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Is it academically dishonest to submit the same project to two different classes in the same semester?
I overheard a student who said that they would use a project done in another course that semester as the final project in an entirely different course. (Let's call the original course Course 0 and the second course Course 2.)
I know it's bad practice to submit work to a class which had been submitted in previous semesters, but I've never heard of anyone turning in the same work to two different classes concurrently before. (Perhaps because opportunities to do so are rare?)
In any event, my initial feeling is that this is dishonesty, but I can't put the reason why into words.
So, is submitting the same project to course 0 and course 2 concurrently dishonest?
For the record: the project involves coding in a certain software (not for the sake of coding, it's just a means to an end), I do not know the name of the student who expressed their intent to do this, but I do know the professors of both courses. I'll edit this section with more pertinent information should anyone want it.
EDIT For the Comments:
The code really is a means to an end, and I furthermore would not describe either course as a programming course. The idea is to perform data analysis on a dataset of the student's choosing.

For all the courses I attended, there was a phrase somewhere in the documentation stating something along the lines of "any submission is the student's work and has not been submitted as part of any other course"...

Why would it be dishonest if the work happens to fit the requirements for both classes?  I would congratulate the student for finding a way for a single piece of software to pull double duty...

I think this one really really really depends on the the nature of the coding. Please edit it in! For starters, if the coding is a means to an end, why is the code being submitted??

I also just want to voice somewhere that as neither answer refers to the coding part, I don't think either is particularly applicable (although they answer the title question).

To justify the above: One of the main principles of coding is reuse. If the purpose of the assignment isn't the coding, then there should be no difference between the code in question versus the use of a public (software) library

Really, the issue is that trying to shoehorn programming into the rules that were developed for writing and communication leads to silly things.

Academia often only grudgingly accepts that it is funded by the training of industry professionals. If it's ever considered dishonest to resubmit previous work, this contributes to academia not being taken seriously by industry.

This is called self-plagiarism and I would be extremely surprised if it wasn't addressed in your school's code of conduct and often in a given course's syllabus. I say this from the perspective of a computer science grad and it is most certainly applicable to code written exclusively for school. (as opposed to a preexisting library of functions etc.)

@Alex: Self-plagiarism in a context like this might be a big deal to you but it's a stupid concept to a lot of other people.

if the code is a means to an end, it's more like a calculator or tool than the work itself no? Can you not use the same tool across multiple classes?

@Alex: "I would be extremely surprised if it wasn't addressed in your school's code of conduct and often in a given course's syllabus" - the existence of a "code of conduct" or a "syllabus" where everything is spelt out to the last dot and comma is a local peculiarity in some countries. Such guidelines may or may not be a thing wherever the OP is located.

@O.R.Mapper understood, I acknowledge that my response may not be relevant in other locales.

@NKCampbell I would argue that if you designed, built and submitted the calculator for credit in a given course then no, you could not submit the same calculator for credit on another project, especially in a different course.

@Alex - which is fine. And...is not apparently OP's situation

Whether it is or not, the professors in the courses will have the last say. If either of them considers it dishonest or otherwise improper, for any reason, you will wind up in a bad place.
But there is an easy way out. Just ask both of them for permission to do this. They might say yes, or no, but then you have a clear answer. They might also give permission provided that you go a bit beyond the bare essentials to demonstrate sufficient work (and seriousness) to cover both.
But doing it without notice or permission seems dangerous, no matter the ethics.
And, you can even come off looking good on this if you actually make an offer to do more than the minimum and submit the result to both. It might mean a bit less work for you overall, and might also teach you some things you wouldn't otherwise have learned. Even for a previously submitted project, offering to extend the old work can be a plus.
FWIW, I would probably be inclined to permit it, with the proviso of some added requirements.
And, I actually did this in secondary school because I changed schools. I asked an instructor at the new place if I could submit a report that I'd previously worked on, but wasn't actually graded for (since I left). I was given permission and it saved me a bit of work.

Some institutions have explicit rules that this is not allowed without permission, e.g. Cornell (see I.C.2).

@Buffy, may I ask what you would do if you discovered someone to have done this without your permission, in the case that you would have given permission if asked?

I would first talk to both the student and the other professor. Perhaps a not deadly solution could be found. I'm much more interested in educating students than most everything else. But the bottom line is that it "feels like" dishonesty. So we would need to work upward from there. But snap judgments probably aren't helpful to anyone.

"not deadly" is exactly right. If the student didn't intentionally violate any ethical code (i.e. it wasn't explicitly stated that one could not do a project that satisfies multiple requirements), then it is in my opinion wrong for anyone to judge it as unethical without first talking to the student and trying to find a fair way to handle the issue.

I actually did this back in undergrad. I had two classes whose final projects I thought I could knock out completely with one big project. After talking to both professors about it, each wanted things added (specific to their class) and didn't care or grade me on the add-on's the other wanted. Asking is definitely the right answer.

It's fairly easy to make the case that any project that satisfies the requirements of multiple classes requires more effort than two projects that satisfy each unless one classes requirements are a subset of the other class. Adding features to a project rarely requires only linearly more effort.

This was actually encouraged in the university I attended. The lecturers were of the opinion that the goal is to learn, not to make projects. If one project can teach you the skills required for two courses, why do two projects?
An example of a project I used for multiple courses was a bit of software I developed as a volunteer activity. I used this for the course in which we had to learn to gather requirements, in the course in which we learned how to develop complex software and in the course that worked on the soft skill of communicating with a client.
I don't think it's dishonest in and of itself, but it is not okay if there are rules against it, obviously.

Yes [if without explicit permission], and it is against many (most?) Student Conduct Guidelines
For example, at Montana State University, this is covered under "Multiple Submission" under Policies and Procedures (under Academic Honesty):

F. Multiple submission - submitting the same paper or oral report for
  credit in two University courses without the instructor's permission;
  making minor revisions in a paper or report for which credit has
  already been received and submitting it again as a new piece of work.

Every University I've worked at has had similar policy wording, and I can't think of any others where I've reviewed related sections of their policies where similar wording wasn't present, but I certainly haven't done an exhaustive search on this specifically.
The key provision here, of course, is "without the instructor's permission". If it has been discussed and approved, it is likely fine at most institutions (check the specific policies and procedures for your University or College, do not assume on this). It becomes academic dishonesty when it is not approved.
Work that is submitted for a course is expected to have been done for that course, not simply the student taking other work previously (or even concurrently) done and submitting it, even if they were in fact the one who did the work. Failing to discuss submitting the same work to multiple courses is an act of academic dishonesty, in the ethical sense at the least, as the student is not meeting the expectations of their actions in regards to the coursework for each individual course.

I understand your point and do not disagree, but the idea in which multiple submissions is unethical seems to place more emphasis on effort exerted than student comprehension.  If the student meets the requirements and fully understands the details then redundant effort may be pointless.  Education strives towards enlightenment, does it not?  Perhaps pursuing the same goals in different ways provides an opportunity for understanding different points of view?

@barrypicker from a pedagogical standpoint, I ABSOLUTELY agree with you, but part of the concept of a class of many where grades are recorded and then used as both validation/credit for having worked to a given standard & as comparison mean that the ethics of engaging in University coursework are different from simply "did you learn it" in terms of the direct course conceptual material alone. Philosophically I agree with you as it pertains to ideals of pedagogy, but in terms of ethics within a University environment I feel it is quite straightforward: without permission it's an ethical breach.

I love this question. I’m a former professor and also had to answer to this exact question when I was in undergrad.
I think there’s an ethical part and a practical part.
Ethically, if you find yourself rationalizing and jumping through hoops to double submit, you’re probably doing something wrong.
Practically, if the work without major edit does indeed fulfill the requirements for two classes, I say go with it. After all, why would you not? Even if the institution had a rule against it, I might elect to fight, as there is no logical reason one should arbitrarily do two separate works if one truly satisfies all requirements. What would YOU the student, get out of such an exercise?

I guest the projects have more or less open topic and the details are chosen by students. In this case the student exploits the freedom in a bad way.

My personal view on it would be that the acceptability of this depends on how much overlap there is between the projects, and how deliberate you were at the outset in making things a single project.
If you have one class which is asking for a project which does A and another which is asking for one which does B, and you come up with a project which does both A and B, then that's likely okay. However, if they're both asking for slightly different variants of A, then it's less likely that a single project which does just A will be accepted.
For example, say you're in a Computer Science class which asks you to write a non-trivial program using multithreading and in a Biology class which is asking you to do a project on DNA sequence alignment. I think that most professors will think it actually a bit clever and pedagogically useful for you to write a computer program which does DNA sequence alignment in a multithreaded fashion to satisfy both projects. Similarly, even if it's two CS classes it can work if the courses are different enough (e.g. a compiler course and a GUI course).
A large part of this is how much "reuse" between the different project requirements there is. For example, in the multithreaded DNA alignment case, the part of the project the CS professor is interested in (multithreading) is disjoint from the part the biology professor is (DNA alignment). You're not really being "double graded", as even though project is the same, the core part being graded is different. -- It's less that you have one single project that you're submitting twice, and more that you are fusing the two distinct projects into one cohesive whole.
The other aspect is the deliberateness of combining. The point of projects isn't make work, it's to provide a demonstration that you have learned and are able to apply the course materials. There's thus an implicit requirement that the project should reflect and incorporate the course materials. To do so effectively, you need to have the class materials in mind while doing the project. This is one reason why reusing projects from previous semesters is frowned upon - you couldn't have consciously incorporated materials from the course in a project made before you took the course. That also potentially applies to projects made in the same semester. Did you deliberately set out to fulfill that specific project's requirements (incorporating and keeping in mind the course materials), or did you just happen to notice after-the-fact that the project for course 0 could be made to work for course 2?
That said, there can be a big difference in opinion between different professors. You definitely don't want to attempt to "slip one by" them. You should be upfront about the fact that you're combining projects. In certain cases, an attempt to deceive (even via omission) can be more ethically dishonest than the project combining itself.

There's a key point in here the other answers are overlooking. You mention it's a portion of code. As a software engineer code re-use is imperative. Not doing so is like a slap in the face to the men and women that worked so hard over the last several decades to provide us these easy to use development environments, frameworks, and platforms. If these are for computer science or related courses, I would be shocked if the professors wouldn't accept it.
But as the current top answer states very clearly: in the end it is entirely up to the professors whether it is acceptable/ethical or not

Heh... code reuse is not "imperative" even in a professional development environment, just a useful thing to do. In an academic setting, it's immaterial. (Would you consider it a "slap in the face" that everyone had to do the assignment individually, rather than just copying one student's answer? Think of the missed opportunity for code reuse!)

"Heh..." I was saying imperative in the context of what created our modern development environments. Obviously it isn't on every level. I learned in notepad without any idea of OOP like a lot of self taught devs. I still write a lot of procedural, depending on the use case. But I'm writing that in php, or even java and C. How's that translated and made useful ..? Hint, compilers that no one can feasibly rewrite every time they write a new program. But let me re-phrase for you; code re-use is imperative to practically develop in the modern world.

I study Information Engineering in Romania at UPB and we have subjects that have many things in common. Usually we have one project per subject each semester.
Sometime, not only that the professors know that we use the same project for two subjects, but they also RECOMMEND it! No ones sees this as a hack or cheating, but it is just efficient and powerful. It is more fun to use several concepts in the same project or software than splitting them in 123 boxes.
At the end of the day, if your skills got better and you acquired more knowledge, that's all what matters.
This was my opinion and experience. If the school / assistant / professor has something against this, then we can no longer be subjective.

I can give my opinion from the side of guy who codes a lot in the field of data analysis: if somebody created software that can do some computations which are easily transformed for needs of two separate tasks or projects, it is actually fantastic.
You can of course do copypasting things from your own code to make another look or even be different, but I doubt it adds anything to your skill as programmer, like is honest just being inspired by your code and do it very similar mor another course? ofc yes.
If in the university there are some very specific rules about it, then it is not great but on contrary one of the main aspect of programming is trying to stick to one style and one set of tricks(untill they are good) as much as possible and reusability of code is highly appretiated in software development in general.
In general if you have good reusable code and in the university there are indeed some strict rules about submitting same project I would recommend you just to use different datasets for your analysis, I bet where you found your dataset there are lots of others, so just make same approach to different data and it will never be your fault, but your achievement.

Speaking only from my own experience, this would be fine. In the Computer Science department I graduated from the three key rules were:

Originality (did you copy it?)
Authenticity (did you do it yourself?)
Exclusivity (is it publicly available for others?)*

Since you wrote the software, you didn't copy it from anywhere, and (assuming) you aren't going to post your code in a publicly viewable location, the project would be perfectly acceptable as long as it fulfills all the stated requirements, for any number of assignments.
In practice the opportunities for the same project to fulfill the requirements of more than 1 assignment is so low that if you can find a way to exploit it, good for you.
*The logic goes: you are welcome to post your project anywhere you want. But if someone else can see it and copy it, you'll be given a 0. If you want your project to be graded, make sure no one else can also submit it.

At any university I am familiar with, submitting a project in a class that you have submitted in another class without permission and without citation is considered self-plagiarism and, if discovered, will subject you to academic discipline. Check your student handbook. It's in there somewhere.
For example: [Washington University in St.Louis]

Other Forms of Deceit, Dishonesty or Inappropriate Conduct

Under no circumstances is it acceptable for a student to:
Submit the same work, or essentially the same work, for more than one course without explicitly obtaining permission from all instructors. A student must disclose when a paper or project builds on work completed earlier in his/her academic career.

If it is the students own work then what difference makes it if it meets the guidelines for both classes. Same student. Their own work. Meets the criteria. Shouldn't be an issue.

You might want to clarify that this is your personal opinion, rather than advice for what the OP should do (since it violates a lot of institutions' academic honesty policies.)


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Who should I ask if I need further information about the submission guidelines of a journal?
Who should I ask if I want some further information about journal policies? I found something unclear in the author guideline of a journal in which I am interested in. I think the editor in chief is not the one I should ask. The only choice left on their editorial board is the "managing editor," is this the person I should contact?

What is your question about? Are you asking about formatting, or something else?

Is there no contact form? Many journals have one. See e.g. https://authorsupport.wiley.com/s/contactsupport

It is recommended to contact the Editorial Team.
You will access the "about the magazine" part, then click on contacts, there you will find the main contact and the contact for technical support, contact the main contact.
Indicate, in the email, that you have carefully read the guidelines for authors, but still have questions, then say what the question was.

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Writing a meaningful paper of descriptive analysis/exploratory study
I have conducted a study with a rare type of participants for my graduate thesis and would just like to present their characteristics in a descriptive manner.
In my opinion, just presenting the characteristics of these participants might also have its value because the type of participants have not yet been studied so far. By the way, I do not have any comparison group nor specific hypothesis.
However, my supervisor thinks that there should still be certain assumptions or aim of my study that I should answer.
Is just presenting the characteristics of the rare population a defective aim of a graduate thesis in general? Or is there any way where I can still write a high-quality master's thesis in a descriptive manner without traditional hypothesis?
It would be rather a wide question. I would appreciate if somebody could suggest a rough example or orientation.

Much too vague for an answer here. You and your advisor disagree and they have much more experience than you do. What's suitable for a Master's Thesis might not be for a "meaningful paper". Voting to close.

@EthanBolker I agree it's vague, but I think "meaningful paper" is a language issue here; not a request for an answer that's suitable for both a journal article and a master's thesis.

I'm going to say that there is an answer here. What you're describing, in my field at least, would not fly for a thesis, let alone a published paper in most cases. It sounds like your advisor would agree with me. So there is your answer.
What separates a master's thesis and a dissertation, at their core, is that a master's thesis doesn't necessarily have to be novel. A PhD dissertation is meant to advance the field, a master's thesis is meant to show that you understand the field. Even if they are totally novel, they are almost always much smaller in scope. This means that things like literature reviews, quality improvement projects, or replication experiments are usually acceptable at the masters level.
I'm mentioning the differences to highlight the similarities. A master's thesis should still have a hypothesis (ideally a testable one). Whether you support it with a bibliographic work, experiments, simulations, whatever, a hypothesis is central to the process. A thesis that simply describes a population would not meet that requirement. On top of that, what do you learn? The point of a research based master's is to learn how to do research. If you are submitting a descriptive work (I hesitate to even call it a descriptive study) you learn nothing.
Now I'm sure that some program somewhere would accept it (maybe even your program), but you would be short changing yourself. So while you could maybe make it work, why not just engage with the process and actually write a thesis? It sounds like you may have something interesting which is rare at the master's level. So run with it and do as much as you can, not as little.

I'm not sure OP is saying that their project is only descriptive statistics.

Based on their question, that is exactly what they are saying - they collected data about a population which is apparently interesting and novel and now want to go ahead with only a description of that population without any meaningful investigation or hypothesis. The issue is not that they want to do a descriptive or observational study, but that they seem to have no study right now.

What OP described is called a Cohort Profile paper in my field and it is published very often (for example). However, only his supervisor can tell if this is enough for a thesis or not.

On a purely practical level, you are going to have to please your supervisor (and your committee) to get your degree. Also, this issue should have been resolved early in the process. Different universities (and different departments) have different ways of doing this, but there is often something like 1) Proposal - what are you going to do?  2) Progress report - How's it going? and 3) Dissertation - How it turned out.  Issues such as yours should be settled at stage 1.
That said, whether a purely descriptive paper is "enough" for a journal article (which ought to be enough for a dissertation) varies by field and by particular topic within a field. I have seen purely descriptive papers in reputable journals. Heck, there are case studies in many journals; there are also ethnographic studies, reports of focus groups, and so on. However, these usually have a lot of "other" stuff that an inferential paper does not have. More details, more background, and so on. You can search the literature in your field for descriptive papers.

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Under which circumstances should I have additional recommendation letters?
Many Ph.D. programs in the U.S. require "a minimum of 3 recommendation letters", and you can submit up to 6 letters if you like. I am under the impression that most people just have 3 LoR, but I have 4 referees in total. In terms of both the prestige of the recommender and the work I have done with them, two of the letters are above average, whereas the other two have average quality among my peers (which I believe is far from "meh" since I am in a good research-oriented master's program in the U.S.).
For the top programs, I am not sure which three referees to request letters from, so I am taking the two above-average ones and alternating between the remaining two for different programs. Assuming all referees are happy to submit an additional letter for me, can I simply request all four letters in the application portal? Does it hurt? Does it help?

There are many people on this site with experience in grad admissions committees, which I don't have, so I'll let them answer. However, I'd suggest that the fourth is only helpful if they provide a suitably different perspective than the other three.

A good graduate admissions committee at a decent school is interested in whether a candidate has a good chance of graduating successfully and at a superb school whether a graduate is going to have a great impact and make them proud. Everything that is asked from an applicant is about answering this question. The number of letters is of secondary importance as long as it meets the threshold. The contents are of primary importance. There is some weight given to the standing of the letter writers in the academic community, but you might be giving it more importance than it deserves. If I am on a committee and I know the letter writer, I would give that letter more weight because I assume that the opinion is more honest. Any admissions committee has a lot of collective experience in academia and know that even the very best students might work with a barely established assistant professor.
If the fourth letter would give additional information, go for it. If not, not asking for a letter of recommendation is an act of kindness, since these things do not write themselves. (Maybe I should try the new AI-bot that my dean is so worried about.) However, since you already asked them to send letters (only not so many) this is no longer a consideration.
Completely besides the point in your case, but I cannot resist the story of a student who insisted ferociously and repeatedly on a famous person writing a recommendation letter. So the famous person finally gave in and wrote: "As far as I know, Mr. X has not been convicted of a felony in California."

This person has already requested these letters and the writers have written them. The question is if they should be submitting the letters they have to all schools or dropping letter 4 from schools where only 3 is required.


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Who to ask to write letter of recommendation: the professor who knows me better or the one that gave me a better grade?
I have a question in regard to choice of recommenders.
I'm applying to my dream school and I want to make the best choice for my LOR. I have two recommenders, one is a professor and he doesn't really know me, but I got an A in his class. Another one is a faculty, he knows me better than the other one, and he asked me a lot of questions in detail before writing the letter, but I only got a B in his class.
Which one should I choose to have him write me an LOR that's going to my dream school?
PS. I asked them both because I wasn't sure which one would be willing to write me the letter, but I only need one letter.

Why not both? They could complement each other if presented in the right light.

Thanks, Sana! The problem is that I accidentally asked two teachers while I only need one more letter.

I would go with professor B. If the admissions committee wants to know about your grades, they'll check your transcript. You want your LORs to give them insight into who you are as a student, what your specific strengths are, etc. This information is supposed to supplement your transcript, and may even be more important than your grades for certain programs. The fact that professor B 1) agreed to write you the letter and 2) asked for more details, suggests that he'll write a good letter for you. The LORs I have read typically do not mention grades, and if a professor knows you well the difference between an A or a B will likely not sway their letter.
Edit: I even asked a professor who knew me extremely well to directly address the most obvious weakness in my application, to make sure that wouldn't raise questions with the committee. You want your application to represent you well, and your grades are only a small part of who you are as a student (depending on the program you're applying to).

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Does leaving a lab disqualify me from being a coauthor?
Are there any standard rules by referring to which you can claim authorship? Or do the rules differ from lab to lab and depend on the PI?
I have worked for almost two years in lab X on some project. After that I joined lab Y. After that the PI from lab X drafted a manuscript (based, in part, on my work) and submitted it for publication. When I inquired about my major role in that paper, they told me that "since you have left this lab, you cannot claim authorship"... Does this happen in every lab?
What is the ethically right approach in such situation?
Edited
I was involved in data analysis along with the first author of the manuscript. I agree that manuscript drafting and writing is major task for claiming an authorship.. But I was not even invited for it..

"since you have left this lab you can not claim authorship": They are being jerks, the role of an author  in a paper should be independent of their current position.

Did they communicate this to you by email?

The rules are usually stated on the journal's webpage. However, there's virtually nothing you can do, since you will probably attract a negative response from your former supervisor (meaning he can make your career progression difficult). I sympathise, as this happened to me twice. In the end, unless they end up publishing in Nature or Science, I wouldn't care too much, as it is only a paper which will likely get lost in the sea of papers published every day.

If they publish the work without listing you as a co-author, then that's blatant plagiarism.

@user2768: it's theft, but unless you actually helped write the paper, it's not plagiarism.

@PeterShor, "Plagiarism is the 'wrongful appropriation' and 'stealing and publication' of another author's 'language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions' and the representation of them as one's own original work." -- Wikipedia. So, I believe my claim is valid.

Ethically right? Did you contribute to the research? Then you deserve either co-authorship or acknowledgement, depending on contribution quality and amount. There is no thing like "not in the lab, no longer a contributor". Utterly despicable.

@user2768 The poster did not say that they used his ideas or that he provided meaningful conceptual effort for this paper, merely that he worked in the lab, so calling it plagiarism is a little premature.

@CaptainEmacs "Contribute" is a too-broad term to capture every circumstance in every field. Large projects especially have many paid staff for executing research that do not create the research project or perform conceptual or analysis work, and would not qualify for authorship on a paper.

@David exactly, and that's why I said "quality" in addition to "amount" - I specifically meant not only the quality in the sense of how well the job is done, but, in fact, "of what quality" the contribution was.

@CaptainEmacs Ah, sure. I missed that.

@David: " The poster did not say that they used his ideas or that he provided meaningful conceptual effort for this paper, merely that he worked in the lab" - the poster does say the manuscript is "based, in part, on [their] work". Yes, that claim may have to be checked independently, but no matter whether or not the OP contributed sufficiently to the manuscript, the issue at hand is that the decision on authorship appears to be made based upon whether the OP is still a member of the lab at the time of submission, rather than based upon the OP's impact on the manuscript.

@user2768: If you look at legal definitions, stealing ideas is plagiarism only if they're already written down. Black's law dictionary defines plagiarism as: The act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.

@PeterShor, we aren't concerned with legal definitions, we are concerned with academic definitions. (I concede that Wikipedia isn't an academic definition.)

@user2768, the term "plagiarism" is wildly over-used in this sort of context. Likely there was no plagiarism, since the questioner had not written anything down. It was theft, though, as Peter Shor observes.

(@PeterShor, I echo'd your distinction between theft and plagiarism. The latter term oughtn't be an umbrella...)

@user2768: There are at least two cases that actually happened to people I know in academia, that went like kind of like this: Somebody explained some ideas verbally or in email to somebody else. The second party then wrote a paper, scooping the first party. Nobody ever called either of these "plagiarism." It does seem like this falls under the technical definitions of plagiarism written by universities in order to guide undergraduates when they write their term papers. But those definitions are deliberately overly broad so as to cover everything.

If you would have qualified as an author otherwise, the act of leaving a lab should not disqualify you. However, make sure you would have qualified as an author under normal circumstances before confronting someone about it. Most journals and universities have their own authorship policies. You could use these policies as a starting point to talk your lab mates about being included as an authors on this paper.
For example, the IEEE authorship policy: https://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/authors/author_ethics.html
You can look up your own university's authorship policy.
However, be aware that most policies place a much greater emphasis on writing/drafting, and higher level design or analysis work than they do on low-level activities. Just working on a project for two years is not necessarily enough to qualify you for authorship on any paper related to that project. The kind of work you performed and it's relation to the published paper is what is really crucial here.
For example, simple data gathering is usually not enough to qualify one for authorship under most policies. Spending time doing tool-building or building an experiment that you did not design are also activities that probably don't qualify you for authorship on their own. Designing an experiment included in a paper does qualify for authorship. Spending time with the other authors comparing and contrasting competing explanations of data might qualify for authorship, depending on your overall role and contribution in the project.
In my experience I have seen people not have authorship when they spent a significant amount of time testing and validating an experimental setup that they did not design. In this case they were more of a paid technician than a researcher, even though they were working with research equipment and contributing to a research project.
I contrast, I know a guy who did get authorship for simply coming up with a really good idea and doing zero work. He was a graduating PhD student and had a great research idea that the others in his lab implemented and evaluated. Even though he did zero work on the project or paper his colleagues thought that the single original idea was enough of an intellectual contribution to grant authorship.

In my experience I have seen people not be authorship when they spent a significant amount of time testing and validating an experimental setup that they did not design. — This seems grossly unethical to me.

@JeffE In this case the individual was validating and troubleshooting electronic components of a test apparatus that wasn't working correctly. He was applying undergraduate level electrical engineering- not doing research. The mere fact that he did his work in our lab doesn't mean he provided an intellectual contribution to our research. This is especially common in large projects that require a lot of technical staff to pull off. Does the crane operator get authorship? Does the electrician? Does the guy turning the wrench? Perhaps, but not usually.

Echoing @David, authorship guidelines typically can be distilled to having a contribution in 2 or more of: designing the research, collecting data/doing the research, data analysis, and writing the final paper. Writing software or maintaining equipment can be labor-intensive but it only qualifies as authorship if the other aspects are included as well.

@David Did he get paid at a market rate for an electrical engineer? Or was he expecting to be compensated for his work in part by advancing his research career? In the former case, you are right; in the latter case, I agree with JeffE.

@BorisBukh The employment arrangement shouldn't affect whether someone is listed as an author or not, and that's certainly not the case according to the authorship guidelines at my university or the places I publish. I agree that a research position shouldn't be misrepresented-
that researchers need to be given research tasks- but even as a researcher you're not entitled to authorship because you happen to have the job title "researcher" when a lab publishes a paper.

@BorisBukh This whole discussion also brings to mind the principle that authorship and responsibilities should always be decided before you get involved in a project. Specifically to avoid situations like above where someone feels exploited.

@David I think we agree

But telling somebody that they're not an author on a paper "because they left the lab" is definitely a bad idea (not that I am sure this actually happened).

If I might add something, I also consider authorship is independent of affiliation and should be decided in advance (so everyone contributes accordingly). However, I have sadly witnessed the attitude that @Parth describes is a very common practice in some labs, especially in physics/chemistry. Author of an article is the PI + researchers + everyone working at the lab at that moment as kind of a "collective reward". That's why you can find so many papers with 10, 20, 100, 1000 or even... 5000 authors. http://www.nature.com/news/physics-paper-sets-record-with-more-than-5-000-authors-1.17567

As pointed out in the other response, check out the legal / specific issues first, but take for granted that your role as an author, ethically and professionally speaking, does not depend on your affiliation but on your contribution. What they told you, honestly, looks more like bullying/retaliation to me than anything else.

This is an old problem. It happened twice to me as a postdoc, later when I had become a professor myself, I asked them why and if we could not fix it. But the answers were, there is nothing wrong and get over it. It is true I was quite ambitious and at times, I got my fat with people who do not like to be overtaken, or not liked me, or wanted not to share. I try today to involve people who left my lab in articles they belong too. It is true with some people you have not an easy stand and it is sometimes almost nobody's fault, we are all very different at times. I try nevertheless to work with all, also with those who leave the lab. Try yourself to be a giver in this matter and then you are better off in front of your mirror. The consequences of not accepting you as co-author can be as bad as many other unfortunate conditions. But there is a place for the hard working despite ugly things we have to phase from time to time.

Hmmm. Maybe "fat" should be "fight", or is there an idiom I don't know?

The struggle takes your energy or fat, in German language used may be in others too, one uses the term almost proudly later when things are over.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


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Lead Authorship Conflict
I’m working on a paper with two colleagues. It all started out with a broad idea that they had. They were coming to me, asking me to do the data analysis (survey data). At the beginning I had the lead authorship and I started to work on it completely on my own and was adding my own ideas to the research design etc. The whole data analysis was very time consuming and I was spending months on it. It all worked out, the results are great and both of them were excited about what I did with the data.
They wanted me to write the draft and finish the paper. At that time though, I was also in the middle of my PhD. I didn’t want to stop the process of the paper. So I decided to give one of them the lead authorship, so that he could finish the paper by writing the rest of the manuscript and I got the 2. authorship. I already wrote the methods and results section of the article.
That was a year ago. However, I’ve finished my PhD now and the paper has still not been written by the lead author. He only wrote a draft of the theory which did not fit the results of my data analysis very well. Therefore, I suggested that I could take over the lead authorship again and finish this paper. Since I already published a very similar paper during my PhD, I was already experienced and knew the underlying theory, state of research etc.
Unfortunately, at first they were ignoring my request and after I asked again, they suggested that the lead authorship should be decided based on how much time/work capacity the person has.
Since the lead author is my boss, he can decide if I should do other work instead. So far, he took the lead of another paper where I did the data analysis and formulated the research questions etc. as well. For this paper as well, I already wrote the methods and result parts and prepared the figures, regression tables etc.
I feel like I’m not treated very fairly. Although they depend on me regarding the research papers, I’m also in a bad position because both of them are above me in the hierarchy. How should I proceed?
Update:
Thank you both for your very helpful response! Your arguments support me in the decision that it's probably best to just let it go to avoid conflict.
I still work with both of them, and there is still pending work from the time when I was still working on my PhD. However, both of them were not my supervisors (my supervisors treated me very fairly and did not insist on co-authorship).
In sociology the author order generally indicates the amount of contribution. The last authorship is often given to someone who is usually the group leader.

It seems odd to me that writing the intro and discussion would entitle someone to first authorship? What field/country is this?

Sociology and I’m from Germany but this article is intended to be submitted to an international journal.

This seems to be one of your first collaboration and authorship experiences. Let me try to give some pragmatic advice.
Authorship order for academic publications is a very sensitive and controversial issue, mainly because it is hard to objectively determine what merits the order. There have been several attempts to make this process more objective (for example, here is a particularly rigorous attempt), but it remains subjective and standards vary widely across disciplines. (Some academic disciplines make it very simple, even simplistic: authorship order is always alphabetical, except in exceptional circumstances.)
You should realize that, unfortunately, students are in low-power relationships and they often have little choice but to accept what more powerful professor coauthors impose on them. Here's my pragmatic advice: if you're a PhD student, that's life; you unfortunately have to sometimes accept that. (But if you're a professor: I strongly consider it unethical to take advantage of students in authorship order; whenever I am personally involved, I fight for students' rights. But I am advising you here on how to go forward when you have no one to fight for you.)
So, first, whether you like the situation or not, I recommend that you objectively consider the long-term consequences of not being the first author of an article in which you placed the most effort. The consequences are usually almost zero. Other than perhaps your pride being somewhat hurt that someone else gets the primary credit that you deserve, there are generally no negative professional consequences. If it really matters to you, then you can privately very briefly mention to people that you did the most work, but your professor took the lead authorship because they are the professor. (I would never say anything more than that--people who dislike such behaviour will fully understand the situation; complaining further than that looks bad.)
Going forward, if you don't like the way your coauthors have treated you, then never coauthor with them again. It's that simple. This is often the difference between students who publish with their professors only during their doctoral program and those who continue to collaborate with them long after they have graduated. And it doesn't end there. In your professional publishing career, you will occasionally encounter collaborators whose practices you very much dislike. If they refuse to change even after you have politely explained your concerns, then as long as they are not compelling you to do anything unethical yourself, very often the best resolution is to humbly say nothing more, complete the project with them, and then never work with them again.

Thank you for this very helpful advice, which supports me in the decision that it's not a sign of weakness to just let it go. Yes, it's particularly painful for me to observe how they take credit for the work in professional settings like conferences. Although I'm a Post-Doc now, it's probably still best to let it go to avoid conflict and perhaps consider looking for a new workplace.

Are you still at the same place after the PhD? Or are you only still in touch with these people because of this pending work?  If you are out of that place, just let the work be published in whichever way. I think you already have an idea that the chances of you getting the lead authorship are low. I suggest avoiding confrontation at this stage. For the future, discuss things like this during the early stages of the project and decide on a plausible author order.
I think, at least in computer science, the lead authors are generally the lead of the project work as well. They contribute to planning the experiments, delegating the work to suitable team members, making sense of the results and finally writing and editing the draft. Accordingly, the order of the authors is decided. The senior professors are always listed at the end of the author list as they were mainly helping with discussions and refining our ideas, correcting along the way. I am not sure how is it in sociology.
In my view, these issues can be sorted out amicably. There is no point fighting it out. I do not think it's worth it. For future, better avoid working with such people who do not play fair.

Thank you for your helpful response, I'm also considering now to let it go to avoid conflict. I still work with both of them and probably have to work on new papers with them in the future if I don't quit this job.


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Not completing the objectives in a fellowship (Marie Curie for instance). Which consequences on the career?
When one applies to post doctoral fellowship, you typically have to write a proposal with clear objectives and deliverables. Of course, in research nothing is guaranteed. This is why we often have to give "plan B" in the case "plan A" fails in the proposal.
My questions are:
1. What are the consequences for the career of a researcher that did not succeed in reaching the objectives (let's say, neither plan A or plan B).
2. If during the research, the researcher finds that there are much more interesting results to obtain rather than plan A or plan B that they couldn't anticipate when they wrote the proposal. Will it have negative consequences on their career as well? Under two assumptions (1) this other investigation is in the same thematic as the proposal or (2) this new investigation is not directly related to the proposal (but the results are genuinely interesting in terms of scientific outputs)
In terms of consequences, I am asking about the consequences on their individual career. Typically at the end of a fellowship one has to write a report explaining which results it obtained etc. What if in this report it is clear that the objective were not meet (but it is also clear that they tried and figured out it couldn't work). Will it play any influence on their future career? For instance if they want to apply to other fundings from the same grant? I am at least asking it for a Marie Curie Fellowship.
Ideally, I would like to have an answer from someone that knows the answer because they have been involved in organizing such fellowship.


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Specify average of grades in cv
I studied in Italy and I'm writing a CV for CERN and I would like to specify the average of my grades.
How can I do that? I provide you an example. I had an average of 30.5 out of 30 (honour degrees are counted as 31).
Should I write:
Average grade: 30.5 out of 31
Average grade: 30.5 out of 30 (My university says this)
Should I use GPA? But this is American I think, CERN is in Europe.

My advice, as an Italian, is to avoid any personal interpretation of the grades and get from your university the Diploma Supplement, which provides complete information on the grading system. This kind of Supplement has been conceived exactly to allow universities in different countries to better understand their different grading systems, and those I had seen were fairly detailed. It should also provide information on the honours system in use at your university.
If you further want to provide separately your average grade, assuming that it’s not already in the Supplement, I suggest you to use the average grade reported by the university, possibly attaching the source of that value (if your university says so, it should be written somewhere).

Good advice everywhere, not just Italy.

Thank you! Diploma supplement is released when the degree is completed. I applied for an internship and I followed your advice, and I used the average grade reported by the university.


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Personal statements in my motivation letter?
I am applying for the CERN summer program. On their YT channel they empathise to write a lot about us as persons, so passions, hobby’s, etc.
In your opinion should I write some personal statements in my motivation letter, like:

My strong passion and independent study for history/ philosophy
I enjoy sincere art and drawing since I was a child.
The fact that I was born and raised in a country, then with my family I moved to another country and this experience made me understood life’s most important lessons. This is a key point because I really think that CERN is an amazing community that shares all my values, integrity, importance of diversity, adaptability. So this statements are not just words but some important reasons for which I apply, but they concern my personal life. Clearly in addition to that I have a deep passion for physics, but also my history explains why I would be honoured to spend my summer at CERN instead of any other place.

Clearly in the letter I write all in a more formal way.

Next time if you  want to post something here, please put some effort into your post

Think about the tone of what you write. I don't have an easy way to see their explicit instructions, but if they mention "passion" and "hobbies" and such then what you write here doesn't seem sincere, especially the first to samples. It reads like you are checking off boxes to fulfill requirements. That is a bit stilted.
If they specifically ask for "passion" and you answer "... passion..." it will seem that way. Think deeper about what you really want to get from time at CERN and how it fits into the larger picture of your goals.
Your third point is getting much closer to the way you want to write, I suggest.


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Credit for co-first authorship in Chinese academia
I heard that in Chinese academia, you would not get credit for a co-first-author paper if you are not listed as the first co-first author. Is this true? If so, why non-first co-first authors can't get credit for their equal contribution? The area is bioinformatics / computational biology.

Credit from whom, exactly?

@Buffy https://www.science.org/content/article/cash-bonuses-peer-reviewed-papers-go-global and https://www.enago.com/academy/paid-to-publish-the-chinese-cash-cow/
add imprecations of your choice

@Buffy. Credit that I meant was whether the universities would consider co-authored papers as my work if I am not the first co-first author when applying for a position in Chinese academia. Is a non-first co-first-authored (or sole first author) paper considered my first-author paper? Or is it not different from a second-author paper?


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What should i do if the school made a mistake on my grade? Failed but when i checked i really passed
I had been informed that my final grade was 74.86 and I did not pass. So I repeated that subject and paid $2000 for that subject. I passed the said repeated subject. Yesterday, I was browsing through all my final grades for the courses I took. Upon coming up with the MED SURG1 subject that I supposedly failed, my grade there was actually 75.01 which means I actually passed. I printed that screen as my proof in any case they deny or change it. Thank you and i hope to resolve this matter with some advice here.

What do you want to accomplish? Would you have been able to check your grade before retaking the course? If so, why didn't you check? What country are you in? Do instructors at your institution tend to have leeway in assigning grades, or are all grade assignments formulaic based strictly on point totals?

Aren't grading systems that think they can measure quality to within 1/100 of a percent wonderful?......NOT.

What's your grade of the second time? Are you sure 75.01 is the grade of the first time, not the second time?

There is probably nothing to do and a complaint will probably be ignored. This is sad and you are out some time and money. But, if you learned a bit more in the second taking you have some, perhaps small, compensation. And if the new grade is a bit higher it can help later, perhaps. Also, the course sounds pretty important for someone in the medical (or related) profession.
You could have a discussion with the dean or the head of department about it and, perhaps you could get some financial credit against a future course, but not likely more than that.
Good luck. Sorry you are caught in such a rigid system.

If you're going to make a binary distinction for some purpose between "passing" and "failing" there must be a threshold somewhere, whether it's rigid or not just means different students are treated  differently with respect to the threshold.


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Are reduced working hours in a PhD a reasonable idea?
I live in Germany. I've just recently finished my M. Sc. in computer science and I'm now thinking about pursuing a PhD. I've been offered a full-time position on a topic which I'm quite interested in (related to my Master thesis). The contract would be for five years and well-paid, so I wouldn't have to worry about finances. But I am still very hesitant to accept, since I'm not sure if I can handle the stress associated with a PhD. Driven by fascination and harsh self-criticism, my studies went quite well and I've always received positive feedback on my performance. But I took much longer than average to finish and by the end I was close to a burnout.
I'd like to continue research on the topic of my thesis, but I'm not really interested in another academic title. I believe this is a great opportunity, but I'm also aware that I need to consider my well-being after exposing myself to way too much stress during my studies. I'm currently thinking about negotiating the contract from 40 hours down to 35 hours a week. An hour a day might make a significant difference in terms of stress. However, this obviously means there would be less time to develop, implement and test research ideas. Is thinking about work-life balance in a PhD a good idea? Or is it a sign that I'm not fit enough and I should go to the industry straight (where I know I'll end up in the long term, anyway)?

This is hard to answer as it will depend a lot on your personality. Anyway, one thing I'd be quite curious about if I were you is to what extent the hours in the contract are just a formal necessity or whether there is some real enforcement of working time. In many places people can work whatever time they want for their PhD as long as they come out with something good. In such a situation it wouldn't make sense to reduce the formal working hours as the real conditions wouldn't change. (The negative implication is that you may well work more than 40h whether the contract says 40 or 35.)

It's trust-based working hours. I suppose the actual working time will depend both on my supervisor's and my own expectations.

As @ChristianHennig comments. That is, depending on the type of work you're doing, can you really stop yourself from thinking about it after the official stop-work time? Would pretending that it's 35 hours (with a pay cut?) really make it different from 40? And, yes, I think most things at that level are outcome-based, not rule-based... But I'm not familiar with the situation in Germany.

Stress in a Ph.D is a function of several factors, not just the amount of hours worked. Even in the odd (and lucky?) chance you do get to work fixed hours a week, your working relationship with your advisor contributes majorly to your overall well-being. Is your advisor supportive? Do they offer sound guidance? Do you trust that they will help you succeed? Of course, the answers to these you may not know now, but I am just saying there are other aspects to what could induce stress. It is quite possible to work long hours and yet be stress free, as long there is a supportive system around.

When you are certain you will go to industry and your supervisor is fine by you reducing hours and you want to do it, by all means, go for it.

One thing you have to keep in mind in Germany is the "Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz". Irrespective of the numbers of hours per week you have, the hard limit for employment during your PhD is (excluding some other special cases) always 6 years. Even at 35 hours this should be enough, but you should keep in mind that something like taking twice the time at half workload is not possible. Also as an alternative, if you feel burned out after your Masters-degree, consider taking a few months off for doing something different (e.g. travelling) before you start, that is easy to negotiate for.

Note that both official and practical working hours in a PhD will depend strongly on the specific domain and environment. I've seen anything from people doing a PhD at 25% employment as a side-gig, to 50% employment and working well past 120%, up to 100% employment like a regular job (and many permutations of that). You might want to take advice with a grain of salt unless you are sure it actually matches your situation closely.

Focusing trivially on just one small part, the specific question, “Is thinking about work-life balance […] a good idea?” can always be answered with a resounding YES. Thinking about your work–life balance is never a bad idea, under any circumstances. Whether this thinking causes you to actually make different choices in different circumstances is less unequivocal, but keeping balance in mind at all times is a good thing.

You write that you were on the verge of burnout at the end of your studies. You did not have fixed working hours during your studies. Ask yourself what made you put in more time and effort than was healthy for you. Was it the feeling that others were working harder? That your results were not good enough? Ask yourself whether a reduced contractual working time would really solve your problem.
I'm a PhD student in Germany and I've also been faced with the question of whether it's possible to do a PhD with the normal workload of a full-time job.
In Germany, there are two types of doctoral funding: a scholarship and a staff position. It sounds like your offer belongs to the second category. Ask your supervisor how much time you would have to spend each week on work unrelated to your PhD, e.g. teaching. Talk to PhD students in the research group about how much they think they have to work and how much they actually work. The actual working time of PhD students depends very much on the working culture of the particular group. (If there are people with disabilities or PhD students with small children in the group, this could be an indicator that not too much overtime is expected). Then you can consider whether you can cope with the workload and whether reducing your contractual hours would mean you actually work less.
My solution, by the way, was this: I made it clear in the interview that I could not work more than 40 hours a week in the long term, which my supervisor accepted. Then I saw my doctorate as a 8 to 5 job, which worked well for the first 80% of the doctorate. Now I am working more to finish my dissertation, but for a limited period of time that is fine for me.

That's a very helpful answer. I believe my main issues were overidentifying myself with my work as well as working inefficiently due to concentration issues, partially because there was no real separation between studying and leisure time. I believe transitioning from being a student to being a paid worker would be very healthy for me.

In my group in Germany, there is a fellow Phd student who has an 80% contract by choice and usually doesn't work Fridays. As far as I can tell, that person gets their work done just as well as the rest of us, judging by objective measures such as submitted publications. Of course, there are some phases, especially right before submission deadlines, where we are all working regardless of whether we usually would. Our supervisor encourages us to take time off afterwards to balance this out.
However, I strongly encourage you to talk about this with your future supervisor and especially future fellow Phd students, as they will be able to tell you about the group's culture with respect to these sorts of things. Phds in Germany are often highly individual relationships between supervisors and supervisees and a lot will depend on what your supervisor expects. In contrast to the experience in my own group, I also know Phd students, where it is expected that they work weekends and long hours.

It's encouraging to hear from such a success story. If I knew it would work out this way, I'd go for it. It's exactly the inherent variability of work environments, as well as the unpredictability of research, which makes the decision so hard for me. However, from talking to the supervisor and some potential future colleagues, I've gotten a positive impression. But as pointed out by Ina, self-exploitation is another potential issue to consider.

Let me start by saying that I find it crazy that we as a society are so brainwashed into thinking that only those who are willing to spend a majority of their time working their butt off are really serious about their career and fit for doing their job. Of course you do not have to be a workaholic to be fit for doing a PhD, especially if you don't want it to take over your life. Especially in Germany where A) the right to work part time is guaranteed by law and B) the route to a PhD is often less structured and less time sensitive than in other places.
There are even studies that hint to a 4-day work week being just as productive as the status quo 5-day work week that has been so firmly implanted into our brains as being the only way to go. In some countries this concept is already tried.
On the flipside (as said by some commenters), it often happens that people put in a lot of (unpaid) overtime while working on their PhD. If that were the case in your institution, reducing the hours on paper but not in reality would just lead to you getting paid less for working more or less the same. Talk to your future supervisor and ideally to other PhD students about this to find out if that is the case.
So, if you feel better with working less hours per week, are OK with a little less money and have the guarantee that it will not only be less hours on paper, go for it. It will not make you less of a PhD student. It will probably won't even make you less productive, as you will have more time to recharge and relax in between working hours.

"Talk to your future supervisor and ideally to other PhD students about this to find out if that is the case." - Perhaps this is especially important for the case of Germany. Research groups are very different - in some, the advisors will enforce the max. 40 hours per week (because by the employment law, he/she is formally obliged to, except for those financed with scholarships). In other research groups, PhD students spending less than 50 hours per week in office will receive snarky comments from their peers. Find out what the culture in the group is from the other PhD students.

There also is the option to start with 40 h and then evaluate after 6 months or so, as it's always possible to reduce.

You're right. In an achievement-driven job like research, efficiency is more important than total working hours. Of course, this quality is difficult to predict. But by reducing my working hours, I would also be setting my hope into the remaining hours being more productive.

Thinking about work-life balance is a good thing for a PhD, and something that many people have to painfully learn during it. Someone working 75% of the time but at full efficiency is going to run circles around folks spending 16 hours a day totally exhausted but not stopping to catch a breath.
But ultimately, you should ask yourself whether you actually can do a specific PhD at less time at a pace sustainable for you.
There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this: Both official and practical working hours depend strongly on the specific domain, university/lab and advisor.
With the way funding works in Germany, your salary is directly tied to the official working hours. Often, the official working hours will be set according to the salary funding available, not the actual work hours expected/required. Cutting back on work hours may not even be feasible since the funding must to be spent.
Regardless of your own preference, talk to your potential future advisor whether working reduced time is even feasible and how official versus expected work hours align. You gain nothing by asking yourself whether you are fit for a situation that doesn't actually exist.
In many domains, you are not actually paid to do your PhD. The salary you get is for "service work", such as contributing to general tasks in a scientific collaboration, working on a practical project that is merely the use-case of your research, teaching, supervision, and so on. Actually working on your PhD is then your own business and time; you primarily get paid by your institution so that you are close to your research peers and don't have to worry about finding a job elsewhere.
As far as I am aware, a 100% employment over 5 years in Computer Science in Germany is practically guaranteed to be paying you for significant teaching work. Unless you are working in an absolute niche, there will be competition that does not mind working extra hours or churn through several people.
From the way you describe your M.Sc. the driving force is not your employment but you. So ask yourself: If you are overworked and may feel that you must keep up with goals set externally, will you stop yourself from working that extra hour per day?
Because that is what you may have to do if you pursue a PhD in Computer Science.

It may be worth keeping in mind that a disparity between official and working hours is not exclusive to academia/science. Especially software development and other work related to CS is notorious for being an industry with wildly different work-life guarantees. You might not want to think of this as "industry vs academia", but rather weight the offers you actually have – that may include looking for other offers so that you can make an informed decision.

"you are not actually paid to do your PhD" This is absolutely key. If your employer decides to give you lots of what you call service work, you are obliged to do it for the time per week written in your contract. So then it might make sense to reduce this to an acceptable level, provided you still make enough money for a living. If your employer gives you a lot of freedom to basically do what you want... Well, be happy and take the money. It is OP's (often not so easy) task to find out how the group culture actually is.

I think the question you've posed is quite important. If I start a PhD, I will only survive if I learn to accept the possibility of failure. With the M. Sc., I can always turn to the industry, decreasing the pressure to succeed.

What do you mean by competition churning through several people? Are you referring to professors from different research groups working on the same topic? I think I would try to steer my research such that it becomes as niche as possible without sacrificing relevance.

@freshGraduate Yes, it’s not uncommon for several research groups to work on similar topics, and for some groups to handle heavy workload by having multiple people work together or in succession to handle stress. Keep in mind I don’t know anything about your specific research; figuring out what the competition is - if any - is something you should discuss with your potential supervisor.

Well, that's a good point. Of course I know that science is competitive. But I didn't consider the nicheness of the field to be a relevant factor in the stress equation before you mentioned it.

Worked hours vs contracted hours
In general, the process of research as such and PhD in particular is unstructured enough that there is not an exact match between worked hours and contracted hours.
You should definitely care about managing your workload and work-life balance, however, I feel that "negotiating the contract from 40 hours down to 35 hours a week" will have no impact whatsoever on how many hours you'll actually work in a given year, as all kinds of other factors (external, personal, psychological) will have a much larger impact on that than anything that contract says, so the only thing this negotiation will achieve is that you'll get paid less for the same thing.

Please consider the answer of @lordy. Unfortunately, that was exactly what happened to me in my PhD in Italy. And according to my experience, it was the case for most PhD students all over the world.
If you manage to give your supervisor the number of publications they want from you every year, they will have a more flexible approach towards you, and will most probably  not care about how many hours per week you work exactly. If not, they will push you to your limits. They will do it to try and get something from you and justify the money the University/research center is spending on you. But mainly they will do it because it will not make sense to them to supervise a PhD student that does not produce new publications for them each year and therefore doesn't improve their curriculum.
Remember, PhD students are actually cheap (actually the cheapest) disposable publications-producing machines in academia. That's how academia sees PhD students, everything else is secondary. They are disposable because the vast majority of them will leave the university/research center where they worked producing papers for their supervisors, while the supervisor themselves will stay, waiting for new PhD students to squeeze for other 4/5 years. I repeat, I think this is the case the majority of times in Accademia. In Industry it's different.

I'm sorry to hear you had such a negative experience. I think in my case the publication pressure wouldn't be too extreme, but I've heard of departments like that.

Is thinking about work-life balance in a PhD a good idea?

Not only is it a good idea, it is absolutely crucial for your success that you take care of yourself and build an environment and lifestyle in which can thrive as a researcher.
In my experience, those who are most productive are not those who work the most, but who have the ability to take, say, 2 or 3 hours a day -- at a time that works best for them -- to set aside all distractions and focus on a key goal in their research project. Anecdotally, I spent large portions of my PhD (sometimes weeks at a time) accomplishing essentially nothing, and other weeks accomplishing an unbelievable amount in a short amount of working hours. Taking a break has few downsides and is often a great idea to boost your productivity.
So to answer your main question:

Are reduced working hours in a PhD a reasonable idea?

Absolutely yes.

During my thesis, I've also made the observation that progress is very unpredictable and by no means subject to continuous growth. I guess this is something one definitely needs to be able to endure. Thanks for the perspective.

Doing a PhD is not a normal full-time position (40h/week) but usually considerably more (>60h/week). But it is also not like a normal job - it is more like being married to your thesis topic without fixed working times at an immense pressure. In order to survive in academia you have to put everything you have into your projects.
Even if your potential supervisor agrees to reduced working hours (which is unlikely) you might still have to work considerably more than the hours you're being paid and you the run the risk of not being able to finish your PhD and you will certainly not be able to start a competitive career in academia.
To answer your question from above: It is most likely not a good idea for you.

I disagree with that. I know people who did work much less than 30 hours (and completed in time). I know single mothers who did a phd and teachers who did a phd in their free time (the latter unpaid, I think). The last sentence I also disagree with: The future is not the only thing the counts, but also the current time - if you are happier now, that may be a good idea. (Also OP does not want to have an academia career - as far as I can tell, Industry does not seem to care at all)

Even if not every PhD is like this, I feel this is an important data point. Sure there are people (and entire domains) for which things work differently, but most PhD students in Computer Science in Germany I know of are doing significant extra work. Even if one doesn't want to survive in academia forever, 5 years is still quite a while...

While this scenario is rather pessimistic, I'm aware that it's a possibility. I appreciate the straightforwardedness.


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What is an effective note taking procedure?
I've recently started to use the onenote software to keep track of valuable concepts in different fields of interest. I have constantly found myself dubious during the note taking process. I never know whether I should copy large book paragraphs into my notes or whether I should summarize them. I have little knowledge about how to make the most value out of my note taking process. Is there any good book recommendation or resource to help me answer these kind of questions ?

The note-taking strategy that will work best for you is the one that works best for you, and you are the only person who can figure out waht works best for you.  The most you'll get out of other resources is suggestions for strategies to try.

you are right, the more I reflect on my note-taking process the more I find myself tuning inefficiencies to match my note taking needs. Although, it would be nice to have some ideas about the note-taking process of highly effective note takers.

What I do is I read a chunk (maybe a few pages), then I write in my notes something that still represents the material but is transformative. I try to write it in a different form or draw relations that weren't mentioned in the text. This avoids just summarizing and replaces it with a process of both thinking about the content and writing it down for future reference.

@bjb568 - This would make a strong answer, in my opinion.

I'm voting to close this as IMO it's unanswerable -- that is, it's entirely dependent on the person taking the notes, and the way the question is currently phrased (Is there any good book recommendation of resource) is a fishing question. I don't think it's a bad question per se -- I'd love to know the answer myself -- but I don't know if it's a good fit for Academa S.E.

While large scale educational practice is the subject of a lot of debate, how an individual can best learn things is much more clear.
I'd recommend reading a book like Your Memory by Kenneth Higbee to get an understanding of how your memory works and also some basic study/notetaking methods that are justified by evidence. (Over half of the book is on mnemonic techniques, which you might find useful or interesting, but are not required knowledge in my opinion.) There's a lot of flexibility in study methods, but the basic structure of most methods should be the same. For example, the book discusses how the SQ3R study method is basically the same as many others. You should use the basic structure of a good study method to help you design a method that works for you.
Notably absent from the book is spaced repetition software like Anki. I use this when I'd benefit from having information of interest memorized (e.g., for engineering work this tends to be definitions, shortcuts, and common misconceptions). I don't use it for information I expect to use infrequently. Gwern has some additional thoughts about when to use this sort of software.
In my personal case, I tend to have multiple tiers of notes. At the lowest level are handwritten notes, which tend to be scanned and then discarded to save space. Above that are text files, usually in an outline format. I find text files are easiest for combining excerpts and my own thoughts, and also for keeping track of questions/hypotheses I have. The outline structure is very easy to reorganize as well. The excerpts are obviously quoted, and my thoughts are not. Above that are more carefully typed notes, whether in TeX, HTML, or something else. If I want to excerpt something there, I'll use blockquotes or inline quotes. Parallel to these options are my Anki cards, which often duplicate things in other notes. Which option I might use for a particular subject I'm learning depends on the subject and how much time and effort I'm able to put in.

You can keep 2 sub notes per topic, one of them can be composed of excerpts lifted from books/internet, the other can be on your thoughts/summary of the material.
You can use a standard numbering scheme for both notes to keep track of content; e.g. in notebook 1, 1.2.4 can be Geography>Rivers>Nile in both sub notes.
Take care to paste searchable text and not images of text, for ease of later access.


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Do I need to cite the source of a famous quote in my thesis?
I'm writing part of my Computer Science PhD and I'd like to know whether it is generally acceptable to have a reference to a famous quotation by a famous person without citing a source. For example,

"Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence!" - Edsger W. Dijkstra

The world of quoting is full of misattributing famous quotes, so I'd personally suggest it's a good practice to give a citation for those. This doesn't answer your (current) question of whether it's generally acceptable but generally acceptable isn't necessarily the best option.

Depends on university/department, better ask alumni or check older theses.

"Notes On Structured Programming" (EWD249), 1970.

But please don't decorate each chapter with a quote you took from a calendar. As JiK said, there are so many misattributions and misstatements around, you need to go to the source if you absolutely must use a quote. But as chapter decoration I find them silly. Okay, Knuth is allowed to do that, but until you reach the god-like status of Knuth, please refrain.

I think Knuth used them before having reached the god-like status. Personally, I do like well-chosen and tasteful decorations.

Knuth is allowed to do that — But Knuth sources everything.

I meant, Knuth is allowed to use quotes for every chapter, but it looks silly if everyone does it and additionally misattributes everything. Indeed, Knuth's quotations are properly sourced.

Knuth's (co-written) 1961 paper “Algol 60 Confidential” (written while he was a PhD student at Caltech, and only his sixth publication even counting the one in MAD Magazine) has a pair of quotes at the top. So he's been doing it before reaching any particularly exalted status.


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Should I pursue a math REU despite my hesitancy and lack of skills or am I kidding myself?
I wouldn't consider myself to be the best math student in my undergrad since I have always had trouble independently starting the homework and I'm constantly going to the professor for help in math. I started getting interested in math and fixing my study habits around my sophomore year of college and by then, I really had a weak foundation in Calculus. My grades are a B-/B range in math. My memory is bad  and I do have trouble reasoning but I work really hard but I'm really slow. I'm apprehensive about trying to apply to Math REU programs because there was an instance last summer a group and I did math programs and while everyone was figuring out simple algebraic problems I was behind and panicking.
But a part of me wants to continue studying math and adequately honing my understanding/skills in math after undergrad so I don't know. I really like the theory behind math and seeing how beautifully it comes together.

I can't really imagine a situation where you are potentially interested in further study of Math but shouldn't go ahead and apply to REU programs, because they are explicitly designed to help you figure out if research in the field might be right for you (and help you decide if you want to continue on to grad school). I'm having trouble think of any combination of factors that would make me advise you not to give an REU a try anyway, so long as you are potentially interested in further study and are willing to be open to the experience. There are no grades, and very little downside risk.


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Post-doc without much collaboration
I am currently doing a Ph.D. and will be graduating soon. I have applied for many post-doc positions but untill now, I haven't received any offer. I may get an post-doc offer in my own country. The problem is, in my own country, there are few collaboration oppurtunties, although there are many great researchers. The field I have chosen in my PhD is quite on trend in my country. My goal is to get a job (assistant professor) in my own country. During my PhD I have published a few results but I need more papers to get a job. During my post-doc I need to publish 2-3 good papers in a year then only I am eligible for a assistant professor job in my country. In my country collaboration is less and in foreign country I am not getting post-doc. I am from asia. I can publish good papers at my own but not like 2-3 in a year.
Question : What I should do to increase my research paper output in post-doc If I don't have collaboration? Last thing I don't need publication in A* conferences, Even A level conferences are enough to get a job after post-doc.
I work in theoretical computer science.

You don't need to be colocated to have collaboration. Does the postdoc give you any freedom?

In general, I'd recommend that you travel and attend conferences a lot, if it's practical. I know the conference culture in CS is different than in my field; is it normal to attend conferences even if you don't have a new paper to present at each one?

You can publish faster with practice.  I think this question is unreasonably broad.

@Anonymous Physicist True. but practise might take few more years. Currently even working hard I don't think I will be able to publish as much as required at my own in a year.

@academic I have talk to few researcher during conferences in the past but I don't know in the conference we can start a project but I will try to this in the comming conferences.

@I_wil_break_wall I'd recommend approaching researchers after their talks and asking questions. e.g. "You described how Technique X can be used to address Problem Y. Do you know if it's also relevant to Problem Z?" Maybe this will lead to a collaboration, but doing this kind of thing is usually good for its own sake.