text:
Inadmissible theorems in research
One of my engineering friends told me how e once had to take a make-up calculus I exam due to being hospitalised and so self-studied a lot of the missed topics. For the make-up exam, e used L'Hôpital's rule, although we weren't taught that until 1 or 2 exams later. My friend told me that the professor wrote

'You are not yet allowed to use L'Hôpital's rule.'

So, I like to say that L'Hôpital's rule was inadmissible in that exam.
Now, it absolutely makes sense that if you're the student that you're not allowed to use propositions, theorems, etc from future topics, all the more for future classes and especially for something as basic as calculus I. It also makes sense to adjust for majors: Certainly maths majors shouldn't be allowed to use topics in discrete mathematics or linear algebra to have an edge over their business, environmental science or engineering (who take linear algebra later than maths majors in my university) classmates in calculus I or II.
But after bachelor's and master's and maths PhD coursework, you're the researcher and not merely the student (this is supposed to link to a star wars video): Say, you're doing your maths PhD dissertation or even after you've finished the PhD.
Does maths research have anything inadmissible?
I can't imagine you have something to prove and then you find some paper that helps you prove something and then you go to your advisor who would then tell you, 'You are not yet allowed to use Poincaré theorem' or for something proven true more than 12 years ago: 'You are not yet allowed to use Cauchy's differentiation formula'.
Actually what about outside maths, say, physics or computer science?

I would have said by virtue of being hospitalized, L'Hopital's rule should be fair game.

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The error, such as it is, your friend made was not the use of l'Hôpital, but the lack of proof that it is correct. If he had stated l'Hôpital as a lemma and provided a sufficiently elementary proof, then presumably the lecturer would not have had an issue with the solution.
An analogous phenomenon happens in research mathematics. There are plenty of folklore results, where researchers are pretty sure the result is true, and the techniques for proving the result are known, but nobody happens to have written the proof down or at least published it. These can be found, for example, in the classical regularity theory for partial differential equations.
Should one provide a proof of such a result when using it as a tool? Sometimes people simply refer to the result without being explicit about it. Sometimes they prove it "because we cannot find a proof in the literature", even if the proof is simple or not to the point of a given article. There is no absolutely right solution in these cases.
I think that folklore results are as close to "inadmissible" as one gets in research mathematics; one should be careful about them, sometimes prove them, but sometimes they are also used without proof.

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Does maths research have anything inadmissible?

No, but trying to prove X without using Y is still a very useful concept even in research, because it can lead to interesting generalizations, or new proof techniques that can be applied to a larger set of problems.
For instance, in some sense the Lebesgue integral is "just" trying to prove the properties of integrals without using the continuity of f, or the theory of matroids is "just" trying to prove the properties of linearly independent vectors without using a lot of properties from the vector space structure.
So this is far from being a pointless exercise, if that's what you had in mind.

This is an excellent answer.  There is a very broad phenomenon that can be paraphrased as "constraint breeds creativity."  E.g. there is a reason that people have been writing haikus for more than eight hundred years.  But one of the essences of "creative constraints" is that they are largely self-imposed.

excellent answer. However, for this question I'd say that the exam task any such constraints need to be stated explicitly. E.g. we had exam rules along the lines "you can directly use everything in this list, whatever else you need must be derived starting with that list." IMHO, students should be reminded of such rules even if they have been stated before at the beginning of the lecture. (I consider not doing this as one form of those bad exam questions where stuents can only get full points after a correct guess what concept the lecturer is driving at)

An important note, though: I consider there to be a very significant difference between proving results using fewer hypotheses or axioms, and "pretending" not to know theorems which are consequences of the hypotheses you do assume. Banning l'Hopital, while assuming stronger results like the mean value and squeeze theorem, is both ill-defined (the first lemma of my solution can just be a proof of l'Hopital) and of dubious benefit.

I took a proof based class on the history of math. We spent a lot of time looking proofs of things that could be achieved easily with modern calculus and trigonometry when all of calculus and trigonometry were banned.

In the sense that you are asking, I cannot imagine there ever being a method that is ruled inadmissible because the researcher is "not ready for it."  Every intellectual approach is potentially fair game.
If the specific goal of a work is to find an alternate approach to establishing something, however, it could well be the case that one or more prior methods are ruled out of scope, as it would assume the result that you want to establish by another independent path. For example, the constant e has been derived in multiple ways.
Finally, once you step outside of pure theory and into experimental work, one must also consider the ethics of an experimental method.  Many potential approaches are considered inadmissible due to the objectionable nature of the experiment. In extreme cases, such Nazi medical experiments, even referencing the prior work may be considered inadmissible.

Ah, you mean like if you want to, say, prove Fourier inversion formula probabilistically, you would want to avoid anything that sounds like what you already know to be the proof/s of the Fourier inversion formula because that would defeat coming up with a different proof? Or something like my question here? Thanks jakebeal!

Re outside of pure: Okay now that seems pretty obvious in hindsight (i.e. dumb question for outside of pure). I think it's far less obvious for pure

It is worth pointing out, that theorems are usually inadmissible if they lead to circular theorem proving. If you study math you learn  how  mathematical theories are built lemma by lemma and theorem by theorem. These theorems and their dependencies form a directed acyclic graph (DAG).
If you are asked to reproduce the proof of a certain theorem and you use a "later" result, this results usually depends on the theorem you are supposed to prove, so using it is not just inadmissible for educational reasons, it actually would lead to an incorrect proof in the context of the DAG.
In that sense there cannot be any inadmissible theorems in research, because research usually consists of proving the "latest" theorems. However, if you publish a shorter, more elegant or more beautiful proof of a known result, you might have to look out for inadmissible theorems again.

+1 for bringing up explicitly what seems to have only been implicit, or mentioned in comments to other answers. I have a hazy memory of marking someone's comprehensive graduate exam in Canada where the simplicity of the algebra of n-by-n matrices (which carried non-negligible marks) was proved by appealing to Wedderburn's structure theorem...

This the right answer to my mind.  It would be strengthened by explaining what this has to do with l'Hopital as in Nate Eldridge's comment.  But what does DAG stand for?

@NoahSnyder: DAG doubtless stands for directed acyclic graph.

@JW: Thanks!  I was expecting it was a technical term in pedagogy or philosophy of science, not math.

The acyclical bit of DAG's is probably worded a bit carelessly. It's common enough to have theorems A and B that are essential equivalent, such that A can be proven from B and vice versa. This creates an obvious cycle, but it doesn't matter. There are then at least two acyclical subgraphs that connect the theorem to prove and its axioms - axioms being the graph roots. IOW, while any particular proof is acyclical, the union of them is not.

In Philosophy of Science, I suppose that this notion justifies accusations of circular reasoning, sometimes made with the intent of producing Paradigm Shift.  Is there a "So-and-so's Rule" to capture this principle (i.e. circular theorem proving is a non-starter)?

A perhaps very common example of such circularity (and in particular relevant to the OP's context) is to compute $\lim_{x\to0}\frac{\sin x}x$ using l'Hôpital, when perhaps computing this limit "manually" might have been important to find the derivative of the sine in the first place ...

@elliotsvensson: I probably should point you to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom_of_reducibility, but the word axiom is already an important concept here. Circular reasoning by definition fails to prove a theorem from postulated axioms, because it merely proves the theorem is true if it's true, and false if it's false.

@MSalters: The theorems do form an acyclical graph. If you prove equivalence, between theorem1 and theorem2 you are proving th2 using the already proven th1. But when you then use th2 to "prove" th1 you are not actually proving th1. You can't prove th1 from th2, because you used th1 to prove th2. Instead you are proving "th2-->th1". That's a difference and it is rather the fact that we tend to gloss over these subtle differences that is a bit careless. (Though of course the wording of my answer could be improved in many ways)

@BlindKungFuMaster: My point is that when you can prove both th1 and th2 from axioms a1 and a2, it's not strange that th1 could alternatively be proved from th2 instead, and also th2 from th1. The error is in assuming there is only one proof possible.

@MSalters: Of course different proofs are possible. But when building a mathematical theory in the context of a lecture, you prove theorems once. Further proofs don't prove the theorem. They prove equivalences or entailments.

While there are indeed no inadmissible theorems in research, there are certain things that one sometimes tries to avoid.
Two examples come to mind:
The first is the classification of finite simple groups. The classification itself is not particularly complicated, but the proof is absurdly so. This makes mathematicians working in group theory prefer to avoid using it when possible. It is in fact quite often explicitly pointed out in a paper if a key result relies on it.
The reason for this preference was probably to some extend originally that the proof was too complicated for people to have full confidence in, but my impression is that this is no longer the case, and the preference is now due to the fact that relying on the classification makes the "real reason" for the truth of a result more opaque and thus less likely to lead to further insights.

The other example is the huge effort that has gone into trying to prove the so-called Kazhdan-Lusztig conjecture using purely algebraic methods.
The result itself is algebraic in nature, but the original proof uses a lot of very deep results from geometry, which made it impossible to use it as a stepping stone to settings not allowing for this geometric structure.

Such an algebraic proof was achieved in 2012 by Elias and Williamson, when they proved Soergel's conjecture, which has the Kazhdan-Lusztig conjecture as one of several consequences.
The techniques used in this proof allowed just the sort of generalizations hoped for, leading first to a disproof of Lusztig's conjecture in 2013 (a characteristic p analogue of the Kazhdan-Lusztig conjecture), and then to a proof of a replacement for Lusztig's conjecture in 2015 (for type A) and 2017 (in general), at least under some mild assumptions on the characteristic.

Didn't Elias and Williamson put the KL conjecture on an algebraic footing, or am I misremembering things?

@darijgrinberg They did indeed. I actually meant to add that, but forgot it again while typing. I have added some details about it.

There are cases where the researcher restricts himself not to use  certain theorems. Example:

Atle Selberg,"An elementary proof of the prime-number theorem". Ann. of Math. (2) 50 (1949), 305--313.

The author restricts himself to use only "elementary" (in a technical sense) methods.
Other cases may be proofs in geometry using only straightedge and compasses.  Gauss showed that the regular 257-gon may be constructed with straightedge and compasses.  I would not consider that to be "a new proof of a known result".

So same as jakebeal?

That case is different because the researchers are justing showing a new proof for a known theorem but that is simpler (or more elegant) than the known proofs. In math, there is a kind of consensus that simpler proofs are better (for many reasons, for instance, they are easier to be checked and usually depend on weaker results), so, an elementary proof is an original research result even if it is a proof of the "same type" as the existing ones (e.g, a simpler algebraic proof when other algebraic proof is already known).

@HilderVitorLimaPereira if I may nitpick a bit, the elementary proof of the prime number theorem is regarded by most people who have studied it as neither simpler nor more elegant than the analytic family of proofs. It is however more “elementary” (specifically, does not use complex or Fourier analysis), which is also a very important and interesting feature. Certainly its discovery was a major research result, so in that sense you make a good and valid point.

@DanRomik I see. Yes, when I said "weaker results" I actually was think about more elementary results in the sense that they use theories that do not depend on deep sequence of constructions and other theorems or that are considered basic knowledge in the math comunity. Thank you for that comment.

@HilderVitorLimaPereira maybe that thought could be called "weaker claims"?

It is perhaps worth noting that some results are in a sense inadmissible because they aren't actually theorems. Some conjectures/axioms are so central that they are widely used, even though they haven't yet been established. Proofs relying on these should make that clear in the hypotheses. However, it wouldn't be that hard to have a bad day and forget that something you use frequently hasn't actually been proved yet, or that it is needed for a later result you want to use.

Perhaps Poincare was a bad example because it was a conjecture with a high bounty for quite sometime, but let's pretend I used something that had been proven for decades old. Your answer is now...?

There is (unfortunately...) a whole spectrum between "unequivocal theorem" and "conjecture" in combinatorics and geometry, due to the rigorous methods lagging behind the sort of arguments researchers actually use.

@BCLC Actually, the Poincare Conjecture was widely 'used' before its proof. The resulting theorems include a hypothesis of 'no fake 3-balls'. But I also know of a paper proving a topological result using the generalised continuum hypothesis.

@darijgrinberg I disagree with your assertion. If something is believed true, no matter with what level of confidence, but is not an “unequivocal” theorem (i.e., a “theorem”), then it is a conjecture, not “somewhere on the spectrum between unequivocal theorem and conjecture”. I challenge you to show me a pure math paper, published in a credible journal, that uses different terminology. I’m pretty sure I do understand what you’re getting at, but others likely won’t, and your use of an adjective like “unequivocal” next to “theorem” is likely to sow confusion and lead some people to think ...

... (incorrectly), that there is such a thing as “equivocal” theorems.

@DanRomik: I guess I was ambiguous. Of course these things are stated as theorems in the papers they're published in. But when you start asking people about them, you start hearing eehms and uuhms. I don't think the problem is concentrated with certain authors -- rather it's specific to certain kinds of combinatorics, and the same people that write very clearly about (say) algebra become vague and murky when they need properties of RSK or Hillman-Grassl...

@darijgrinberg ok, I understand better now what you meant, thanks for the clarification. And interesting MO question!

In intuitionistic logic and constructive mathematics we try to prove stuff without the law of excluded middle, which excludes many of the normal tools used in math. And in logic in general we often try to prove stuff using only a defined set of axioms, which often means that we are not allowed to follow our 'normal' intuitions. Especially when proving something in multiple axiomatic systems of different strengt you can get that some tool only become available towards the end(the more powerful systems) , and are as such inadmissible in the weaker systems.

That is a great thing to do, but not the same as having parts of math closed off from you by an advisor unless you are both working in that space. The axiom of choice is another example that explores proof in a reduced space. I once worked in systems with a small set of axioms in which more could be true, but less could be proved to be true. Fun.

In the same vein, working in reverse mathematics usually requires one's arguments to be provable from rather weak systems of axioms, which leads to all sorts of complications that would not be present using standard sets of assumptions.

To answer your main question, no. Nothing is disallowed. Any advisor would (or at least should) allow any valid mathematics. There is nothing in mathematics that is disallowed, especially in doctoral research. Of course this implies acceptance (now settled) on Poincaré's theorem. Prior to an accepted proof you couldn't depend on it.
In fact, you can even write a dissertation based on a hypothetical (If Prof Buffy's Large Theorem is true, then it follows that...). You can explore the consequences of things not proven. Sometimes it helps connect them to known results, leading to a proof of the "large theorem" and sometimes it helps to lead to a contradiction showing it false.

However, I have an issue with the background you have given on what is appropriate in teaching and examining students. I question the wisdom of the first professor disallowing anything that the student knows. That seems shortsighted and turns the professor into a gate that allows only some things to trickle through.
Of course, if the professor wants to test the student on a particular technique he can try to find questions that do so, but this also points up the basic stupidity of exams in general. There are other ways to assure that the student learns essential techniques.
A university education isn't about competition with other students and the (horrors) problem of an unfair advantage. it is about learning. If the professor or the system grades students competitively they are doing a poor job.
If you have the 20 absolutely best students in the world and grade purely competitively, then half of them will be below average.

I feel like you have misunderstood the question.

In what way, please @JessicaB?

@Buffy: The question wasn't actually about the class. The question was about whether "inadmissible" stuff exists at the graduate level.

@cHao, please see the long paragraph in which it is directly addressed.

@Buffy: But the other 2/3 of the answer is just going on about the classroom example. The answer to the actual question can easily get lost in the noise.

@cHao, I moved it around a bit. I hope you don't object anymore.

@Buffy: Works for me. Here, have an upvote. :)

One reason to "disallow" results not yet studied is that it helps to avoid circular logic.  A standard example: student is asked to show that lim_{x -> 0} sin(x)/x = 1.  Student applies L'Hôpital's rule, taking advantage of the fact that the derivative of sin(x) is cos(x).  However, the usual way of proving that the derivative of sin(x) is cos(x) requires knowing the value of lim_{x -> 0} sin(x)/x. If you "forbid"  L'Hôpital's rule in solving the original problem, you prevent this issue from arising.

@NateEldredge, if you say 'prove "X" without using L'Hôpital', then it is a fair question. But without that qualifier, how can you fairly, after the fact, downgrade the student? I'd call 'foul'. So yes, forbid it if you like, but make it explicit. That didn't seem to be the case in this setup.

Well, you can have a standing course policy not to assume results not yet proved.  This is sufficiently common that the instructor may have assumed it went without saying.  Or, the downgrade may have actually been for circular logic, but the reasoning was explained poorly or misunderstood.

@NateEldredge, what you say seems reasonable, but isn't in this case. The student was hospitalized and self-studied. That in itself was a handicap. Now, if you want to impose (after the fact) another handicap, I call 'foul'. This is precisely why exams are such a poor substitute for assuring learning. The instructor can't, reasonably, think of everything. The student shouldn't be expected to know secret meta-rules. Yes, the student needs to understand about circular reasoning, but the exam is a poor vehicle for doing that. The pressure alone makes you grasp at the first reasonable solution.

@Buffy But where to draw the line then? Say an exam in group theory asks to show that a group of some given order is not simple. Should the student be allowed to simply state "follows from the classification", or maybe just (in case the order is odd) "follows from Feit-Thompson"?

@TobiasKildetoft, where I draw the line is in depending too much on exams. But if a student gives an off the wall answer, rather than just marking it wrong you can explore with the student what is going on and, maybe, increase his/her understanding. Make the students work, not just remember stuff in a high pressure environment.

Buffy, cc @NateEldredge How is it a secret meta-rule to not use future chapters? Ah, ok I think I see the misunderstanding. L'Hôpital's rule in our textbook (Stewart) is in Chapter 4 while the exam (i forgot if it was the second exam or the midterm) covers at most Chapters 1 -  3. It is the not the case that L'Hôpital's rule was discussed along with the Chapters 1 - 3 topics and then told that for the exam, L'Hôpital's rule will not be allowed. I believe this should have been clear because the comment was 'You are not yet allowed to use L'Hôpital's rule.' Then again...

...i guess it's possible to have started Chapter 4 even before all the exams for Chapters 1 - 3 are finished eg Chapter 3 is finished on Monday, Chapter 4 starts on Tuesday but then Chapter 3 exam is on Friday. Therefore, L'Hôpital's rule could be discussed before the Chapter 3 exam but the Chapter 3 exam does not allow L'Hôpital's rule. Is this what you had in mind? Perhaps I was unclear then. In that case, I might substitute L'Hôpital's rule for convergence of series or multivariable limits. But that's not really the point of the question...

@BCLC, I don't understand the comment. If an explicit rule is given, then I have no problem with it. Nor should the student. But the original question didn't say that.

Pretend I said convergence of series instead of  L'Hôpital's rule. Does your answer change?

Sorry, I'm not going to speculate. This has become an argument with no end. It is losing meaning. Consider, please, my comments about exams in general.

I agree with @NateEldredge’s position. This issue has already been discussed here.

Avoiding circular logic seems like a good idea, but it sidesteps the question of definitions. If I define sin(x) in terms of a power series, or a complex exponential, it's not obvious why I need the limit of sin(x)/x to differentiate it, even if there may be some deep reason. Or do I then have to prove that my definition of sin(x) has something in common with the geometry of circles, before I can use it in an exam???

I think L'Hopital's rule is uniquely pernicious and results in students failing to learn about limits and immediately forgetting everything about limits, in a way that has essentially no good parallels elsewhere in the elementary math curriculum.  So I don't think you can substitute in something else and make it the same question.  Someone who uses L'Hopital to say compute \lim_{x\rightarrow 0} \frac{x^2}{x} isn't showing a more advanced understanding of the material, they're showing they don't understand the material!

I don't think there are inadmissible theorems in research, although obviously one has to care not to rely on assumptions that has yet to be proven for a particular problem.
However, in terms of PhD or postdoc work, I feel that some approaches may be rather "off-topic" because of not-really-academic reasons. For example, if you secure a PhD funding to study topic X, you should not normally use it to study Y. Similarly, if you secure a postdoc in a team which develops method A, and you want to study your competitor's method B, your PI may want to keep the time you spend on B limited, so it does not exceed the time you spend to develop A. Some PIs are quite notorious in a sense that they won't tolerate you even touching some method C, because of their important reasons, so even though you have full academic freedom to go and explore method C if you like it, it may be "inadmissible" to do so within your current work arrangements.

Thanks Dmitry Savostyanov! This sounds like something I had in mind, but this is for applied research? Or also for theoretical research?

Even in pure maths, people can be very protective sometimes. And people in applied maths can be very open-minded. It's more about personal approaches to science, perhaps.

Thanks Dmitry Savostyanov. i knew there had to be something like this. omoidoori x3 (as light yagami says)

I will add a small example from Theoretical Computer Science and algorithm design.

It is a very important open problem to find a combinatorial (or even LP based) algorithm that achieves the Goemans-Williamson bound (0.878) for approximating the MaxCut problem in polynomial time.

We know that using Semidefinite Programming techniques, a bound on the approximation factor of alpha = 0.878 can be achieved in poly time. But can we achieve this bound using other techniques? Slightly less ambitiously but probably equally important: Can we find a combinatorial algorithm with approximation guarantee strictle better than 1/2?
Luca Trevisan had made important progress towards that direction using spectral techniques.

ah, a computer science answer! thanks PsySp!

The axiom of choice (and its corollaries) are pretty well-accepted these days in the mathematical community, but you might occasionally run across a few old-school mathematicians who think that it's "wrong", and therefore that any corollary that you use the axiom of choice to prove is also "wrong". (Of course, what it even means for the axiom of choice to be "wrong" is a largely philosophical question.)

In research you would use the most applicable method (that you know) to demonstrate a solution, and would possibly also be in situations where you are asked about or offered alternative approaches to your solution (and then you learn a new method).
In the example where L'Hôpital's rule was "not permitted", it could be that the question could have been worded better as it sounds like a "solve this" question, assuming that only the methods taught in the course are known to students and therefore only the methods taught in the course will be used in the exam.

There was no ambiguity in the question. L'Hôpital's rule wasn't introduced to us until our third or fourth exam. My engineering friend was taking a make-up for either our second exam or our midterm or both (i forgot). It would've been like using the sequence definition of continuity in the first exam of an elementary analysis class if such class teaches sequences last (like mine did)

I understand that, but when it was introduced has no bearing on whether students may already know how to use it. It would be the same asking, "Show that the first derivative of x^2 is 2x, and then telling students that solved it using implicit differentiation that that is not allowed and they should have used explicit differentiation.

Mick, but it was a make-up exam. It would be unfair to students who took the exam on time because we didn't know L'Hôpital's rule at the time?

It's not about being fair. It's about math building on itself. Often you're expected to solve things a certain way in order to ensure you understand what the later stuff allows you to simplify or ignore. If there was an intended method, it should have been in the instructions. But it's a common assumption that if you haven't been taught it, you don't know it yet.

Without denying the other suggestions on why it might be disallowed, fairness to other students is irrelevant.  The purpose of an exam is to assess or verify what you have learned, not to decide who wins a competition.


text:
How to interpret the French terms cahier and tome in citation
I want to reference a 19th century French journal paper, which appears in vingt-quatrieme cahier, tome XV, of the Journal de l’École polytechnique. The journal front page lists them in that order: cahier first, then tome.
I am using Word and tried to enter the citation data in the bibliography fields Word provides. In those fields there is Volume and Issue. Now, cahier translates to notebook and tome to volume, as far as I can understand. Furthermore, Word suggests a format of Latin numerals for Volume and a decimal number for Issue. So I put the tome data into Volume and the cahier data into Issue. The resulting citation was like "....., XV(24), .....", i.e. the tome first and inside brackets was the cahier number.
So then I started thinking whether this is correct, given that the journal lists them in the reverse order.
The question, then, is: does cahier correspond to Volume and tome to Issue, or is it the other way round? (Or is there another interpretation?)
(Just a thought: maybe their mindset was to treat this as a postal address, where the most inclusive part of the address (e.g. the country) goes last. So with them the tome goes last.)

Could you provide a link with an example? Even as a native speaker, I'm not sure. This cannot be a direct translation.

@Emilie Here's a Google books link. zerzevul, a representative citation I've found (to one of Poisson's papers) contains "Journal de l'Ecole Polytechnique, Cahier XV, t. VIII". Whether that's the proper way or not, I do not know.

In the article you linked, it says: "Tome XV, Vingt-quatrieme cahier, 1835", i.e.,

Tome 15, Cahier 24, 1835

Then we find two more, for;

Tome 15, cahier 25, 1837, and
Tome 18, cahier 30, 1845

So, it seems like there are a few cahiers for each tome.
Since this is a different system than modern Anglophone publishing, I would keep "tome" and "cahier" untranslated in the bibliography. If this is not possible, I would treat cahier as issue and tome as volume, since in English, there are several issues for each volume.

Thank you cag51. I agree that keeping tome and cahier might just be the best course of action. This was bound to be an obscure topic of conversation right from the start, but it increasingly seems like splitting hairs.

I hate not having a chosen answer; and since you suggested what in hindsight seems the best approach (keep "tome" and "cahier" untranslated), while also agreeing with the logic of  cahier as issue and tome as volume, I will choose yours as the answer of choice, with Peter Shore's being an honourable mention.

According to the  webpage of the Journal de l’École Polytechnique, each cahier corresponds to a one year volume, and  tome corresponds to an issue.

Thank you for your answer. I checked the link you sent, which directs to the Overview section. That section does not explain the breakdown of journal publications in cahiers and tomes, as far as I can see. However, I clicked on Browse Issues and in French it lists tomes. When choosing English as the site language, it is changed to volumes. So, according to the journal, it seems that a tome is a volume, not an issue.

@zerzevul: On the webpage this answer links to, it explains the various name changes of the journal. For example, "Journal de l’École royale polytechnique, 18e cahier (1820, janv.)-31e cahier (1847)." Translating, this means that the 18th cahier was in 1820, and the 31st cahier was in 1847. So 27 years for 14 cahiers. Clearly, cahier means volume, roughly 2 years per volume (although if you trust the website, it was not biannual but "irrégulière").

@PeterShor I see what you're saying but it's not that clear to me. The fact of the matter is that the journal itself translates tome as volume. At the moment, that is the most objective piece of information I have to work with. By the way, the tome number is lower than the cahier number, so this might also be an indication that tome is the principal number.

@zerzevul: Let me take back the comment; cahier corresponds to issue, and tome to volume, but they are used somewhat differently than issue and volume in standard modern-day journals; see my answer.

I think the point is finding the hierarchy of the subdivision of the journal, the vocabulary does not matter. (As a native French speaker, I would consider cahier to be smaller than volumes.) But according to the website, the cahier seems to be the subdivision that matters.

If you look at the 1900 issue of the journal, you can find advertised for sale (for 3 fr.):

Table de Matières contenues dans les 64 premiers Cahiers, formant 45 Volumes, suivie d'une Table analytique et d'une Table générale par noms d'auteurs.

Which I would think should be translated as

Table of Contents of the first 64 Cahiers, forming 45 Volumes, followed by a subject index and a general index by authors' names.

So the first 64 issues were grouped into 45 volumes (presumably also known as tomes). These were numbered 1 through 64, and 1 through 45, respectively. The numbering of cahiers starts again with after the 64th cahier, with cahier 1, second series.
Thus, the smaller number would probably be translated as "volume" and the larger number as "issue". However, it's clear that the journal considers the "cahier" the primary number, and the "volume" secondary. In fact, in the second series, they seem to have dispensed with tomes or volumes altogether, and use only the cahier number.

Thank you Peter. Your digging also seems to suggest that a tome is a volume and a cahier is an issue. And yes, it seems that the journal considers the cahier the primary number, so it's probably not a strange case of listing the least important first. I don't know about dispensing with tomes back in 1900, but today they still use tomes, as seen here.

By the way, I guess your answer nullifies your previous comment, right?

Yes. I take back the comment.

Here (click on the front page on the left) is the front page of their 1904 issue. No mention of tome or volume.

In this case, I think the 'cahier' is the volume and 'Tome' is the issue, based on this example but also based on the definition of tome.
This Larousse's definition state that a tome is the division of a work.

Thank you for your reply Emilie. I checked the example from Google Books that you sent. If you see on the left hand side, it says "Journal de l'Ecole Polytechnique, Volume 15, by École Polytechnique (Paris)". So they translate tome as volume, exactly like the Journal itself seems to be doing (see my other comment to user36236's answer)

But the definition of a cahier can be Revue éditée par un groupe d'intellectuels, d'écrivains et publiant, avec une périodicité non fixée, des textes variés: "journal edited by a group of intellectuals, writers, containing various texts, and published at irregular intervals."

You know what...I've become really unsure of my answer. This thing is really confusing.

@Emilie :-)  As I said in another comment, this thing increasingly seems like splitting hairs.

Ok, after looking at the Browse issues link from the Journal de l’École polytechnique (changing the site language to English turns tome into volume; thanks to user36236 for pointing me towards looking at their site - seems obvious but I didn't think of it), I am inclined to interpret cahier as the issue and tome as the volume. I think the logical conclusion is that the journal, for some obscure reason, lists the principal piece of volume numbering data second and the secondary piece first, i.e. it first mentions the cahier and then the tome. Maybe their mindset was to treat this in the logic of a postal address, where the most inclusive part of the address (e.g. the country) goes last. So with them the tome goes last.
If anyone provides justification for the contrary or actual proof for my "educated" guess, then I will choose that answer as the accepted one.

I would assume it mentions the cahier first because it thinks that is the most important number, which is contrary to our usual assumption about volume and issue.

True. I agree that mentioning the cahier first is because they think that is the most important number.  :)

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The editor of a jounal asked me to withdraw the ArXiv version of a paper and only upload it after acceptance. Is it possible to do that?
I submitted a paper to Elsevier recently. The editor told me that its similarity tool found more than 80% of word coincidence and sent me the report. I realized that the test actually referred to the same paper, specifically the version posted in Arxiv. I thought this was very odd because the Elsevier recommends uploading the manuscript by retrieving the sources directly from Arxiv, which is what I did. After explaining to the editor what happened, he asked me to withdraw the paper from Arxiv and only submit it again after acceptance.
I would like to know if it is possible to upload a new version of the paper on Arxiv after having withdrawn it. Has anyone ever had a similar situation before?

If you withdraw a paper from arXiv it can still be retrieved and read though, so it's not clear what the editor is hoping to achieve here. And Elsevier generally allows preprints as far as I'm aware.

It sounds like this editor doesn't know what he is doing.  The fact that two copies of the same paper exist has nothing to do with plagiarism.  In your situation, I would withdraw the paper from the journal and submit elsewhere.

Does the journal have an official preprint policy on their website?

Perhaps the editor isn't concerned about "self-plagiarism" but about the anonymity of the reviewing process.

Agreeing with @Anyon. Most likely, withdrawing the paper from the arXiv will not withdraw it from whatever automated plagiarism checker the editorial office is using!

I totally agree with the comments of @anyon and @david-ketcheson. I'd suggest that you

point the editor to the guidelines regarding self-archiving of the journal and/or Elsevier in general and, if this fails,
contact your library, because there are people dealing with this kind of situations very often and they usually have (other) contact persons/options at the publisher.

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Reviewer asked for dataset section within the manuscript
Recently, a paper of mine received a major revision. Among different comments, one reviewer asked "the authors to include dataset section in MS".
Now, my problem with this request is that the data is too big (monthly precipitation and temperature for 30 years from 11 stations!) to be included within the MS itself.
The data should be requested to upload as supplementary files, rather than inside the paper itself. And I know the reviewer was not accidentally misusing the word "MS", since his other requests were completely precise.
So...
My question is, am I missing something? Did the reviewer mean something else? Beside the raw data itself?
These are his exact words: "The authors should first tell the reader what data you have, and you will use in this manuscript. The authors include Data Set section in MS. It is also requested to inform about the source of data."

Many journals support uploading to the site. Check with the editors.

Is the comment instead to include a dedicated section explaining the data? I haven't heard of people having to include all the data in the manuscript itself.

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/987, https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/65925 show where you can put your data. I, personally, recommend Zenodo. In my eyes, it suffices to describe the data in a manuscript section and to put there a link to the actual data. Yet again, <8k lines of CSV can go to the journal webpage.

@SHD404 In which country are you working? Depending on the country, you might have different options. E.g. in Germany you might upload your data to Pangaea or to the WDCC.

"received a major revision" would mean that it has been modified a lot, I think you meant that the reviewers requested a major revision?

@MarcGlisse In English, you can often shorten phrases like "received a request for a major revision" to "received a major revision" as the meaning is clear. It's perfectly idiomatic.

They are not asking you to copy-and-paste the data into the paper in a "dataset section." They want you to devote more space to explaining what the dataset is and where you got it. Presumably, you did not collect it, so it should be easy to post to the government source.
That said, 7920 data points is tiny and could easily be included in a CSV file (but I digress). If they want you to share it, you could upload it somewhere else and link to it. But since this sounds like a publicly available government dataset, your time would be better spent making sure your preparation of the data is replicable.

Thank you for your comment. Your answer makes much more sense than my initial interpretation of the reviewer's comment! And yes, the raw data is openly accessible, so by following your advise, I would clarify my data preparation process and make sure the data source is refered to, clearly and precisely. Thanks!

Maybe you can even add a 30 line script in the appendix that downloads the data from the original source? That would be the cherry on top of the cream!


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A published paper is a literal translation of my own unpublished work. What can I do?
I found out that my supervisor in college translated an unpublished article of mine (in Chinese) into English verbatim and published it in a top journal, without any quotation marks or acknowledgments. I have amounts of email records 5 years ago as evidence, in which my supervisor and I discussed (in Chinese as well) how to modify the paper.
I want to write an email to the journal editor to report his cheat, but I am not sure whether the evidence is sufficient to judge him as plagiarism, especially under the situation that my original work has not been published.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

Contact the journal, ask for it to be taken down.
Most top journals in English should follow academic norms, and those norms require that everyone who has contributed intellectually to a paper be listed as an author, and that publication isn't allowed without the unanimous consent of all authors.
As such, I would recommend that you contact them, inform them of the plagiarism, and, if possible, include a link to a preprint of your Chinese-language paper, or to any other evidence you possess that proves your primacy, and ask them to retract the paper. They should be happy to comply - they don't want to be known as a journal that publishes plagiarised work any more than you want your work to be plagiarised!
Of course, the professor who plagiarised you would doubtlessly find out in short order, and there'd be nothing to stop him from retaliating against you, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't consider doing it.

Like your answer much more than the super cautious answer with the majority of upvotes. Many speak a lot about the protection of intellectual property but are not ready to do anything about it.

@yarchik - yet some feel like they can advise a student to risk a career to follow up on it.

Without advising about the possible risks of accusing an author of misconduct, this advice is irresponsible.

@ScottSeidman Why do you assume the OP is a student? Five years is enough time to become permanent in many places.

How can a paper published in a major journal be "taken down"?

@SupaNova Same as anything else, the journal just stops making the files associated with the paper available on its website. Of course the actual printed version can't be taken down, but the point here is not to prevent anyone from having access to the paper, the point is to disseminate the message that it has serious problems which (should have) made it unsuitable for publishing in the first place.

@ScottSeidman can you provide some examples of  such "possible risks" associated with reporting blatant plagiarism?

@FerventHippo -- employment issues, if an employee, issues getting a degree if a student, losing grants, getting blacklisted for employment, .....

Your former supervisor has represented your work as their own, which is the definition of plagiarism, regardless of whether this work was published before.
What you should do about it is a different story.  You should consider your current position, your potential for future positions, and how an official complaint to an editor, or official recognition of your major contribution to the published work would impact these.  Getting the credit may or may not be worth the trouble you start by bringing up the issue with an editor.  Your first instinct here should be to avoid doing yourself or your career irreparable harm.
In the US in an academic environment, someone who reports misconduct (and we are talking about misconduct) has a modicum of protection, in that retaliating for a report of misconduct (at least scientific misconduct, and probably some other forms) is misconduct.  This means that the institution is likely to exert strong pressure on those in a position to retaliate to NOT retaliate, in fear of liability.  In China, I have no idea what the legal environment protecting whistleblowers is, but I would believe it is not as robust as in the US. Even with such protection, a whisper-campaign can be hard to prove.
There are also cultural and legal differences between my particular background and people in that part of the world, and some of these involve concepts surrounding intellectual property (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_in_China for a bit of a review, and perhaps some good bibliographic material on the matter.  You might also peek at Xu, Comparative analysis of intellectual property between China and the West: A cultural perspective, J. Intellectual Property Rights 2014(3)(http://nopr.niscair.res.in/handle/123456789/28926), https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235330028_'Plagiarism'_and_the_Confucian_Heritage_Culture_CHC_Student,  and https://uselesstree.typepad.com/useless_tree/2010/08/plagiarism-and-confucianism.html.   Beyond recognizing that there are differences, I'm not particularly well-qualified to comment on them, and would certainly welcome an additional answer that can expand on this.  To my untrained eye, it's not just a legal issue, but it has something to to with the concept of intellectual property and how people think about it.  You can't just make laws and expect people to follow them when the concepts lying behind a law don't match up well to concepts within a given society.
It would seem that as China is becoming more and more involved with the rest of the world, these issues are improving: https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/16/china-intellectual-property-theft-progress/

Well thought out answer. But the wikipedia link only addresses legal issues and plagiarism is normally outside the legal framework. It doesn't need to break a law to be plagiarism.

Thanks, @Buffy  -- I'm always hesitant to bring up cultural issues because it doesn't take much misinterpretation to believe that I'm asserting that one group of people is better or worse that another, but I do believe it's important to point out, in some cases, that someone may be thinking about an issue in a very different way from someone else because they're from a different part of the planet.

Your advice that the OP should protect themself is the key here IMO. What is fair and what is achievable without risk are not always aligned. And self protection applies elsewhere as well, whenever a student is faced with misbehavior by someone with power/authority.

I did spend some time looking for a better bibliography for the cultural differences in the concept of intellectual property, but without luck.  I agree that that the Wikipedia article doesn't go deeply into this, if at all.

I beefed up the "be sure not to hurt yourself" part.

Regardless of the cultural differences between China and other countries, the plagiarised article was translated "into English verbatim and published [] in a top journal". Since the journal is a top English-language journal, I would expect their policies are in line with cultural expectations in English-speaking countries, not China. And the OP's supervisor isn't exempt from those policies just for being from a different culture. So I think this is a red herring.

@kaya3 I'd say cultural differences are not a red herring. The main thrust of this answer is not whether the supervisor's behaviour was wrong, but what (if anything) the OP should do about it, and cultural differences do come into play in answering that question. Were an English-speaking/western supervisor to do the same, they would/absolutely-should know it was wrong, and that influences the question of what to do about it. (cont)

However, if cultural differences mean the the OP's supervisor doesn't even conceive that they might have done something wrong, you might be less inclined to "rock the boat" if there's a risk that doing so may harm the OP's future prospects.

@kaya3 The journal would certainly be applying Western norms, and might retract or modify the paper.  But consequences for the OP are the concern here, and those would follow norms for Chinese academia.

@Graham I get your point, but I think this could be much clearer in this answer - it mentions "trouble" and "irreparable harm" and then says that Chinese cultural differences are "also" a consideration. The way that comes across to me, it sounds like the answer is saying there will be trouble and reputational harm directly with the journal, and "also" possibly with the supervisor. Also I should point out that the OP's question says they want to contact the journal but are unsure if their evidence is sufficient; so in that context the answer can be read as warning about shaky evidence.

@kaya3  -- there is very likely to be no harm from the journal itself.  That should be the least of the OPs concerns.  In fact, the journal likely has an established protocol in place (as recommended by COPE -- https://publicationethics.org/misconduct) for responding to reports of misconduct.  Those protocols may well involve reporting allegations of misconduct to institutions and charged parties.  It is with those entities that problems may arise for the reporter, possibly officially and unofficially.

"Getting the credit may or may not be worth the trouble you start by bringing up the issue with an editor." In addition to gaining credit you deserve, you also help prevent a plagiarist from getting undeserved credit. And you potentially also prevent them from continuing to plagiarize others in the future, or help reveal that they've done so in the past. You may still decide it's not worth the trouble it brings you, but be aware that you aren't just helping yourself. Academic dishonesty hurts everyone.

@Ray -- yes, there is a case that reporting is the right path.  Many people cannot afford to take the right path.  Do you know enough about academia in China to comment on what forms of retaliation the OP might be subjecting themselves to, or how likely they are to happen?

@ScottSeidman Nope. There's still a decision to make. This is just one more factor to consider.

retaliating against misconduct... is misconduct  Shouldn't that be "retaliating against someone who reports you for misconduct... is misconduct"?

@Michael  Thanks

@tripehound I flatly disbelieve that anyone exists who’s capable of training a student to produce a paper capable of being published in a top journal, capable of either translating it for themselves or contracting with a sufficiently technically competent translator to have it actually published, and is actually unaware that the most gross possible plagiarism is doing something wrong by the standards of Western academia.

Is it possible they mistakenly attributed your work to another author of the paper and there's no intentional malice here at all? (you don't mention any other authors, but presumably the professor didn't publish it exclusively under their name)
Reminding the professor of your contribution may be all that's needed to correct the mistake.

I think that with cultural differences across the world and department differences across research disciplines it is hard to give advice here on the best course of action. I would advise you to seek input from a trusted faculty member or ombudsperson at your institution to figure out how to proceed with damaging your current and future positions.
The bottom line is this: Your supervisor acted unethically in taking your work and passing it off as his own. But you need to ensure that you follow a path that is best for you overall—and not just consider this manuscript.

I think you should write to the editor and let the editor know you believe this article has plagiarized your original work. You probably should send the original paper and pdfs of email messages you have exchanged with your supervisor (perhaps the originals and rough translations).
Your supervisor won't be happy but your supervisor should not have plagiarized.

The institution itself could be a good starting point. Consider speaking to higher authorities or trusted personnel in the college to seek some insights into protection of your interests from the college and self-protection, before any contact with the journal which may help with your credit but could alert the supervisor. The college most likely values its own reputation as much as a journal does, and an incidence like this either gets intentionally covered up, goes unnoticed, or be addressed seriously and then that's where any evidence helps, to convince people. Consider the power of a supervisor, are they capable of causing irreparable damage to your career even if all odds are against you? Knowing them for long, what's their personality like, do they tend to seek retaliation? Have you talked to the supervisor at all? Perhaps, this is simply an imprudence of the supervisor and they just didn't think about this being plagiarism.

We cannot judge the strength of the evidence for you, but ultimately that is going to hinge on whether you have records of your unpublished paper which will allow an independent person to verify its existence, its genesis, and (roughly) when it was created.  If you have records of past emails working on the paper between you and your supervisor, that sounds like strong evidence to me.
In any case, if you have enough evidence for a prima facie case on the matter, you can make a complaint to the journal and the university employing your supervisor.  Both journals and universities have established procedures to investigate allegations of plagiarism.  They will be able to guide you through the complaint process and advise you on what evidence is useful in the matter.  Ultimately it is up to them (not you) to judge the strength of the evidence.  Nevertheless, if you have records showing the prior existence of the paper, the fact that you wrote it, and corroboration that it existed at a date prior to the translated version, that sounds sufficient to make a complaint.

"If you have records of past emails working on the paper between you and your supervisor, that sounds like strong evidence to me."
Not to me. I am quite sure the professor would go full power with the claim "the emails printout are falsified" ... how to prove the email exchanges are true? simply by contacting the email provider. Managed in China, by a chinese employee of the university where the professor has a very powerful role... good luck!
Please include some part of this comment in your answer, comments get deleted (and answers get downvoted by "the" party minions ... get ready :/ ).

There are pretty well-established legal procedures for dealing with this issue (although I'm not sure of the situation in China), and it is unusual for people to deny the authenticity of genuine communications.  As you say, if the authenticity is denied then the student can seek evidence directly from the email provider.  I see no reason that a Chinese court would be beholden to the position of a Chinese professor, and if that professor is found to have lied about the authenticity of the communications, that would presumably be serious misconduct.

@ben the implied email provider is the university and professor has already removed all evidence from servers.

The professor has unsupervised access to the university email servers now?  What is this guy, a personal friend of Xi?  (Does he also have access to the servers for the email provider the student used to send his emails?  His own police force too perhaps?)

@Ben Professors can be quite powerful figure in the (local) party. Rules are in place, but are enforced only when convenient to a higher goal (for example: removing an inconvenient person from the (local) party elite). Xi is not Stalin, but ...

Nothing in OP information suggests that the professor in question is a powerful figure in the CCP, or gives any reason to believe that he would have control over relevant email serverse.  The speculations here are going so far beyond the information in the question it is frankly quite ridiculous.

I think Earl Grey knows what he is talking about.

You may think the emails are a strong enough proof.
I am quite sure the professor would go full power with the claim "the emails printout are falsified" How can you prove the email exchanges are true? Contact the email provider.
Managed in China? by a chinese employee of the university? The same university where the professor has a very powerful role... good luck!
Ps: I really feel for your situation, but to face such a situation would already be very difficult in the western world, even by having an equally powerful professor by your side. In the chinese world (mainland or not)? you would neet a lot of friends that want to topple that professor ...


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Receiving recommendation letters after graduation
I am applying for a few different masters' programs and I need three recommendation letters total. I graduated from university last year spring, and when I send emails to the professors I had for my major courses, the majority of them do not respond (they responded when I was a student on campus).

Are professors more likely to ignore emails from students who are no
longer affiliated with the school?
Also, is it fine to accept recommendation letters from professors who taught courses that I received my minor in?

Likely they are just feeling very short of time.  Don't give up; try phoning also; but also do reach out to some other people.
Make sure to include an unofficial transcript as an attachment, to jog their memory of who you are.  I suppose a photograph might not be a bad idea.

I graduated from university last year spring, and when I send emails to the professors I had for my major courses, the majority of them do not respond (they responded when I was a student on campus)

Do you mean that you were in need of recommendation letters while you were still a student?
Normally you will need to provide mark statements of your highest degree to the selection committee. I am curious to know the institute or graduate school you have applied while you were doing your undergraduate studies. Yours may be an isolated case, from my experience neither me or my classmates didn't have difficulty getting recommendation letters even if we were no longer affiliated to the institute. That said, there may be several reasons for the faculty not to reply your mail. The faulty

thinks you don't deserve a recommendation.
had brief period with you so that he cannot at the moment assess your skills for a recommendation.
may just be busy or forgot to reply.
don't know you.

Are professors more likely to ignore students who are no longer affiliated with the school?

From my experience, NO but there is a fair chance that you will receive late replies or may be ignored, the above points renders an explanation.

Also, is it fine to accept recommendation letters from professors who taught courses that I received my minor in?

Usually the admitting schools have guidelines (some have a specific format) for a recommendation letter and it is often stated that the letter should be from who had worked with you closely or have known you long enough to write with authority [1]. If you think this applies to the professors who taught minor courses, you are good to go.

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Should I do another PhD?
I have completed my PhD in chemistry in an area which doesn’t have scope to get job or a postdoc position.
Now I’m at the age of 29–30, I’m not eligible to write CSIR, a public eligibility test for lectureship and PhD admissions in India, but I’m eligible to write GATE-2016, (Graduate Aptitude Test for Engineering) another public test whose score (valid for 2 years) is also considered for PhD admissions in India and some other countries like Singapore. Shall do another PhD with a valued GATE score again, in my selected field of chemistry?
The only stipend available for me is from GATE score.

@CapeCode I disagree, the context is completely different.

Some overlap with this too: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/38196/10643

Please add some context for those of us not from India.  What is CSIR?  What is a Gate score?  Why does your age matter?  Why would you expect a graduate program in Chemistry to accept anyone with an existing PhD in chemistry?

Both GATE and CSIR are public graduate tests. CSIR test score grants you eligibility for both lectureship and PhD admission in India. GATE score is considered for PhD admissions in India as well as in some other countries like Singapore.

@Sathyam Then what does it mean by "write Gate-2016"?

@scaaahu To appear for the test in the year 2016. Synonymous to appear for GRE 2016.

You'd be better off with a post-doc from abroad if your PhD research was good enough. Realistically speaking, why would you want another PhD, is it because you want an AP position in one of the IITs or IISERs? Please do state your end goals which would help people here more.

Not exactly, i would like to get a scientist position in reputed gov. laboratory

It is not possible to give a concrete answer without knowing which area in Chemistry you did for your PhD. I assume you are from India. There are other options for you to consider irrespective of your field of research.

Try to get an INSPIRE Faculty position, which is not really a faculty position in usual sense.
Apply abroad which will increase your chance of finding a similar field at least statistically.

I don't think appearing GATE once again is a good idea. Also why don't you try industry, there are plenty of jobs for chemists, once again its hard to say for sure without knowing your area of research.

I added in my answer an alternate possibility for the OP to apply abroad, which may increase his chances of doing research in his field of study.

And that's good general advice. (S)he will just have to put a lot more effort into the application process than was invested in writing the question.

It seriously depends on the end goals of the OP, industry or academia. If it IS academia, there are seriously a lot of constraints to consider right now.

@vkv What do you mean by end goals?

@Sathyam I mean whether you (OP) want to become a professor, research scientist, stay in academia, move to industry, or pursuing research because you like it. Each requires a different trajectory as far as I have understood. I might be wrong here.

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Follow up email in 2 weeks - PhD application - a good idea?
I had written to a well know professor in my field of study regarding a possible PhD position. He responded and asked for references. I was dumb enough to respond to this mail after 4 days. It has been two weeks since the last email and I never heard from the professor.

Is it a good idea to send a follow up email?
Do you think the delay in responding to his mail would have spoiled my chances?

No, the delay didn't spoil your chances, and no, don't write a followup.
The prof wasn't waiting for your reply, and didn't expect it to come the next day. If he is "well known", he may get dozens of applications every week, plus hundreds of other emails. He likely didn't notice the delay, but just processed the daily flood of messages.
Even if he did remember when your first mail came, he knows that compiling a good application with references takes time. You usually have to write a reference yourself and find a professor who knows you at least by sight to sign it. You could have been out of town for a job interview, ill, etc., there are a million very legitimate reasons why you didn't have it ready by the next day.
If he actually has an open position in which you might've fit, he has surely checked your references, and didn't like them. If not, there is little you, or he, could do.

Well I was in a very similar situation. I applied to Germany and X offered me a position. I had two interviews from Y and Z coming up the next week, so I decided to wait till I got them over with which turned out to be a very very bad idea. I sent a mail to X mentioning I need some time to think over the offer. The interviews gone bad. I decided to take the position offered by X. I sent a mail and the response was

We decided to give the position to another applicant. Good luck in your search.

I have every reason to doubt that you are in hot waters. Replying late unless you really had strong grounds to do such an act will seriously affect your chances of getting admitted. First, there are others like you who have applied. Second, its unwise to expect them to wait this long for a seemingly simple reply.

@Karl Ignored is not the right word as I asked for time to think over the offer. In this case of OP there is a high probability that someone else could have replied with references, the chances gets very slim if its an advertised open position.

Ah, you did't say you asked for pause to think about it. Still you might've overdrawn it, or they were just impatient. But the OP never said there was an actual position. If there was one, that professor would be collecting possible applicants for a few weeks, and then get back to those that look promising to him.

You cannot expect an employer to wait for a week after a real job offer. He's made a decision, and urgently needs to make another one if you decline. Number two on his list might get an offer from a third party, and then he's scraping the barrel. Unless of course he said he'll wait. Did he?

Good question.
Yes, the delay may have affected your chances, but I wouldn't worry about it either way, as you can never know. The professor might not even have noticed as he was away. Alternately, he may be very attentive to such things and ruled you out. Even if he did notice, it might only have made a slight impact on his views - it is not implausible that he would assume that you had to contact referees about references, for example. With this said, I have the impression that fast replies are the way to go, so you should probably try to ensure you reply faster in future situations of this nature.
I think that you should contact him as you have nothing to lose, and much to gain. Plus, you signal that you are very interested by following up. In terms of how to do it, I would start by politely apologising for taking his time (i.e., sorry to bother you...). I also apologise for taking so long to respond to his initial reply and explain why this happened. I would then ask if he could let me know about the likelihood of getting the position, given my follow up email, explaining that I am am very interested in the position, and would like to know if I might be able to acquire it before I consider applying to other positions (or something to that effect).

I agree on the "nothing to loose part", but am doubtful about possible gains. Those professors get a lot of applications. If everyone writes a  followup email after two weeks, in the long run everyone will have an annoyed professor with less time to think about actual new research projects. ;-)


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Why do I have the "required reviews completed" status on my submission in Elsevier?
I had submitted my paper in an Elsevier journal one year back. Now, status update on the submission tracking says "Required reviews completed." However, for the last two weeks still there is no change in the status.
Should I ask the editor what is going on with my submission?

Default answer: A polite question is always ok. Keep in mind that editors are particularly busy people.

I thought four months would be too long in any discipline, a full year is ridiculous. Is it a treatise of 300+ pages? That would be the only excuse I can think of.

Related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/22040/13852 (although the wording is different due to a different submission system, the status is pretty much the same and the answers should apply here as well).

@behacad: In mathematics, four months is totally normal, and a year is not unusual.

A year for review of a typical manuscript in the field of mathematics is not uncommon? That seems absurd!

@Behacad Let me assure you, it is not (and nobody said "typical"; in my neck of the woods the average is about six months). Manuscripts can be extremely technical (and in extreme cases, understandable only by a few specialists), and all this work is done by unpaid volunteers who have not only their own duties to take care of but often many papers to review at the same time. But feel free to ask a new question about the reason why reviews can take a long time (try to make it less tendentious, though).

Wow how interesting. Although it also applies to many other fields that papers are extremely technical and reviews are conducted without compensation to individuals who have a great deal of other work to do. Perhaps math is simply more complicated and there are fewer experts?

@behacad Definitely the latter, and possibly also the former (although I would rather say more detailed or technical). But this is getting too chatty for comments...

FWIW, the Notices of the AMS publishes backlog data each year in their November issue. Here is the last one http://www.ams.org/notices/201410/rnoti-p1268.pdf. As you can see, median wait time of more than a year until acceptance is not unheard of. On the other hand, rejections can be very fast.

To expand on Dirk's comment: The status you see means that the reviewers have submitted their reports to the online system, and the handling editor has received an email about this. Now she has to read the  comments (and likely look at your manuscript again to see if they comments are relevant), come to a decision, and write a corresponding letter to the author summarizing the comments and justifying the decision. This will in general not take more than an hour.
But you should keep in mind that yours is not the only manuscript (nor, in all likelihood, the only journal) the editor has to deal with. In addition, this is both the end of semester and conference season in many parts of the world, so it is reasonable to assume that the editor is just very busy with more urgent deadlines, or isn't even in office. (Remember, editors are unpaid, so this work is on top of the regular duties of teaching, advising and doing their own research.)
In some cases, the final decision even involves two editors (associate/managing editor and editor-in-chief/communicating editor), which doubles the chance of other things getting in the way.
In light of that, I would say two weeks is definitely too early to worry and start contacting the editor; give it at least a month.
(Although I know how stressful the wait at this stage of the publication process is...)

One year is a very long time for a paper to be under review, at least in the social sciences.  Indeed, the change of status is promising, but I think following up with the editor on when the reviews will be complete is reasonable in this case.  Indeed, as suggested in the comment (by Dirk), being polite is key.

Thank you very much for the answer. I am from the mathematics background. It took one year to complete the review process. I am confused whether it would be too early to contact the editor about the status of the paper. Two weeks have been passed but still the status is required reviews completed.

If the paper was in review for a long time (over a year as you mentioned), it is a very bad sign. Being polite is an obvious solution, but, I am afraid, it may not help. Most likely your paper will be rejected. One of the reasons, the reviewers, who are in the same area of research, are not interested in publication of your work. They will find "convincing" excuse not to publish it. Unfortunately, you've lost a lot of time. Still not late, however. Go to another journal, not necessarily to highly ranked one, and submit it ASAP. Another good option, go to arxiv or vixra and make submission right away. Be wise, something is better than nothing. This is the best what you can do now.

This is bad advice: with a volunteer-run academic journal, there are any number of reasons you might get such a delay.  If you submit elsewhere before receiving a decision, that could cause you to get rejected.

-1. This answer reads way, way too much into a two week delay.


text:
How can I cite software documentations?
As my bachelor's thesis, I'm developing some software (a mocking framework for MATLAB). As such, I often need to reference software documentation - both from MATLAB and the software which serves as my inspiration. It would also be nice to be able to reference the documentation of the specific feature I'm referring to (the analogue of referencing a specific page in a book). However, I mostly access this documentation online and by its nature it tends to exist just in electronic form, which is not really recommended in publishing. So far, the best I've come up with is this:
@misc{mockitoFeatures,
 author = {{\em mockito} developers},
 title = {Features and Motivations},
 note = {\url{https://code.google.com/p/mockito/wiki/FeaturesAndMotivations}},
 urldate = {2013-04-24},
}

(ok strictly speaking, this isn't part of the official docs but it serves the same purpose: it's a specific page and it's only available online)
Specific questions:

Who should be the author? In the case of MATLAB I guess it's Mathworks or somesuch; I guess listing open-source projects as "xx developers" is the best I can do.
How should I mention the version? Urldate helps in general, but if I'm referring to a particular software version, where should I put this info? In the title?
Are there any "official" MATLAB citation recommendations? MATLAB is used in research a lot, perhaps there's a suggested way of doing it and I'm just missing it. The rest of the question still applies for other software, though.

Also somewhat related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8098/how-to-cite-a-website-url/8112#8112

open source projects often tell you how to cite, e.g. http://matplotlib.org/citing.html

"Do your best, and don't worry too much about it."  These were official directions provided about Internet resources before Academia started to catch up with technology and realize that websites were interesting.  If you have something that has no category, simply choose another format that does have some rules, and adapt as best as you can.  If no instructions clearly match, most graders won't penalize you for something that has no clear instructions/precedent.  If you are going to be judged/graded by someone who can provide you with support ahead of time, check your results before submission

In general, I would treat software documentation depending on how it's distributed.

If it's published in book form, then it should be cited as a book. The version number goes where you would put the edition, and the company that manufactures the software is the "publisher."
If the manual is distributed electronically, then you should cite the website from which it is obtained as the "source."
An exception to this is if you are asked in the documentation to reference a specific work (for instance, a research article, or a website) when citing a code. Then you should follow the specific guidance provided.

what about the author? In some institutes we need to cite as Author-Date and this way the reference will have no author

In addition to @aeismail's answer:

In my field it is common to refer to Matlab in the text "Matlab version X.Y (The Mathworks, USA)"
as @Bitwise comments, scientific FOSS often specifies how cite. So we refer  e.g. to R as a normal book. R's recommended citation includes the version.
If the version is not included in the recommended citation, I put it into the note field (Bibtex) - that's the R way of putting together such citations:
> citation ("cbmodels")

To cite package ‘cbmodels’ in publications use:

  C. Beleites (2013). cbmodels: Collection of "combined" models:
  PCA-LDA, PLS-LDA, etc.. R package version 0.5-20130417.

A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is

@Manual{,
    title = {cbmodels: Collection of "combined" models: PCA-LDA, PLS-LDA, etc.},
    author = {C. Beleites},
    year = {2013},
    note = {R package version 0.5-20130417},
  }

If there's a "normal" publication, I combine the normal citation data with  additional URL and version information:
> citation ("softclassval")

To cite package 'softclassval' please use:

  Claudia Beleites, Reiner Salzer and Valter Sergo: 'Validation of Soft
  Classification Models using Partial Class Memberships: An Extended
  Concept of Sensitivity & Co. applied to grading of astrocytoma
  tissues', Chemometrics and Intelligent Laboratory Systems, 122
  (2013), 12 - 22, DOI: 10.1016/j.chemolab.2012.12.003, arXiv:
  1301.0264, R package version 1.0-20130318,
  http://softclassval.r-forge.r-project.org.

A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is

  @Article{,
    title = {Validation of Soft Classification Models using Partial Class Memberships: An Extended Concept of Sensitivity & Co. applied to Grading of Astrocytoma Tissues},
    author = {Claudia Beleites and Reiner Salzer and Valter Sergo},
    year = {2013},
    number = {122},
    pages = {12 -- 22},
    journal = {Chemometrics and Intelligent Laboratory Systems},
    note = {R package version 1.0-20130318},
    url = {http://softclassval.r-forge.r-project.org},
    doi = {10.1016/j.chemolab.2012.12.003},
    eprint = {http://arxiv.org/abs/1301.0264},
  }

(Here, I don't need an additional date, because the release date is included in the version number.
I've been using other FOSS software where I did not find a specification, so
I asked the developers how they want to be cited.
The experience is that the developers usually are very happy about this kind of question.


text:
Why have international branch campuses?
There are campuses in Malaysia belonging to the universities of Southampton, Nottingham and Reading.  There is a Mauritius branch belonging to Aberystwyth University, whereas the University of Wolverhampton has shut down its Mauritius campus.  Newcastle University has a Singapore campus.  There are many more examples of UK universities with campuses in Asia or Africa.
Why do (some) universities based in the UK spend resources on establishing a campus on another continent?  Is it a form of developmental aid, to bring UK expertise to a spot where existing universities may be perceived to have less quality?  Or is there a different reason?
I don't know if this is exclusive to the UK or if it also occurs with universities in other countries — I have not seen it anywhere else.
The Wikipedia article International branch campus is not terribly informative.

This is certainly not exclusive to the UK. The Wikipedia article notes that "nearly half of the IBCs in operation today are from American institutions" and refers to Carnegie Mellon, Texas A&M and others. Plus, there is INSEAD. I'll take the liberty of removing the [tag:united-kingdom] tag. (And upvote.)

So focusing on the UK to start. The universities seem to be attempting to provide UK standard university education, but in more 'exciting' locations, increasing the number of students who study with them and their global reach.

Branch university campuses are in many ways a win-win-win phenomenon. For the university, they mean more students and stronger ties with other countries. For the host nation, they’re a quick way of boosting higher education standards and attracting more students, both local and international. As for students, the prime attraction has already been mentioned: a degree at an internationally ranked university, in a location where this was not previously possible. (1, 2, 3)

Back to the question of why universities are doing it?/getting involved?
It seems to be that these branch universities are risky and liable to fail.
This article is great and discusses many factors. It predominantly suggests that branches can be financially lucrative but they have a high risk of closure. As such, it concludes that prestige and a desire for international reach that are the main drivers, citing this report.
It is true that although financially risky, there are many sources of funding for these ventures, whether its tax breaks from the home country or incentives from the host region.

Nottingham's Malaysian campus has the benefit that it can apply for funding from more than one region. Doughty says: "EU funding is quite interesting because we are viewed as both a UK and an Asian institution so we can pitch to whichever suits us best." 5

However I think this thesis offers the best view, these campuses are seen as new opportunities for universities otherwise limited to their own country.

Multiple factors contributed to Texas A&M being poised and ready to accept the
opportunity to open an international branch campus: an invitation from a host country sponsor willing to cover all expenses, existing international ambitions, and strong support from the central administration.

These campuses predominantly provide undergraduate and masters degrees because tuition fees can cover the costs, but some campuses can provide highly specialised research centres for PhDs but it is usually not worthwhile undertaking research outside of the main multi-disciplinary hub of the home university unless the research is local to the branch because of isolation and funding.
NB: Other countries have these branch campuses:

There are currently over 240 international branch campuses around the world; many of these are located in the Persian Gulf region as well as (and increasingly) in Asia ...
71 countries hosting branch campuses – up from 53 in 2012;
30 “home countries” (i.e., originating countries) for branch campuses, up from 24 in 2012.

So it's really mostly a teaching thing — not so much for research?

Yes definitely, I've seen nothing so far talking about research reasons. EDIT: University College London has established branch campuses in Adelaide, Australia and Doha, Qatar. These campuses are research intensive with all studies at graduate level only.