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What Problems Are Applied Mathematicians Concerned With?
I have been doing some looking around to try and learn a little bit more about what applied mathematicians work on in a more general sense and think that I could benefit from a question posted here. Research in applied mathematics seems to be something like a 'jack of all trades' type of discipline in which applied mathematicians can work across many different and seemingly unconnected fields that could benefit from mathematical modelling. But, modelling in a specific field seems to me to be the role of the domain specialist.
Then, what is the utility of an applied mathematician when domain specialists would (should?) be the people who tackle, solve, and model the problems related to their field of expertise? Where do applied mathematicians fit into the research puzzle where domain experts do not?

Are you asking about people who specialize in some mathematical modelling, or about applied mathematics in general? The latter is a much larger category than the former, for example someone who works on improving general numerical methods would definitely fall under applied mathematics but also not fit a single sentence in your question.

So are you a “jack of all trades” or a “domain specialist”?

Part of the ignorance in my question is an understanding for what it is that applied mathematicians typically work on, and their general job description. I’m essentially trying to develop a better understand of what the applied mathematician would add to a field, say like biology, where the biologist cannot, and vice versa.

I am mostly going by your title question and your clarification from the comment. Because as it turns out, the only field most applied mathematicians add knowledge to is applied mathematics itself, only then someone else to apply this knowledge to something later, so there is a lot of internal stuff going on. But more about that later. First let me tackle the part of applied mathematics that is "exposed" to the sciences. (By which I choose to mean everything except maths for sake of simplicity)
What do applied mathematicians do with respect to sciences?
If you want to apply mathematics to something, there are essentially two (oversimplified) steps:

Write down a model of your problem. (e.g. differential equations, graphs, minimization problems, etc.)
Extract useful information from your model using maths. (e.g. find solutions, universal properties, minimizers, numerical approximations etc.)

People from the sciences¹ are certainly good at the first step, and they are taught a bit about the second step during their education or pick something up in practice. But that is generally restricted to some standard methods. In contrast think of applied mathematicians as kind of the opposite of this. The model a mathematician writes down might be a bit rudimentary and not be most realistic one, but he'll certainly know some more advanced mathematical trickeries to extract some additional predictions from it. And of course as lifetimes are limited, it is basically impossible for someone to get into the full depths of both sides.
Now one would think that this would lead to a clear division of labour. But what muddies the waters is that there are many models and not all of them are created equal. There are many models that may look reasonable but that are mathematically ill-posed, rendering their predictions useless.² There are also many models that look simple and are of interest to scientists, but where extracting mathematical information is impossibly difficult, while a less straightforward looking model might be easier to solve. (And for the converse, there are many mathematical toy-models with interesting theorems but no real applications).
People who focus on this would generally fall under the heading of mathematical modelling. But that is only a small part of applied mathematics.
What problems are applied mathematicians concerned with?
Contrary to your question, a lot people in applied mathematics don't deal with specific real world problems at all. Rather than that they work on improving the methods used for problems. These can be ways to prove certain classes of theorems and make predictions or they can be algorithms to numerically solve problems. Both are completely different but kind of have the same function for the sake of this discussion.
The important point is that the good methods are application agnostic. I don't want to prove a new theorem for each new application and I don't want my numerical algorithm to only work for a specific equation (there are some exceptions but those are by necessity, not by choice). So while many may look to some application as an inspiration or put it in the paper as an example, that is not their focus.
Notes:
¹As a sidenote, you called them "domain specialists", but that isn't a good distinction, as this is true for both sides. Applied mathematics splits in many domains and each mathematician will only be a specialist in one or two of them (e.g. statistics, or partial differential equations or, certain numerical methods etc.). They just might feel like "jacks of all trades" to you, because each of those domains will have some applications in almost all sciences, but they are still rather specific and fundamentally useless if the problem needs a different subfield of methods. Think of the two as orthogonal to each other.
²If a model M has no solutions, the sentence "Every solution to the model M fulfills property X" is true for any X.

This line of thought is much more what I’m interested in. Thank you for the response!

Broadly speaking, a domain expert knows what questions to ask, and an applied mathematician knows how to get useful answers once the question is posed, because they are familiar with common patterns that repeatedly appear in the structures of questions about how the world works. Good progress can be made when they work together, leveraging their combined skills.
There is of course a continuum here with many intermediate stages, such as modeling experts, who specialize in abstracting domain problems into mathematical form, and so have some breadth in both the domain and applied mathematics, and so form a bridge between deep domain experts (who have specific goals they are trying to achieve) and the applied mathematicians (who have the tools to fully exploit the models, and are familiar with edge-cases and other problems that may arise during analysis).

Cryptography seems to be a mathematical applied field since many centuries.
And today, computer science can be thought of a mathematical applied field.
(e.g. is abstract interpretation or machine learning some applied math, or just computer science)
Was Alan Turing a mathematician or a computer scientist?
Is this paper about math or about computer science?


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How to start my own research?
I am currently a researcher (a postdoc) in a research group at a scientific institute. I obtained my Ph.D. degree 2 years ago and right away I got employed at this institute and started as a postdoc. I dare to say that I did a nice job during my Ph.D. and also I am working quite well here and my supervisor is happy with my outcomes.
Yesterday, after a discussion with my supervisor regarding some results he told me that now it is time for me to gradually start my own research (along with doing my job here) in order to strengthen my academic career so that I can have my own research group in the future. I am a bit stressed now because the main path of my research has been always chosen by my supervisors and also I always had their support. On the other hand, this has always been my dream to have my own research and become a pioneer in a scientific matter.
I have some interesting scientific topics in mind that I can follow but I am afraid that I cannot do a nice job alone. I think what I need is just a strong startup then I will get into my stride. Could somebody give me some good advice?

May I ask what your field is?

@henning--reinstateMonica Yes sure. It is engineering. Mechanics, in particular.

Specialize, focus and diversify your research agenda solely on 2-3 open questions/problems the next years. There is not really another path. Especially in fundamental sciences it's hard to plan an academic career, so you have to take risks, therefore diversify them. And this is also encouraged by the academic system to achieve results beyond the state of the art and knowledge. With many publications you might get a staff position, but to get tenure as a professor you need to become one of the few experts in your field for a distinct method or sub-topic. But don't understand this as a 2nd PhD, it's now your duty to acquire funding, PhD students and build a scientific network around you. You need to acquire people now that work with or for you. You showed with your PhD that you can work alone on a scientific question, for tenure you need show that you can set up aresearch agenda for younger scientists and bigger projects with several partners and that you are able to manage successfully and financially projects aparat from teaching duties. You also have to show autonomy, staying with your supervisor your whole post-doc time is disadvantegous.

This is a great question, even though it connects to the very general question of how you get established as an independent researcher.
It is never too early to have your own research interests and take your own ideas seriously. It is not really different from having hobbies, only that here you take the hobby idea seriously.
Ideally in your post-doc you are behaving as though you have a lab of your own within someone else's lab. Maybe that is a good place to start, taking small projects from start to end. It is probably better to begin with something small that you can finish before you complete the post-doc. This can also give you the confidence to work on more projects.
Another way to think about projects is to consider funding sources. A bit of weird way to go about it, but I find that it can give you some concrete goal to aim towards. This depends on the field, but it can help to write a proposal about your idea in the form of a grant, and then decide if you'd like to submit it or not. The important part (for yourself) is seeing that you understand the investment and skills required by the project.
I don't think there's ever a situation where you will receive no feedback from anyone. The supervisor provides a buffer between funding bodies and journals and their students (depending on the supervisor...), so it's not a huge leap to try to do without this mediation. You still have the critical feedback of reviewers and colleagues, and eventually, students.
As a final point, you can consider collaborations with other, more experienced researchers where you contribute equally and are on the same level as the researcher you collaborate with. This way you can learn from more experienced researchers while being essentially independent. This can make the transition much smoother.

This is a really good question and something that a lot of researchers struggle with. I've written an article about this my self. There are many different ways to discover a new research topic. The first thing you need to ask yourself is, what interest YOU as opposed to what is currently trendy or where all the funding is going. Being aware of funding is of course important, but it should be CONTRIBUTORY factor and not a DETERMINING factor. After all, you are going to work with your new research project for many months or years, exploring something that is interesting to you makes it so much easier in the long haul.
To answer your question concisely, I would say:
1) Look through conference proceedings on topics that you've researched in the past, look at the titles. Do you see anything that interest you? Set aside one hour, make a batch of tea, and skim through these articles to find something that sparks your interest.
2) When reading through this material, always ask yourself, hmmm is there something that I could contribute here? If not, maybe it's better to keep searching until you can answer that question affirmatively.
3) Finally, remember to take walks to free up your mind. It is often during these times of recreation that we come up with out most creative ideas. Maybe even schedule a bus/train trip in the upcoming weekend to a neighboring city that you've never visited. Just sitting in the bus/train, meandering and gazing out the window will definitely keep you busy with all sorts of creative ideas.
Keep at it and best of luck with finding your new research project! :)

Thanks a lot for the really nice ideas.

No worries, keep it up. I hope you find something that suits you.  @KratosMath

Sorry I find this no good advise for several reasons, a research agenda you have to plan strategically not within an hour. Next you shouldn't contribute something here and there or which you can already answer, one has to really go deeper to contribute something significant. With 3) I agree very much, my best ideas are coming outside of university :-)

@user48953094 I think you made a very good point. I don't want to have my footprints in different researches without a deep understanding. I would like to do something big. That is why I posted here. +1

Pick your favorite topic in your chosen field. Explore the underlying assumptions. Push these assumptions along different dimensions to see if and how they breakdown. Do a little investigation on the work done by others working on these extremities, and see if you find something that interests and inspires you, to do more.

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Arxiv did not accept my submission after being "on hold"
I work in the field of Mechanics of Materials and my scientific papers are mostly about modeling. I have some preprints deposited on arxiv but I never submitted a preprint myself. This time, I did the submission myself (category of computational physics). However, after about 2 days, the paper status changed to "on hold". And after about five weeks of being on hold, they informed me that my paper will not be published. Here is the email:

Dear author,
Thank you for submitting your work to arXiv. We regret to inform you that
arXiv’s moderators have determined that your submission will not be accepted
and made public on[ |http://arxiv.org][arXiv.org|http://arxiv.org].
Our moderators have determined that your submission is on a topic not
covered by arXiv or that the intended audience for your work is not a
community we currently serve.

Don't know what to do next. Should I resubmit? Are there any other legitimate repositories that I can try?

Maybe resubmit to a different category. Some of them are exclusive, some public. You need authorized permission for some of them. Is the publication associated with a university?

@apg If you mean my affiliation, it is not a university, rather a research institute.

Basically its probably based on something to do with the institute not being sort of "auto-recognized" by the arXiv moderators/subject moderators. Maybe try a different subject tag, or speak to the head of the institute/department and ask what they think?

Does your research institute have an option of posting your preprint on their site? I know, some math institutes do. Other than that, send the pdf file of your preprint to people who you think should be interested in it and submit your paper to a journal/conference proceedings, whatever appropriate.

Do you disagree with the conclusion that your preprint doesn't fit the topics covered? For other repositories, see Preprint services other than arXiv (for other fields).

@Anyon Computational physics encompasses a broad range of topics, and I have seen so many papers on the same topic in arxiv.

If you believe your article is actually on-topic for arXiv (check against the category taxonomy), you can submit an appeal. Typically when you do so, you'll want to include what specific results are claimed in your work and how those results fit within the category you selected. If you wish for it to be considered for another area, be sure to explain why you feel its results better fit within that area instead.

arXiv is famously very opaque when it comes to moderation, refusing to reveal their reasons for rejecting or putting papers on hold and rarely accepting appeals. There are many stories of established researchers getting their papers rejected without explanation. Some of them received coverage in Nature or on blogs run by leading scientists. You can find many verified accounts of such treatment on Twitter (just one example).
The moderators of arXiv are seemingly not accountable to anyone and it may be impossible to receive 'due process' from them.

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Is it bad to be coauthor on a bad paper, or use it as a PhD paper?
I am currently doing my PhD (my third year just started). My PhD consists of writing three papers and is set to last four years.
A friend of mine who started his PhD with me and I started working on a (in my eyes) pretty meaningless research idea that we considered good at the time. We are now nearly finished with the project and I consider it a rather bad project now. The results are not interesting, methodologically it is not interesting.
It would probably suffice as one of three PhD papers, especially because I have another really good one finished already. But it stresses me out just thinking about the paper - I don’t like it at all. However, my coauthor definitely wants to finish the project. I am now thinking of dropping coauthorship. Is this the reasonable thing to do here? Is it bad to be coauthor on a bad paper, or use it as a PhD paper, respectively? Or does it not really matter as long my supervisor says it’s okay?

What is your field? This is definitely field dependent.

If you drop this one, do you definitely have time to do two more good ones? Will the university kick you out once you publish your third paper?

The world needs "uninteresting" research results too. More data helps to improve the confidence in that what we believe to be true is actually true.

What does "bad" mean here? There's a difference between a paper that is "not very interesting" and a paper that is "wrong". Being a coauthor on a paper that is not interesting is never going to be negative (it's not worse than not being a coauthor). Being a coauthor on a paper that is wrong could be negative.

Does your PhD require you write three papers, or publish three papers? Who else will be reading and assessing the quality of the work?

No need to publish. I am thinking of staying in research (not necessarily at university though). Thus, it might be relevant for my future career I suppose.

You'll be surprised by what other people think is good or bad. There may be value in some parts of your paper, or that your paper may trigger some other questions or research ideas.
I recall a paper in my area that presented a very simple solution to a problem.  It is published in a low quality conference as well.  However, to date it has 20K+ cites.  This is because everybody uses it as a benchmark.
I would classify a 'bad' paper as one that contains non-ethical elements; e.g., plagiarism or fabricated results.

I see. I do not think our results are anywhere near being useful. But it's not a scam.. So it might suffice as one of three PhD papers I suppose.

@Lawazyy It is useful to put it out there, so that people do not have to do the same thing again, and can try to do it differently to make it "more useful" (using your terminology).

You'll be surprised by what other people think is good or bad. Well, that's sometimes true. Some papers on the other hand are genuinely bad (even without being unethical) and everyone who reads them is almost certain to think so. So it's misleading to give the impression that "you never know".

@DanRomik yeah, but if it were a BAD paper, OP would've said that, but they just don' lke it/ feel it worthwile

@Hobbamok OP said it was BAD three times...

@pirsqua my bad. I thought they danced around calling the paper bad and sticking to the "not wirthwile" "uninteresting" and so on. That being said: boring is not directly bad, and from what it sounds like OPs "bad" is most likely just uninteresting

You've said the research idea is meaningless, the methodology and results are not interesting, and you just don't like it.
I can't be sure but it sounds like you've done the science equivalent of grunt work:
Pedestrian research of a bland question using standard techniques and producing completely normal results.
None of that makes it a bad paper or bad science. Somebody's got to do the boring research. As long as it's done properly and competently then you've done the entire world a favour by documenting and publishing your results so that nobody else has to do it in future.


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What defines if a researcher is an expert in a field/topic or not?
I have often seen academics and science communicators who are positioned as subject matter experts in a field or topic but haven't been directly involved with doing research since their Ph.D. or postdoctoral training years ago. Or they had their training in some other topic in the field ages ago.
Does the ability to read and assimilate information from a paper (irrespective of having practical training) enough to be called an expert? Or is it necessary to be an active researcher in the subject to be an expert?
For clarifying my question:

I have an undergrad, Master's and a Ph.D. degree in materials science with a focus in aerospace materials but am now reading papers on battery and solar cells (which are completely unrelated topics in materials science). Can I be called an expert in battery and solar cells if I have read current research papers, got some theoretical understanding and can have a constructive discussion on the topic? I can distinguish between a good research and a poor one. But don't have practical experience or research output in the topics.

I think this is off topic as asking for opinions, so won't answer, but usually "expert status" is "conferred" by the acclaim of others. It is "recognized", often for various, possibly obscure, reasons. It normally requires some visibility in some community, however.

"What defines if a researcher is an expert in a field/topic or not?" What or who defines of your neighbour is a nice guy or a jerk? If a musician is a great artist or only produces trash? If your local carpenter does good work due to their extensive experience, or can't distinguish a table from a chair despite being a carpenter for 20 years? There is no "official certificate" of being an "expert". Who considers whom to be an expert for this or that depends strongly on the context, the social setting, etc. So I don't think your question can be answered unless you make it much more specific.

@Buffy Jochen Glueck, I have added some clarification to the question.

I think the answer of Maarten Buis would be my answer (not answer) also. You likely have "some" expertise. But would a recognized expert call you an expert? Not so likely, but possible. Still, it asks for opinion, as there is no "definition".

A person is an expert if someone calls her or him a expert. It could even be that someone declares herself or himself an expert. Be careful when doing so: it works surprisingly often for a general audience, but at the same time makes you look silly within that field.
In short, expert is not a protected title, so it could mean anything.


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Reference-style in the cover letter for resubmission of a manuscript
I'm going to resubmit a 'major revisions'-paper to a journal. In the cover letter I describe changes I've made. Obviously, I mention some other papers in the debate:
"I developed and strengthened my criticism of XYZ(2010) in the following way..." etc.
Which reference-style should I use. (Reference section looks stupid at the end of a letter, doesn't it?) Or should I treat references in the manuscript itself as a reference section for the letter?

You are overthinking it. It doesn't matter. Whatever is clear for the 3-4 people who are going to read the letter will work.

In my opinion, what you really need to worry about here is clarity.  Cover letters do not generally have a prescribed style, so you can probably pick whatever style is most clear in place---that will not be a number pointing to a different section or document.
Personally, I'd probably not do any formal citation at all, but instead just reference the work in prose, e.g.,

I developed and strengthened my criticism of XYZ's 2010 paper in the following way..."

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Submitting An Extended Abstract To Conference, But Later Changing The Methodology and Research Question
Context: MSc student, first time having a paper accepted to a conference.
I submitted an extended abstract to two conferences which were ultimately accepted. In the original extended abstract, I did not yet have results. The original extended abstract was also based on a particular methodology (optimization), but I ran into some computational complications solving my problem, so I had to change my methodology to 'simulation', and ultimately, my research question had to be adapted to the new methodology.
So now I am in a position where my original extended abstract was accepted on the premise of the original methodology and research question, but now when I present at the conference I will have to present on a new question based on a different methodology.
I feel like this 'bait-and-switch' is a bit of a slippery thing to do and my inexperience in publishing research and being involved with conferences probably influences that feeling, but my advisor said it isn't a big deal and now I find myself conflicted. From the perspective of my supervisor, they said that most conferences are understanding that research can change on the fly, which is why I should not be overly concerned that i'm presenting on something adjacent (but still very much related) to my original question and methodology. Additionally, the current title of my work is based on the original submission and uses a key-word in my field that signals to the readership that an 'optimization' methodology is going to be used (key word is "optimal").
I am wondering if I should reach out to the conference organizers and inform them of this change, particularly in regards to changing the title of the original paper. Or, perhaps this really isn't much of a big deal at all and this situation that I have described above is more common than I currently understand, in which case I can just leave it alone.

On matters like this, listen to your advisor, plain and simple. It's their job to guide you in just these kinds of circumstances. If their advice consistently leads you astray, you've got to start asking yourself some bigger questions...

Depends strongly on the conference. It't not unusual (maybe 10% of papers) for presenters to present a paper on a substantially different topic than their accepted abstract at one of the most important conferences in my discipline. That's because it's considered a work in progress and discuss conference, so it's completely accepted that the question you thought about six months prior didn't actually work out.

Personally, I don't have a problem with the change, but I'm not on the committee. If your original abstract didn't say that you actually had results with the old methodology, but that you were seeking results, then the change should raise no issues. But it would be good to give them a heads up.
On the other hand, if you overstated your case originally, then you have a bigger problem. Sometimes an "abstract" presents completed work, other times it is work in progress. If the latter was the tone of the original you should probably be fine.
Changing the title may be an issue or not, depending on their procedures and how long in advance they need to commit to things. And, of course, simulation is quite a bit different from optimization.
But, the best (abundance of caution) route is to let them know and send a new version. The attendees will want the latest result, not one you have abandoned, of course.


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PhD in machine learning in my life? I'm 37; graduating with BA in math (online degree) this summer
Title is a pretty good TLDR.
I would like to get a PhD sometime in my life.
I have a stable job where I can work from home frequently. Unless something catastrophic happens, I should be receiving my BA in mathematics this summer.
I would like to continue my education. I know of many data science and machine learning online master's degree programs that I would like to apply for.
I would love to be able to study some particular aspect of machine learning and become an actual expert in it one day. Automated machine learning comes to mind, but many other aspects fascinate me.
I'm perfectly fine being an older student at any college but there are some issues that are getting in the way of my long-term goal.
Right now I'm the main source of income for myself and my girlfriend. So I will have to wait until I am more financially stable before I could apply for a PhD program. From what I understand, most programs do not offer much income. It's going to take a couple of years of planning and sacrifices to be able to financially handle a lower income.
In the meantime, I feel that getting an online master's degree would be helpful. The problem is that almost all online degrees DO NOT OFFER A THESIS OPTION. This concerns me, since that would be the most enjoyable aspect of grad school. However, if that is my only option, I am okay with that.
Would it make sense to go to an online grad school and, when I'm financially stable, cross my fingers that a PhD program will accept a student who has only attended online classes for the past 3-5 years? From what I understand, most PhD programs want to see some research experience. Or at least have some professors that you can connect with. Going to school online prevents me from making a connection with professors, so I have doubts that I could get strong recommendation letters that way.
Questions:

What can I do with the next 3-5 years of my life to help my goals?
How can I connect with professors who I only interact with online?
Is it even possible to do quality research while working full time?
Should I wait until I'm financially stable and then apply to a physical campus for a master's program?
Are online degrees even worth it, if my ultimate goal is a PhD?

(current phd student here) What is your goal after getting PhD? Do you want to be employed in ML field? Why your desire to "become an actual expert" can't be satisfied by self-studying and taking online classes or local college classes?

I won't go too in-depth into this, but the honest truth is that many universities are hopping on the "data science" or "machine learning" or "business analytics" online bandwagon. Many of these programs are extremely watered down and will seem as such to someone who has a bachelors in mathematics. So, in your choosing of a program, I would recommend that you be wise about which programs you look at. Many of them don't assume much of a prerequisite background. (For instance, I know of some programs that don't even require calculus.)

Thank you @Clarinetist This has been my observation as well, which is why I thought I'd ask to confirm how I felt.

@aaaaaa Doing work on your own is good but let's be honest here. A PhD is a serious commitment only for someone who seriously wants to create new knowledge for humanity. As much as I can picture myself somewhat happy with just a masters, I have a strong suspicion it might not be enough. My goal with this post is to find out what is the best path, not necessarily to decide prematurely.

@FarleyKnight An online masters program is almost certainly meant to be a professional masters, to teach students to apply some techniques from machine learning to problems in their own field. Such a program is unlikely to be designed for someone intending to do research in the field of machine learning, similar to how a course teaching how to use MS Excel is not going to be designed for computer science students that want to create a new database architecture.

I guess I have to be comfortable with the trade-offs of an online school. The fact is that due to my finances won't be able to become a full time student any time soon. Even doing a part time program on campus will be very hectic and probably cause a lot of stress. My main concern is whether an online school will be seen as a negative. However it seems that it's more of a neutral since the real issue is not education but networking with professors.

Check out what David Venturi did rather than getting a traditional degree, he created his own MS in computer sci/machine learning http://davidventuri.com/

Yes, you can do it, but the cost will be significant.  If you're not independently wealthy this will be an expensive journey - you will spend years making poor wages, accumulating expenses, and delaying career growth.  Whether remaining in academia or going looking for private sector work, you'll be entering at a junior level in your 40s.  Be sure it's what you really want.

@J... Fortunately I already have a job as a web developer, so I am not going to be behind as a software engineer. Also I think I have what it takes to learn enough on my own to get some side work doing statistical data analysis. Not ideal but it is something. So I don't believe I will stuck as a 'junior' in my 40s. Perhaps mid level. Also I have my landlording side business to generate some income as well. Unfortunately starting a landlording business is very expensive, but I know it will serve me well if I continue to renovate another house every year or so.

Rather than give a long answer to a long set of questions, let me propose a strategy for getting all your answers fairly quickly. Make an appointment to visit a quality university and a professor in machine learning. It might be a place you'd want to go, but it need not be. Ask him/her these questions and try to work out a plan that might lead you to success.
I'm going to guess that online-only education will be less valued than in-person education, but by how much, I can't say.
Yes, you can do quality research part time, but it takes a lot longer than when done full time - especially if you don't have collaborative relationships to aid you.
The other questions (and even these) should be explored face to face with someone who can answer follow up questions and help you devise a plan.
Note, too, that 37 is still pretty young. Ignore the age factor.

Thanks for your response! I actually have talked with professors before about this. Unfortunately, they mostly have given me the same answers you have.

I have been fortunate to be in a top online M.S. Statistics program which is synced with the on-site M.S. Statistics and Ph.D. Statistics students, am almost finished with the program, and I've considered a Ph.D. in the past, so I feel like I can offer some insight.
TL;DR I should have done the Ph.D. coming straight out of my undergraduate. Doing it after an online M.S. can be done, but you will have a lot working against you.
For me, the online education aspect isn't an issue. My degree will be identical to what I would have gotten if I were on-site.
I am expecting no letters of recommendation from my M.S. program. Although I've been pleased with how the online content has been delivered in coursework, I haven't had opportunities to interact with professors. The main benefit of the M.S. content has been to be able to implement what I learn in my full-time positions in data analysis, and to be able to learn some advanced material on my own. This, of course, is not the point of a Ph.D.
Another difficult part of online learning, in particular while working full-time, is that employers will be mixed toward supporting you toward your degree, whether that be letting you take vacation or offering tuition reimbursement. I am aware of some anecdotes of hiring managers that will immediately reject candidates who are currently pursuing graduate degrees, because they feel that candidates will leave as soon as they are finished with them, and that such candidates do not apply to jobs to benefit companies, but rather, to only benefit the candidate's self.
I also don't interact with others in the class, other than a periodic e-mail to a few people whom I know. The M.S. program has taught me to become very independent and how to learn complicated material on my own, but one of the parts that I miss about my experience with the on-site degree that I have is the interaction aspect: interacting with other students, as well as professors, and building those relationships. This matters in more ways than one might imagine, not only for letters of recommendation, but also for attending seminars (I don't live anywhere near the campus which houses the program I'm in), and also for finding new (even paid (!)) opportunities. As one example, one of my peers did a paid government project due to a connection she had with a professor; that is an opportunity that I would not have access to.

I think you bring up some important points. Fortunately my current job is working for an online education company, and they do offer some data science masters programs online. I believe I will be eligible to pursue one of these programs completely free. At the same time, some of these programs, as @Clarinetist mentioned, are not as rigorous as I'd like. If it were possible for me to jump into a PhD program immediately after my BA, I would consider that track, but financially I won't be able to do that for a while. I think the networking aspect is something I will have to take care of on my own

I was chatting recently to a new PhD student in my university, who had recently taken her Bachelor's degree. When I asked her why she was working on the specific topic of her research, she replied that that was what her supervisor had suggested.
Nothing wrong with that, I suggest, if you are in your early twenties. But if you are a lot older, you might be expected to have in mind some aspect of your subject that you passionately wish to know more about and to contribute original work towards.
You will also, having more life experience, know more about how to work independently, and how to plan work over longer than the length of a course. An online masters will not give you anything more in those respects.
Do you know now what area of ML you would like to research? If not, you need to find out by learning more about the subject, for example by studying an online masters. As the holder of no fewer than three masters degrees, however, I feel that earning them required me to learn too many things that were not interesting and too little about the things that I did find interesting.
So, in short, there may be better ways than an online masters to  follow your interest in ML until you think the time is right to seek a place on a PhD programme.


text:
Polite message for my supervisors who do unfair things that would totally leads me to lose my study
I am currently working on finishing my PhD thesis. For about 3 years and 6 months of my study, I am suffering from the absence of my supervisors. She always travels for 6 months, sometimes two months without contact. My second supervisor takes only 20% as supervision.
Any help, please?

If you had these "poorly defined" objectives, then theses should have been sorted out much earlier than at this late stage.

Is there a head of department or any student support at your university?

@Emilie, yes there is a head but he is very biased with them.

You have indicated that your advisors have worked with you through several extensions of your study and have at this point concluded that your work does not rise to the level of a doctorate.  Further, you feel that you cannot approach the head of your department as this person also feels as your advisors do.  Do you have any advocate that does feel your work justifies a doctorate?

@JonSG, My first supervisor told me by email a long time ago that I am a good PhD student and what I have done is exactly what is required for the PhD study. But she changes her mind.

Yes, that is very unfortunate.  I guess I was more asking if there are other faculty members who might feel your work warrants a doctorate.  Someone who might advocate of your behalf with their colleagues and/or potentially join your committee.  If you had such an ally, it would likely be a big help.

Well, what is the idea that you want to express?

If things are as you describe there is likely no help for you on this site. Ultimately, you need to make your supervisor(s) happy with your work.
I can see elements of misfeasance (lack of doing the job properly) here, but we can't solve that. An email, even if polite, isn't going to solve your problems.
If you believe that your advisor hasn't properly guided you and is now abandoning you, then you need to deal with that locally. Either by working out a better (closer) relationship with the advisor or making an appropriate complaint to local authorities.
But even if you make a successful complaint, it won't get you any closer to a degree and might get you farther away.
The question I would want to ask of the advisor is about what you need to do to earn the doctorate. If you can get a plan, a written plan, and it is reasonable, then just do that and move on.
You attribute bad motives to both of your advisors. That may be true, but it may also be a problem. If the second advisor is just "devil's advocate" it can actually strengthen your work, as long as that is all it is. Saying that your advisor doesn't want a written record may be true, but if true is a serious allegation. If I were adjudicating your case, I would question that sort of statement.
Look first for a path to completion. If that is impossible, then an MS/MA may be all you can reasonably achieve in this situation. If it allows you to go on afterwards it may be good enough, though clearly not ideal. But find out, if you can, what it would take to make the advisors happy. Make sure it is clear and in writing.

You have previously posted questions about how to better communicate with your advisors, which seems to be the main issue here. They seem to have chosen to be absent from their advisory role.
This could have happened for a variety of reasons: being away a lot, hoping that the other advisor would do the job, you not living up to their expectations... I think it’s not important why: after 3.5 years the best you can do is cut your losses and think of alternatives.
An email would not resolve three plus years of miscommunication. Once your advisors repeatedly doubt your ability to successfully graduate it is very unlikely that you will, at least not under their guidance.
I’m really sorry but I think it’s past the point of reconciliation. Get out, think of alternative paths. Good luck!

Thank you for your answer. My second supervisor told me in-person meeting that my topic is complex for him and I have better knowledge than him (I swear). Then, he asked my first supervisor to put me under review.   Once, I told him what he said about the complexity of my topic, he refuses that and said he did not say that at all.

I have better knowledge than him — I should hope so!!


text:
Responding to papers which reinvent ideas without citing them
A few months ago a very well-known (and controversial) authority in my field published a theoretical model of a phenomenon that one of my collaborators addressed many years ago. Interestingly, the paper does not reference my collaborator's work at all, even though the authors of this new paper are well aware of it, and have carefully cited "around" it.
My initial response was not to respond, but then I noticed striking similarities between specific paragraphs in the paper and my collaborator's work. The authors reach the same conclusions as my collaborator, but using a model they have developed. Though it doesn't qualify as plagiarism, it annoys me when "new" ideas are proposed without crediting those who originally proposed them. Of course this happens all the time, but I have never been in a position to respond.
My question is how should I respond to this paper, and whether I should respond at all. My collaborator has ceased publishing in this field, and was not interested in responding (but wouldn't mind if I did). Otherwise I have had mixed responses from colleagues, everything from "it happens all the time", to suggesting that I write to the authors or the editor of the journal. Another point to consider is that the senior author is on the advisory board of the prestigious journal the paper was published in.

What field is this, please?

There is a lot left unsaid here. Do the authors claim a new idea, or only a new approach to an old idea? Is there any evidence here or elsewhere suggesting that rejecting the old work is appropriate? I math, for example, a theorem could be proved in a new way, and an older flawed proof might not be mentioned at all as a curtesy to another. That would be perfectly valid.

Sorry, I should have written courtesy. Actually, curtesy is a word with a completely different meaning.

The field is theoretical biology, though I would prefer not to specify further. The purpose of the new paper is to present a new formal model of some phenomenon. My issue with the paper is that the problem and the solution are presented as novel, while the same problem and a very similar solution (but without the model) were presented previously, and these are not cited.

Was the well-known authority the first author? They might be in the dark themselves about the earlier paper, just like the reviewers apparently were, and were hoodwinked by a postdoc or student. Big name profs are quite busy and sometimes delegate more freedom than they should to students and postdocs. You could start by notifying them directly. I'd suggest being very polite. "Hi I found your recent paper very interesting, and thought you may be interested in some similar work we did in...". Then at least next time they should cite your paper properly.

The "authority" is the corresponding author. It's not something that was done unintentionally - this person has cited various papers by said collaborator before. It's hard to explain without giving the exact details, but by analogy what they did is very similar to mentioning the theory of evolution, citing Wallace and Fisher, and then developing an idea that Darwin presented in one of the chapters of the Origin.

From what you have described, it is unlikely that the author's decision to omit mention of the previous paper would constitute any breach of the journal's policies, or any violation of academic integrity requirements.  You have stated your assessment that this is not a case of plagiarism, notwithstanding some similarities between the present paper and the previous paper.  If that assessment is correct then you are really just talking about a decision by the author to omit mention of a previous paper, which is a decision that is within his discretion as a researcher, and which has gone successfully through peer review.
Since there is no evident breach of policies or academic integrity standards, the journal is unlikely to change the article unless its authors request an addendum.  You could either write to the authors suggesting this, or you could try to publish your own "letter to the editor" supplementing the information in the recently published paper by mentioning the previous work.  A letter to the editor could draw attention to the omitted work in a respectful way, noting the similarities of the ideas in the two papers, and noting the way in which the present paper formalises the previous idea with a new model.  That would make a nice supplement for readers who are unfamiliar with the previous work.  Of course, there is no guarantee that the editors would publish it, but if you feel strongly about this, it might be worth a try.  If you can say something valuable about the connection between the two papers then the editors might decide that it is a worthy supplement.

This was my conclusion, and I drafted a letter to the authors, but I was then convinced to ignore it by the apathy of my other colleagues. The journal asks that the authors be contacted directly before submitting a letter. Anyway you have worded it well. I am still skeptical whether a letter (to the authors or the journal) would have any effect, given that it can appear to be a very insignificant oversight on the part of the authors.

Yes, I suspect it will not get traction.

I don't know if this is field dependent, but I would definitely recommend contacting the journal editor as, in my field, one of the questions asked of reviewers is "has this paper correctly cited previous relevant work". Maybe the reviewer was just not aware of your previous colleague's contribution (although in my opinion, a thorough reviewer should be doing their own literature search to check the authors have done this), but the journal should be made aware that they haven't cited something relevant to their work.
Science (in the current state of career progression based on paper and citation counts) relies on us all being honest and giving credit where it is due to other researchers. As a community, we need to be vigilant about this and not let occasional egotists claim originality if others have contributed to the topic. Also, since your colleague is no longer working in this field I think they should be grateful to you for taking up this point.

Publish a technical report version of your work (or update any existing report) and include a critique of the new paper.

I wouldn't write to the authors or to the editor. If your collaborator does not want to respond, why would you?
You can, of course, mention your collaborator's results during conferences or when talking to other scientists. In fact, if your field is anything like mine, most of your colleagues will already have noticed that this paper does not bring anything new to the table.


text:
I'm doing an industrial PhD. How to convince the company to let me publish my source code?
I'm pursuing an industrial PhD within a company in the context of an European project, having two directors: one from the company and another from the university.  The topic of my PhD is related to the use of artificial neural networks, although the company where I work has no relation to this field at all, neither they plan to be related to it. Actually, I had to "sell" them that it was going to be useful for the company so they allowed me to select my PhD topic while I work in some other stuff. Anyway, my results belong to them as far as I know.
The problem I foresee is that:

In order to have some real impact with my research in AI, I think it would be convenient to publish the code as Open Source so other researchers can access and check my code.
If I don't publish some code, I will not have good proves of my work after the PhD as my thesis will probably remain confidential for some time.
At the same time, it would probably be convenient for the results not to be completely lost, as I foresee that nobody is going to use this work once I finish my PhD in the company.
Lastly, the project is funded with public resources and I believe unfair to privately keep developments that could be somehow useful for the scientific community (more if I achieve something interesting, and even more if they are going to waste my effort).

The question then is, what should I say to convince them to publish the code of my developments as Open Source?
Additionally, they don't have a public Github repository and so that, I think it would also be ideal to publish on my own repository (maybe specifying that they own the commercial rights?). This way, they could not remove the code whenever they want...
I insist, as far as I know, they own all the work I do. That's why I want to convince them. I'm not trying to do it without letting them know.

Well, better to work this all out now with the university and the company. I did a lot of my PhD research at Bell Labs, and published it all, so it is not unheard of in the least. Do you know anyone else at your company that has done a PhD in this way?

@JonCuster thanks for your reply. Sure, there are plenty of people who has made the PhD thesis this way in the company, but I kind of the first one doing something related to software instead of materials or biology stuff. So I don't think I can use other people as reference

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that the company (say the IP lawyers) have experience with the requirements for PhD research material to be published. That may require you to limit some of what you publish (leaving out the important-to-the-company bits), but likely the other folks did similar things.

Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it's hard to tell exactly what you're asking.

"industrial PhD within a company in the context of an European project" have you looked into what the project/cooperation contract between your company and the university says?

So actually, I have checked it and surprisingly it is still to be defined. I have an agreement document to be completed by the company, but everyone is busy here with their own stuff, so no one noticed. And the same at the university. Until this is signed by both parts, I am oficially doing a normal PhD instead of an industrial one. Maybe I could try to discuss this topic with my director then to include "the publication of the code as Open Source" as a clause in the agreement(?).

A very short example: MacOS is released under a BSD license, but you can still charge others for any products you deliver if produced using a MacOS-based computer.
Put the focus on "we do not sell the software, we sell the use of the software and the training to use it" and good luck.

When you undertake a PhD program with outside sponsorship from a private organisation (whether it is an industrial firm or some other private firm) the university will need to negotiate an appropriate arrangement for IP and publication expectations up-front.  In order for this kind of arrangement to work, the university must be satisfied that you will be able to publish scholarly work and have the appropriate evidentiary backing available to defend that work, so that you can meet the requirements of your PhD.  If open source code is necessary (or even valuable) for providing evidentiary backing to your work, then the university might consider it to be an important aspect of your research.  If the sponsor imposes restrictions that prevent this, then the university should not accept the arrangement.  On the flip side, if you are going to receive private sponsorship for your degree, you will generally expect that the sponsoring firm ought to get something out of it.  Consequently, it is necessary to negotiate an arrangement where you have the ability to meet the expectations of your PhD (inncluding publishing your work) but you also give something of value to the sponsoring firm.  If those conditions can't be met, then this kind of "joint venture" ought not be undertaken.
As to how to negotiate this, you shouldn't feel like you need to do this yourself.  Universities have experienced academics and legal advisors who are highly knowledgeable about these kinds of arrangements and negotiations --- ask them to help you negotiate an appropriate sponsorship arrangement with this industrial firm.  If the university is doing its job, it simply will not accept an arrangement that prevents you from publishing your work and meeting other requirements of a PhD program.  (Often in these cases, a sponsoring firm gets the benefit of having academic research created that helps it to do its work, even if they hold litte to no IP in that research; in some cases, they might negotiate a "head start" on knowledge of the material before it is published.  In any case, the university ought to be pretty good at negotiating an outcome that can satisfy both institutions.)


text:
I have been accused of plagiarism for similarities between my presentation and a website that I used as a source and cited. What should I do?
So I did a ppt poster presentation. In one of the sections of my PowerPoint, the entire section was highlighted as having a 10% similarity to a website, which is already cited in my PowerPoint and paraphrased. Now on looking at the word version of my PowerPoint it highlighted generalized statements and common examples. Now I contacted the student union advice team and they said I plagiarized because I didn't put the statements in quotes.
I have been accused of this same thing before and took the fall, however I don't want to go through that again and I am truly confused about what to do. I have inserted a picture of the word version of the PowerPoint:

The hearing is in five days. What should I do?

Ugh.. 10% should really not be above the threshold for a plagiarism charge. That is low enough to be incidental, especially because there are often-repeated phrases or thoughts between different sources. I've served on an academic honesty panel before. The student in question very clearly fabricated data, and we gave them an F in the course. The student typically has the right to appeal decisions in academic honesty panels. If it does not go your way and if this impacts your status with the university, I would consider hiring a lawyer. What you have shown here should not be used against you.

Is the highlights supposed to be what the plagiarism checker found?

@Azor yes it is

You already got your answer, but could you please clarify for future readers what exactly happened? Is this hearing in court due to a violation of copyright law or something like that? Or is it just your university's org? What is the punishment if you are found guilty?

Related question: Is changing some words plagiarism?

This is a great example of why automatic plagiarism checkers should never be used on their own. They are a good tool to help search for possible plagiarism, but not to make a decision without carefully studying what the tool has marked.

@vsz What has given you the impression that that is what happened?

Honestly, I think it's a good idea for students to use plagiarism checkers themselves just to make sure they're not caught off guard. I'm very sympathetic to matching sentence structure and style, as I internalize those elements from sources myself, without realizing it.

I can't pretend to provide something better than Bryan Krause's excellent answer - but just a friendly bit of advice - when you have a source you know you'll use heavily, write down notes in specifically different phrasing and skip lines then find another source and fill in your skipped lines with details. Then, use those notes to create your presentation. As it looks now, I think the plagiarism case is stronger than you think. At the same time, I think it should be a slap on the wrist, not an F in your course. That being said, this not being your first time accused is concerning.

@vsz Not sure what exactly you mean by this being a "great example", but to me, this is a great example of a case where the software was able to flag similarity where a subsequent comparison to the original source makes very clear that it's been entirely lifted from that source. In other words, this seems like correct application of the tool by the staff. The incorrect application is by the OP, who seems to think that only the flagged phrases are the problem here, when actually it's everything else about this assignment that is a problem.

@vsz if you do carefully study, you will see that this work is plagiarised by most reasonable standards. I assume the university has done so, hence the charge against the student.

@BryanKrause : plagiarism would be if I presented someone else's work while pretending it was my work in the first place. If I make a summary of someone else's work while being perfectly open about it being a summary of someone else's work, why would it be plagiarism? There are extremely few papers which establish a completely new field of science on their own, most are about building on and expanding someone else's work. And then, at least in the introduction, we have to write a summary of the work we are building on. There are only some many ways to say the same thing.

@vsz That's not what OP did here. Read about "close paraphrasing" or check out the three links in my answer. It's plagiarism to take all the sentence structure and organization from a source while crediting that source only for the ideas. That is not an issue of plagiarism detection by the software, it's what becomes evident when you compare the product to the source.

I agree that this seems at most to be a borderline case on its face, and 10% is not an unusual percentage similarity for non-plagiarized work.
However, there are some things counting against you:
First, I suspect that your work here may not be meeting the learning goals of the course. Typically, you should be able to synthesize multiple sources for a college-level presentation. Relying so much on one source suggests that you haven't made a unique presentation, rather, you've found someone else's presentation and summarized it. Possibly the topic you've chosen is too generic.
Second, it does seem that you've directly copied from the source rather than internalizing the concepts and generating text in your own words. For example, the source states "MRI is relatively expensive, requires longer imaging times than CT and may not be immediately available in all areas"; you transformed this into two bullet points "MRI is relatively expensive/requires longer imaging times than CT". It seems likely to me that you did in fact copy these phrases directly, or perhaps wrote them down verbatim in your notes as bullet points and then copied those into your writing. If, instead, you read this article, internalized it, and then reproduced it, your bullet points might have been "Cost" and "Long imaging times". These are not concepts that can only be expressed one way. The more times you choose exactly the same wording, the more it appears that you've taken the source verbatim and then tried to adjust the language to evade plagiarism detection. I still think you're in a sufficiently grey area where I'd have trouble arguing you should see a substantial penalty for this, but it might be worth a warning to be more careful in the future.
Finally, and this is I think the most damning, your words come in exactly the same order as the source. All of them. You have taken the exact order and structure of the original source. This is not merely a reproduction of selected phrases from another article, all of the words bolded in red occur in exactly the same order in the source as in your work. There is no reasonable way this would occur in exactly the same sequence if you did not copy from the article. Further, even more of the content is substantially identical than was directly flagged. You write "MRI machines have enclosed, tight spaces that can trigger claustrophobia in people without anxiety or phobias". The original source sentence is "...MRI machine is a tight, enclosed space that can trigger claustrophobia even in patients without preexisting phobias or anxiety". All you have done is changed verbs (machine is -> machines have), rotated some words (tight, enclosed -> enclosed, tight; phobias or anxiety -> anxiety or phobias), and used synonyms in context (patients -> people). This is not acceptable, it looks like you're just trying to beat a plagiarism checker.
I think what you did is to copy the article you are citing and then go through, line by line, remove some of the words and insert your own. Some may argue it does not represent plagiarism in the worst form, but to me it is a dishonest representation of original work. This is not an acceptable way to write an academic paper. You can avoid this in the future by first reading from multiple sources and learning about your topic, then writing from your own memory about the subject, supporting your work with citations and quotes from what you've read. One way I was taught to do this in grade school was to use note cards where you express a concept and a source on each card, and then use those cards independently of your references to compose an essay.
I don't know whether you intentionally plagiarized to make your assignment easier, or if you've learned incorrectly what the academic standards for plagiarism are. It is important that you recognize that you are not being accused because there is some 10% overlap detected by an automatic plagiarism detector, which may be perfectly defensible, but because you've lifted an entire article on the subject and merely modified it to appear like it's different. I'm also wary to advise what you should do about this accusation, because it depends a lot on how your instructor and institution will behave. I think in the best case, you will admit how you have crafted this work, recognize that what you thought was acceptable behavior is not, and re-do the assignment or an equivalent the correct way and be assessed on that assignment. If this is the first time you've been sanctioned for plagiarism, I think it would be fair to let this additional work be your primary punishment, and not have your final grade be affected. I don't know how consistent this outcome will be with the policies at your institution.

I've thought about this some more, and I really think the evidence is strong enough that you've plagiarized that I think your best option is to admit you've closely paraphrased your work from one source, to make a case that you did not previously understand this action was plagiarism, and that you now understand this is not acceptable and that you will correct this in the future. The best way to demonstrate this would be to redo the assignment appropriately, clearly explain what it is that you did wrong (without excuses or "to be honest I didn't plagiarize"), and ask offer additional work  to demonstrate meeting the learning objectives of the course. I think the hardest part will be re-learning your understanding of plagiarism. Here are some references that may help you:
https://www.bristol.ac.uk/arts/exercises/referencing/page_05.htm
https://integrity.mit.edu/handbook/academic-writing/avoiding-plagiarism-paraphrasing (see "unacceptable paraphrase" example #5)
https://writing.wisc.edu/handbook/assignments/quotingsources/ (see the "Word-for-Word Plagiarism" and "A Patchwork Paraphrase" sections)
If I were involved in this hearing, I would be least likely to advise strong penalties against you if you:

Completely re-did the assignment correctly before the hearing, and submitted this version to your instructor

Explain coherently the issue of close paraphrasing and how you have learned that it is plagiarism to reuse the sentences and structure of someone else's work even if you substitute words. Your best option may be to write an additional essay on what close paraphrasing is, in your own words, citing sources appropriately.

Promise that you've learned from this and won't do it again

Frankly, if you use the excuses you've tried to use here in the comments and chat, I would have very little sympathy, especially as you have had previous accusations of plagiarism and seem to have made little effort since then to learn what you've done wrong.

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

Interestingly, this answer ties very closely to a question I posed a few months ago: Is changing some words plagiarism?. E.g., I get about half of plagiarizing students saying, "Ah yes, when I took that file I didn't change enough of the words because I was rushed for time. I'm sorry, next time I'll change more of the words." Surprisingly, I thought, most people interacting with that other question of mine do not seem willing to say that copying and changing some words around is plagiarizing.

@DanielR.Collins At least in the posted answers there, the vast majority (there may be one exception, with low score) seem to me to clearly agree that this type of close copying method is plagiarism. I'm surprised by your read of it.

In the US, at least, “to copy the article you are citing and then go through, line by line, remove some of the words and insert your own,” is copyright infringement. Taking the original work and changing it makes yours “derived work,” and copyright includes an exclusive right to make works derived from the copyrighted work. I believe this to also be true in the vast majority of other countries, since copyright is fairly consistent internationally (in broad strokes) thanks to the Berne Convention.

@DanielR.Collins This matches my experience with a similar question regarding an (IMHO) clear case of plagiarism in a published paper (multiple paragraphs copied with a few words changed). The fact that many people deny that this is plagiarism (with sometimes absurd arguments) or downplay it leads me to wonder whether there are many public defenders of this behavior because it is actually very widespread.

I bristle at any mention of copyright in a discussion of plagiarism,  They are two largely different things.

You can certainly plagiarize from the public domain.

@ScottSeidman Indeed, I intended the mention to convey "copyright isn't the relevant concept here" but even mentioning it brings it to the discussion and these concepts should be thought of separately, so I've removed it entirely.

In examining the image, my judgement would be that you have not plagiarized anything. You include only short phrases that were marked, but those phrases are also just about the only way to express the ideas. Moreover, the citations (assuming correct) are listed for each of your paragraphs, indicating that you are attributing the ideas to the authors not yourself.
If they penalize you then you are being abused.
Speaking for myself, there is no plagiarism here at all. Missing quotes for the phrases might be a minor infraction of some local rules, but it isn't plagiarism. It is clear, to me, at least, that you have paraphrased a cited source including key essential phrases.
Unfortunately, I'm not on the board of judges here, so can't guess what will happen, but I'd complain up the hierarchy if you get any sanction.
Especially since this is a poster, not a paper, where some stylistic flexibility should be allowed. Quoting each of the "offending" phrases makes it less useful as a poster.
Some of the words marked as offending are just facts. I doubt that there would have been any way to produce the report had you not actually listed the source since those facts will appear as phrasing in many similar sources.
As to what you should do, insist that everything you said is cited. There is no attribution of any of the ideas to yourself. It is not plagiarism.

If I'm going to get in trouble every time I write "MRI is relatively expensive", it might be time to quit.

@Ian That does not seem to be an accurate assessment of what has happened here. The OP has taken a verbatim format from a source and removed sentences and substituted some words as filler, while retaining the structure and content of the original source.

@BryanKrause Your point is well taken. I should have investigated the source more thoroughly.

@BryanKrause Unsure what are your problems with content - that the student didn't know what to safely leave out? 2 sources he copied from are probably expected from students for this amount of text. The structure is likely the only sensible one - you tell what it does, good sides and issues, starting with relevant ones (you aren't explaining how to calm the person if he can't even go in). I think this would be a good high school summary of MRI, poor undergrad one and perhaps plagiarizing only if it came from a senior researcher that should have known better.

@ZizyArcher I recommend comparing closely the OP's writing and the source linked in my answer. It's not just the general structure, every single sentence is directly lifted from the source and then merely modified to appear different.

@BryanKrause I read that now. While I find that very poor assignment, coming from a student I don't consider it to be enough plagiarism for board hearing just yet. I believe he should be simply told to change more by a professor - that merely rewriting the very same text using your own words isn't enough. I guess it is a problem because he is a repeat offender.

@ZizyArcher I think you should raise your expectations of students at the university level. It's a lot of trouble and work to identify this type of plagiarism, and there is no way this type of plagiarism is accidental, so it's reasonable to have high penalties when discovered to discourage students doing it as a habit. If the only consequence is having to make a few more changes, that is both completely missing the point of original work and encouraging the behavior to continue, since the student simply gets away with low-effort all the times they are not caught.

This entire conversation is really helpful in defining plagiarism. I appreciate the contributions. It seems the OP was being lazy, but not out of malice (they cited the source at least). lt's likely out of ignorance of the boundaries and prior success with this approach. In this context, I suggest coaching the OP on plagiarism and expected level of effort would be much more effective than anything too punitive.

@ZizyArcher "Change more" is exactly the wrong advice here because it completely ignores the basic problem: he's not understanding his source, he's simply regurgitating it. I would probably approach this by asking him to write up notes not on the content of his source (or sources) but the organisation of his source, explaining the benefits and downsides of that particular way of organising the facts, and then ask him to propose and write up an organisation of the data different from the source and better suited to the audience for his poster.

FWIW, I do a lot of note-taking, and somewhere along the line in that close to a half million words of notes I realised that the real key to knowing I understand something was to be able to re-form the information I'd been reading. It's not unusual for me to spend five times as long writing up notes as I did reading the original text because that's the level of effort it takes to actually understand what I've read.

@cjs From learning perspective I completely agree with you. But the problem he is facing is plagiarism, not getting F for not learning.

@ZizyArcher I think we disagree on what the problem is. My opinion is that the plagiarism is just a symptom of his misunderstanding of how to (or his lack of ability to) synthesize information, as Bryan Krause points out in his answer. Even outside of academia, "go do a writeup or presentation on X" is a fairly standard way of learning about something, though of course "teach something to learn it" doesn't work if you are simply parroting another teacher rather that developing your own learning materials. And the accusation of plagiarism is essentially an "F" in this context.

@BryanKrause I think you should raise your expectations of the range of possibilities. This kind of plagiarism may be unlikely to be accidental, but it certainly can be. When I read, I, accidentally, memorize the text. At times, it comes out of my mouth or pen afterwards, exactly as I read it, without the intention to regurgitate. This is certainly not the norm, but it is not unique.

@DeNovo For a couple sentences or phrasings, sure; this is not a couple sentences, all of the words come in exactly the same order that they were presented in within the original. Sentences that do not need to be constructed identically to convey the same meaning are constructed identically. In places where a superficial change to the order of the words would make it harder to match (eg, separated by or/and), OP exactly inverted them every time.

@BryanKrause, you've said that several times, I'm beginning to think that your positions is that it would have been better to obfuscate it a bit.

@BryanKrause either you think I'm fabricating my experience in back and forth comments with you (why? given our history), or I'm not communicating clearly.

Plagiarism checking software should have rules for entering text that
should be excused. For example, my university used Turnitin for
plagiarism checks. Our professors told us that if we were citing text
from anywhere, we could include the text in double quotes, and
Turnitin would ignore it. At my university, 20% was the plagiarism threshold.

The alternative is to write the text in your own words, instead of
copy-pasting it.

If you've already submitted it, it's just a matter of providing proof
of innocence to your professor by mentioning that you've cited the
text.

I am bothered by the idea of having a "plagiarism threshold."  Similarity detection software might flag cases for review, but it is the professor who should make the determination of whether plagiarism occurred.

I'd recommend reading this answer to a recent separate question https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/185810/63475 (this has also come up elsewhere here but this particular example is the most recent) and thinking more about what this software is and is not. I think the thought patterns in this answer, that plagiarism = the "% plagiarism" detected by this sort of software, helps contribute to exactly the issue the OP has, which is that they don't actually understand what plagiarism is and think that if they can beat the software they have behaved ethically. This is wrong and counterproductive.

One very good piece of evidence that a student is doing it wrong is if they have reason to submit their work to a plagiarism detector. Doing so is only testing for whether your work could evade your instructor's ability to identify your plagiarism. If you haven't plagiarized, you don't need to check it. OP's specific offense is not failing to cite their source, but failing to recognize that lifting the entire sentence structure and language of the source is also plagiarism; mentioning they have cited is not a defense.

@Bryan: Our assignments/theses were compared (by Turnitin) with the work of students from various universities and literature too. Even though I never plagiarised anything, there would still be tiny phrase matches like "the Haar features were compared with". Many such matches would add up to a lot. Professors would crosscheck what we submitted, so trying to "beat the software" was never an objective.

@Nav I'll say it again - if a student hasn't plagiarized, they don't need to submit their work to a plagiarism detector. Their instructors might have a reason to, but not the student. Phrases that software finds to match are not plagiarism themselves, and plagiarism that software fails to detect is still plagiarism. These are tools to possibly assist in detecting plagiarism; they do not measure plagiarism itself.

@BryanKrause Sometimes the student doesn't have a choice. In my grad studies, assignments submitted through the learning management system were automatically routed through Turnitin, and the students were presented with the similarity report immediately after submitting.

@BryanKrause: I'm aware of what you are saying and I agree with it. But shoover and I are trying to make a point that the software and the methods used by universities and students are done out of helplessness. Somebody in the university makes a rule, and everyone has to follow it. So people try to find workarounds. Not for the sake of sneaking in plagiarized text, but for the sake of getting around some silly rule or flawed software process. That's the objective of my first point about using double quotes for text that's cited from somewhere.

@Nav If you're at a university where they have decided that plagiarism is equivalent to the "% similarity" output from some software program (not that they use the software to look further, but that they actually identify plagiarism this way), and this means that students have to put their non-plagiarized work through a checker and then reword the specific phrases that are flagged until they've met the threshold, I have some bad news about the quality of education you are receiving and highly recommend leaving that institution immediately.

@BryanKrause I can't state any more emphatically how wrong I think you are here. Yes, absolutely check your own work in a plagiarism detector. Many people, myself included, inadvertently write entire paragraphs of text that they previously read without realizing it. The fact that you think this can't happen is the best example I can think of to demonstrate the necessity for students to use these tools

@DeNovo Sure, cryptomnesia is a real thing that enters into assignments and academic writing in shared phrasing and unintentional re-use of very specific language, and more often believing previously read concepts or patterns are novel rather than previously heard. On a few humorous occasions my boss has suggested to me that I do something only for me to remind him that it was my suggestion a couple weeks ago; I'm very familiar with this. However, no, I do not find it credible that this would occur in sentence structure and wording to this extent.

@BryanKrause I'm telling you, I personally do it, have since I was young and continue to do it well into middle age, but you don't find it credible. So, again, this is excellent evidence that students have to protect themselves from academic authorities that don't believe them.

Ok @BryanKrause why do you keep saying that I did it intentionally. I kept off here because I was already going through stress. Were you here with me while I worked on it .? While I spent sleepless nights writing two exams and working on another poster alongside same poster and preparing for interviews ? . I get you are just trying to drive your point and I get it but I did  make a mistake ,hell I didn't even realise how similar that section was until you mentioned it so pls can you stop now thank you

Also @Bryan if i am being judged using the same document and turnitin receipt , then the fact that Turnitin or any other software didn't highlight the entire sentence as plagiarised should be taken into content too cause if it was highlighted that would have alarmed me to the similarity and my mistake

@DeNovo thank you so much for your comment


text:
How to convince team members we need IRB approval?
I come from a social science background and have recently moved into more of a public health role. Since I was doing experimental research, pretty much every study needed a review. As far as I can tell, only studies with publicly available data (i.e. secondary analysis) that is totally de-identified can skip review. Some of our studies meet that criteria but most don't. I think even at worst, better to submit and be told it is not necessary than the reverse.
Some team members are convinced that we do not need approval on primary data collection studies of qualitative interviews because they are not "about individuals", or even crazier, that it does not meet the definition of "research" based on the following: "According to federal regulations (45 CFR 46 102.d). Research means a systematic investigation (including research development, testing and evaluation) designed to develop or contribute to generalize knowledge."
Thankfully they are going to go through with it but there are still people who are unconvinced. Any time you gather data about perceptions, decision-making or personal opinions- anything outside of fact-based information about institutions (eg policies), I would argue it is "about individuals." I don't even know how to counter the argument that our work is not "research" or that we don't intend to generalize results, as this seems self-evident. I have tried to illustrate using language from existing documentation but it doesn't get far.
I think the real problem is that prospective study planning is a real weakness in this group, because from my perspective you should have everything you need to submit an IRB before you begin collecting data anyway. It should take an hour to prep an IRB application, not WEEKS like it takes these teams. I just don't see why they feel it appropriate to skip out on ethical oversight when we should already have everything we need to complete the application anyway before the study begins. But everything is so ad hoc that whenever they put together IRB materials, they have to change it later. I can't tell though if the arguments about lack of "human subjects" or "research" are a consequence of this or a separate issue, but I don't know how to address either by myself. I've spoken up on this many times but little progress is being made.
Anyone with similar experiences able to advise? Or am I just totally off base?

What is your role on this team?

Also, is it the norm in their field to have a research project planned out before you start? In my field it is common for the scope of a research project to change or grow halfway through, with more interesting results at the end than what you'd initially imagined.

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/143701/my-human-subjects-research-is-exempt-under-us-regulations-does-that-mean-i-ca

Have you asked your IRB to declare these exempt from full review?

Is it possible that your colleagues are right and IRB is not in fact necessary legally speaking? If they can get away with skipping one step of pointless bureaucracy, why not follow their lead?

In my experience in the US, it is rarely up to researchers to determine by themselves that their research needs full IRB review when it involves human subjects in any way.
Additionally, "exempt" in the world of IRB DOES NOT NECESSARILY MEAN YOU DON'T NEED TO SUBMIT TO IRB, it only means that it is exempt from certain specific requirements of full IRB review, and instead can follow an expedited process.
Low risk, "exempt" research must be exempted by the IRB, not the researcher. You submit a brief application to the IRB, IRB says "we've determined this is exempt, so you do not need a full application" or they say "this is not exempt, complete this process for full submission".
There are other things that are not considered even "exempt" research that the IRB doesn't need to review, but even so, institutions may require that IRB make the determination in these cases, as well, and it's always a good option to the researcher even if it's not required.
This includes considering things as "not research". Things that are "not research" would include internal process reviews, things that you would not consider publishing. If you conduct a poll in your office to decide if they'd prefer cake or ice cream for the department party, that is sufficiently "not research" that you wouldn't even need to do the cursory IRB submission. Other circumstances may be more borderline.
I do think there are cases like department climate reviews (for example, to measure harassment or feelings of marginalization or discrimination among staff) and such where the purpose is not research and IRB need not be consulted, but these situations certainly require very careful attention to participant privacy, and should only be conducted with the involvement of HR and other institutional systems to protect staff.
I assume, though, that the work you are doing involves academic goals in some way rather than internal ones. This is (nearly) always "research", or at least close enough to have an IRB sign off on it; I don't know how to convey this concept to people except to simply state that anything to be published in some form is research because it's intended to contribute to knowledge; the "generalizable" clause there isn't about some statistical ideal. I do not think there is any magic way to resolve this or convince people, you will need to be insistent and persistent. You may be going up against years of entrenched bad procedures, there is no quick fix. I think you can do best to lead by example. Likely your institution has some people specifically involved with research integrity, so they may have further resources or may be able to schedule trainings/seminars on the proper procedures, including helping to facilitate submitting simpler proposals for quick review.
It varies from IRB to IRB, but some IRBs may be willing to approve "blanket protocols" that give you broad leeway to conduct certain types of low-risk research without further consultation. Some examples I've personally experienced are A) protocols that cover the 'research' done as part of a lab course, often where the participants are other students in the class. These will outline certain variables that are collected and certain experimental manipulations, and basically let students play around with research without having to go to IRB for every particular combination of variables they might come up with, and B) for IACUC (animal ethics committee) rather than IRB, basic tissue-harvesting protocols that allow for add-on procedures to already terminal experiments, for example to recover organs for tissue culture without getting further approval when that animal is already due to be euthanized for purposes of another study.
I'm a bit surprised you are having these difficulties in a public health department. In my experience, anyone in the health sciences has had these ethical research requirements drilled into them many, many times since their undergraduate days. There's no real excuse to be unaware. The place where there tends to be less awareness is more on the tech side of things, where people trained as computer scientists or engineers find that they need input from people on their systems and designs, and suddenly find themselves doing human subjects research despite not having any training in the subject. Same thing for business fields, where internal market data analyses are not considered research in industry, but in an academic/social science sense they certainly are.

I will provide a stronger assertion that dept climate surveys don't need an IRB

I suggest replacing the word “exempt” with “non-reviewable “ because exempt has a particular meaning in the world of IRB. Exempt studies actually require review, which is always a point of confusion for my students.

IACUC?  I'm in a very different field (where research subjects have never been living let alone human) and just about familiar with IRB but not IACUC

@Dawn Thanks, I had some mix up about the things required by my institution and those required by law. Indeed, that word "exempt" is a really unfortunate and misleading choice... Also reminds me of the idea of "exempt employees" which is a really dumb term that approximately means "salaried employees" but not quite.

@ChrisH IACUC is for animals

united-states
One argument I've heard before from my colleagues is "we don't need IRB permission for this study since it is 'exempt' because it fulfills <insert exemption category here>."
In the United States, the Office for Human Research Protection notes:

The regulations do not require that someone other than the investigator be involved in making a determination that a research study is exempt. What they do require is that there be accurate determinations so that non-exempt research ends up being reviewed by an IRB.

So, at least as far as the law concerned in the United States, your colleagues are correct that for exempt research, the IRB is not legally required. However, the OHRP guidance continues:

However, OHRP recommends that, because of the potential for conflict of interest, investigators not be given the authority to make an independent determination that human subjects research is exempt. ... Institutions should implement exemption policies that most effectively address the local setting and programs of research.

This OHRP recommendation frequently leads institutions to enact policies that  require investigators submit potential studies to the IRB for certification of exemption. My institution, for example, requires that the IRB make the determination. A quick Google search reveals many other institutions have enacted similar policies, like this (randomly selected) one from Northwestern.
So, how do you use this to convince your colleagues?

Check that your institution doesn't have a policy that requires the IRB to make the determination (odds are they might).
If there is no such policy, use the OHRP recommendations as an argument. "The Office for Human Research Protection recommends investigators not be given the authority to make independent determinations because of risks of conflicts of interest. If we make the wrong determination, we may be in violation of federal regulations."

Side note: If your institution does not have a policy against investigators making their own indepenent determinations, they should. Try lobbying your IRB to push for the policy.

Indeed, the potential risk of being in violation of federal regulations includes losing all federal research dollars. Institutions don't want to mess around with that threat.

@BryanKrause: Also, screwing up an IRB exemption can, in extreme cases, result in journalists writing articles like this one about your study. Nobody wants to put something like that on their CV.

Academia varies more than you think it does.
I work in an area without human subjects research, so I'll address the interpersonal issues of this only.
First of all, I wouldn't try to persuade your colleagues that IRBs are intrinsically important, something more than a bureaucratic hurdle. It sounds like you believe this and your colleagues don't, and I doubt that you can change their minds on this. Arguments like "the dean will shut us down", "the NIH could pull our funding", etc. might be more persuasive, if true.
Secondly, you say

prospective study planning is a real weakness in this group

If I understand, you like to plan your research projects out in full before you begin, and your colleagues don't. This might indeed be a weakness of theirs, but are you sure? I work in a field (math) where it's common to just "dive in", and where the scope of a project may significantly change halfway through. In math, this flexibility can be a great virtue -- sometimes the final product can be much more interesting than what you were originally hoping for!
In my experience, the people who have successfully changed my mind were those who first listened to me and understood where I was coming from. So, if you'd like to be more persuasive, I'd recommend investing additional time in understanding your colleagues' goals and methods.

+1 for the general diagnosis and the specific “varies more than you think it does” link.  This exactly sounds like a culture clash between OP and the new team, due to different subfields, different institutions, different regions, or whatever else…

Simple:  If you do not have IRB approval, journals can, and in my experience will, refuse to publish your work.
Simply from the information that you are using "qualitative interviews" it is not possible to determine in IRB approval is required.

What if OPs colleagues point to their previously published research and say "see, we did just fine without IRB!"?