text:
Should I quit PhD in Germany to apply for Top Universities because of Personal Reasons?
I guess similar questions have been asked but I didn't find one which is close to mine.
To my background: I have two bachelor degrees in two natural sciences from a well known university in Germany (GPA 3.3 and 3.2) in city AAA. For my master degree I moved to the small town BBB (Germany again with a well known university in my field of expertise) and finished it recently with a perfect GPA of 4.0.
Within the next 6 months I expect to publish around ~5 papers, some of them are mainly software projects. Surprisingly, quite a few people tell me that I'm somehow talented which I didn't really expect if I think back to my first years of studies.
Also I got accepted to a quite competitive PhD program with an excellent salary for my position. I started the position in December '21.
However, the main reason I stayed in BBB was because of a combination of my (6 years) relationship & the academic conditions here. Recently, it turned out that this relationship will end which puts myself in an emotional vacuum (complex story which I don't want to tell here).
Thinking of how I can change my life to give myself hope/motivation again, I thought about applying to top universities in the US. The main issue is that most deadlines are in December '22 which means that the PhD would start in fall '23. By that time, I'm going to turn 28 years old.
For me the main questions would be:

is it worth to move to a top university to get my PhD degree? By finishing that degree I would be around 33 years old. In the meantime until fall '23 I could probably work in a startup from a popular professor in our field in the US. Potentially we could also publish papers there.

to stay in city BBB. Most likely, I will be the star in our group for the next 2-3 years (our group shrinked quite a bit in the past month). My professor also agreed that I can do a few internship in top companies or different research groups (I did a 3 month stay before starting my PhD in the US). Realistically, I could finish my PhD within the next 3 years. Afterwards, the plan would be to continue as PostDoc in a top group in my field.

I guess we can boil it down to:

PhD in a top group
vs
PhD in mediocre group + PostDoc in top group

which would be the steps I could achieve until I'm ~33.
Is there someone who had a similar situation in the past? How would my decision affect the possibilities to get a permanent position in academia (preferably in Germany)?
I mean, a PhD from a top university in the US basically keeps all doors open both in academia and industry.
I'm quite aware that this is only one piece in my career but this decision might have a big influence on my whole life.
Also, I'm emotionally quite damaged/sad because of the relationship in BBB. That's also the main reason why I have the urge feeling that I have to change my life drastically.
Best,
Confused Scientist
PS: I don't want to sound arrogant and that's also not my intention here. I just want to be as honest as possible.

"Here is my situation, tell me what I should do." style questions aren't really suitable here. We might be able to do "What factors should I consider?" or "I want to accomplish this, how do I get there?", but keep in mind that if the question is so specialized that only you would benefit from the answer, it's not for here.

Yeah I agree on that!
That's why I tried to boil it down whether a PhD from a top university outperforms the PhD + PostDoc path.

Outperforms regarding what metric?

that it might be easier to get an academic position in Germany.
I know for sure that even at top universities in Germany, a label such as MIT, Stanford, Berkely improves the application significantly.

The wisest thing I've been told in this context is that in academia there are no "top universities". There are only top universities in a field. By what you are saying, you are already at one of those, so I don't think wasting almost two years to get to a slightly better one is worth the effort. From what I can gather you are also not doing anything that is reliant on better funding for experiments.
Also note that the route to a PhD in the US is much different from that of Germany. Depending on where you apply you might be required to do another master's worth of coursework.
In any case, if you decide to stay in academia, people care what your PhD was about and possibly what other work you did and much less where you did it. If you decide to leave academia, no one really cares where your PhD is from. In particular since you say you have several software-projects, you will probably end up with more job offers than resumes you sent out, if you choose to go in that direction.


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What are appropriate measures to keep use of reference managers within the GDPR?
The GDPR (or national legislation implementing it) places requirements on anyone who processes personally identifiable data concerning residents of the EU and the UK. As per this question the GDPR applies to reference managers. While it seems that either legitimate interest or scientific or historical research purposes would provide justification for the processing, other sections of the law may impose requirements on individuals using these tools:

Right to be informed

Data subject have a right to be informed about data processing. One could easily inform each corresponding author that one is processing their data (this could be automated by the reference manager).  This could be viewed more as spam than useful information.

International transfers

There a a lot of rules governing transfer of PII to third parties, with particular emphasis on the US.  Transferring ones reference manager database would seem to count as this, as would storing it online where it could be accessed by US law enforcement.

You must not keep personal data for longer than you need it.

The GDPR says "you must not keep personal data for longer than you need it".  How is this interpreted when it comes to reference managers?

Security of data

There is a requirement to keep data secure.  Obviously reference manager software only holds public information, but there is no exception in the GDPR for this.  Should reference manager databases be considered high security documents such that extra security measures are taken?

What measures are appropriate to allow legal use of reference managers that contain data about authors who reside within the EU/UK?

I am certainly not a lawyer, but would have found it weird if this case was forgotten when drafting GDPR. The same problems are present when processing data about anybody "public", and I can't, for instance, imagine a newspaper sending a member of parliament a GDPR information note when starting to write an article about them.
A quick google finds the following article: https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=cd8cdc5f-6f96-4032-9730-54a61d0eb045 - Here, there is a "journalistic exemption" mentioned, which also seems to include academic purposes. Perhaps that may apply here as well?

Personally, I think the answer to the question you linked (that GDPR applies to reference managers) is incorrect. Using similar logic one could imply that keeping a copy of Nature around after you've read it would violate the GDPR since, well, all that 'personal' data is just sitting there on your desk unprotected and unused. However, this question would be better off over on Law SE if you want a real answer.

@JonCuster My opinion is that the law was not intended to apply in these situations, but the way it was written it does.  I thought the linked question covered the legal aspects, and this the practical academic aspects.  A paper journal does not have "processing of personal data wholly or partly by automated means" so the GDPR does not apply.  A collection of journals organised by date may.

@User65535 - I'm pretty sure the full GDPR text is much longer than the snippet listed in the linked answer. Again, asking on Law SE would prove more fruitful than opinions here.

The way I understand this (again, IANAL), the article I linked to in a comment above explains that the GDPR itself applies to the author information, but the "journalistic exemption" frees the holder of the reference database from the relevant obligations that come with it in the way specified in the national laws. If that is really the case, the answer that the OP got on law.stackexchange is correct, but not helpful, because it doesn't clear this up.

@DCTLib - indeed, I don't think that answer there really delved into it. A little sleuthing came up with https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/78685/does-the-gdpr-cover-reference-to-court-proceedings where "This condition is met if the processing relates to personal data which is manifestly made public by the data subject." is apparently in the GDPR as an exemption. If you don't want your name on a paper, use a pseudonym, other wise the 'data subject' made it public on purpose.

Given the advice to ask on law.SE, should I edit this information into the linked question, ask a new one or move this one (if I can)?

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sort: votes


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Improving chances of entering a Theoretical Physics program in the US
I am a current undergraduate student majoring in Physics in a US institution. I am thinking of doing my PhD in Theoretical Physics also in a US institution. I think I know the basic things I should do to have a strong application:

Have a very good GRE score
Do some research in my undergrad institution (some theory research exposure would be good)
Strong letters of recommendation
Take advanced courses in Physics and Math in my school.

I am currently in my senior year, is there any extra advice you might have for improving my chances of entering a Theoretical Physics PhD program? Either during my senior year or when I apply ? ( I am planning to apply next year)

Take advanced courses and do well in them.

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text:
Academic publishing: advanced questions about figure/table positioning
I am writing a textbook and am in the process of making final adjustments, such as the positioning of figures and tables.
I know the basics: figures and tables need to be at the top or bottom of the page. However, I'm concerned about fine-tuning. I have three questions:

figures are always at the top, which makes sense because captions are below the figure and captions are very close to the text. However, does this mean that tables should be at the bottom? The captions are above the tables and if you put the tables at the bottom, the captions are closer to the text.

what is the best styling in the situation where you have two unrelated figures on the same page? From a contextual perspective, one should be at the top and the other at the bottom because they are unrelated. But from a caption perspective, they should both be on top, since the caption is closer to the text in this case.

what is the best styling when the page is divided by a new section and the figure belongs to the new section? From the contextual perspective, the figure should be at the bottom because it belongs to the bottom section. However, from the caption perspective, the figure should be at the top because the caption is closer to the text in this case.

Do you have any ideas for this situation?

Won't the publisher decide the style for you?

I wanted to have full control over how the result looks like (everything is done in LaTeX and tikz, including all figures), so we came to an agreement that I provide camera ready manuscript.

Since you are in full control I suggest you decide each figure or table placement by looking at the local context to see what makes sense. There might be places where \here (in line) is right, even in the middle of a page.

@EthanBolker Does this means that position of captions is irrelevant for the decision?

I would keep the conventional captions under the figures, wherever you choose to put the figures. As a global response to your question: I think you are overthinking things. Your readers will be fine whatever you decide.

To me, this question is purely about typography and layout, not specific to academia texts, and therefore of-topic to the sure

This will depend very much on your style guide and on the expectations of your publisher. In general, the meta-rules are

consistency - choose a standard and stick with it

accessibility - choose a standard that provides a better user experience

For instance, in the 7th edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, the chapter on Tables and Figures gives the following guidance on placement in-text (7.6):

"When embedding a table or figure within the text, position it after a full paragraph, ideally the paragraph where it is first called out."

"Place the table or figure so that it fits on one page if possible."

"If text appears on the same page as a table or figure, add a double-spaced blank line between the text and the table or figure so that the separation between the text and table or figure is easier to see."

"Put a short table or small figure at the beginning or end of a page rather than in the middle."

So APA would allow any of the placements proposed, provided that the table or figure fit after the paragraph which referred to it. (That paragraph could be on the bottom of the same page or the top of the next page.) Multiple tabes or figures on the same page are not an issue as long as they both fit and are formatted similarly as possible.

The simple answer is that it doesn't really matter, as long as you're consistent about how you do it.
If you stick with the LaTeX defaults, the figure will always go to the top of each page, and that's a perfectly reasonable convention. If you shift to placing things "nearest", that's fine as well, but will take more care on your part, since it's easy to end up with unexpected shifts caused by distant upstream changes.

This is why I am making this last moment adjustments.  There will be no more change whatsoever to the text.

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How could one prepare for a telecon interview for a government lab?
Suppose that, after applying to a publicly advertised position, a person gets invited to an interview for a regular (not time-limited) scientific job at a national scientific research laboratories in the United Kingdom.  Due to the location of the candidate, the interview is scheduled to take place as a teleconference (i.e. Skype).  The candidate is instructed to give a 10-minute presentation titled ”Background experience of the candidate” for a panel of four scientists.  The candidate has a conventional career-path so far with Master, PhD, and post-doc, but has so far not had any “real job”.
What might be effective strategies for the candidate to prepare for such an interview?  Needless to say, summarising Master + PhD + postdoc/postdocs in 10 minutes is, to say the least, challenging (read: impossible).  How could one focus a presentation and what kind of questions might one expect?

10 minute job talks in the UK are pretty common. While it is not helpful. You really should have some canned talks, of various lengths between 2 minutes and 1 hour, that provide an overview of you research. For versions that are 5 minutes or less you should be able to deliver them with and without slides and the longer versions you should be able to deliver them with slides but also with a pen and napkin while sitting around a table with a few people. You never know when you will be asked to describe your research. In terms of preparation, I would focus on being able to describe your research at various levels of depth.
The best 10 minute job talks I have seen in the UK have demonstrated that the past research is important and has depth, but also has breadth in terms of fitting in with other people in the department. You do not need to be over the top in terms of saying how you fit in with the others, if you really fit in, they will see it.
I would say in terms of timing provide a 2 minute intro covering your MS, PhD and postdoc(s). That is a 30 second description of each. Ideally, the descriptions show how they fit together, and how one led to another. I would then spend another 2 minutes talking about breadth and impact; basically how your research fits I to the big picture. I would spend the remaining 6 minutes talking about a single research project. This is similar, although shorter than, a conference talk. In terms of ordering, this could come in the middle or the end.
In terms of questions. After the talk, you can expect typical research talk questions. At some point they will then switch into the formal interview. In the UK, these are scripted and they need to ask each candidate the identical questions. They have some leeway with follow up questions, but it is pretty narrow. There is often an "outsider" from HR or another department who makes sure the script is followed. The questions often focus in the essential and desirable qualities from the job description, so re-read that carefully. Brits are all about box ticking, so make sure you are able to clearly explain how you meet all the essential requirements and as many of the desirable requirements as possible.

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Who typically serves on a graduate school admissions committee?
Suppose a student is applying to a graduate school. Who is typically on the admissions committee? Is the chair of the department on the admissions committee?

That depends on the country. Are you referring to the US?

At my (large CS) department, the graduate admissions committee officially consists of:

The director of the graduate program.  This is a ~3-year rotating position among the senior faculty.
About a dozen faculty members, distributed roughly uniformly across topic areas and faculty rank.  The department head is not a member; he's way too busy.
About a dozen graduate student volunteers.

However, our graduate admissions database is open to the entire faculty.  Each faculty member is expected to help review applications, and in particular, to identify applicants that they would be willing to advise, offer an RAship, help recruit, and/or recommend for fellowships.  We ask each applicant to name a few faculty they'd be interested in working with, so I usually start by reading the applications that mention my name.  I haven't been on the admissions committee since 2000, but I still read a few dozen applications every year.
For each round of admissions, each research area (theory, graphics, architecture, etc.) provides a ranked list of applicants for their area to the committee, along with estimates of advising/funding capacity.  This usually requires discussion among the area faculty, coordinated by the area chair, who may or may not be a committee member.  (I was the theory area chair for several years.)
Final admissions decisions are made by the official committee, but positive reviews from extra-curricular faculty carry a lot of weight.  In particular, nobody is admitted without at least three positive faculty reviews, including at least one potential advisor.  Decisions are folded back into the database so that faculty can track their favorite applicants' progress, and if necessary, drum up more faculty reviews.
So, in practice, everyone is on the committee, including the department head.

To offer a contrast to JeffE's answer, at many (and I'd argue at most) departments, the graduate students are rarely involved in the admissions process itself. However, they are usually heavily involved in, and are in fact critical to the success of, the recruitment process once students have been admitted.

I think it depends on the department.  In CS, having graduate students on the admissions committee seems to be relatively common.  In math, it's absolutely unheard of.

Indeed, I am a mathematician who is on my department's graduate committee, and the idea of having current graduate students on the committee is nothing I have ever heard of.  Can you explain why you do this in your program?  Is it simply a matter of dealing with high volume?  (How many applicants do you get each year?)

@PeteL.Clark — Yes, exactly, it's a volume thing.  We got 737 PhD applications and 717 MS applications this year; 64 new PhD students and 34 new MS students are joining us in August.

@JeffE: Holy crow, 100 new students each year?!?  Your department admits about three times as many students per year than any math program I know of.  Are there many other CS departments as large as yours (or larger)??

I was one of the grad student members at @JeffE's department way back when :) (I don't remember the committee being quite that large!) No students at Cornell ECE, and the number of faculty on the committee are about half a dozen, although all Faculty are involved in admissions, as explained above.

It's highly unlikely that the chair of a department serves on a graduate admissions committee. The committee is usually composed of some set of faculty who represent the different areas in the department.

In our small department (about the same size as David Ketcheson's), there is no admissions department per se. Master's applications are initially read by our student-services person, who routes the ones passing an initial sniff test to two reviewers (faculty/instructional staff), ideally ones whose specialties align with the applicant's. Reviewers score applications on a rubric, adding a five-point-Likert-scale recommendation (from "definitely admit" to "deny").
A third reviewer may be sought if the original reviewers' opinions diverged significantly. The assistant director of the program resolves any remaining in-limbo applications.
Ph.D admissions, however, go through the Ph.D Committee, which consists of tenured faculty.

Since this question has somehow come to the top of the queue: in the U.S., in mathematics, the department chair would rarely participate. The person in charge of graduate admissions would be "Director of Graduate Studies in Math.", or equivalent title. This would be a position that would/should involve genuine PR and recruitment work. The old tradition was that the position would be a backwater/sinecure for otherwise inactive faculty. In modern times, the level of energy required to do the job has increased to the point that most faculty could not cope, and do not want such a job, since it would take away from "refereed publications", the baseline for salary and status improvements.
But, of course, grad admissions and policies around this issue have a tremendous impact on the atmosphere in a department. Somehow the internet has made things more intense, more stressed, so choice of people to be around is all the more critical... ironically?
To some degree, the "grad admissions committee" is supposed to represent "all constituencies", but, in reality, this doesn't make much sense, since in the U.S. the thin-ness of undergrad preparation does not allow students to make competent announcements of their eventual interests.
The "real-politick" of grad admissions, involving understanding of the wildly varying undergrad or Master's level preparation around the world, and how those things translate to functioning in the U.S., is not interesting to most faculty, so the responsibility descends to the shoulders of a relative few who've paid attention to the reality, rather than the PR.
Who this is in a given place, and whether it's anyone at all, depends...

At Stanford the position of Director of Graduate Studies rotates through research-active faculty (the most recent people to be DGS were Akshay Venkatesh, Eleny Ionel, and Leyna Ryzhik, all very much research-active).

@TomChurch, probably relatively smaller, relatively elite places need to expend less effort on "recruiting", ... and all that that does or does not entail. At my univ, if we rotated all faculty through the position, it would be a disaster, I think.

To give a completely different view, here the graduate admissions are handled by a central committee run by the graduate school of the university, as faculty I have next to no incidence on their decisions. We are rather small (some 600 graduate students in all).

To clarify: you are in mathematics, correct?

@TomChurch, Computer Science, actually. But that doesn't matter, admissions are all handled centrally.

In my department of 15 faculty, 3-5 faculty serve on the committee.  This usually does not include the chair, but sometimes has.  The committee makes final decisions on most Masters applicants, and screens PhD applicants.  But promising PhD applications are also reviewed by likely potential advisors before a decision is made, so faculty who are not on the committee also play a major role.


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I discovered a mistake in my own published workshop paper, how do I handle errata?
I am PhD student and the main author of a research-in-progress report in computer science. The paper is already published at a workshop (in the proceedings, this is not a journal paper) and was presented there a few months ago.
While continuing to work on the topic of the paper, I discovered a mistake I did in the already published workshop paper. A value that is referred to twice in the paper is wrong; it is still unusually high but lower than reported. The value is also mentioned in the summary of the paper. First I told my coauthors who sit in the next room in the same institute.
Now I want to publish an Erratum on my academic website.
My first idea is to publish a text file next to the download like that is labeled "erratum" (it is a single mistake). As an example for this "text file", I looked at the following webpage.
My second idea is to change the author version of my workshop paper that is downloadable as PDF file from my website. My current idea is to solve this via a footnote in the PDF version of the paper. So how would I handle that? Do I correct the value and add a footnote saying that the original published value was wrong and explain the mistake? The other option that I think is unsuitable is the following: to leave the wrong value in the paper and add a footnote that explains that this value was a mistake and give the correct value in the footnote?
Also, are there websites on how to handle errata for conference/workshop papers in technical fields like computer science? Please note also that in my field conference papers are quite important (e.g., the POPL conference) while in some other fields only journal papers count (sort of).

There is a related question: How do you make corrections do a published paper? but it does not address the specific case of a paper published in workshop/conference proceedings.

Mistakes happen. I would say that since it's a conference proceedings, therefore often the presented work is short of proofs, it's work in progress and it's very quickly baked, mistakes happen.
It is probably impossible to post errata to the paper. I would suggest the following steps:

If you put it on arXiv, upload a new corrected version.
If you put it on your personal webpage, add the errata there.
Make sure that once you sumbit it for journal publication, the mistake is correted.

A published paper is a published paper so if your paper has a unique identifier (e.g. doi) and is considered an official publication, I do not think it is a good idea to make versions of the paper with differing information. That would just cause confusion since the reference would still be the same (you cannot publish the same paper twice with only a number changed).
If you publish with a regular journal, it would not be problematic to publish an errata in the same journal explaining the error. It is also possible to publish a correspondence where the error is discussed and hopefully convincingly shown not to alter the conclusions made in the original paper. Which way is applicable in each case can be discussed with the editor of the journal and also the best way to proceed. So contacting the journal and editor is a good first step to find out the best way forward.
You are of course entitled to provide this information on your own web site but the problem may be that it will be lost to most people reading your paper that way. Hence trying to get a published correction is the best way forward. A journal should be able to link the errata to the original article so that anyone interested in the paper will find the correction at the same time.
How this relates to a conference is unclear to me and is something you need to research for your specific case.

I think what makes this question different from related questions on this site is precisely that it is about a paper published in conference proceedings.

I gave a link in my question, and if you look at one of the conference proceeding papers (http://pauillac.inria.fr/~herbelin/articles/lics-Her12-depchoice+errata.pdf) in explicitly states "pdf including erratum" in the link to the PDF and in the paper it is written "(includes erratum to Section III-C – September 2012)" just below the title. (conference: http://lics.rwth-aachen.de/csl-lics14/) So this would be an example where the PDF is changed, or?


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How to cite software used to produce data/images?
I have made a building model in an energy simulation software tool. I have taken a screenshot from this model and I want to publish it in my thesis. I'm not sure if citing the software is necessary or not. The software is not merely used as a drawing tool, but also as the calculator of the energy requirements of the building. I would like to ask for an example of how such images need to be cited. Thanks in advance.

A software is a commercial product and by using it as a tool you are not violating its copyright. It is not possible to cite all tools we used to finalise the thesis. Otherwise, we will cite MS Word, Latex, Photoshop, etc. If you want to mention it in the text as @DSVA suggested it is possible if you do not it is OK also.

@DSVA I think you should make it as an answer.

Some software may have citation requests in their web-pages. The following are a few examples

Matplotlib: Hunter, John D. "Matplotlib: A 2D graphics environment." Computing In Science & Engineering 9.3 (2007): 90-95.
MATLAB: MATLAB <version> and <toolbox>, The MathWorks, Inc., Natick, Massachusetts, United States (<year>).
Origin: Origin (OriginLab, Northampton, MA)

Otherwise, you may adopt the following format:

Software [version], Company, Year, Link, Last visited: Date.

Also bear it mind that you may not need to cite the software used for image production unless the software itself produces some data used for scientific inference in your work (as mentioned by @DSVA's comments).


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In IEEE citation style how do I cite different sections of a book
This is not a specific LaTeX question, hence why I post it here.
I am typing a report for a project. I use multiple sections of a handbook (say, page 113-116, a bit later 389-390, etc.). What is the proper way to deal with this? Should I include a separate citation for each? I've looked at the IEEE editorial standard but they don't mention this.
LaTeX thing: If yes, is there a way to do it with bibtex without copy-pasting the entire thing in my .bib file and just changing page number?

In LaTeX you can simply write:
 Bla bla bla \cite[p.~3]{ReferenceKey}.

which produces

Bla bla bla [1, p. 3].

where [1] corresponds to key ReferenceKey.
For more information, you might find this video enlightening (2:28)
 http://libraryguides.vu.edu.au/ieeereferencing/gettingstarted

I edited to restructure so the answer appears at the top. I hope that's okay. I'm not sure what "(2:28)" means nor why you include As a result..., perhaps the latter is supposed to be an example? I've assumed so and included as a block quote, by all means revise if that wasn't intended.

@user2768 (2:28) is the time of the video at which there is the relevant piece of information.

In the IEEE editorial standard you linked to, you will find the answer on page one in the books section. Example [2] says:

[2]  L. Stein,  “Random  patterns,” in  Computers and You,  J. S.  Brake, Ed. New  York:  Wiley,  1994, pp. 55-70.

Computers and You is the book title. "Random patterns" is the cited section/chapter.
If you wanted to cite another section/chapter of the same book (let's say with title "X", author A. Nobody and on pages 100-110) you would have to add a second reference in the bibliography:

[3]  A. Nobody,  “X,” in  Computers and You,  J. S.  Brake, Ed. New  York:  Wiley,  1994, pp. 100-110.

I knew how to do a book reference/citation. The question I had was how to deal with it being referenced multiple times. I wasn't sure it I just had to add the reference again with a different page number. I could image it was not the case, since in my case you would have 5 identical references with exception of the page numbers

The example I showed is for a book called Computers and You where each section/chapter has another author and the book itself has an editor called S. Brake. Are you talking about a book without editor(s) and only overall author(s)? If so, you have two options: 1) Add the book as one reference in the bibliography giving only the overall page numbers. Then you have to be precise in the in-text-citation. 2) Add each section you want to cite seperately as shown above (giving the section in quotation marks and the book in italic). Then you have the exact page ranges for each section.


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After posting in arxiv the author finds that proof technique in the paper has some similarity with some discussions in a math forum
Suppose in mathematics, someone writes a paper, uploads it to arxiv and afterwards he learns that the proof technique used in the paper has some similarity with some discussions in a math forum (e.g. math exchange / stack exchange). It was not published in any journal or in arxiv. He did not see this discussion while working on the paper. What should the author do? In general, in mathematics the priority goes to the one who publishes the article first in arxiv.

Mention that it was independently discovered and the discussion only found after the paper was written. Independent discoveries happen regularly, when the time is ready.

I would be careful with the comment that the priority (always) goes to the first to publish something on ArXiv. That might be true in some cases, but can be just as false in others.

@Dirk: I mean there are such thousands of math forums. It is impossible to keep track of them. In mathematics people generally treats arxiv as standard.

I can say the same about ArXiv. For example, the category Machine Learning has 45 new papers only today, and the day is still young. I don't know about you, but keeping track of everything seems just as impossible there, at least to me.

@Dirk: I meant that literature means arxiv plus published papers in standard way.

@applied There is a lot of folklore, unpublished literature as well. The issue of priority is much more subtle than you suggest.

@AndrésE.Caicedo: Thanks. In this case what should the author do ?

@applied What others have suggested: In the final version of the paper mention that similar results/techniques/ideas (or whatever is appropriate) have been found/explored/showed independently by ..., and cite the appropriate source (whcih may very well be private communication, or handwritten notes, or a blog post, or another paper, or something else entirely).

Captain Emacs, Andrés E. Caicedo: But, I am not sure whether the other study was done independently as I uploaded my paper on my webpage much before I uploaded it on arxiv. Therefore it was publicly available.

It's just an independent discovery.  That it was on the web versus a journal is just a detail (could have even be neither, like from a verbal talk).  Although the informal nature of the other work does make it a little more understandable that you missed it when you did a background search (even so, obscure archived articles can be missed also).
I wouldn't feel some need to update the arxive paper.  These things happen all the time.
If you do an update of the arxive (which I see more as a preprint server, but this is a different debate), into an archived real journal, I would cite the other work at that time.  I personally think it is possible to gently note that the other work was noticed after your discovery.  (Buffy disagrees--too personal.  But I think you can adroitly manage it.)

Depending on how important the similarity is (i.e., which results of the paper are affected, how similar it is, how detailed the other proof is, etc.), I would either do nothing, or post an update to the arXiv paper. The update could add to the related work or intro some discussion of this other work. If it's so similar that the reader wouldn't understand why you wrote the results again, you could say something like "After writing up and posting the present work, it has come to our attention that...".
Also, to have links between the relevant material, I would probably post a comment or such on the other source, to point to the arXiv preprint. Indeed, it may be relevant to the people who were involved in that discussion, or to other people who would stumble upon it.


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How can I annotate a web article?
More generally, what "workflow" do people suggest when dealing with web articles in research?
I used to always save useful articles as PDFs to my Documents folder, and maybe copy and paste useful information I found to a word processor document. I have realized this is inefficient for a number of reasons, and found simply bookmarking useful articles and organizing those bookmarks in a nested file system (in Safari) to be a more elegant, clean work process.
Is there any similar minimalist process for annotating those web articles? I know Evernote and others have a web annotator, but I'm hesitant to deal with external software... a feature integrated into Safari would be ideal.
Can anyone recommend how they deal with web articles when researching?

Zotero might be what I'm looking for.

Or Mendeley or Endnote or Jabref or Citavi ...

Isn't that a question for https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/ rather than this site? Actually, it might even be a duplicate : https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/q/2959/30773

You may want to try Microsoft OneNote. When you copy content from a website and paste it into a notebook, OneNote automatically appends the website URL. You can thus collect all relevant snippets without losing track of where they came from, and add your thoughts there.

You can use Hypothes.is tool. It is an open tool created by a non-profit to annotate freely on the web. They have a browsed add-on that you can download. You can even share your annotations (if organising a journal club).

Thanks for the suggestion and welcome to academia.se! Just to avoid doubts, keep in mind that, in case you are associated with the tool you are suggesting, you should disclose it in your answer.

Good point. I am not associated with Hypothes.is. I know this tool from presentations at publishing meetings that I have attended. It seems to be a good idea for commonly annotating documents - for example in a class. It does not even have to apply to science - my friend uses it to annotate travel plans with her partner when the go on holidays, marking museums they want to see on Wikitravel, etc. I personally have not used it before, so I give you that.

OK, perfect. I apologize for having had doubts, but in the past we have had a few new users that posted on this site just to advertise their own products.

it is a valid concern, and I did post an answer just a couple of hours ago about the tool that I personally work on without mentioning that in the post - changed it after your comment. Still think that sometimes it is ok to make people aware of the new tools, but disclosing conflict of interest is simply a good practice and an ethical thing to do


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Waiting time/silence after a postdoc interview
I had an informal interview for a postdoc position that was followed by a formal one. Both went really well (at least in my opinion) and the formal interview exceeded its specified time because of the interest they showed in the work I presented. Upon asking, I was told that the process may take up to 2-3 weeks, speaking of which, there is no official/unofficial word about the outcome of the interview and more than two weeks have already passed. Should I wait a bit longer so that I don't come across as too desperate?

You say "upon asking" -- when did you ask? i.e., have you already spoken to them post-interview? Also, what region of the world are you in?

I think this might depend on whether you have other options that you need to pursue soon, or just want to quiet your fears. In the first case, you should probably ask so that your options become clearer. But in the second, I'd wait, perhaps even after the 3 week window ends.
I think that if things were bad you'd hear sooner, so it seems that you are still in contention, but there is no way to judge your relative position among finalists.
I would recommend, at the moment, that you wait, but don't neglect other options. But the only information I have is what you wrote. You may have more.
Not to mess with your mind, but it is possible that they have made an offer to another person and are waiting for acceptance/rejection before contacting you again. That would push the time frame out a bit. If that is the case then you aren't going to get much useful feedback from an inquiry now.

Hello @Buffy, Thank you for taking your time to answer my question. I really appreciate that. I just wanted to quiet my fears (as you pointed out). I would wait as you suggested and would pursue other options. Thank you again!


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How much do grad schools care about my dismissal experience in my application?
I am an international student from China and currently pursuing undergraduate degree in Canada, majoring in computer sicence. My academic experience is very tortuous and I want to tell my story and ask my chance to be considered for the phd study.
This is my second undergraduate study. I got my first honor degree in ECE at University of Windsor, Canada with distinction in 2015, standing at the top 15% of graduated students with a GPA of 83/100 (It doesn't look amazing but the university gave low grade to students). Afterwards I worked for 2 years in related industry. During the work, I found what I was more interested about is computer science. However, without a single computer science course taken, I find myself lack appropriate academic training. I planned myself to pursue a master degree in US. After getting a GRE score of 324 with 4.0 in analytical writing, I fortunately got admitted by Columbia University in 2017. This turned out to be a horribly overwhelming experience possibly because I lacked the foundations of computer science, I got academically dismissed 1 year after for not being able to maintain a gpa higher than 3.0. After a thorough retrospection, I made my decision to get a second bachelor degree in computer science in Canada. Right now, I'm 1 year to graduation with a GPA of 89/100 (not sure about the rank but should be close to top 1st or 2nd). I do get involved in some research projects with professors during summer, though I got no publications. However, the experience in Columbia seems to haunt me. So here I have some questions regarding the application:

I acknowledge that I have to include the dismissal experience in my application. The question is when calculating GPA, does the grades in Columbia take into account for the overall GPA or the GPA's are seperated for each institution I've attended?

How much will admission committee care about the dismissal experience? I did perform poorly in academics during some period of my life, but I think I have recovered from that not only in terms of mentality and maturity but also improvement in my ability of study. Will this experience kill my chance to get considered?

Thanks for any comment

Do you want to study in Canada? The US? Other? And for what degree?

I could answer for US study, but probably not elsewhere. It might also depend on what degree you seek?

without a single computer science course taken, I ... got admitted by Columbia University

If Columbia admitted someone who had never taken a course in CS to their masters degree in CS, I'd say they probably made a mistake.  A surprising one.  It's clear to me that the problem was

You did not know you were enrolling in a degree that is not for CS beginners
Columbia did not realize you were a CS beginner.
You are not a CS beginner any more, so this whole situation is no longer relevant.

does the grades in Columbia take into account for the overall GPA or the GPA's are seperated for each institution I've attended?

Each institution will compute its own GPA.  It would be unreasonable to combine them, as each university has its own grading system.

How much will admission committee care about the dismissal experience?

If you explain the circumstances (not prepared for the degree program) and what you did about them (second bachelors degree with good grades) then I think most admissions committees will consider your more recent grades to be more important.
You should seriously consider if you have any use for more degrees.  You might have enough already.

Can you provide more information about where you would like to apply for a PhD? Is it in Canada you want to apply? Having this information will make it easier to answer more specifically.
A lot will depend on where you are applying. It is unfortunately true that many institutes that receive a high volume of PhD applicants will dismiss applications with rough patches in educational history. However, you might be able to circumvent this in two ways:

Add a cover letter explaining 'extenuating circumstances' and explain the rough patch in your history. Then go on to stress the impressive industry and academic track record including a switching of subject.

Correspond directly with supervisors. If you can apply for a specific PhD project or a specific research group they will often help with the application process via the university. Start by reaching out to professors and meet with them to discuss your interest in their work/research group and take the time to explain 'face-to-face'/over zoom what happened in your past. This kind of personal interaction tends to lead to less callous responses than CV review procedures. Additionally, talking to a specific supervisor is generally a good idea before applying to a PhD as finding an understanding and supportive advisor is key to a successful and satisfying PhD experience.

I think that 2 would be unusual and ineffective in the US. I don't know about Canada. Admission is by committee not like in Europe where a PI hires people. I don't really see any of this as being effective for US graduate study. Sorry. Welcome to the site, anyway.

Thank you for your clarification. I don't know how usual it is but from my own experience applying for a PhD in the US I found this relatively common among Universities. The PI can't hire you directly but if they do agree to pay you the admissions committee can sometimes be persuaded to relax admission requirements.

I think that your field may be different from most, if your username here is an indication. Some lab sciences are more like the European model, especially if most of the grad student funding is from grants. But CS, math, etc. aren't like that.

I actually am a computational biologist so work in the computer science department. However, I my work was grant funded so that might be the important difference.


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One of the authors changed idea before submitting paper
I have just finished a paper together with a number of colleagues and collaborators from other universities.
We were about to submit it but one of the authors does not agree anymore. His explanation is that, while he thinks the paper is fine, he has a new idea and does not want to publish this as it would make his idea ‘‘less original’’ (because some parts of his idea are already in this paper).
Mind that it would be difficult to  include his idea in the paper as while the methods are the same, the applications are totally different.
What would you do in this case?
I am the main contributor and another professor had the idea. He wants to cut out some other authors, including the professor who had the idea. He’s quite a powerful and famous academic though, that’s why I think he’s feeling entitled to do so.

Seems pretty unethical.

Can you safely remove his contribution from the paper and publish without him?  Then he could do his own thing separately.

Talk to the other collaborators who probably agree with you, and then take a unified front to tell him that holding several collaborators hostage is not ok.
Additionally, if part of his new publication uses a jointly developed idea which he intends to publish alone while blocking your joint work (that should be in the references of his planned solo paper), then this strikes me as borderline plagiarism. In any case, it’s very bad form.

Probably not "borderline" at all.

Good answer, but the "blocking the joint work" part would not affect whether it's plagiarism or not.

@lighthouse: I had to read this twice. :) Yes, that is correct. It just makes the situation more unsavory.

Maybe the relevant idea was originally a contribution by the blocking author's one, in which case it's not strictly plagiarism, and it shouldn't be used as an argument if this is the case. Still, destroying a paper written with colleagues because it will damage their future work is pretty bad stuff as it goes.

@CaptainEmacs: Agreed. When talking to their co-author, I would not mention plagiarism anyway, or at least not at this point should it apply (hard to say given the information we have). It’s always best to try to stay as amicable as possible. The other authors should highlight that it’s just bad style and that their joint work should lead to a joint publication, maybe subtly indicating how such behavior makes people less likely to ever want to collaborate with him. It’s rude and selfish.

Let’s say that I am the first author, I did most of the job, and the idea came to another professor, not the blocking one. Still, he gave a relevant contribution in terms of advice and experience. He’s quite a powerful and famous academic though, that’s why I think he’s feeling entitled to do so..

@Wolf: I assume the issue you’re concerned about is to lose a publication. It was my understanding that the professor you’re talking about was blocking you others from publishing. If he’s not, and ok with a mere acknowledgement, that strikes me as fine. If he blocks you from publishing, then I’d still contact him after conferring with your other collaborators - or better yet, have someone more senior (I take it you’re a Ph.D. student or postdoc) talk to him - and proceed as above, having a civilized conversation with him. Also, discuss with your PI/Ph.D. advisor first.

Not only about losing a paper, but also about the ethics. On one hand, we worked hard to do the paper and it is right to publish it, on the other hand he’s still an author, although not the primary one, and we need his approval to submit.

@Wolf Your comment begs the question whether he became so powerful and famous by tricking others the same way...

Is he the primary contributor of this paper or the idea?
If he was the sole contributor of that specific idea, he has the right to withdraw from the paper with his idea. Your work is still publishable. If he soon writes a new paper partly based on his idea, you should cite his working paper as the source of idea. If no working paper comes out before your submission, then you should acknowledge him for telling you that specific idea.
This happens too many times that once researcher A mentioned a new idea to researcher B, the latter, if being unethical, may occasionally say that he was also thinking about the same idea for a while. This way, researcher A cannot claim that he was the sole contributor of that specific idea.

If he is not the primary contributor of that idea, then this sounds a little bit unethical. Is he going to write a solo-author paper or a new joint work with you and others?

I am the main contributor and another professor had the idea. 2) he wants to cut out some other authors, including the professor who had the idea.

@Wolf This case, I don't know what is he doing. Is he the PI of your group?

He was the PI of my previous group (when I was a student) and we still collaborate sometimes. When we started the work I had already graduated and I was no longer in his group.

@Wolf I think the info in your comments (particularly the first one) should be added to the question.

@Wolf If you remove that "idea", will your paper still contain enough results to be published in a good place? If so, you could send out a mass email to all your coauthors, neutrally and politely, telling them that the Big Name wants the idea to be removed; anyone having disagreements could send an email to the Big Name. If they agree, you will have no troubles.

Many journals have a policy that all authors must approve of the paper for it to be published, and if any authorship changes (for example, adding or removing authors) occur between submission and publication, all authors must agree to it. If you had submitted the paper with his name as a co-author, he might have been able to try to use that as leverage to block the paper from getting published in that journal.
Since you haven't submitted it yet, the situation is a bit better, but still very messy:

(1) If it is possible to remove his contribution and publish the paper without him as a co-author, the journal is very unlikely to let him block your paper, but this might make him angry, and since he was your former PI when you were a student, this might not be a good idea. Pissing off your former supervisor can sometimes be harmful to your career (for example when you apply for things, your former supervisors can often be contacted informally, even if you haven't listed them for a letter of reference). So preferably, you won't have to do this.

(2) If his contribution was essential to the paper (i.e. cannot be taken out), if you submit the paper without him as a co-author he could file an academic integrity complaint at your institution (or with the journal if you don't have an institution). If his contribution was essential, he would hopefully win in this academic integrity investigation. So I highly recommend not to do this.

So what can you do that doesn't jeapordize your career?
Two options that are better for your career in the long-term (despite not looking better in the short-term) are to:

(3) Try to discuss the situation with the other professor, in a professional and adult-like way. Perhaps get the other co-authors on your side and get the senior-most one to do the talking (you said there was another professor involved).

(4) Take a sacrifice and make a compromise with yourself: your long-term career may be more important than the short-term gains this paper provides right now, so maybe you can accept the cost of having to avoid publishing this paper, in exchange for the benefits of maintain a good relationship with this professor who you said is "powerful and famous". Hopefully the "powerful and famous" professor would be able to include you on the subsequent paper. While this is not ideal, it would not be necessary if you are successful with your attempts in option (3).

So option (3) is the best option here, and if it doesn't work then I would in many cases recommend option (4). The third and fourth best options would be (1) then (2) respectively. No option is perfect for you in the short-term, unfortunately. This is academia.

I personally have settled with option (4) many, many, many times.
I can't count the number of times I did not publish something because a more powerful academic preferred to wait (even though that academic did not need to be a co-author.


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Publishing papers as a high school student
How to scientifically approach theories and research them as a high school student to get it published? (Given that the theory is not yet proven by anyone and may or may not be true).

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/42763/how-can-i-get-into-computer-science-research-as-a-high-school-student or https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/159732/how-should-a-high-school-student-approach-professors-in-research-institutions-ab might be relevant.

You will need an experienced researcher to guide you.  Most high school students that I know who have published had help from their parents (usually professors), or a professor who is associated with a school.  An example is Intel's science competition.  Have a look at the students who participate every year, their support system; e.g., mentor(s).

Depending on your area, perhaps look for a mentor network within the appropriate professional society? AMA, MAA, ACM, IEEE, etc. etc.

As a high-school student, you are going to have three or four main difficulties, all of which will probably require the assistance of an experienced researcher.  The difficulties you will encounter are: (1) finding out what is already known and published about the topic (what we call a "literature review"); (2) knowing the substantive method to use to investigate the topic; (3) if the paper involves data analysis, knowing enough about statistics to do this analysis; and (4) being able to write the resulting paper in an appropriate way for submission to a journal.  All of these are hard skills, and they are usually taught over the course of a full undergraduate and then postgraduate research degree at university.  It would be hard for a high school student to have skills sufficient in these areas to produce something publishable.
Having said that, if you have a good and novel research idea, and you have a rough idea of how to do the research in a substantive sense, you might be able to find an experienced researcher who is willing to help you (perhaps in exchange for co-authorship or even primary authorship) of the resulting paper.  Most high-school students who have published papers in academic journals have had help from researchers who are family friends or parents, and if you don't have these connections it will probably be difficult to get the required help.
I recommend you start by reading some papers in academic journals in the field that contains the topic of interest to you.  Browsing some articles in those journals will give you a sense of what is required to produce a published paper.  If that doesn't put you off, write up the goal and methodology for your project and show it to some academics in the field to see if it makes sense, and to see if you can find a researcher interested in helping you.  Bear in mind that when academic researchers collaborate with students, we are usually dealing with PhD students aged between about 24-40 years old, who already have a strong undergraduate degree in their field.  Consequently, convincing a researcher to collaborate with you will require you to show an unusually high level of ability for someone your age.


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Can I take the biochemistry GRE test if I am a biology graduate?
I currently hold a bachelor of science in botany but plan to do a master's in genetics. I was wondering if I can take the GRE subject test for biochemistry, molecular biology, and genetics, or am I eligible for biology graduate record test  only?

This is not an undergraduate question, since it's asking about GRE subject tests! This is an admissions question.

There are no requirements on who can take a GRE subject test. So long as you pay the test fee, they're happy to take your money, even if you've never taken a course in the subject in your life. You're a French major who wants to take the mathematics GRE? Bien sur !


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High school student scooped by PhD student in the same lab
When I was in high school, I spent one of my summers working in a lab.  The professor had a small lab, so I was given my own project, and made enough progress on it to publish a paper.
While I was working there, one of the PhD students started taking a keen interest in my work, and she kept wanting to discuss the problem, asking about details of my methodology, etc.  She even started replicating my work and literally rewriting my code to produce the same graphs that I was getting.  She was not originally assigned to the project, but I was happy to discuss the problem with her, because I enjoyed my project and wanted to talk about it with as many people as possible.
At the end of the summer she asked me to send her the slides from the talk I gave at group meeting.  A few months later my supervisor told my brother that she presented my work at a conference without mentioning my name.  (He never told me directly, probably because he thought I'd be sad.)
Anyway, my dad (who is a professor) was very mad about this, and told me I should write a draft of the journal paper myself so the professor would feel obligated to give me first authorship instead of that PhD student.  A few months later I sent him the draft, and he didn't give me first authorship, but did give me coauthorship on three different papers, one of which was only marginally related to what I did.  I got into my top choice of college (and graduate school), but this was one of the more traumatic experiences I had as a teenager, and ever since this incident I've sworn off academia as a career option.
Do you think I should have done anything differently, and what would you have done in this situation?

Remaining bitter about this situation may not be good for your health. The situation itself is pretty bad as you've described it, but you should move on. Since you seem to have stated you've already gotten into grad school, it's been 4 years removed from the issue. You shouldn't remain bitter about it. I spent 3 years trying to get into medical school before moving on with my life, for example. Letting it weigh on you after you can no longer change it will eat you up on the inside.

As a bit of a silver lining here in this problematic situation, three co-authorships as a high school student probably super-accelerated your career and your applications. Not to say you would not have gotten in without it, but for sure something good came out of this, as no one in high school or early undergrad can say their name is on three pubs! Perhaps you should have been first author, but the sheer number of co-authorships here, that early in your career, was probably worth far more than fighting to be first author on a single paper.

Yeah, I think I've generally made peace with the situation itself, especially since I got three co-authorships out of it.  I think it still affects me in subtle ways though.  For instance, once I was using my research for a class project, and I refused to share my code with my project partner because I was afraid he would steal my project.  Even though this fear was probably pretty silly, because he was a master's student and I was a PhD student.  I also know this was kind of a dick move on my part, because who does a project with someone without sharing the code?

@Roland: I guess I wasn't afraid that he would steal my code, more that he would take my code and do all the work for me, and essentially squeeze me out of the project.  Eventually I told him to do something that was kind of tangential to the project (and largely his idea), which seemed to work out because he produced a contribution that I wouldn't have produced if I was the only one on the project.

You're gonna need to develop "thicker skin". This sort of thing happens in all walks of life.

The situation that you describe sounds like extremely unusual and improper behavior on the part of the professor.  The graduate student is part of the problem, but the real responsibility lies with the professor who committed two major instances of misconduct:

Allowing the graduate student to co-opt your work without giving you credit.
"Giving" you authorship on a paper that you did not participate in.

Whether or not you should have been first author is not necessarily clear---one would have to know a lot more about the final form of the work to judge for certain.
As for your actions, I think that the primary actions that you took (raising the issue with the professor, then walking away from the situation when the problem was not addressed) were appropriate.  I think that you should probably feel uncomfortable about the paper that has your name on it when you don't feel you deserve authorship.  You can get that fixed by the publisher, if it makes you uncomfortable enough.
I think that you are making a mistake, however, in allowing this experience to sour you on academia.  Unethical people who will take advantage of you can be found in every profession, and in academia at least there are clear rules on what the ethics are supposed to be.  You won't necessarily find that in the business world, where it is often considered ethical to exploit people for money (see: fiduciary duty to stockholders).

To be fair, I don't think that in the business world there is no ethic. I'd say that since there is more economical interest involved, it's much easier for some people to forget about ethics.

Your sentence beginning "As for your actions, I think..." looks like it was intended to express an opinion about the actions. I approved the third-party edit that added "were appropriate" to the end of the sentence, as it seems that was what you intended. But please correct it if we're putting the wrong words into your mouth!

Interesting use of the term "exploit". I wonder what your definition of the term implies -- that stockholders should be fleeced and lied to or workers should do their jobs?

@clabacchio Please note that I did not claim the business world is unethical---I myself am in industry, and most of the people that I know are extremely careful about their ethical decisions.  The question of profit, however, often creates direct conflict between different ethical stances.  For example, where is the boundary between the responsibility to maximize profit and the responsibility to maintain a safe and healthy environment for workers?  These issues certainly crop up in academia as well (see: adjunct professors), but its non-profit status typically provides a degree of insulation.

@jakebeal I get it that there may be ambiguous situations, but I think your example doesn't really work: making profit isn't ethical per se, therefore it's second to workers' safety. Experiments on animals and/or humans could be more debatable maybe.

@clabacchio Although I share your opinion, in the United States at least there are many people who will argue that there is an ethical duty to maximize return to stockholders, and there is some legal support for this theory as well.

@jakebeal it seems to imply that if reducing quality and safety standards to the minimum required by law helps increasing profit, then it's the most ethical conduct (according to the law). Scary at least. But I get the point you make.

@clabacchio, it's broadly accepted in management circles (with some caveats) that the managers of a business have a legal and moral obligation to run the business as well as they can, in the interests of the owners of the business (i.e. the shareholders: you and me and everyone else who has a private pension or an insurance policy). If the manager of a company were to run the business for their own benefit rather than for the benefit of it's owners - e.g. by using the business's money to buy them a house to live in and a series of sports cars to drive - then they would be committing a ...

... serious crime. This is what Conrad Black was convicted of. The obligation of a business's managers to act in the interests of the business's owners (with, as I say, some legal and moral caveats) is really quite uncontentious. I don't find it scary at all. What would be scary would be if management were allowed to use the owners' money (yours and mine, remember) for whatever purpose they wanted. For more info see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_problem

Frankly, as the prof, I would have given that grad student quite a talking-to.  Perhaps the prof did, since s/he let the OPs brother know about the case, it can be suspected that they were unhappy about that. But making that decision about the future depending on this? The OP should find strategies to prevent that rather than punishing himself for the crimes of others.

Take the rough with the smooth.
Yes, it seems the other student took advantage, and if you had been an adult you would perhaps have been more wary. But you were a child, so I don't think it's your fault.
However, you did get your name on several papers, which is very unusual for a high-school student, and there is still some question over whether your work would have been at the same standard as the PhD student; it is easy to think that the idea is all that mattered.
On balance, it worked out well for you. And you clearly have academic aptitude. So my advice would be to go into academia; you are in a rare position of having published already, and having experience of some of the pitfalls of coauthorship in research.
Put the past behind you, it will not be your greatest work and digging over the coals serves no constructive purpose. If it prevents a great academic career, the tragedy will be yours, not hers.

Personally, I feel mad as well as your father.
This is not only about you but about the fraud of the lab you have worked in. Even the professor approves this behavior by bribing you.
I would never, ever let this go.
Please do not think that I'm winding you up or anything. But this behavior is unaccaptable.

and what would you have done in this situation?

I would accept that this has happened and do not try to change the situation.
I would not accept the authorship of the papers I have not participated in.
I would tell the story in every possible media tool without hiding the names, institutions etc.
I would save all the proofs that I can, that approves the work was mine.

Besides all these, I would carry on with my works, not spend a lot of time on this matter (it seems that (3) contradicts with this, but you can write in a blog and copy+paste the link).


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Does getting pay to be a subject in an experiment violate an F1 visa in the US?
I am in a university in the US. I need 10 subjects for a 2-hour experiment. The compensation is 100 USD. If a subject is an international grad student on an F1 visa in my university, will it go against the terms of his F1 visa, which restricts his ability to work in the US?

You should really take this kind of question up with the international faculty/student organization at your university. My non-expert impression is that F1 restrictions do not apply to on-campus employment, and moreover what you are describing is not really employment.

@SashoNikolov Thanks, I'll indeed have a talk with them, but in the end the visa holder is the ultimate responsible for the respect of the visa terms, and I prefer to have this kind of information available online under everybody's scrutiny  :)

I am just not sure anyone here can or should provide this information. The school officials dealing with these matters are the experts. The SEVIS website might be helpful: http://www.ice.gov/sevis/employment/

Surely, you had this covered when submitting your IRB application?

@Shion I don't remember: where in the form do you see whether getting pay to be a subject in an experiment violates an F1 visa in the US?

@SashoNikolov Thanks for the link, I had indeed went through it but it is still unclear to me. I don't think that having experts in the University precludes from sharing the information online though.

@FranckDernoncourt A lot of these issues were covered when we did ethics/IRB training (required of all first year graduate students) in my university - which is a prerequisite for submitting any IRB applications. I assumed that this was similar in your school as well.

@FranckDernoncourt Perhaps, more helpfully, it does not violate F1 visa rules. We recruit international students (on F1s), all the time for our experiments.

@Shion Thanks, my feeling is that it is common practice indeed, but I can't find in the law where it says it is legal, the default setting from my understanding being F1 = no work, except on-campus employment, which should be declared (and located on-campus, which is not always the case with experiments, unless we get some petition for being off-campus). I guess there might be some exceptions for small jobs but I can't find it.

It depends on whether the student on the F1 visa is already working 20 hours / week, which is likely to happen if he is an RA or a full-time TA (typically grad TA), but unlikely if he is on a fellowship or pays the tuition fees himself. If the student is already working 20 hours / week, then he is not allowed to work, either it is on-campus or off-campus.
Given the amount of experiments or other small jobs I see paid either in cash, Amazon gift cards (sorry RMS), ice creams, and other kinds of compensations, the immigration law forbidding F1 visa holder from working more than 20 hours per week is broken every day.
I am impressed so few people seem to care about this situation, given that violating the 20-hours-per-week rule can be a cause of visa termination and other troubles (e.g. green card obtention).
(I need to check for volunteering work, but to me that's work too. Any idea?)

Are there exceptions to the limit of 20 hours a week for on-campus
  employment?
The only exception is if the Secretary of DHS suspends this
  requirement, by means of a Federal Register notice, due to emergent
  circumstances. The student must demonstrate to you that the extra work
  is necessary because the emergent circumstance has affected his or her
  source of support.
Endorse the student’s Form I-20 with a reference to the Federal
  Register notice that announced the emergency exception before allowing
  the student to work more than 20 hours a week.

By the way the exceptions are extremely rare afaik.

You need to ask the international students' office at your university, because

It's a delicate legal issue of the type they are trained to navigate, and
The answer may depend on the particulars of how the university handles its students and how your experiment handles compensation, and
The answers to these questions change frequently, as visa and immigration regulations mutate.

Even if somebody on this site could give a correct answer and take legal responsibility for it, it would not be safe for somebody else to rely on it in the future.

Thanks. "how the university handles its students" -> What flexibility do universities have when handling F1 students? ; "how your experiment handles compensation" -> what are the options (in terms of their impacts on the answer to my original question about F1)?

@FranckDernoncourt Honestly, I have no idea what the complications might be, which is why you need to talk to the people at the university who do. I do know that different universities handle tuition vs. stipend vs. pay in different ways, and that that may interact with the visa and compensation for time through the university.  Similarly, some experiments give their compensation in cash, some via international systems like PayPal, some via gift certificates, and these may interact as well.  Talk to an expert who can assume liability.

Thanks, interesting! I've been told that Amazon gift certificates can be regarded as a payment that has been declared to the IRS. I can indeed talk to an expert in the university, however in your university do you have experts who can assume liability? As far as I know the visa holder is ultimately responsible for respecting the visa terms.

@FranckDernoncourt I'm primarily affiliated with a company, not a university, but the same principles apply.  While the visa-holder is ultimately responsible, 1) you also need to make sure you are acting legally, and 2) the system does have more mercy if the visa-holder has a paper trail documenting that they have been advised that an action is correct by a person legally qualified to do so.

The safest and correct answer is to ask your international student's office, immigration attorney, or customs and  immigration themselves.
Seems like a lot of work for $20 (our standard 'enticement' at my university). Your enticement is $100 which is much nicer....
The pragmatic answer is to inquire whether you will need to fill out a W9 before being paid. If you do, then they are reporting the enticement to the government as taxable income. In that case, GOTO LINE 1.
If not, then the enticement is so low as to not being reportable and/or not being reported. In that case, follow your conscience and/or risk adversity.

$100 because we'll burn their neurons with fMRIs.


text:
How to deal with two students who potentially colluded when one is unavailable?
We have two students in my department who handed in identical essays. As per our policy we scheduled independent meetings with both students to determine what happened. Going into these meetings our primary objective is to figure out which of the following 5 possibilities occurred:

The students worked jointly and wrote one essay
One student wrote the essay and knowingly allowed the other student to copy the essay
One student wrote the essay and the other student copied their essay without the first student's knowledge
The students worked independently and managed to write word for word identical essays (this seems unlikely)
The students independently copied the same source

One student is on medical leave and was therefore unable to attend the meeting. The student who attended the meeting showed us drafts of previous essays which have convinced us that neither (4) nor (5) occurred. Further, when we exclude the other student's essay, TurnItIn doesn't find anything of concern. We also are confident that the student who attended the meeting did not copy the essay from the other student. This leaves us with possibilities (1), (2), and (3).
Our policy states that both students would be punished for academic misconducted if either (1) or (2) occurred and only the other student would be punished if (3) occurred. It seems without talking to the other student we cannot really come to a fair conclusion. Without a decision the student who attended the meeting will have neither passed or failed the class and therefore is not eligible to retake the class nor take any class which has the class in question as a prerequisite. It is unlikely the student on medical leave will be back in time to make a timely decision. How should we proceed?

My gut reaction is "innocent until proven guilty." If you can't determine what the truth is, best to assume innocence.

@JimConant but you can sit in jail a long time waiting for your innocence to be proven.

I'm assuming that the student you spoke with claimed that he didn't knowingly assist the other student.  If that's the case, then you pretty much have to let this student off the hook since you can't prove collusion.

Probably not an optimal decision, but you can assign an IN grade until the decision is made, and then maybe waive the prerequisite for any class which requires this class as a prerequisite.  Usually waiving the prerequisite is a department decision... The student involved know exactly if he cheated or not, so he should be able to plan accordingly...

@BrianBorchers The exact phrasing is "you cannot prove collision YET". Usually in these cases a decision is postponned... You cannot know what evidence the other student can bring....

In a criminal case if a prosecuter can't bring witnesses to court in a timely fashion, then their testimony simply won't be admitted and the case will proceed.  If the second student is really unavailable for a long period of time then it is unfair to withhold judgement on the first student's case.

@StrongBad: My point is not to draw a connection to criminal justice, but to the underlying philosophy that it's better to let a guilty party go free than to wrongly punish an innocent person.

Also, if you find solid evidence of guilt later on, is there any way to retroactively assign a penalty of some kind? For example if a student of mine, whom I assigned an A, was later shown to have cheated, I could retroactively change their grade according to our university's policy.

As a previous student, I had this happen to me, but I didn't collude. A classmate wanted to look at my project so I naively sent him my Word doc. Him and his girlfriend turned in the exact same copy albeit mine was in full color and theirs was in black/white. We both got zeroes until someone fessed up. Former classmate and girlfriend fessed up. They got zeroes, I got an 87. I ended up with a 3.5 GPA at graduation, he had a 2.5 GPA. This was 12 years ago.

Possibly simple-minded question: Why does this case need to be settled now?  Assuming that the other student will be back by finals, why don't you just tell the student who is available "we need to talk with the other student.  Keep going to class, etc., and we'll determine who cheated at the end of semester."?  This has the added advantage that, if he did collude, he may just decide to stop putting effort into the class entirely (building a case against him).

Bring a basket of fruits to visit the sick student and incidentally question him during the visit.

Possibilities (1), (2) and (3) all involve one or both of the students being incredibly stupid.

If you just dont know who is guilty then if there is a BIG grade difference in the final Exam then all will be revealed .If you had a proper policy that you must get 50% in the final to pass the course irrespective of homework then the guilty one will FAIL.

Not letting this student move forward at this point would be punishment. If there is a chance that you will find the student innocent of any wrongdoing, it seems like the injustice of punishing them for something they did not do is  worse than letting them get away with something they did.
Make it clear to the student that they will pass the class given the lack of evidence against them but that you will continue to evaluate the situation. Make sure they know that if you conclude later that they have colluded, you will update their grade to a failing one and force them to retake the class.
The only real negative consequence of this is that the student might be able to take classes that require this class as a prerequisite before they are forced to go back and take the original class again. That's not ideal, but it doesn't really seem so bad.

It's not really a negative that the student might have to go back after taking classes that required the given one as a prerequisite - the offshoot there is that the student gets to go ahead if they are innocent. If they're lying, then it would only be reasonable for them to admit guilt and take the class again - since otherwise, they'd just waste time in some other class before they're forced back. So the student gets a chance to be make a choice, and if they choose to take a class they know they haven't satisfied the prerequisites for, well, that'll be their problem when they're discovered.

The reason course 1 is a prerequisite for course 2 is that a student is unlikely to understand course 2 without first understanding course 1. If the student proves they understand course 2 by passing that course, who cares if they are subsequently failed on course 1? It's unusual administratively but it in no way invalidates their pass on course 2.

@DavidRicherby: That may be the idea behind the prerequisite, but, depending on the respective university's rules, fulfilling the prerequisite can easily be enforced. If passing of course 2 is defined as "having passed course 1 + achieving X points in the exam on course 2", a later discovery of a failing in course 1 would obviously invalidate the passing of course 2. What would be unusual administratively is that the student might be given a chance to pass course 1 after passing the exam of course 2, thus fulfilling the requirements of passing course 2 in the opposite to normal order.

If you are convinced that the student who attended the meeting wrote the essay in question, then you must conclude that either the other student stole a copy or the two students collaborated.  I think that almost requires grades of "Incomplete" for both students until the matter can be resolved.
Edited to add: I like Nick S's comment about waiving the prerequisites for the student who attended the meeting.  His is a comment to the original question, and is worth reading.

I know this can only apply to some of the situations, but if the student is unable to attend, yet still able to communicate I would say:
Have you considered scheduling a call?
You can just do the talk by phone, or Skype and documents can be scanned and mailed.
Perhaps this is not as good as a face to face meeting, but I would say there is a good chance that you can clear things up this way.

If I might add, you could also ask of the sick student to come for a meeting or... provide a note from his medical doctor saying he is not fit to do so. Then see what happens.

In my university we have a general rule: If you collude, you both fail that assignment. If you took another student's assignment and copied it (stole from a classmate) then you not only fail the assignment but you fail the subject and must retake it. Note: It is possible to fail and assignment and still pass the subject by resubmitting the failing work (as I believe most UK universities do and I believe you are in the UK).
I do not believe there is a perfect solution but by having a rule such as this, you can mostly avoid having one student say "It is my original work" when really it was joint work because they would not want to save their friend at the cost of retaking the module (when they could both pass, albeit with a lower grade).
If you have the same rule and the student in front of you is very clear about that and the student in front of you says "Yes, this is mine, all mine, he must have stolen from me" then I would let that student pass (without any contradicting evidence from the other student).
The challenge with such a rule in this case is that they might have colluded but the other student might simply take the fall, if only because he has nothing to lose because he's out on medical leave and cannot complete the module this term anyway. So, he might as well fall on his sword.
In your case (where one student is unavailable) I would have the student present sign some simple declaration ("It's my original work and the other student must have stolen it from me and I agree if the above is found to be untrue then my grade will be changed after-the-fact.")
I would not worry about the student taking subjects which need this subject as a pre-req. If he doesn't understand, that will be shown clearly later and will sort itself out.
Again, it's not a perfect rule but it mostly prevents colluding students from getting away with it by imposing double punishment on one.

As an answer, I would like to bring up a question. Are the drafts conclusive evidence that (4) and (5) can be excluded? As far as (4) is unlikely, I find (5) highly likely. My question is extended to ask what was the time frame between finding the plagiarism, informing the students of the plagiarism, and the submission of the drafts by the student who isn't on sick leave?
As most "drafts" are neither handwritten or typed on a typewriter, the ease and quickness that a draft can be made does not remove doubt that the work isn't of the student.
If (1) and (2) are options, and this brings into suspect their collusion, then don't think that they still wouldn't be colluding in the fallout.

I have another idea. Are the students both of the same sex? I just found something interesting that may help.
This site analyzes text for traits statistically associated with the sex of the writer.
http://www.hackerfactor.com/GenderGuesser.php
It seems to be fairly accurate. It correctly identified George Eliot as female (it was not fooled by her male pseudonym, LOL), and me as male. I also used it to analyze a text translated by male and female translators of a male writer (the same passage of about 600 words). The male translator's text came out 8% more 'masculine'.
If the test text comes out 'female' and one or both of the students is male, you have reason to suspect one or both has copied it. But of course, this is only one tool and must be viewed as such. It is just a piece of evidence to add to whatever other evidence you may have. To 'calibrate' the system, you could run all the students' papers through the process to see if it correctly identifies the male and female students in the class.
Of course, if both students are male or female, and the analysis does not show any discrepancy, it is of no help in determining which of the five possibilities occurred.

You can't punish or not punish a student based on the result of this test. The fact that it is often right is not enough to justify failing a student. See my answer for details for why I think that "innocent until proven guilty" is the correct approach.

It's hard to believe that both students would have agreed to turn in identical papers. Most students would know that turning in a paper identical to some other student's would certainly be noticed. So, it is more likely that only one of them is the culprit. In this case, this student is most likely stupid as well as dishonest. The question is how do we tell who is lying? I believe King Solomon had a similar problem, when two woman claimed to be the mother of a single child. You might want to offer to give half credit to each. The one who cheated would likely object less.

Despite repeatedly telling them group work is not allowed, we often get identical papers from students. As for offering half credit and then trying to gauge objections, especially when one student is unavailable, seems like an awful idea.

Apparently there is a communication problem if that is happening 'often'. Are these students Oriental? Culturally, some east Asian societies encourage group endeavor, the Japanese in particular.

I have never heard of such a thing regarding Asian people, and I'm Asian.


text:
Should I start working as a teacher at a different uni while I'm still finishing my PhD?
I am currently doing a PhD in maths, in the UK. UK PhD scholarship are typically only 3 years, and mine can't be extended. I do need every day of these three years to finish my thesis. For a small fee, I can hand in my thesis up to 1 year after the money has run out.
I now received an offer from a german university for a half-time teaching position in theoretical computer science. The position would start 3 months before my PhD scholarship ends.
Should I accept this offer? A similar question has been asked before, but there are a few circumstances that make the decision harder:

The university where I could teach is in germany. It typically takes a day to go from one place to the other, and it isn't too cheap. (There might be some financial support from the german uni.) So I would be meeting my supervisor significantly less often, but possibly this is not so much a problem towards the end of the PhD?
I would have to switch fields. While there is enough overlap between the particular topics so that I can learn the teaching material without too much effort, I'm unsure how risky this is for my career. In the worst case, I will not be able to establish myself in computer science because I would "only" have a maths PhD, and could neither return to maths because I left the field for too long a time. But again I'm not sure, how realistic these apprehensions are.

First you have to ask your advisor.  You can't just leave with 3 months left on your scholarship.  Angering your advisor is a terrible idea in a field where it's likely that everyone knows everyone else.
Second, you're going to be extremely overwhelmed at how much work it is to teach a new course.  Even though you're only teaching half time it's going to have a huge impact on slowing your thesis progress down. It's possible that you might not even finish.
However, you do have to take into account your finances.  If this is the only job you think you might get it might be necessary to pursue it so that you have income.

Of course, it's up to you, but since you asked ….
If you were to ask me, I'd say 'no', but I am not you.  What is your family situation?  Lifestyle?  It seems high-risk.  Do you speak fluent German?   I think that it's good (as said above) to consult with your advisor, other relevant colleagues, and consider their opinion.


text:
Disclosure of academic dishonesty during background check for tenure track
I am a CS PhD student in my final year in North America and I will be applying for academia jobs starting Fall 2020. As far as I know, there will be some sort of background check during the hiring process.
As for my past background, I had an incident during my undergraduate year where I submitted a project with citations at the end, but omitted in-text citations and so I was charged with plagiarism. The committee decided that it was unintentional and allowed me to redo the assignment with a 30% grade reduction penalty and the incident didn't show up on my transcript. So how should I report this incident with my prospect employers? Is this considered a crime or misdemeanor conviction?
Any suggestion is appreciated. Thanks!

Crimes and misdemeanors are given out by the criminal justice system. Were you ever prosecuted for anything by your country’s legal authorities? It sounds like you were disciplined by a university disciplinary committee, that’s a totally different system and has no connection to the legal system.

They decided it was unintentional so there was no 'crime', no?

The purpose of the background check is to find out if you are likely to abuse children on campus, assault your colleagues, or steal from the university.  It is not related to academic integrity.
Academic integrity is evaluated by reference checks and transcript checks.
Convictions are decided by law courts, not university committees.  You have a conviction if a judge or jury convicted you in a court.  This does not include university honor courts that are not part of the legal system.

So how should I report this incident with my prospect employers?

You should report it if you are asked to do so.  You probably will not be.

Mistakes of this nature, when handled appropriately at the time, are part of the learning process and you can move beyond them without additional penalty. I assume you don't make such errors now, intentionally or otherwise.
There are a few exceptions, however, as when applying to a national intelligence organization and being asked specific questions. You need to answer them honestly and openly. But an old offense such as you describe is unlikely to be a problem if you are honest about it when asked. Lying is a crime in such situations, but the old offense is not.