushing them to. I'm curious though: what would happen if we don't cite them (and they don't cite us)? You mentioned academic honesty, but I'm not sure I understand what the "dishonesty" would be if we don't cite them - as far as I'm aware neither of us knew about each other, so I don't see why this would be a case of dishonesty.

@Mehrdad: At this point I recommend that you ask a followup question, in particular to get other opinions.  But briefly: neither of you knew about the other when you were doing the work, but you do now.  Uploading a paper within a few days of seeing someone else's paper and not mentioning that other paper is not being forthcoming.  You don't only mention papers that you use logically in your work; you have an obligation to inform the reader of directly relevant work.  And practically, not mentioning it all is not clarifying the situation: you leave room for misinterpretation.

@Pete: Hmm I think I'm good for now, not really feeling like I have any followup question to ask that isn't a duplicate of this one. Thanks for the advice though!

I'm not planning on citing them if they're not going to cite us at the same time. — Please don't play that game. If I reviewed your submission and was aware of the arXiv preprint, I would insist on your citing them as a condition of acceptance, no matter what the other authors did.

@JeffE: It's easy to tell people to give away credit for their hard work when it's not your own. I would find that quite unreasonable, but I would have few choices then. The situation is symmetric in my view. Barring an event like that, I'm not convinced I should cite a paper in a pre-print whose existence I'm only aware of because of a quick search I did long after I'd finished mine and already it for publication. If the readers are interested in simultaneous work they can find them the same way they found ours. I just can't justify giving away credit for work that is entirely mine.

Citing other people is not "giving away your work". You have admitted that others have independently achieved the same result as you. It follows that you already know that you do not deserve sole credit for your results. (For your actual work, yes. For the results of that work, no.) All you have to do is publicly admit what you already know.

@JeffE: Lots of problems with your quotes and your bolded text. For one thing I never said give away my "work"; I said give away "credit". I also never said I deserve credit for my "results", I said I deserve credit for my "work". I'm also highly bothered by your usage of the word "admit" -- whether or not you intended it, I feel it implicitly makes me look guilty. We'll definitely talk to the other group and figure it out, so don't worry. I do feel neither of us needs to cite the other, though we might anyway. I'm not interested in arguing about it though, so let's end it here.

This actually happened with a paper I worked on. We handled it by:

Immediately submitting our own version to arXiv, including a short mention of the other paper.
Informing the other authors of our result, and offering to write a joint journal paper.

Submitting your own version as soon as possible strongly suggests that it was an independent discovery, especially if the presentation is completely original. It also sends a signal that you're not trying to hide anything.
By writing a joint 'final' version, both parties can share the credit. In our case, the papers had been submitted to different conferences, so we thought a joint journal version would be the most appropriate. In the end, both papers were rejected from these conferences, but the other authors were able to strengthen the original result, while we generalized it. This meant that we were able to write a very strong merged paper, which was accepted to the most important conference in the area.

+1 especially for your first point.  For some reason responding with a rapid uploading of your own document makes a convincing case for the independence of the work.  (Logically speaking this is unconvincing: I guess people think that intellectual thieves are slow and lazy rather than fast and hard-working?  It need not be the case!)

+1 I'll probably upload it soon, hopefully by tomorrow. Just have to make sure I don't make silly mistakes in the public version. Not really convinced why I would need to mention the other paper (nothing in our paper is based on anything they did) but I'll consider it.

Many theorems, algorithms, fundamental scientific ideas, etc bear the name of (or are attributed to) more than one person. This does not always happen because these persons worked together. Sometimes it happens because it is established that they worked on the same issue approximately during the same period and/or published approximately during the same period. An example that I can immediately give from Economics/Econometrics is in the sub-field of Stochastic Frontier Analysis: in 1977 two papers were published independently, laying the fundamentals of the field. Almost 40 years later, they are still mentioned together, when the author wants to refer to those that initiated the whole thing. These papers are
Aigner, D., Lovell, C. A. A., & Schmidt, P. (1977). Formulation and estimation of stochastic frontier production function models. journal of Econometrics, 6(1), 21-37.
and
Meeusen, W., & Van den Broeck, J. (1977). Efficiency estimation from Cobb-Douglas production functions with composed error. International economic review, 435-444.
Your algorithm and the other algorithm may be "cousins", and the existence of both may have positive externalities on the research and professional paths of all involved, since it makes for a more vigorous "look here!" shout to the scientific world. I would even consider promoting  the other paper alongside yours.

+1 for making the key point that someone else who is interested in what you are working on is a good thing.

@PeteL.Clark: It would be a good thing if I was going to continue working on this. But I've already finished the project and want to stop working on it -- I was only waiting to publish the results somewhere. So if someone else becomes interested that's arguably bad for me because it'll take away valuable time I want to spend elsewhere; I've already spent more time on the project than I ever intended to.

@Mehrdad: Well, I'm not sure what to say about that: you did say "arguably", and you are certainly entitled to your opinion as to whether this development is good or bad.  For what it's worth I truly don't see it that way.  Alas: academia is a time-consuming business.  Also, if you're sticking with it (academia, that is), it seems hard to know whether you'll return to something or not.  Many times have I put a project or research area aside for years at a time...only to return later and take it up again.

@PeteL.Clark Thanks for the thumbs-up. Essentially, my answer is a subset of yours, which I just read. I must confess that lately this site emits a much more negative tone than when I first subscribed. Too many questions about allegedly questionable conduct, too many answers suggesting "attack" or "admit defeat". I am an economist and have no issue with competition or even antagonism -but what big bucks I have made in life (monetary, intellectual, emotional) was by "tricking" the competition into ...balanced cooperation -so I guess I am a bit biased on the matter.

If your paper gets accepted in this conference, you win. The submission date is before the arxiv uploading and no one can claim you plagiarized the arxiv preprint.
If your paper gets rejected, you probably lost. In subsequent submissions you have to cite the original arxiv preprint, make extra effort and experiments to differentiate your work from theirs (by augmenting your original work) and claim that both works have reached independently to those parallel findings. Still, this lowers your work's novelty and might lead to another rejection. In that case, the other side might lost too, because your original rejection might also signify that the algorithm is not that seminal or important.
So, you should consider in what ways you can expand your work to actually provide novel content in comparison to the arxiv preprint, in case of rejection. In case of acceptance, you have nothing to worry about.
UPDATE: I really liked the other answers. Submitting to arxiv the OP's paper as soon as possible is probably the best thing to do. Also sharing co-authorship (in case of rejection) is of course the ethical / right thing to do and that is what the OP should do. But:

Case 1. There is some foul play on the other side. In that case, they do not want to share co-authorship but patent / steal the idea. In that case, co-operation is not likely to happen
Case 2. No foul play involved and the OP's paper gets rejected. The other side has already patented those results by their arxiv preprint. They may even already submitted the paper to another conference (many times that is when you upload preprints). Why would they share co-authorship? Would the OP share co-authorship if his paper got accepted? Will he include the other paper in the related work section (of course he should) in his camera ready version (in
case of acceptance), when most of the results are identical? According to his comments he is not going to do that (when he has nothing to lose by that if his paper got accepted). Why does everyone assume that the other side will cooperate? These are serious questions that are easily answered on an ethical basis but the practical side is always more complicated. And what if the other side is more famous / established than the OP? Sometimes in that case they may even refuse co-authorship on that fact alone.  Co-operation and co-authorship usually happens between similar / equal parties but they are harder to achieve when the other side has more leverage.

I really hope things work for the OP. But if his paper gets accepted he should definitely cite the other work and explain the situation in his camera ready version.

It's not about winning and losing. If the asker's paper is rejected, a joint paper with the authors of the ArXiv paper is probably on the cards.

@DavidRicherby See the updated answer. I really wish things could work the "right" way but many times unfortunately they do not.

The asker's submission of the work to a conference already establishes their share of priority, even if the paper is rejected. And I, at least, assume that the other group will co-operate because that, in my experience, is what normally happens.

@Alexandros: The OP is rather clearly a young researcher who is trying to learn what to do in this new situation.  In my opinion you are not being so helpful by assuming the worst.  This is not a Prisoner's Dilemma situation or anything like that: in this case both parties can establish that their work precedes the public availability of the other's, so they both have priority.  If one party openly acknowledges this and the other doesn't, then the main thing which is lost is the opportunity to engage in best practices, like consolidating common work.  I see no potential tragedy here.

@PeteL.Clark I do not assume the worst. The OP even thought of withdrawing the paper (which would be a huge mistake). But it is a great possibility that the other side has already submitted to another conference. And this is something that previous answers do not address and the OP should have in mind.

@Alexandros: Yeah I've been thinking of the same thing -- I have no idea if they've submitted it to another conference or not, and I'd definitely wondered why no one had mentioned that possibility except you.

"The OP even thought of withdrawing the paper (which would be a huge mistake)." Well, he presented it as one of four choices anyway; I agree that would be the worst thing to do.  "But it is a great possibility that the other side has already submitted to another conference. And this is something that previous answers do not address and the OP should have in mind." That is also true.  In my mind this is part of what you learn by contacting the authors of paper X.  If you have each already submitted to a conference, then probably the two works should be published separately.

When I was speaking of a joint paper, I had in mind mainly a journal paper that would follow the conference paper.  (In full disclosure: in my field -- pure mathematics -- we don't have much in the way of conference papers in this sense.)  Thanks for making that explicit.  I do think however that maintaining a cheery calm is a good reaction to this question: this is very far from a truly sticky situation.

If your paper gets accepted in this conference, you win. — If by "win", you mean "get sole credit", this is inconsistent with my experience. Assuming both papers appear in som form at roughly the same time, you will (eventually) both get credit, as you should.

@JeffE By winning, I mean the OP gets credit for his work. Otherwise he will have to fight for it. I understand that for professors like you, one more publication does not mean that much, but for struggling students who need them for a PHD, it does. And any mishap like that (that happens on real life) it might mean 6 months - 1 year additional work. So, if the paper gets accepted, yes the OP wins because he gets the publication he needs.

That's a bit unfair, @Alexandros. Even though I'm not a student myself any more, I have students of my own, with publication records of their own, in whose success I am personally and materially invested. When similar things have happened to them, I've said exactly the same thing: Finish the paper, and do it right. Part of doing it right is citing your competitors. Otherwise, people will notice that you didn't, when you could/should have, and that lack of generosity/honesty will hurt you more in the long run.

@JeffE Citing the "competitor"'s work, in case of acceptance is something that I have already suggested in my answer. Also, in a similar case I assume you and your students are more happy if the paper gets accepted (before the other party's work) instead of having to negotiate co-authorship and joint papers with them.

@Alexandros Actually, no.  I'd really rather join forces.  If I were in OP's situation, I'd not only cite the arXiv authors, but also invite them to be coauthors on the conference paper, assuming it's accepted and the PC agrees.

@JeffE: Joining forces is great if you have the time to spend on re-authoring a paper. I'm not sure I do. I just want to publish what I have done and move on.

Too bad. If you don't want the research community (precisely the people who will be judging your suitability for jobs later) to think you're lazy, apathetic, or intentionally negligent, finish the paper properly.

@JeffE: The more of your comments I read the more antagonistic they become. When I say I might not have the time, it quite literally means I might not have the time. It does not mean I'm "lazy" or "apathetic" or "intentionally negligent". You most certainly do not know what my situation is like to be justified in telling me "too bad", as though you're my adviser and I'm just a lazy student who doesn't want to finish his work. Please don't pretend to know people's limitations, motivations, and constraints when you don't.

I'm not claiming that you are lazy or negligent. I'm claiming that not citing the other paper will make you look lazy or negligent. The latter is much worse for your career than the former.


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When to use a table vs. a plot to present numeric information?
I find that in many cases, either a table or a plot will do an equally good job of presenting numeric information. Does anyone have any advice or even rules about when to prefer using a table over a plot and vice versa? I'm referring to tables and plots in the context of academic journal articles.

I generally prefer plots as they are easier to interpret at a glance. Only use tables when there is lots of information which is hard to put in a plot

I would say: Use tables if the actual values are of importance and use plots if trends (or similar things) are important.
The rationale is simply that one cannot extract actual values of a function at specific places from plot. Vice versa, it's much simpler to see linear growth or periodicity from a plot than from a table.

I would add that when both the actual values and the geometrical form are important it is convenient to provide both of them.

Tufte offers suggestions for making the precise numeric data extractable from plot while still showing the relationships.

As @Dirk says, it's often quite useful to preserve the numeric values - that's  the motivation for tabulating data. However, plots have the advantage of being able to easily visualize trends in data.
If you have a set grid of x and y co-ordinates, with each pair of co-ordinates having a numeric value, you can sort of do both.
Here is an example. The trends in the data are made much clearer by plotting and colour-coding the data, but the numeric information is preserved. As a result the readability of the numbers isn't perfect, but (depending on your data) you can sometimes have the best of both worlds.

More often than not, "it's often quite useful to preserve the numeric values" is only true from the perspective of the author, though. :/

what is the name of your program?

@Ooker PGFPlots for LaTeX. See Jake's answer to this question to see how you can do a plot like mine. I just followed his example and added the text annotations using nodes at each set of co-ordinates.

In addition to the other answers, I think it depends on how much data you are trying to show.  Personally, I like to use tables when I can.  If you have only three data points, a figure wastes a lot of space and ink.  Tufte calls this the Data-ink ratio.  In his book, he recommends:

Above all else, show the data.

So, if you have hundreds of data points, you would show a figure, unless the exact data values matter (in which case it is rather a reference table).  But if you have only a handful of points, it is more efficient to display the data in a table.  Unless, as other answers point out, you want to visualise a particular relation or trend — then a visualisation is again more appropriate.

I strongly disagree with your answer. It's one thing to argue that some very limited cases might justify a table. It's another thing entirely to advocate tables as a default choice. I find the later position completely out of sync with current practices in both statistics and scientific publishing. I would suspect that Tufte would in fact disagree with your opinion and he certainly never advocated “using table when [you] can”.

I don't know if current practices in statistics and scientific publishing are to use graphics by default, and if it is, I don't know if that is a good thing.  Personally, I often see graphs where I would rather see tables (in particular in the powerpoint/excel world), but rarely the opposite.  Maybe it's a matter of taste.

Personally, I do often regret not seeing better plots (dotplots, boxplots, small multiples, plots with the raw data and key indices of central tendency and variability, better ordering when there are several categories, etc.) instead of bar and pie charts but I almost never find myself wishing a table, no. Raw data I would sometimes like, of course, but that's something else. As I explained above what is both currently recommended and very much to my own taste is good plots + raw data and other materials available online.

Are the specific values really, really meaningful and relevant? Do they have meaning outside of the sandbox? Are you, for example, publishing new measurements of fundamental constants? No? Then, most likely, the actual numbers have no business being in your article extended abstract.
My rationale is: you are telling a story. Elements that don't serve to make a (major) plot point or at least support it have to go. Nobody will look at the numbers if their values are not relevant or support a point you are trying to make.
Now, there is data that does not lend itself well to the usual plots you can make (line plots, histogramms, bar charts, ...). Sometimes, a table is all you can do, especially if the data has no useful scale in at least one dimension. For example, assume we have investigated four methods in four scenarios and have collected some quality measure; the bigger the number, the better the method worked in that scenario.

What do we see in this table? Nothing, without really reading which may be a waste of time, given that the numbers may not mean anything on their own.
What is the story we want to tell? Maybe something like this: Methods one and three are complementary and excell in their respective strong scenarios; you should pick one of them if you know which category your application falls into. Method two is somewhat useable in all cases but worse than the specialists; use it if you don't know what you have at hand. Never use the fourth method, it's always bad.
We can improve the table so that it supports that story at one glance by normalising the data (I assume a linear scale from 0 to 250 here) and giving visual indication of "good", "meh" and "bad".

[source]
Now, the layout of the table can be improved and maybe you want to swap columns so that the complementary methods are neighbours. It is hard to show variances with this visualisation. Furthermore, the choice of colors can be debated (red/green may have different meanings in different cultures; also they can not be distinguished by a sizable portion of all readers).
Still, I think the example serves to support my point: be creative when representing data, with a focus on supporting the narrative of the article and less on dumping data (there's other places for that).
There is plenty of literature on visualising data but I'm not intimately familiar with any, so I'll just point you towards some blogs:

FlowingData by Nathan Yau
Statistical Graphics and more by Martin Theus
visualising data by Andy Kirk

They have plenty of inspiring examples.
One further TeXnical note: it's possible to draw small inline-style plots (called sparklines, apparently) with which you could potentially fill a table.

Really intuitive

Great examples and links !

If you are able to do it, use plots, period. What little purpose tables used to have is currently best served by online supplementary material, either on the journal's website or your own.
If you have more than a couple of constants/data points (which would not require a table either), numbers are very difficult to read and (good) plots are much better for human consumption (I don't think this is merely a matter of taste; while I am not an expert there is quite a lot of research on this).
If actual values are actually useful to someone, a table is in fact a very poor way to provide them as anybody wishing to use them must go through a time-consuming and error-prone data entry process. What should actually be done in this case is making the data themselves available electronically. A table is not a decent alternative to that, not anymore.

I respectfully disagree.  If you have three values it is possible to use a plot, but it is neither efficient nor helpful.  In fact, any table can be converted into a plot, but the reverse is not true.

@gerrit Fair point but I would argue you don't need a table in this case either. A sentence will do… More generally, I am being provocative to stress the point but I do think tables are overused left-overs of another time and plots are almost always better.

Three is an extreme case.  But if the three values are the major result of the research, one might want it to stand out more clearly by having a table.

@gerrit I still find it difficult to imagine what such a number could be (a theoretical constant?). In my field, a major result would depend on several experiments and have error bars or variability around it so even if the point estimate is important, there is still value in presenting it in context.

True, three results + corresponding errors compromise more than three pieces of information.  Of course the article (or presentation, or poster) provides context, but I think summarising the results in a table is still valuable.  Some explanation in the caption, and then "see text for discussion".  That's how I would do it.

@gerrit Indeed but my point is that I find it difficult to imagine what three pieces of information might warrant being presented in a table.

I find that in many cases, either a table or a plot will do an equally
  good job of presenting numeric information.

Strictly speaking, a plot does NOT present numerical information because it is just a picture. The purpose of a plot is to show geometrical form of some dependence(s) when this form is important. It is impossible to recover original numerical information from such picture. The requirement of reproducibility of scientific results requires to provide all necessary information needed to reproduce the results described in the paper. Most journals do not allow publishing large tables of numerical data but they allow to publish supplementary information online which can contain huge tables in TXT format. It is good idea to supply such information and it is free.

The topic of effective visual presentation of information is subject of infographics:

Ben Fry. Visualizing Data (2008)
Cleveland W.S. The Elements of Graphing Data (1985, 1994)
Cleveland W.S. (1993): A Model for Studying Display Methods of
  Statistical Graphics. // Journal of Computational and Graphical
  Statistics, 2(4): 323-343.
Tufte E.R. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (2001)
Wilkinson L. The Grammar of Graphics (2005)

and others.

Thanks for the answer, but I think that just posting references is not a good way to answer a question. Use those references and links to support your answer to the question. Even if your answer is an abstract of all those links.

Note that Tufte discusses strategies for preserving the precises numeric data in a plot.

@dmckee Again, plot is just a figure and does not contain numeric data. If the plot is available as a high-quality vector figure, such figure is described using numbers and then it is possible to discuss how precisely the vector data represent original numeric data. But it is a very bad habit to mix numeric data and figures: numeric data usually is presented in tables and allows to create any visual representation you wish, while figure is just a figure - what can you do with it?

Er ... Perhaps you don't recall the form that Tufte shows for exposing the precise numeric values in a plot, but I really meant that. A plot with the raw data. The best of both worlds.

@dmckee Can you provide a reference? If it is in the book "Tufte E.R. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information", please tell which figure do you mean?

My copy is a 1st edition, and I don't know what changed between the 1st and the 2nd. I was thinking in particular of the figure Tufte calls "a further enhancement of the dot-dash-plot". it is near the top of page 152 in my copy; in the chapter "Theory of Data Graphis" shortly before the section "Puzzles and Hierarchy in Graphics". He also approaches the same idea in some figures on the preceding page. There is, of course, a limit to the density of data that can reasonably be presented that way, but the option is present.

@dmckee Thanks, in the 2nd edition it is also on page 152. This is undoubtedly beautiful idea but extremely limited in practical applications: the numeric values should not contain more than about 3 - 4 digits and the number of data points cannot be larger than about 15 - 20. Actually it is a consolidation of a small table with a small scatter plot what impose severe restrictions on the dataset.

Readers and listeners tend to read without no more that 16 or about items on the figure during presentation, so a good table should not be larger that 4x4 or about. This is relatively small size. Use plots if you need to present more data.

Good advice, I think. Does this apply to articles as well?

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


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What qualifies as a research publication?
A simple question:

What qualifies as a research publication?

Two criteria spring to mind:

Peer-reviewed: The article has gone through some form of formal peer-review process.
Dead-tree proceedings: The article has been published in a bound collection of thin sheets of dead tree.

In terms of exceptions to 1., many book chapters do not rely on a formal peer-review process but are generally considered as research publications and listed in author bibliographies. Similarly, some may consider arXiv, etc., as publications and counting towards h-index counts.
In terms of exceptions to 2., various workshops (esp. in CS) publish on-line through systems like CEUR or informal web-site proceedings, are peer-reviewed and contain in-depth technical material. As online publishing becomes more commonplace, criterion 2 will grow weaker and weaker.
Is there something else I'm missing?

A poem published in a ("peer-reviewed") poetry magazine satisfies your two criteria, but I don't think it would be considered a research publication.

@badroit this is a great question and I amazed it hasn't been asked before. would you edit the question and remove the justification part?

While this question is interesting, I'm not sure where it's relevant. Any work can be cited, regardless of whether it's a research publication or not; it's up to the reader to decide whether the source is convincing. The only application I can think of is how to list publications on a resume, and that's typically done in sections; peer-reviewed, proceedings, book chapters, etc. The question is interesting, but largely academic.

@eykanal, I had a list of criteria why I felt the question was concrete and important (not an exercise metaphysics): (1) related works:  what is in scope for surveys, for declarations of novelty, for comparative studies, (2) publication listings: CVs, homepages, publication indexes, (3) author metrics: publication counts, citation counts, h-indexes, (4) self-plagiarism: what is "already published", what can/not be copied from self verbatim, etc. I removed these per request as people felt they had different answers. I rather feel the question generalises all of these issues.

Your criteria are close, but (at least for computer science) not quite right.

Research: the paper must describe a novel contribution to some field of inquiry.  Whether a paper makes a novel (and correct and interesting) contribution is often determined through formal peer review, but not always.  Peer review is almost always a formal requirement for a paper to "count" for purposes of formal evaluation for promotion and tenure, but not necessarily for building one's reputation as a researcher. (It's quite common for breakthrough results in theoretical compute science to be announced and discussed in blogs months before they undergo formal peer review.)
Publication: The paper must be, at least in principle, accessible to the public.  Two reasonable prerequisites are that the paper has a DOI, and that it is published either in a serial with an ISSN or in a book with an ISBN, but one could make a reasonable case that PDfs on researchers' personal web pages, blog and newsgroup posts,  and even StackExchange answers are "publications".  (Certainly there are fields, like chemistry, in which journals will not publish anything that has previously appeared on the web, on the grounds that it is "already published".)  There is absolutely no requirement that the paper be printed on dead trees to be considered "real".

In particular, I would classify most ArXiv preprints as "research publications", despite the lack of peer review and the absence of dead trees.

Thanks for the comments. Staying within Computer Science, I find that for academic evaluation, even aside from books, invited book chapters with tertiary material are often ranked more highly than hard-fought "A+" conference papers. Similarly, survey journal papers without novel results are often highly cited and highly prized (and no doubt, highly useful aside from having a well-selected title). Hence it seems to me that "novel contributions" (in a technical sense) are not a necessary condition for highly-valued research publications.

With respect to the publication side of things, I agree with the general answer of being accessible to the public and would add "easily found by a diligent member of the public". Still though, this, for me, raises a whole raft of further questions about self-plagiarism (can I copy parts of my own arXiv paper verbatim) and need to discuss and compare to claims that are not peer-reviewed, particularly on the systems/performance side of the spectrum.

...invited book chapters with tertiary material are often ranked more highly than hard-fought "A+" conference papers. — That is not my experience at all, but every department is different.  Also: Well-written synthesis of existing results is a novel contribution.

can I copy parts of my own arXiv paper verbatim — In my opinion, only if you're writing another version of the same paper.  (Recall that different versions of a single paper may be published as a technical report, as an ArXiv preprint, in a conference proceedings, in a journal, and as a thesis chapter.)

need to discuss and compare to claims that are not peer-reviewed — Somebody else needs to handle that one.  I've never understood how systems performance claims are (or can be, even in principle) peer-reviewed.

book chapters ... That is not my experience at all, but every department is different. I think it's often more on a faculty level. CS departments are often within science/math faculties that do not seem to value conference papers, but where book chapters count more towards, e.g., official tenure evaluation. (CS departments themselves would highly value good conference papers.)

I've never understood how systems performance claims are (or can be, even in principle) peer-reviewed ... Probably a good candidate for a separate question, but the key aspects are reproducibility of methods described and consistency of results. Although common and even encouraged, I dislike first-party system comparisons since there is an obvious bias of authors towards their own system. Third-party evaluations or standardised benchmarking schemes work much better and there are often separate tracks for this at conferences.

I think it's often more on a faculty level. — To clarify: That's not my experience either as a postdoc on the job market or as a faculty member serving on hiring and promotion committees.

The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) has summarized a standard for responsible publishing for authors (pdf). Although this document does not define scientific publication explicitly, the requirements are implicitly understood by reading about the demands set on an author of such a publication.
The Council of Science Editors (CSE) (quoted by Day & Gastel, 2012, p 19) provides the following definition

An acceptable primary scientific publication must be the first disclosure containing sufficient information to enable peers (1) to assess observations, (2) to repeat experiments, and (3) to evaluate intellectual processes; moreover it must be susceptible to sensory perception, essentially permanent, available to the scientific community without restriction, and available for regular screening by one or more of the major recognized secondary service.

This means that, for example, abstracts, corporate reports do not count as scientific publications. It should be added that review papers of course count although the wording of the definition may not make that clear at first.
Day, R.A. & Gastel, B., 2012 How to write and publish a scientific paper. Seventh Edition. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

This is borderline opinion-based, but I would use this definition:

A research publication is any readily available artifact which has passed peer review.

I would exclude non-reviewed book chapters and arXiv etc. preprint submission.
Unlike JeffE, I would include peer-reviewed work which is not novel.  In my experience (and according to some bibliometrics), review articles are among the most influential research publications, and they are not novel.
Unlike JeffE, I would not require that the artifact be "descriptive," have a DOI, ISSN, or ISBN.  For example, an abstract sculpture that was peer reviewed and displayed to the public could be credited to an art professor in a similar way to a journal article.  Peer-reviewed source code and database entries should also be counted.