text:
What are the legal and ethical implications of "padding" pay with extra hours to compensate for unpaid work?
I have come into a strange position and could greatly use some advice on how I should proceed. I am an undergraduate student at an American university in a computer engineering program. For the last several months, I have been hired as a student developer working for the university. However due to HR issues I have been working without any compensation. (I have so far worked over 300 hours for the university without pay.)
However last week they have finally got around to filling out the HR paperwork to officially hire me. My immediate boss feels bad about me working all this time and wants to "make it up". He has suggested doing this by going and "padding my pay" by a few hours each week until the time is covered. However I have been told to not let anyone else know or there will be trouble for it. This feels very shady and I am really struggling over whether this is something that is acceptable or not to do.
I know the thing that most people are likely to comment on is “Why the world did you not just quit?” The reason for this is really twofold. The position is a really nice one, I am able to be doing development work to help build up my resume and pay for school as a freshman student. The second being that I really do need the money from the position to help pay for school, and I was told throughout the entire process that I would start being payed “Just next week”.
I understand that they probably were just taking advantage of my ignorance (this is my first job), but has anyone ever had any experience like this where they can give advice on how I should proceed? (Or if the suggested method of padding hours is acceptable?) I’m told that “People do it all the time”, but also being told “don’t tell anyone” just makes it seem somewhat suspicious.
Any advice that could be provided would be greatly appreciated. (Particularly concerning the legality and ethics of the situation.)

This question was originally posted on https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/78016/working-without-compensation-what-to-do
but as they said academics tends to look differently on "under the table" dealings, they recommended I try to post it here for a better answers.

Question:  are your hours self-reported, or are there some mechanisms in place (time-clocks, etc.)?
Second question: can you explicitly quantify the number of hours you've invested, and get explicit agreement from your supervisor that there is agreement on this?

It doesn't seem possible to answer this without knowing more.  Were you officially reporting/recording your hours? If so, it should be easy to get backpay.  If this was entirely off the books, then they took advantage of you and you should seek legal aid.

Was there any expectation of pay during this time of "HR issues"?

Are you aware that even if posting anonymously you may have provided enough information to identify you?

Note that this answer is culture-dependant and my experiences will probably not fit directly with the situation in an American university, which you described to be enrolled in. However, the answer can help understand situations in which the described inofficial arrangements can work out, and also outlines why your situation is rather different from those.
As far as I know, it is very common to pad payment as described for smaller student jobs, so in the end the actual work hours and the actually received sum of payment match. Reasons include:

University administration/HR departments tend to be (considerably) less spontaneous than what is sometimes required for fulfilling certain research-related tasks. This can become particularly discriminatory towards foreign students, as they might have to wait for documents from other agencies outside of the university (e.g. the agency responsible for foreigners in the respective jurisdiction).
Workload created by ongoing research is by no means balanced in any way.
The time available to students is not balanced in any way.
In contrast to the two above points, student work contracts are often not sophisticated enough to account for that variation. They assume a uniform workload such as n hours a week.

Evidently, these issues can create a severe discrepancy between what is confirmed on paper (e.g. "4 hours a week for 3 months starting in July") and what both parties directly involved in the research want to agree upon to their mutual satisfaction (also with respect to not impeding the student's studying). Hence, it seems, distributing actual work hours differently to what the contract says is a way to counteract the negative effects of bureaucracy both towards research projects and the preferences of the people involved, and therefore not ethically problematic.
However, all of these arrangements usually work because they are conducted by people who responsibly handle the relatively large inofficial leeway. In your particular situation, I do see some warning signs that your superiors might not belong to that group, which indeed evokes the question “Why the world did you not just quit?” for me:

There was no clear agreement between your superior and you about the inofficial arrangement before it started. It seems your superior 'feels bad about [you] working all this time and wants to "make it up"' as late as you have been working for a considerable number of hours.
Your superior apparently did nothing to change things earlier. The contractual definition of work hours is, among other things, meant as a protection for the employee from negative side-effects (working too much; having too little time for studying; ...). It can seem justified to bend the rules for the reasons described above, but then the responsibility to protect the employee is passed on to the employer's "manual control". When they learn your officially paid hours are not just behind the actual working time by a week or two, but that no payment is in sight yet, it is up to your superior to tell you to pause working and to try and influence HR themselves.
Rather than knowing more or less the deviation between what the contract says and what actually happens, you were repeatedly told you 'would start being payed “Just next week”'. While it may have been HR telling you that, this should have been another reason for your superior to suspend the inofficial arrangement for the time being, because obviously it cannot be implemented within parameters known to both of you (given that the parameter of how long you will actually have to wait was totally unknown).

As a final remark, you say you "have been told to not let anyone else know or there will be trouble for it". It is not quite clear how this request was phrased and what is meant by "trouble", or especially, who the "trouble" would be directed at. If this is meant to be "trouble" for you you are right to consider this quite shady, as apparently, your superior is not going to take responsibility for the arrangement1 on the off-chance that anyone complains, and maybe also that the number of hours you amassed is substantial enough that someone might indeed bother to investigate.
1: At the very least, by describing the arrangement as a way to retroactively make up for the due payment the student missed due to unforeseen administrative issues. IANAL, but while probably a violation of procedures of some kind, it seems unlikely anyone would bother to create consequences as there is no tangible damage if the student is paid for the worked time eventually.

Great answer, but I just want to point out the magnitude of how out of line this particular situation is. Most student workers are limited to 20-25 hours a week during the school year, or 40 hours over the summer. 300 hours of unpaid work is at least 8 weeks (2 months), and could stretch to as much as 4+ months. I expect student developer pay to be $8-$15 an hour, so that's $2,400-$4,500 of work the student should have been paid. This situation crosses the boundary into gross managerial misconduct or incompetence, and if the proposed plan is followed would take months of false time cards.

@BrianDHall: Sadly, when the issue is paperwork from external agencies, a delay of some 2 months is not at all unheard of. Actually shifting the work to a later time may not be practical due to deadlines (paper submission, project, ...), and the benefit of planning ahead is limited when students can spontaneously become available or unavailable at any time. Again, all of this with contexts in mind that might not quite match the system at an American university - just like, in the situations I described, there is no such thing as "time cards".

My experience with this has also been that this is the norm. Pretty much everyone involved, from HR to the lowest level employees all the way up know it's happening and is just kind of expected. Now, why does it take so long? That's a mystery. It's a couple freaking forms in a department whose primary job is processing those forms. Doesn't seem like a leap to think they might do them in a reasonable amount of time... but I digress.

@corsiKa: "Now, why does it take so long? That's a mystery." - one particularly tricky case that I saw was a student from a non-EU country (myself being within the EU) who had recently moved from one town to another. University required some paperwork from the municipal foreigners agency, but the two municipal foreigners agencies (in the student's former hometown and new hometown) couldn't agree upon which one was responsible for the paperwork.

@O.R.Mapper Let me guess - they spent more time arguing about who should have handled it than they would have if someone would have just... done it?

@corsiKa: Well, the agency in the university town said they have provided the respective form many times for other students of the same university, but that the agency in the town where the student lived before is responsible in this case, whereas the agency in the other town claimed the form doesn't exist and they never provide it. So, the student was sent forth and back.

I am not a lawyer, but maybe you can ask them if it would be possible for them to provide you with a contract which back-dates your starting date to when you actually started?
I would prefer this approach because then you can list the correct, longer time range during which you worked for them on your CV without worries because you can prove it with your contract (and probably also in their files).
Also, it could be that there are certain rules that forbid students to work more than X hours a week which, if surpassed, may have consequences in terms of taxation/visa/whatever. Sticking to the truth (in this case backdating) can avoid those problems.
I worked a few times as teaching assistant at my university. Usually I got to sign my contract in time before the starting date, but one time the personnel drafting the contracts were overloaded with work, so I started working without a contract. About a month later they finally had created my contract. The starting date indicated was from a month before (i.e. it was correct); I put my signature and the then-current date (i.e. a month later) under it. Had no problems, they registered it correctly at the tax office and the next month I received two months of salary at once.
Generally, I wouldn't recommend working with only the promise of a contract. Luckily, in my case (and as it seems, in your case), it turned out well and promises were honored. Also, I only did it because trust had been earned earlier.

I have no clear answer -- but you certainly can't get into trouble for working without pay.  Your supervisor and the school might, but not you.  That's probably why they prefer you not discuss that.
As for padding your pay -- this may be the right thing for your supervisor to offer, but it doesn't seem legal (I'm no lawyer) -- and if it isn't, you'd be complicit.
I'd be tempted to say just take your lumps, and work your future hours for compensation.
You might have a chat about receiving independent study credit for the free work you did, either in the current semester or a future semester, with all involved understanding when the work took place

I am not a lawyer.
However, the Federal Fair Labor Standards act dictates that they must pay you for your work under various circumstances. In general, if they derived a benefit from your work and you working for them was not a detriment or net cost to them in some way, then you should be paid for it. You do have the responsibility to prove in some way that you worked the hours claimed. This can be a letter from your boss backing up your claim or detailed documentation of the hours and days you worked.
The "right thing to do" is to have your boss file a request with HR to provide you with back pay based on the hours you worked. It should all come in a lump sum and include all the proper deductions.
If your boss is not willing to do the right thing and file this request, or HR is unwilling to fulfill the request, then the next best thing is to get a letter from your boss stating the hours you worked and go talk to HR personally. Remind them of their liability under the FLSA and request that they rectify the situation. If they still won't budge then you need to decide whether it is in your best interests to sue them for the back pay. Assuming you have a letter from your boss stating you worked those hours, you should have no issue winning the lawsuit. Technically, they are also not allowed to fire you for doing so. This type of retaliatory behavior is strictly prohibited by law and could entitle you to further damages. However, if you have to sue them for pay you rightfully earned just to get them to pay you, you should seriously question whether they are someone you want to continue to work for.
In the future, always keep your own personal detailed records of every hour your work, including the date and the times during the day you performed the work. I'm sure there's probably an app for that.
That's my 2 cents on this issue.

The risk inherent in "doing the right thing" is that even if they're forced to pay you they can still discipline your boss. In principle this is Not Your Problem, in practice it might be your problem.

I can tell you, that this is very common practice in Germany, a sort of open secret. At my university at least. I've done it myself and I know many people who've done it. Although the cases I know of were not as extreme (i.e. 300 hours of advance work), I wouldn't have any qualms accepting your supervisors offer.
I'm also not sure I agree with other answers on this being a disadvantage as far as your CV is concerned. I presume the amount of time you're going to spend on the job in total will not be affected, right?
Don't tell anyone you don't trust, though. Or, better yet, don't tell anyone at all. And also the situation in your country might be different.
EDIT:
I got @JosefStark's CV remark: the padded contract might squeeze the total hours into fewer months, that is of course correct.

@Roland: Those points are true, but then, the same HR departments also insist (in writing! The actual HR people know full well it's actually handled quite differently.) that all research employees work from Mon to Fri between 8 AM and 4 PM, no home-office, no work on weekends, etc. Evidently, this is completely detached from the reality of working in research and towards paper deadlines. And speaking of which, some unis do not insure equipment for use abroad. Even the relatively harmless (compared to human injury) event of a stolen/damaged laptop during a conference trip would be a nightmare.

@Roland the insurance is a good point. I haven't thought about that as it was always theoretical work for me, so the worst possible accident would have been a paper cut :-). This also applies for the OP, I believe. Although I know of one case where a student worked in a lab for 2 months, I think, prior to receiving a contract.

To clarify my remark about the CV: You're right, the total time (= hours worked, if I understood you correctly) would be unaffected of this, but usually what you put in your CV is start and end date, not hours worked. Considering that this is a student job, 300+ hours could easily mean 4 months (if it's 15 hours a week) which imo could make a difference, depending on how long he'll continue to work there.

Here in Portugal the same thing, or it was in the past a bit unsure if it still now. Working without a contract means that if you go to court, it will be a permanent position. In the last couple of years they made it illegal to have any kind of work without a contract, not sure how this old situation applies with the new rules.

Everyone who fills in their own timesheet has wiggle room.  What matters is the perception and satisfaction  of the supervisor who signs off on it. If he's happy with the situation, it's good. Labor law does not and cannot capture the nuance of this.
My realpolitik perspective is that, as long as you aren't actually being taken advantage of (i.e. you get paid), bringing it to HR is just causing a problem over nothing. That could hurt you as it will cause you to be perceived (say, by your current supervisor) as a stickler.
This isn't legal advice and all that, but I can't see any way this could hurt you.  Just don't cop to it, especially in writing.
(As an addendum. I have worked a variety of hourly positions. I have seen people come in and do nothing for 6 hours, write down 8 and call it a day. I have seen workers who are only allowed to bill 8 hours a day but work 12, whether by tacit expectation or otherwise.
It is completely absurd and laughable to me that there would be anything like an investigation, or that someone would call him on it. Quite simply, it would be fundamentally impossible to pursue.)

I'm not a lawyer, so don't take this as legal advice.
First, tell your boss you're not okay with padding your hours unless you get something in writing from HR.  You shouldn't take on that sort of risk.
Second, did you get some sort of job offer stating the terms of your work?  Does it mention a start date and pay?  If yes, it seems like you would be on pretty good grounds.  If no, you may be in a difficult spot.
Either way, I would probably go to HR.  They certainly don't want to end up with lawyers involved, and neither do you, so I would think everyone would be motivated to talk about this.  Most places have pretty strict laws about employee compensation.  The only catch is if the job is worth it for the experience, and you would rather write off the earnings to this point than jeopardize your position going forward.  In that case write it off as an internship or unpaid research assistantship, and talk to your boss about labeling it as such.

You're not padding your pay with hours that you didn't work; you're just being paid for hours that you DID work, albeit at a different time.

This can go two ways:

Nobody notices, or they notice but nobody minds. You get the money.
Somebody notices, and it turns out your boss: had no authority to hire you for the work without approval; worst case would never have got permission to hire you for the original work; therefore has chosen to knowingly defraud the University in order to "Robin Hood" you the money. You're both involved in criminal fraud to the tune of 300 hours of pay. Perhaps your boss even denies ever having had this conversation with you, in the hope you'll go down for it alone.

So the worst-case potential downside is prison. Probably the money's not worth the risk, but your call.
Even if the worst case doesn't materialise, your boss is saying that if you tell anyone there will be Trouble. This strongly suggests that if you don't tell anyone but they find out anyway, then there will likewise be Trouble. So what's the chance of getting caught padding 300 hours? Depends how long you pad them over, whethe the timesheets you submit are plausible, and whether anyone is auditing any of this.
So granted, the worst case is unlikely, and other people are working around the bureaucracy in similar ways. Still, you want to avoid doing anything shady, and this is shady because the people paying the money aren't being told what it was for. That justifies pressing your boss to admit to HR and his boss that he was slack about the paperwork, and request that you be paid for all or some of the work you've already done. It's much better to submit a truthful invoice for the work you've done, than a bunch of false timesheets for which you can be held liable, maybe even years from now. If the University refuses to pay the invoice on grounds all you had was a verbal agreement with your immediate boss, you can either let it go or you can explore other options to demand payment.
If all that's going on here is your boss doesn't want to have to confess to being badly-organized, then it might not even be that difficult to convince him to face the music rather than do something that probably isn't legal even if it does "come out the same in the end". Really depends on his personality and the consequences for him of anyone finding out what he already did wrong (strung you along for 300 hours of unauthorised work). If he's already committed a sacking offence then you can only choose two of getting paid, staying legal, and continuing to work for him. You couldn't have all three. If he's merely at risk of looking like a buffoon and getting frowned at then maybe once pressed he'll be willing to do that in preference to involving you in something you're not happy with, and you get all three.

"your boss: had no authority to hire you for the work without approval; worst case would never have got permission to hire you for the original work; therefore is knowingly defrauding the University. You're both involved in criminal fraud" - wait, is it really the employee's obligation to verify the employer has the authority to hire someone? That sounds like any employee can be charged with criminal fraud at any time, also without an hour-padding scheme as described here.

Is there any precedent of some employee going to jail from this kind of situation?

@O.R.Mapper: padding the hours is fraud. If the employee doesn't pad the hours, then the employee hasn't done anything fraudulent. AFAIK no, it is not the employee's responsibility to verify the authority, but it is the employee's responsibility not to committ a crime in the process of working around their boss's failings.

@T.Verron: if the prosecutor and/or court accepts that you really worked the hours then you may be in a better position than if they don't accept that. The worst case is that they don't accept that, and it's not hard to find people who've been jailed for timesheet fraud in cases where the court has found that they didn't work the hours. But I'm not aware of an identical case to cite. Note that if it's a sure-fire thing that any court would find you really worked the hours then you still don't have to massage your timesheets, you can just claim the money under FLSA or whatever.

... I would say the main danger, in the unlikely event it comes to a criminal prosection, is that it's found you were a volunteer. This is after all the "official" position: the employee agreed to start work as a volunteer on the expectation of being employed Real Soon Now. A court may or may not agree with the employer's interpretation, that there was no employment until the paperwork was done: clearly sometimes courts do disagree with such interpretations, where employers are flagrantly trying to evade employment law.

I agree with this. Initially the arrangement was that the OP worked for the experience, rather than cash. Trying to revert the arrangement to being paid for cash by fudging timesheets after the event could end badly for the OP and also his/her boss. As an analogy, if you engage a tradesman to (say) unblock your toilet, and then don't pay him, that doesn't give him the right to break into your house and steal goods to make up the outstanding debt.

Many places of employment have either an official or an informal system of "flex time".  Initially I believe it meant that you could work 6 hours one day and 10 hours another day, since it would even out in the wash.  But in a community college where I worked, full time in the IT department, it meant I was able to put extra hours into my flextime bank over the course of several months, by working more than 40 hours in the week, and then take hours out (by working less than 40 hours) when I took some college courses in the summer term and needed time to go to class and do homework.  Each employee in the department kept track of their hours by just jotting them down.  I kept a separate notebook just for that in my top desk drawer.  My immediate supervisor shared an office with me, and there was an atmosphere of complete trust.
On the other hand, sometimes a freelance worker is hired for a particular project, and is asked to keep track of his total hours worked.  In essence he will get paid for the total number of hours needed for the project, but he may be asked to invoice his hours in a more evenly spread-out pattern than the actual distribution of hours as he puts them in.
What your boss has proposed could potentially fit under either of these schemes.
Note that in an academic setting, things are sometimes more loosey-goosey than in non-academic workplaces.
If your boss has asked you to be discreet, I would honor this request, since he's the one who's going to be signing your timesheets.
Based on multiple personal work experiences with both of the schemes I described, I really don't think you have anything to be concerned about.  However, to be sure, you could anonymously call the government employment office in your area.  Where I live these offices are called "Workforce New York".

"However, to be sure, you could anonymously call the government employment office in your area." - the government employment office being an official institution, are you sure they will dare to provide anything but a legally rigid and flawless solution?

@O.R.Mapper - Coincidentally, I called my local government employment office yesterday with an unemployment question for a friend and spoke with one of their employment counselors.  She was anything but rigid.

IANAL.
This might be typical for more limited circumstances: say, you started work a week before the paperwork went through, and you have a limited part time 5 hr/week student research job, adding those hours to your first week of work wouldn't be legal but it is very unlikely to lead to consequences for anybody.
Your circumstance is way beyond that, but it really sounds like the person likely to be in trouble would be your boss, and not you, assuming it would be clear to anyone that your boss knows how many current hours you are actually working (i.e., if they are always in the lab when you are).

If you do it then for sure you need to not tell anyone. If you keep it just between you and your supervisor then you could probably get away with it.
The problem is that slight chance you don't get away with it. You would likely get kicked out of school, possible criminal charges, and they may ask for the money back.  If your supervisor fessed up and said he was in on it then not likely they would file criminal charges but if he throws you under the bus then you could be facing criminal charges.
Ask for another way to make up for that time.

This is incredibly unlikely.

@NeilG See "slight chance"


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Removed as Co-Author for Resubmission
I was part of a university project team, and at the end of the semester we decided to submit a review paper related to the topic of our project. Our advisers gave us feedback and made suggestions on our draft. We submitted our draft to a journal and many months later, one of my team members got a notification that our paper needed to be edited to respond to reviewer comments and resubmitted. However, he did not contact us until a few months later, when he said he thought we should not submit because the necessary edits were too demanding. However, when he went to talk to our advisers, some of them decided to continue working and resubmit. The other student did not let any of the other team members know, and told the adviser no one wanted to help him without consulting us.
 A month later, we were all notified that they were resubmitting that week and they needed our consent to remove us as co-authors. They have made very significant additions to our paper, adding more sources and detail to our claims and rewording the majority of it. However, the overall idea of the paper is quite similar and there are aspects of the paper that resemble portions we wrote. I feel it is quite ungenerous of them to cut us all out from being co-authors, when we wrote the majority of the initial submission, even if the final draft is quite different. Did they do the right thing?
EDITS
To clarify some points -
The main issue is that they have to resubmit in a few days, so any changes in authorship need to be approved by everyone very soon. I agree that our adviser should be changed to first author, but there's no time to get everyone's consent for that, unless he can get an extension.
The adviser has not been hostile in any way and I don't want to make things too awkward, but I don't quite feel comfortable signing off on cutting us all out.
I guess my real question is should I insist they include us? How much of the initial draft must be modified before you can just remove co-authors.

Welcome to Academia SE! Going by your question, I don't think they did the right thing. However, to make this question fit the site better, I suggest you ask a more specific question - right/wrong is primarily opinion based. I'd suggest that you think through your options now, mention them (shows that you've done your homework), and then maybe ask a specific question regarding those options, i.e. which of those are optimal, is there a better (define better- expedient, rewarding, peaceful?) approach, etc.

When you the initial group of students were notified that 'they' were resubmitting, who was 'they' who was sending the request? Was it the faculty, or the student on their behalf?

We were requested to consent to the new author list by the student on their behalf, but I have since talked to the faculty directly.

I find the question description a bit hard to follow, so details are unclear. For instance, how many "advisers" are there? How many authors in total? Same group? How come nobody kept in touch about this? Please clarify key details. In short I think they are wrong, as is the decision of placing adviser first.

It is not ethical to remove you as co-author from a resubmission, if you contributed to the first submission and your contribution is still relevant in the resubmission. In that case, there seems to be a portion of the text in the resubmission that is a revised version of text that you wrote, so your contribution is indeed still relevant to the resubmission.
Do not agree to being removed from the author list. Don't let yourself be pressured to agree by an impending deadline. In most cases it is no problem to get an extension, even up to multiple weeks, on manuscript resubmission deadlines. Moreover, it should have been the lead author's responsibility to plan everything so that the deadline can be met.
If the importance of individual contributions has changed by the revision, it may indeed be appropriate to change the author order. That has to be agreed upon by all authors. The editor might also want to have approval from all authors for that change.
Start collecting evidence to support your claims. In the text from the first submission, mark which portions of the text or data have been contributed by whom. Collect earlier drafts and emails or other communication that further evidence these contributions. If you have the revised version, mark which portions in that are based on contributions you made earlier.
If the lead author does not resubmit to the same journal with you as co-author, try to keep an eye on other journals in the same area. They may just try to go to another journal with the revised version, where the editor will not be aware that the manuscript may still contain contributions of someone who's not listed as an author. If you see a publication with text based on your earlier contributions, but not listing you as an author, contact the editor with a complaint, and provide the evidence you collected.

Just to add to your first point: Even if all of OP's words got replaced by someone else, the fact that he contributed to drafting the paper still stands. The only constellation where I see an author removal as correct is when parts are being completely left out, but this does not seem to be the case.

I'm going to answer a slightly different question than the one you asked, namely: My advisor just emailed me for consent to remove us as co-authors on a paper, what should I do?
I would politely but clearly let him know that you think your contribution to the original article warrants co-authorship, and that therefore you cannot consent to be removed as co-author. In fact, you could use that line almost verbatim in an email to your advisor.
You're writing that there's a pressing time limit for these author changes. That may be true, but it would be incorrect to expect you to give up co-authorship when they could have reached out to you long ago. It's up to the first author and corresponding author to make sure the paper gets submitted in a timely manner, and figuring out questions about authorship is part of the whole submission process and cannot be delayed until the end.

No, I don’t think so. If you all feel strongly enough you could contact the editor, explain the issue - do provide thorough evidence and have it corrected. mind you the editor could just stop the publication...

I do not think you have been treated fairly. In case you were involved in the earlier steps of a project, any further development should be discussed in front of you. From your account, it seems like you felt excluded. Thus let them all know this, and do not agree with being removed from the list of authors.
A relevant point: (i) "Our advisers gave us feedback and made suggestions on our draft."; (ii) "The other student did not let any of the other team members know, and told the adviser no one wanted to help him without consulting us"; (iii) "I agree that our adviser should be changed to first author". From points (i-iii) it is my understanding that someone made a deal with some 'adviser' by giving this person some 'honorary' first authorship? I believe you should take this pattern into consideration, as this honorary first author is now expected to use his power and influence to scoop you out of this.

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text:
Is there academic research that supports individual over group work for better learning?
I'm in an undegraduate program in the US where group work is a major focus in most classes. Faculty often cite the important benefits of knowing how to collaborate in teams, claiming how educational research findings strongly support collaborative learning.
I'm also a TA in a course in the department, and in our learning course, we had sections in which we strongly focused on the pitfalls of group work and how to improve the learning process (e.g. strategies to divide work, how to moderate conflict, with people who don't pull their weight, etc.). We were assigned a few papers on research about collaborative work (some even written by faculty in the department).
In all these papers, there always seem to be a behavioral assumption that makes the situation utopic. For instance, among the good strategies in papers were things such as: "Divide work early into task groups" or "Create a time estimate for the semester for every task." This is good advice, but not all students follow or care about these strategies. Otherwise, everybody would be getting As, no? Thus, despite my qualms about how the research was conducted, it seems that theoretically group work would be ideal, but in practice it is more often than not negative.
Is there any research that has found that group work has more often been negative in academic settings? Or, perhaps, given the constraints (i.e. group is assigned, members don't know each other) or types of behavior (i.e. member who doesn't care about grade as long it's above C, member who just drops class) that exist in university classrooms, is positive group work unrealistic?
Additional related questions:

If there exists research that supports individual learning. Why is group work still insisted on? From the point of view of the professor, wouldn't it be preferable to assign a project (and if individual/group work is not a concern), let students organically generate their groups if they desire to do so, or work individually if they are willing to undertake the task alone?
If there isn't research that supports individual learning. What are some of the most important papers which have established group work as the desired learning strategy? Are there any popular experiments in the field of education related to this topic (e.g. famous/popular such as Zimbardo's experiments in Psychology)?

Since you probably know how to search for academic research, I'm going to venture that the point of this question is that you hate doing group work and you're looking for people who agree with you.

@ElizabethHenning I foresaw that such a remark would arise and tried to present my question in the most inquisitive way possible without sounding cynical or to come across as you described. Indeed, I believe I could formulate queries on Google until I get papers that speak to the issue at hand. However, because I have no idea about the layout of the field of education, I will not be able to appropriately judge what are good papers or conferences, or what's appropriate methodology, etc. If anything, without advise from people who know, this would just result in more confirmation bias.

@ElizabethHenning Secondly, to your point, I believe that most questions asked in this forum would be answerable by the individuals who ask them given enough time. Because questions shouldn't be seeking opinions in stackexchange, then the facts presented must exist somewhere. Why shouldn't everybody just go search for answers rather than ask questions? If my question is poorly formulated or could be improved, do offer me advise on how to improve it, so that we can continue improving this community.

The best answer to your question is still to search the relevant databases or to ask a reference librarian if you don't know what they are. I'm also wondering why you don't ask the faculty at your school who have done work on this, since they are far more likely to be knowledgeable about this question than people here.

@aedcv please tell me the area of the subject and I will find you educational research related to that subject.

@ElizabethHenning educational departments and educator researcher are not so willing to cooperate with other researchers.

I think the close-vote (off-topic/shopping question) is not justified: for academia-related topics, we have a dedicated tag "reference request" ("Questions requesting a supporting document or citation for a specific query.").

@SSimon My described experience is in the area of Information Sciences and Technology and somewhat in general STEM fields (math, physics, etc.). However, I'm interested in group dynamics independent of field. From your question, I would be very much interested, for example, on whether learning individually or as a group works better in certain fields rather than others. Primarily, though, going back to the original question, I'm interested in research in general that supports individual learning and under what contexts.

@aedcvhave you heard of online uni? they work on the criteria you stated

search individual vs group learning pedagogy and you will be taken to this page.

Here is a cross-comparison of the efficacy various forms of group learning http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/00346543069001021 one notable conclusion is you want ot group learners of similiar ability, paring high functioning with low functioning is often counterproductive.https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=3nnBETM5lnEC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=group+learning+structure&ots=k5bO80dKlN&sig=99QJuVCNokJZR4E3ijY6nBiY-0A#v=onepage&q=group%20learning%20structure&f=false

Just a piece of general advice: take all "education theories" with a grain of salt. No matter how much the educators may promote their points of view, there are no universal recipes. One needs some individual time, one also needs some group time; one needs cooperative environment, one also needs highly competitive environment, and so on. When you learn to drive, it is pretty clear to everyone that you should get some idea of how to operate a car under all conditions before hitting a road all on your own. Mathematics (or whatever you are teaching) is no different from driving.

I found this study, which is a pretty interesting read: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jbryson/CBRReport.pdf
In the end it is proved that group work isn't beneficial. Most of the students who worked by them selves scored higher than the groups, by showing and explaining there work, but a bunch of others got the question wrong. The groups were scattered in the middle scores, meaning that they got more answers right than the individuals, but the individuals had a better understanding on how to solve the problem. When students work in groups, they get more questions right, but they don't understand what they are learning. This proves that it is better to work as individuals, since more students will understand what they are doing, although more will get lower scores. Also, the groups, probably only got more correct, since the students are collaborating and helping each other, which doesn't show that they understand what they are doing.

Part of the issue with your study is it used randomized group membership, if students in a group are not of similar ability then they end up offloading the work on the most skilled. Also the really high pretest scores indicate they were not teaching the students something they did not already know making the assessment meaningless.

Another bad thing: they didn't disclose the actual questions, thus leaving everybody in the total darkness about exactly what skills have been tested (of course, they can claim whatever they want in the introduction in this respect, but I prefer to form my own opinions). The addition of the picture of the "random number generator" to the text makes a good laugh without doubt, but I would rather have an opportunity to look at a few other things.

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text:
My First Authorship was Turned into a Second Authorship without Informing me
Early this year, I had a surgery-related study in rats and today I just found out my first authorship got turned into the second authorship in the final manuscript my PI planned to submit.
For the study which was my original idea, I spent a tremendous amount of time in conceptualizing the study, created the protocol and design for the stud (second and third authors also involved in this but not as much as I did), carried out all the animal surgeries and analyzed a part of the data independently (for this study, there were only two results we could get), and wrote the part of manuscripts.
The divided tasks between the first and second author for this project was I did all of the above mentionings, while the second author collected, collaborated with two other pathologists who are going to be the co-authors and wrote the discussion and conclusion section.
But all of a sudden, I was just informed today my PI is making the second author the first author because she spent so much time in collaborating with those pathologists and revising the manuscripts with her (they are very close to each other because the second author works full time but I worked the only parttime).
It was so ridiculous because it was our agreement before that she was in charge of the pathology section for the paper with other pathologist and I was in charge of other results. For the whole revision process, both the third author and I haven't been informed by any mean. And I always thought the manuscript was all done except the pathology part.
I brought up the concern to the second author and she told me she deserved the first because "I spent as much time as possible with PI in rewriting the discussion and manuscript" (without letting me know) and collaborate with other authors to put their input into the results which I don't even really need this part to make it published. (Moreover, it was my idea to work with the pathologists and I was the one who assigned her the tasks she needs to do with them).
I am so pissed off now and I would like some advice about my situation. I understand this second author spent a lot of time in revising the manuscript (she is good at writing so we agreed before she would write the discussion and edit the paper) but this was done without informing both first and third authors. And it was all because of me to make the project possible when none of the people including the PI likes the project early this year. I was the one spent every weekend and night time alone (until 10 or 11 pm can you guys image?) to carry out all the trails. I was also the one who analyzed the most important part of the data and gave all the inputs the second author needs to form the paragraphs. Now, what she did was just to put others' opinion (pathologists) into the paper, and remake the figures and table I made, so she and the PI wants to make her as the first author. Please help that this lab is so sneaky and horrible. And the similar sneaky revision happened before already to my work (Fountly, I kept my first authorship that time). I would like to take whatever I can to defend my right as I am done in the lab and I don't care if I will continue research in this field or to make the work unpublished.
*Note: Also, the PI and she added another person to the authorship who did nothing but for a "gift" because she is the new hire. but the other volunteer we had in the lab who actually contributed got nothing out of it. I feel so bad for her now too.

Have you asked about whether it could be co-first authors?  As an outsider to the situation that seems fair for a paper where by your description each of you were in essence first author for different halves of the paper?

Some formatting would make this wall of text readable.

My situation is not similar to the co-first authorship because I don't even have that. I will also do whatever I can do because I am not making this my career. I want to input from those you who have experienced the same before because I am not so familiar with the whole dispute process. I don't even mind file lawsuit with them also the lab has tons of serious violations I am thinking of reporting those too. But the best scneior is publishing the paper and I am the first author.

If they informed me before I would add her to be the co-first but now I don't take it I don't even bother asking that. She didn't do the other half of the paper. It was she wrote half of the result from other co-authors' input (that result doesn't even need to be in the paper, it was I wanted to make it a better paper so I designed that the pathological analysis of tissue change after operation so we need help from pathologists) because those doctors were too busy to wrtie manuscript.

This was not edited, it was HACKED, removing issues of an author being added who did nothing towards the paper is not a sign of a good edit...

Thank you. The second author had done similar something similar to this but I took it last time because at least she didn't take the first authorship but this time she does. I can't understand the practice because someone spends so much time in rewriting or paraphrasing the paper deserves a first author. Would you guys suggest me what to do next? I have talked to the PI but it seems like she didn't want to change anything.

@SolarMike The issue of an unwarranted authorship seems like a separate question from the central 1st-vs-2nd authorship (and if it is the question, then the question is certainly a duplicate and should be closed as such). But feel free to edit it back in, if you think it's critical.

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text:
Is it possible to get IRB approval after the fact?
Generally speaking, peer reviewed journals will not publish research on human subjects that did not receive IRB approval.
If a study was done without the proper IRB approval, but the study itself was ethical and clearly would have passed IRB approval if it had been properly submitted, is it generally possible to get a post-facto IRB approval that is sufficient to publish in most journals, or is the work forever "tainted"? Is the fact that post-facto IRB approval is not often considered an option because it literally isn't allowed, or because research conducted without IRB approval almost always contains ethical infirmities that would have prevented IRB approval from the start? In other words, is the requirement to obtain IRB approval truly a "You absolutely must have prior IRB approval", or is it really more like "You absolutely must not conduct research unethically, and obtaining prior IRB approval is part of Best Practices in accomplishing this, because nearly all proposals that you or I might come up with are actually unethical and we need the wisdom of the IRB to show us the light and put us on the right path. If you forgo prior approval, you are wading in crocodile-infested waters, and you will have no one to blame but yourself, not the IRB, not your mom, not your advisor, but only you yourself, if you get your leg bitten off"?
To be clear, I'm not asking whether it is possible to "whitewash" unethical research to make it look like no one was harmed when in fact people were harmed, but about institutional procedural violations in otherwise ethical research. I am well aware that one of the primary reasons for seeking prior IRB approval (other than because journals expect it) is to avoid committing unethical acts, so for the purpose of this question, assume that the researchers either just get lucky or are just so competent in ethical practice that their actual research demonstrates sublime virtue (just without IRB approval).
Clarification: Some people have seen fit to warn me that I am in danger of losing my job. I am not currently facing this issue. I'm simply curious as to what would happen or what typically happens in cases like these - that is, whether there are Best Practices on how to mitigate the fallout or even how serious it truly is - whether this is more of a "Calm down, it happens all the time, all you have to do is write an apology letter, sit through a five hour 'naughty, naughty bad boy, sit in the corner' lecture, be ritually spanked on the rear by your department head or the Dean, accept a 5% penalty pay cut for six months, and go through a retrospective IRB review." or a "Your career is doomed, don't dream of ever teaching or doing research ever again, you will be lucky if you ever find work cleaning floors."

It might be relevant why IRB approval wasn't obtained.  Did the researchers believe, reasonably and in good faith, that it wasn't needed? Did they try to get it, but unforeseen circumstances prevented the IRB from considering the case or giving approval? Or is it the case that they knew, or should have known, that it was required, but intentionally went ahead without it?

Can we please drop the "you're going to lose your job" talk and stop speculating on what the OP's circumstances are?  I received similar comments once, and it's upsetting and feels somewhat threatening.

@RebeccaJ.Stones your question was about wanting to make sure you did not break the rules, so suggesting you could get fired if you break the rules, seems unfair. Here, the rules have been broken and the OP mentions one relatively minor penalty. I thought it was important to point out there is a much larger potential penalty for breaking the rules.

It's also useful to know that the penalty could be that serious, because somebody at risk of losing their job would be well advised to stop and get advice from a lawyer and/or union rep before talking about the situation (it may well be defensible, it may well not be, but that's why you get the advice first), while somebody who just thinks they may have some unpublishable data could be make matters worse for themselves by walking into an investigation unaware of its seriousness.

As StrongBad has noted, publication is the least of one's worries in that particular context - you're talking about the kind of thing that people get fired for.
There's really no mechanism for "Oh, we totally would have approved this" post-hoc IRB approval. Indeed, there's an argument to be made that conducting the research without an IRB approval is inherently ethically suspect - in the same way that driving without a seatbelt on isn't only dangerous if you get in a car wreck. You are skipping the step meant to protect study subjects. That alone is a risk.
At this point in your scenario, the only real option is to seek the guidance of the IRB, and see what paths are available. This is absolutely one of those "This gets worse the longer it goes" situations.

"Indeed, there's an argument to be made that conducting the research without an IRB approval is inherently ethically suspect" That has been bugging me after reading the question. You can claim a study is ethical all you want, but if you're trying to get IRB approval after the fact, regardless of whether you would've got it had you done things in proper order, the study is suspicious already. It's done.

This could possibly happen when data collected for internal use is repurposed as part of a research study.
Institutional Review Boards are supposed to oversee research involving human subjects. Per 45 CFR §46.102, the relevant regulation in the US, defines research as:

(l) Research means a systematic investigation, including research
  development, testing, and evaluation, designed to develop or
  contribute to generalizable knowledge

The "generalizable" part means that organizations can collect data that might otherwise be covered if it's part of their regular operations. For example, a hospital might track post-operative infections by operating theatre for quality control. They could use this data to determine if staff need to be retrained, or if a specific operating room might be colonized with some bacteria. The critical point is that this information is specific to a particular place, surgical team, etc.
If you had a lot of this data, you might try to make more general statements. For example, you might want to build a regression model that predicts surgical outcomes so that you could argue that this type of surgical team, or that cleaning procedure should be used more wildly. This crosses the line into a research activity and needs IRB approval. Likewise, if the data isn't already being collected, you'll need IRB approval to start collecting it.
Nevertheless, you can request IRB approval to examine any existing records. This can be done after the records have already been collected for their non-research purpose, but should be done before starting the research part of the project.
This is the only example I can think of where an IRB retroactively "blesses" the use of previously collected. There are also some categories of "Exempt Research" per 45 CFR §46.104. However, our IRB--and I think this is pretty standard--claims that the IRB itself needs to determine that a proposed project matches one of those categories; you can't just opt yourself out.

The IRB needs to approve everything is a stupid model. If you want to do a computer simulation of where to store surgical supplies to minimize walking, my institution supposedly requires IRB approval since it is research. They then classify it exempt since it is not human subject research. Imagine what would happen if every math research project required an IRB determination.

When I wrote "The IRB oversees research", I meant to contrast it to QA (etc) activities. The IRB doesn't oversee all research, only research that involves human subjects; your optimization project seems like it shouldn't ever cross their desk.

Great answer and this is indeed an approach recommended in comments to a post complaining about unreasonable IRBs: What you do is you sweet talk the clinicians into using their medical judgement to adopt the form as part of their routine clinical practice and get them to include it as part of the patient’s medical records. Later… you approach the IRB for a retrospective chart review study and get blessed with waived consent. Bonus: very likely to also get expedited review.

The main purpose of an IRB is to protect human research subjects. If you are doing research, even a seemingly harmless questionnaire needs approval. If you are not doing research, you can give humans that same questionnaire  (and a lot worse). IRBs do not have a role in the use of humans in improving "process".
If you want to make your students happy, a department can give a questionnaire, swap out the water cooler with coffee and sugar and heavy metal music, repeat the questionnaire, then swap out with decaf coffee, artificial sweeteners, and classical music, and repeat the questionnaire again. This is a lot like a research project with key differences often being the lack of a randomized control group.
Under the guise of improved process, you can get away with a lot of things as long as you do not violate any laws or OSHA regulations. Companies do in house marketing studies all the time (do people like red or green or sweet or savory food, is this device too loud/quiet). As it is not research, it does not fall under the remit of an IRB.
Sometimes the data collected during this process evaluation look publishable. You might be able to publish them straight up, sometimes a journal will ask for IRB approval. In this case an IRB might grant you approval for a retrospective study. If the data however are deidentified, do not include any PHI/PII or biological, it might not be considered human use, and therefore the IRB would not have a role to play. The IRB might also decide that your process evaluation was in fact research. At that point they may decide you engaged in research misconduct. If that is the case, you could be in for a world of hurt.

"This is a lot like a research project with key differences often being the lack of a randomized control group." Are you suggesting a lack of a control group indicates IRB approval is not required? A bit confused by that whole paragraph actually.

The common rule includes an exception for research based on educational records that have already been collected for educational purposes (stuff like grades, course evaluation surveys, etc. could be used in this way.)  At the point that you decide you want to use the data for research rather than program assessment/improvement, you can file an IRB request asking for permission to use this already collected data in research.  The reasoning behind this is that the data would have been collected anyway for the educational purpose and that collection would have been exempt from the common rule.

@AzorAhai it is confusing because the definition of what is research is confusing. Two people can do the exact same thing to a set of individuals and in one case it is research and in the other it is not. A teacher giving an algebra  test and recording the scores in a spread sheet and calculating the mean and standard deviation is not doing research. A developmental psychologist doing this would quite possibly be classed as research.

Some of this depends on who is conducting the (non-)research. Reality television gets away with all kinds of things that any halfway-competent IRB would shut down immediately...which recently allowed some actual researchers to use data obtained through methods they never could have gotten approved up-front.

@StrongBad I'm afraid I don't understand your point any more

@AzorAhai-him- - The existence of a randomized control group is just an example of circumstances that will likely result in the situation ending up classified as unapproved research, rather than as non-research not requiring IRB oversight.  Another such example circumstance could be having the conclusions submitted for publication in a research journal before asking for determination or approval.

There is a lot of misinformation in the answers and comments on this page, so I would advise the OP and other readers to be cautious about accepting anything on the page (including my own answer) as accurate. Ask an IRB or research ethics professional. An honest one will direct you to a specific federal regulation, OHRP or SACHRP guidance document, or principle from an accepted code of ethics (Belmont Principles, Declaration of Helsinki, etc.) OR admit not knowing or not being sure of the specific citation. For example, one commenter states, "Announced 2018, and phasing in by early 2019, the rules were changed by HHS so that PIs can self determine for certain exemptions." This is patently false. HHS made no such change.
Federal regulations did not before the revisions to the Common Rule, and do not now,

specify who at an institution may determine that research is exempt
under 45 CFR 46.101(b). 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.

Specifying who has authority to make such determinations is thus left up to institutions. The vast majority of IRBs do not allow investigators to make this determination.
Similarly, the regulations do not provide an exhaustive list of what penalties to impose for a failure to submit a protocol to the IRB before conducting human subjects research. I'm not sure they provide any list at all (and it's difficult to provide a citation for what doesn't exist), though, if memory serves, for research conducted or supported by a federal department, they do have reporting requirements (to that department and/or the OHRP) for serious or continuing noncompliance and in some circumstances this topic falls under that category. Again, the specific corrections and penalties are left to the discretion of the institution (except in cases in which reporting to the OHRP is required and the OHRP requires suspension or cessation of research activity). Institutions commonly employ a number of sanctions, varying in severity, e.g., requiring re-consenting or re-contacting to get consent, blocking funding, requiring remedial training for the protection of human subjects, suspension of that research or all research by that PI, refusing to accept theses or dissertations (for students) based on that research, etc.
Again, don't rely on my answer, check my citations and check with an IRB or research ethics professional, preferably one at your institution. You might also try looking for answers on IRB Forum or SBER Network, two discussion communities on PRIM&R's website. They require registration on the site, but I believe they are free. Many of the posters are experienced professionals.

Many US journals demand a statement to the effect of "This research was conducted under the ethical principles of the Belmont Report", and European journals would ask for adherence to the Declaration of Helsinki.  At the very least, Journals often ask for the name of the IRB, and IRB's hold to Belmont or Helsinki standards for medical research.
My understanding is that both guidelines require outside review before you "do stuff" to human subjects, and that if the outside review was not conducted, you don't meet the guidelines.  You can't just go to the IRB for a do-over -- the violation has already happened.
I recommend a conversation with your IRB.  There will be grey areas.  I know one facility that required IRB review for beta testing software (!!!!!) but most IRBs would scoff at the idea.

I've never seen anything about the Belmont Report before. It's usually "This research was approved by the Institutional
Review Board at the University of X"

I think this is a massive over statement. Not all human subject research is medical so the DoH does not apply. The DoH 2013 requires preregistration, which most fields are not equipped to deal with. Even in medical fields it is not uncommon to see research complying with DoH 2013 except for pre registration ... or new research only complying with DoH 2008.

@AzorAhai  First Journal I tried:  Brain Research  "Policy and ethics
The work described in your article must have been carried out in accordance with The Code of Ethics of the World Medical Association (Declaration of Helsinki) for experiments involving humans"

Second Journal, J Neurophys:  The research described in papers submitted to any of the APS publications that involve the use of human beings, including healthy volunteers, should be conducted according to high standards of safety and ethics. We expect that all studies adhere to the requirements of the U.S. Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects (45 CFR, Part 46), and support the general ethical principles of the Declaration of Helsinki.

@ScottSeidman I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just saying statements I see in publications more often are "This research was approved by the Institutional Review Board at the University of X" rather than anything about the Belmont Report or Declaration of Helsinki.


text:
Can an article published in a non-peer reviewed venue later undergo peer review?
As we all know, once a paper has been published in some form (whether or not in a peer-reviewed format), most journals will balk at the idea of publishing it again. Does this apply solely to publishing a work, or does this also apply to the entire idea of peer review?
If someone has already published a finding in a non-peer reviewed venue (e.g. popular magazine, trade paperback, newspaper, radio broadcast, etc.), and then later realizes that the findings would have been significant enough for a scientific publication, is there a process by which they can "go back" and get the peer review that they realize they should have gotten? E.g. a person could then claim:

I published this in 2015 as an article in The New York Times, but in 2018 I paid Science $10,000 to peer review it and they gave me a piece of paper saying that it is 100% Genuine Science (TM) and would have been published by them had it not already been published elsewhere. For this reason, my article can be cited as a peer-reviewed paper (or "equivalency") and should count toward qualifying for faculty positions, even if Science did not actually physically publish it. Please cite me as "Columbia, R. (2015 Jan 12), Radical Deconstruction of Spline Reticulation in Eightspace with reference to Post-Modern Patriarchy, New York Times, Peer Reviewed Science Aug 6, 2018."

Is there a general procedure for handling such cases? Will a journal do this if you pay them a reasonable amount of money to cover expenses and profit? Are there non-publishing academic institutions that specialize in the service of peer reviewing existing publications and giving them their Stamp of Good Science Approval? Is this technically possible but extremely rare or nearly unheard-of?
I found this question : Can non-peer-reviewed work be recognized by the community? , but it seems to more be asking about getting non-peer reviewed results de-facto accepted by the scientific community over time rather than about how to get a formal one-and-done post-publication peer review.
In summary, I'm not asking whether or not a paper already published in a non-peer reviewed venue can later be published in a peer-reviewed journal. I'm asking whether or not a paper already published in a non-peer reviewed venue can later receive peer review and be "upgraded" in status to a "real" academic publication without needing to be republished. Whether or not any particular non-peer reviewed publication meets, or even has a remote chance of meeting, the standards of peer review is out of scope.

I haven't heard of this happening, but I suspect what would happen in your example is that the author would write an "extended" version of the article, perhaps including a few additional results or more details.  They could submit it to Science or wherever, which would review it like any other paper.  It's not duplicate publication because it's a different paper, and Science would likely still consider it "novel" because it hasn't been published in an academic journal.
They should certainly inform Science of the previous publication, but I don't think it'd be a barrier to republication if the paper really was good, and if the additional content was substantial.
In practice, it'd be necessary to rewrite the paper anyway, because the audiences and the expectations of the outlets would be completely different.  The New York Times wouldn't want a paper full of technical details, and Science would insist on having the technical details.
If there were copyright issues (e.g. the Times held the copyright and wouldn't give permission to publish an adapted version in Science), then the author could rewrite the text of the paper.  This makes it a different work for copyright purposes even if they both describe the same results.
I've never heard of any system of "certifying" a previously published article as peer reviewed, like you suggest.  However, there is the somewhat related concept of an overlay journal, in which the journal effectively "certifies" a preprint.  The journal provides the peer review, while arXiv provides the hosting.


text:
What should I do if my advisor insists on being first author, in violation of my field's conventions?
My advisor obligate me to put her name first author name in my publication. What are the possible pros and cons of this order? What should I do if my advisor insists on being first author, in violation of my field's conventions? My field is IT.

Does your advisor's name come before yours alphabetically (if authors are ordered alphabetically in your field)? Did your advisor contribute the most to the paper (if authors are ordered by contribution in your field)?

Also related: What does first authorship really mean?

@ff524 No, the order is not alphabetically and the advisor had the minimum contribution in the paper.

sometimes a professor will use their power to inflate the nature of their contribution to a publication to which their contribution was secondary.  the first author is the primary author.  that person should be familiar with every detail in the paper and should be the person contacted by other researchers interested.

Then perhaps you should change your question to: "What should I do if my advisor insists on being first author, in violation of my field's conventions?" (I'm not aware of any field with an advisor-first convention. What is your field?)

P.S. I can also tell you what the answer will be to that question: Run. Don't walk.

On further research, turns out I was wrong about there being no convention that orders PIs first: there is in organic chemistry. Anyways, this definitely violates convention in IT.

The real issue is that the correct prior guiding your interaction with your supervisor should be "your success is their success". If you feel that this is not the framework in which your PhD is being supervised, then you  have a more global problem. If not, then one paper might not be as critical as you currently feel?

Nominating for reopening, as "what if my advisor insists on being first author" is a different question from "who should be first author"

This is not a duplicate question. The bit about pros and cons are duplicated elsewhere—as indicated above—but the question of how to handle the PI insisting on first-author status is not. Voting to reopen.

I say this a lot, but this is why you should talk about authorship early and often.

I have unfortunately seen these kinds of shenanigans before, so: know you are not alone, whatever cold comfort that may be.
This situation has no "pro," and has the following significant "con:" you are not getting the credit you deserve for your work. In fields where author lists are not ordered alphabetically, order is used to signify the author's contributions to the paper, and first-author papers are much more important for things like hiring and promotions.
I suggest the following steps.
1. Talk to your advisor
Maybe this is just a misunderstanding, or there are other variables in play you're not aware of (unlikely, but possible - see this question).  Have a conversation with your advisor to see if you can clear this up.
Here's your opener:

I thought that in IT, usually the student who did most of the work is the first author and the advisor is the last - this is the case in all the papers I have read. Why do you propose a different order?

2. Run, don't walk
This behavior is typically an indication that either

your advisor is completely unaware of conventions in your field (charitable interpretation), or
your advisor is aware of the authorship conventions and is deliberately violating them to your disadvantage, which is extremely unethical behavior.

In either case, this means that your advisor is simply unsuitable to be an advisor, to anyone, and you should find another one as soon as humanly possible.
3. If all else fails
If you are stuck with this advisor for some reason1, be prepared for a very bumpy ride. This is not likely to be the last stunt he/she pulls.
However, you can at least try to argue your case: there is some advice on the subject here, although that question does not specifically address the case where the advisor is demanding first authorship for him/herself.

1This site is full of students who insist on staying with a completely unsuitable advisor, for one reason or another. I suspect Stockholm syndrome.

in all fairness, there's a lot of fear about leaving advisors. And given the power that an advisor has over a student, it's not an unreasonable fear. But I agree that the fear is often exaggerated.

There's also the "sunk cost" problem—the effort's already been spent; why start over?

One point: the advisor may feel that his contribution is more significant, which the advisee may not realize. We aren't always in the best position to recognize our own contributions. This is why step one is necessary.

@ff524 you might want to modify slightly your answer to underline that step one might suffice?

If you are stuck with this advisor for some reason. Maybe the reason is not Stockholm syndrome, but not wanting to delay graduation by a few years (in the optimistic case)? I know students who changed their PhDs, but it was for much more serious reasons than the order of authorship (I don't claim that the situation is healthy, though).

Beyond "sunk cost" there is the "endowment effect". Even if in fact the costs are not sunk, and the student's progress could be mostly transferred to a new advisor, humans still have a cognitive bias to over-rate the value an asset they have compared with assets they could acquire. In fact since an as-yet-untried asset has an expected value with greater variance than the tried-and-not-good asset this isn't necessarily irrational, just as betting your house on the roll of a dice with 7-1 odds isn't necessarily wise :-)

... where Stockholm Syndrome comes in is if the student is incapable of even recognising how far their current advisor is below average, so they can't just say the reason they don't want to switch is that they're risk-averse.

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How long and detailed should be the rejection comment when reviewing and rejecting a paper?
If someone is a reviewer and recommends major revisions to a medical journal paper, the review can be quite lengthy. (e.g., list of 10-15 points to work on)
On the other hand, how detailed should be the rejection review. Are you expected to provide more than 2 paragraphs justification for the rejection?
Is there any study on length of reviews that reject the paper. I would guess it would be most likely under 2 paragraphs of text. Is that correct?

Short answer: I think it is very disrespectful (or not good) to reject a paper by writing one single paragraph. If a reviewer thinks that there are obvious flaws that cannot be described clearly, then the reviewer shall simply not review the paper.
The reviewer may have not understood the paper well: Personally, many times I get a first negative impression of a paper. I try then to write a summary of the paper. Then I realize that "Oh the author meant this !" or "Oh, this actually works !" -- this usually lead me to realize at the end that the paper is good.
The authors spent a lot of time writing the paper (they are looking for constructive comments most of the time): From another point of view, put yourself in the authors shoes. They have spent a lot of time (obviously) writing the paper. They are smart people (otherwise, they would have not reached this level to write a paper). Then obviously, there is something to get from them.  If the reviewer thinks that this is not enough, then strong comments should be written. In any case, a reviewer should spend a relatively long period of time in each page of the paper.
The reviewer may not have treated the problem from all perspectives:
Note also that - in some cases - the reviewer may have experienced the problem from one single perspective, whereas the paper attacks the problem from a different perspective. Treating a problem with a different perspective is the best way to solve the problem IMHO. It only enriches the literature.

This is a good answer and should be recommended reading for all new reviewers or inexperienced researchers.  Having said that, papers that I'm reviewing must have a minimum level of quality.  Otherwise, my comments can be summed up as 'come back when you know how to do research or learn the basics' or write proper English sentences.

A rejection recommendation should contain a strong and clear motivaton for what is failing in the reviewed manuscript (MS). Since it is not up to the reviewer to make decisions, any review will be a recommendation to an editor. Therefore, a review of the MS should be made to point out the perceived shortcomings of the MS. A review which essentially contains only a recommendation to reject is most likely not considered by the editor since it will be unclear why such a decision should be made.
So as a reviewer you should make a normal review and point out the weaknesses of the MS.
An editor should normally make sure a MS is ready for review before sending it out for review, but mistakes may happen. I think it is fair to leave detailed comments and focus on the larger issues that you think makes the MS unpublishable.

I am not in a medical field and my experience is limited to being a reviewer for a good journal in my field (computing and information science) for the past 2 years. I am also not aware of any studies on journal reject recommendation lengths so my answer is anecdotal and personal. With this disclaimer, I would like to say that the true answer is probably, it depends.
Personally, I have always given a list of points where I have found a paper lacking and elaborated upon them in great detail. Even if the paper is really bad, i.e from the introduction itself you can make out that you are going to recommend a reject for it, I think it my duty provide as much honest and constructive feedback that I possibly can. This is because peer reviewing comes under the third pillar of the academic tripod - service (with the other two being teaching and research). Maybe its because I am not a very experienced reviewer or I only review 1-2 papers at a time or I have more time than most to devote to this. This has been my personal, limited experience. I do not think that one can generalize here.
I am sure others will weigh in on this in meaningful ways.

I would say that it is highly field dependent and also dependent on how long the manuscript itself is. A 3 page short note is going to have a longer revision/rejection comment than a 50 page monograph almost by definition.
What I've noticed is that in practice there is almost no difference between a "major revisions" and "rejection" comment except for the final recommendation by the author. The purpose of a review is supposed to be to show the author where . If a manuscript is rejected (say, because it was submitted to a journal that is not high-impact enough or contains major flaws that could theoretically be rectified), it is still very helpful to the authors to know why it is rejected so they can revise their manuscript accordingly if they plan to resubmit.
A short rejection note could also be interpreted as the reviewer could not be bothered enough to read the entire manuscript. Whereas a long rejection note shows that you read the paper and the problems are extensive enough that the manuscript cannot be salvaged through revision. The way you get around the potential downside of your most salient points potentially being lost is to put your main criticisms up front and in the first paragraph if possible.


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How can I determine whether a conference is reputable?
I recently received an invitation to a conference and I'm trying to determine how reputable it is. Is there a good way to go about this?

You cannot decide whether a conference is reputable based on where it is indexed.  Some indexes try to avoid indexing anything with too bad a reputation, but the evidence you would get from this is very minor at best.  (Also, the arxiv is not an index.)

After the edits, it's not clear what the desired information is.  It starts out by asking a general question about determining conference quality, and then focuses on indexing, which is only very tenuously related.

@AnonymousMathematician - I agree. I tried to keep from editing the original question too much, but I think he is asking two separate questions here.

If it advertise with benefits you are not aware of, it's most likely scam (or off-topic; or the organizers are totally clueless).

If they are offering you free attendance, and you just have to pay for the accommodation, then beware as it might be a "scamference".  The conference does not exist.  And neither does the accommodation.

ask you peers, colleagues and supervisor.

I'm assuming you are really asking how to check whether a conference is reputable (meaning not a scam), not how to check whether a conference is actually good.
Short answer: If you don't recognize the conference or its organizers, stay away.
You should already know a relatively short list of established, reputable conferences in your research area.  If you don't, ask your advisor to give you such a list.  (If your advisor doesn't know, you need a new advisor.)
If this conference isn't on that list, it might still be reputable, but either very new or slightly outside your research area.  In that case, take a serious look at the organizing committee.  If the members of the organizing committee are well-known active researchers, the conference is probably fine.  Otherwise, it's probably a scam.
You mention that you were invited to submit to the conference.  At least in computer science, such invitations are almost unheard of; conferences are normally advertised by impersonal calls for papers.  Did the invitation come from someone you already know, at least professionally?  Does the invitation mention specific technical details of your work (more than just a paper title)?  If you answered "No" to both these questions, the conference is almost certainly a scam.

I am not sure whether "If you don't recognize the conference or its organizers, stay away." is a good advice. Especially when one is not "years in a field" there is a big chance that there are people one does not know, or conferences about which one have never heard (especially as (at least in my field) it is very common to have a new conference, especially when smaller one). So I wouldn't consider it as a guideline.  Sure, when after googling organizers don't do serious work in one's field, it is scam (or off-topic).

Perhaps I should say "if you and your advisor..."  Your advisor has been years in the field; it's part of their job to be well-connected, precisely to help you make judgments like this. I'm also assuming that Google is part of your researcher-recognition algorithm.

Given that at least predatory publishers lie about their editors, I would not be surprised if the people behind scam conferences lie about the organising committee or similar.

@Wrzlprmft I suspect that's is more a concern in principle than in practice.  I have yet to see a scam conference whose organizing committee contained more than a tiny fraction of well-known active researchers.  Being a member of a conference committee is an important promotion milestone, which conference scammers are all too happy to provide.

@Wrzlprmft:  Yes.  If you'd like to see an example in which a scam conference lied about the members of the organizing committee, please see this link. In fact, that scam conference also claimed to have been "sponsored" by GSK and Merck, and featured their logos on its convincing-looking website.

What I usually do is look at the list of speakers in the current and past years. If the conference is in my field, I usually can tell if the speakers are well-known and what the level of the conference will be. If the conference is not in my field, I google some of the speakers and check out their websites to get an impression.
Another thing which is often helpful to do, is to simply ask someone with knowledge of the field which conferences are good.

In addition to the other answers, it's worth taking a close look at conferences that tick several of these boxes (although some may turn out to be OK on further inspection). These can be warning signs of conferences that are basically scams, or that will be a waste of your time/money/energy.
Items 2-5 are indicators of insufficient peer review, and are problematic only for conferences that claim to publish peer-reviewed proceedings.
Items 6-9 are warning signs that the aim of the conference organizers is profits, not academics.

Organizers, program committee members, or keynote speakers are not established researchers in the field (as per some of the other answers on this page).
It has an extremely short review period (e.g. submissions due November 1, author notification November 10).
You receive reviews that are very short and/or don't say anything insightful about the paper.
The technical program committee is small, but the conference accepts hundreds of papers.
If the conference proceedings are published or indexed by a well-known publisher, look at past editions of the proceedings and check if multiple papers have been retracted or withdrawn for plagiarism and/or for being computer generated.
The scope of the conference is extremely broad, such that people who work in one of the areas of interest are not likely to be interested in presentations from the other areas (this can be a tactic to get a lot of submissions, at the expense of conference quality).
The conference organizer also organizes many other conferences, on a very diverse range of unrelated topics.
The organizer holds many conferences on unrelated topics at the same time and place.
The organizer is also associated with one or more predatory journals, or selected papers from the conference are published in a predatory journal.

Note: This answer was merged from a duplicate question.
The previously-referenced post on detecting predatory journals is helpful, but incomplete. The duplicate question asked about conferences which were overt about accepted papers being able to be published in conference proceedings with an ISBN. While I cannot speak for all fields, I can say that in social sciences and statistics, that description alone sounds like a low-quality conference.
In my experience, there are a few markers ("red flags") for low-quality conferences. This list is by no means canonical, but is based on over a decade of my experience.
The first red flag is the note that accepted papers will be published in conference proceedings with an ISBN or ISSN number. Sure, some very good conferences allow for dual submission to a journal or a journal publishes conference proceedings. However, the explicit mention of an ISBN number (often required by accreditors for a professor to remain academically qualified) is something I have seen only at low-quality conferences. Good conferences know that you may want to publish your work elsewhere and assume you are not desperate for any publication. (Caveat: Some fields like engineering tend to publish their work more as conference papers or in proceedings. In those cases, the overt mention of publishing in proceedings may not be a red flag.)
The second red flag is when a conference folds many costs into a high registration fee. This can let dishonest academics claim a food per diem while the "registration fee" can be paid out of a research budget even though that fee also covers food and parties. I'm not talking about a $150 fee; rather, I have seen conferences with a $750 or $1000 fee which covers swanky parties. Most serious researchers getting their work into more than a couple of conferences won't want to blow their research budget on one conference with a bunch of parties. (Besides, most academics can make party enough talking with other academics over some wine or beer.)
The third red flag is the conference's call for papers: if they spam people with the CFP and the deadline does not allow much time for review, that's likely a low-quality conference.
A fourth red flag is if the conference has an unusually broad focus. Some big conferences may cover a wide range of topics; however, you probably already know the reputable big conferences which do that. Less well-known conferences tend to be more focused.
A fifth red flag is if the conference is held in a nice and unusual place. Sure, lots of conferences are in nice places to attract academics, but I'm talking about unusual places like a conference on a cruise ship or a tropical island with no local university. If there is no local academic community organizing the conference, the expected quality is lower.
Suppose a conference does not raise any (or many) of these red flags. How can further check the quality? Usually, this is easy: see who the organizers are and look for prior year agendas to see if there are many good academics presenting (or people from industry/government, in some fields). Essentially, check if the organizers and presenters are people you would want to see and comment on your work. If those people are there, you probably also should want to be there. If none of the names are familiar, you may want to consider if that is a good outlet for getting feedback.
Finally, you ask if you can submit your work to the proceedings and then later extend the work and submit it to a journal. Sadly, that depends on the journal and I do know of people who were told their work could not be accepted since most of it had been published earlier in conference proceedings.

+1, good list. In addition to checking the names of past attendees, you can add checking the names of the organizers.

@FedericoPoloni That is an excellent point. Added that (and noted some fields get. people from government/industry since your point made me think of that). Thank you!

You identify some good points here, but I have to strongly disagree with many of your characterizations. In particular, fields with archival conference publications are the norm in some communities. Fees in the range you describe are quite common for flagship conferences for a field, as are non-university destinations (especially when operating at a scale for which the conference organizing committee is drawn from a national or international society and the number of attendees requires a real convention center rather than some classrooms).

My first line states "While I cannot speak for all fields, I can tell you that in social sciences and statistics...." The poster is in math, so the norms of statistics are more likely to hold. I know that in engineering, conference presentations and papers are more the accepted norm for scholarship. As for fees... while large conferences may have large fees, I have never seen a large conference with a fee of $1000. Even the (huge) Joint Statistical Meetings only reaches $700 for nonmembers -- while members pay around $500.

Maybe I will add to JeffE’s answer. I agree with him that, in your field, you probably have established your own list of reputable conferences after a few years. However, it does happen that you get invited or submit a paper to a conference that's outside your natural “comfort zone”. One reason is because of a joint work with other authors from that area, another may be that you are shifting the focus of your research, or you published a paper that has potential applications in another field.
Anyway, if that happens, you want to check out the organizers and speakers (keynote speakers if it's a large conference). One or two serious people doesn't mean anything though, especially if the conference is held in an attractive touristic area (Caribbean islands?). Some people accept conferences that they know are not good, if they see a nice opportunity for a holiday in them. However, if half the organizers or speakers are well known, or have well established research groups, then you're probably good to go.

Looking at the program committee, organizers, other presenters (e.g. keynote speakers) and what work they've done is one helpful approach.  Asking your advisor is often quite useful.
Also consider if you've read papers from that venue in the past and found them helpful enough and high-quality enough to be citing / using as a basis for your work.
Finally, there's the Computing Research & Education conference ranking portal here which might be another signal to consider.

I think, they shuffled the urls a bit and the homepage is now here http://www.core.edu.au/conference-portal

One answer that I'm missing above is quantitative methods (as for example used for journals in other fields). This less common for conferences but also exists e.g. via Google Scholar. For example if you're looking for top conferences in AI:
https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=top_venues&hl=en&vq=eng_artificialintelligence