text:
Can I call out a researcher for using Maple without citing it?
I am currently reviewing a theoretical CS paper that is incredibly technical and mathematical. I’ve been reviewing the paper for longer than a year now, and I am finally recommending the paper to be accepted as I believe that it is a significant push in a certain problem in my subfield.
However, there are numerous instances in the paper where the researcher evaluates closed form formulas for integrals/summations that are incredibly difficult to do by hand (they involve extremely complex substitutions/transformations/algebraic manipulation/ and quite frankly, non “human-like” steps). Just as an experiment, I plugged in one of the integrals into maple and it gave me the exact same steps in their proof. I found three such occurences where the integrals/summations proofs are simply copied from maple.
I’m inclined to call out the researcher on this, but I have no evidence except what I’ve presented here. What makes me more frustrated is that I wouldn’t have changed my acceptance decision in the slightest had he simply quoted the integral/summation with a note that it was simply evaluated/verified in Maple. Should I just skip this from my review and focus on more important aspects of the paper?

@Roland I want to write that, but I simply don’t have enough evidence to back that up. They could argue they reached those exact steps independently..

Good points. Thanks both. Feel free to change your comments to answers. I’ll most likely go with Roland’s message + Ben’s hedge

Why should a commercial product need a citation? Any commercial product? Word? Win11?

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/71536/20058

Some good discussion here; I have preserved the most important bits and moved the rest to chat. Please use the chat for future discussion; comments below this one should conform to this FAQ

There was some discussion below (on one of the answers) that we should perhaps separate the two issues of (1) whether the authors did anything wrong, and (2) whether "calling them out" is an appropriate response to a perceived transgression. At this point I think the question stands as-is, just documenting this discussion for posterity.

Maybe it’s a generational thing, and maybe my mind is playing tricks on me, but I get the impression that young people today are very quick to “call out” other people for actions that they perceive as moral transgressions of various sorts, where in fact those actions range a wide spectrum from actually ethically problematic behavior, to mild sloppiness, ignorance or negligence, to “offenses” that exist strictly in the imagination of the person doing the calling out.
This can get a bit tiresome.
My suggestion is that you try to adopt the habit of assuming the best about people’s intentions until they leave you no choice. If they do X, don’t immediately jump to the worst possible explanation as to what their motivation was for for doing it. And don’t immediately assume that everyone has (or should have) the same beliefs or moral code as you about every single thing, including such head-scratching, esoteric questions such as whether Maple should be cited for the steps of evaluating an integral. (Edit: this paragraph is addressing some things said by OP in comments which were later deleted, so it may sound off the mark to some. I’m leaving it here to preserve some of the context of my original answer.)
Is it appropriate to point out that it might be advisable to cite Maple for those calculations, if indeed the authors of the paper used Maple? Yes, sure, that certainly sounds like a way of making yourself helpful as a reviewer. But “calling out”? No, I think that phrase and action are sadly overused these days, and should be reserved for much more problematic circumstances.
Edit: I gave some thought to the question of whether it’s actually necessary to cite Maple for the calculations you mentioned. The thing to keep in mind is that there is a well-developed theory of symbolic integration, with standard algorithms that are implemented in the major CAS packages. I don’t know enough about Maple to know whether it also has some additional, especially novel, proprietary algorithms that make it possible for it to evaluate integrals that other packages can’t. But in the current case that doesn’t sound so relevant; the main point is that these days there is no great honor to be had among mathematicians for the “discovery” of how to evaluate a given integral, assuming the steps do not involve some highly non-standard transformation or technique. These days if someone says “I evaluated this integral, here are the steps”, no one will care very much how they found the steps, since it is assumed that they relied on known techniques (and software tools implementing those techniques) unless that’s clearly not the case. The situation is very much analogous to writing out the numerical value of the square root of some number without explaining what brand of calculator you used. No one thinks that calculators deserve special mention for knowing how to calculate a square root.
The bottom line is, if the Maple integral evaluations used standard techniques that are widely known in symbolic integration circles, I don’t think the researcher has a special duty to cite the software. It may be nice of them to do it, and it may even make their paper a bit better if they did, but from an ethical point of view, I don’t see the lack of a citation as a major issue.

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

The continued discussion here raised a potentially good point about the need to separate (1) reviewing CASs and (2) the social aspect of "calling out" colleagues; I have consolidated this discussion as a new comment on the main post.

If the proofs are short enough one can verify them by hand, then I view using a computer algebra package similarly to using a calculator or dictionary.  I think citing is optional.
On the other hand, if someone says "routine use of the trig formulas and standard calculus" will solve this equation, and it turns about to be 200 pages of computer generated formulas are needed, then the source code should be available and the computer algebra package cited.
You are free to suggest the paper would be better if it mentioned the use of a computer package.  I do not think "calling them out" is appropriate.
Also, if there are more natural proofs, then the authors should be encouraged to spend a little time looking for them.  There are lots of proofs that are generated by humans that are awkward, unnatural and hard to follow.  It is not always worth it to spend a month to find a nicer proof.

Agree especially with your last paragraph. A colleague reported to have submitted an (later influential) paper, only to get reviewer's response to simplify the (very technical and convoluted) proofs. He responded with "Yes, happy to do so. Do you see any way how?" The reviewer gave up and accepted the proofs as is ...

The proofs of each of these integrals is almost 2 pages of really heavy workout. My main disagreement is that the authors claim that these proofs are their contributions, when in fact, they are not. They are quite literally copy pasted from the CAS with minor "explaining notes" added in-between steps.

I think their contribution is in finding the proofs.  You may want to suggest a better style, but I see no ethical issues.

@TerryLoring Just to clarify, a CAS is able to give you a step by step solution for an integral. For example, Integrating xsin(x), it would tell you first integrate by parts, then use this rule, etc. The CAS can give you an entire proof for the integral all the way to the closed form. The "proof" they wrote, is quite literally the steps given by Maple, while claiming it is theirs. How is this them "finding the proofs"?

Nobody knew the proof until they used the CAS.  They discovered it.  If the proof is human-checkable, who cares?  You can suggest a better writeup, but many will find it wrong if you say they are being dishonest.

Alright, I reflected on this a bit and I think you're right. I might've overreacted. While the exact steps are not entirely theirs, the result was not known prior to them proving the lemma.

Ok, but on the other hand --- it seems you find this paper hard to read, and you think a mention of the CAS could help.   Say something like that, and see if you can get this to be a better paper.

As @Roland says, there's no harm in stating your observation. You can easily frame your suggestion so that there's no problem if you turn out to be wrong, e.g.

The paper presents complex algebraic solutions without comment (steps x, y, and z) that were likely done with the aid of a computer algebra system (such as Maple). If this is indeed the case, the authors should cite the software used.

As @DaveLRenfro comments, you could also point out that you were unable to reproduce/verify the results by hand/without a CAS (but maybe the authors are just way better at integration than you are ...). If the authors want to double down and say "no, we did these by hand", that's their problem.

If the OP is worried about the authors' doubling down, maybe say instead: "The paper presents complex algebraic solutions without comment (steps x, y, and z) that the reviewer was not able to verify except with the aid of a computer algebra system such as Maple. If the authors used a computer algebra system for these, then the authors should cite the software used."

You probably also want to include a note to the editor why you think this is the case

@DaveLRenfro This should be an answer. Note that maybe other Computer Algebra systems may give the same answer, so it does not have to be Maple. OP should refrain from specifying a particular product. Maybe they used Wolfram Alpha, which would mean it's even an internet service.

@CaptainEmacs that's why my answer said "such as" ...

@BenBolker You did indeed, I overlooked it. Given that, maybe put it in brackets. I might also consider adding reproducibility as an additional argument why this is important.

@Captain Emacs: What I wrote is nearly identical to what Ben Bolker wrote, so I don't think what I wrote merits a separate answer. My slight revision was only to indicate how the reviewer might introduce a bit of added pressure on the author(s) to be more explicit about how the computations were done.

I would say it really depends on the circumstances.
I am one of the developers of Maxima, and I also routinely use Maxima in calculations employed in physics papers. Maple, too, and occasionally, Mathematica.
Computer algebra can be used for trivial things. By way of an admittedly trivial example, I may run into a trigonometric expression like 4*sin(x)^3-3 sin(x), which looks vaguely familiar, so without giving it a second thought, I'd feed it to Maxima, radcan(trigreduce(4*sin(x)^3-3*sin(x))), and presto, I get -sin(3*x) which goes into my paper. Would I mention that I used Maxima for this? No more than I'd mention that I used a calculator to calculate, say, 10/7 = 1.4286. Same goes for relatively straightforward integrals and other simplifications, even if the intermediate results are difficult for humans to keep track of.
The one potential issue with this is that computer algebra systems are programmed by humans (like yours truly) and may not be free of bugs. But that is kind of a user beware thing; it is best to check critical results by recalculating them in more ways than one, perhaps using more than one computer algebra system. In the end, it's no different from making a mistake when doing calculations on paper: always double check your critical results!
In short, in these situations I would not cite the use of computer algebra or expect, as a reviewer, an author to cite its use.
The situation is very different when the use of the computer algebra system is more elaborate. When it's not a single command line but a lengthy, elaborate program in that computer algebra system, designed to set up, solve, and simplify a problem. In that case, yes, I'd very much expect not so much a cited reference to Maple (or whichever CAS is used) but perhaps the actual computer algebra code included in the paper as an appendix with a brief explanation or, if it is too lengthy to be included, then deposited in a public archive and referenced. Otherwise there is no reproducibility: how do we even know that the program (perhaps written by a researcher with limited programming experience as his expertise lies elsewhere) is even correct?
From the wording of the question, however, I get the impression that it is a case of the first variety: the question itself suggests that once the reviewer recognized that the solution was likely obtained using Maple, he was able to obtain the same result with ease.
So no, the simple fact that a result was copied from Maple is not a reason to cite Maple, just as copying a result from the display of a calculator is not a reason to mention that calculator.

It seems like you are treating this as a homework assignment where the instructor said "all work must be done by hand", but then someone went and did all of the work with a calculator. While doing the work with a calculator would be wrong in that instance, here I don't see what the issue is.
Coming from a physics/mathematical modeling background, I have seen countless papers write out derivations of equations where huge steps are left out or only briefly described. Never once have I ever seen a paper say "we did all of this work by hand", or, "we used Maple, Mathematica, etc. to make sure we did our math correctly". You just assume the math was done correctly, and you don't really care about how it was explicitly done.
The only reason I can see this mattering is if the method of "evaluating closed form formulas for integrals/summations" was the whole point of the paper, but the results were actually obtained a different way. e.g. the authors claim to use their new method/algorithm, but really they just plugged things into Maple, then that would definitely be dishonest. But if the equations are just being used for other things and the derivation is not the point of the paper, then I honestly don't see how they got the derivation done matters at all.
So I will agree with others; there is no need to call anyone out. From what I can tell nothing bad is going on. The most I would do is just suggest giving credit to any software that was used.

My experience in physics is that more reasonable phrasings like "checked using Mathematica up to N=20" or "evaluated using Mathematica" are used occasionally. That said, my hope/impression is that the refereeing standards for proofs, perhaps especially in pure math and theoretical CS, are a little stricter than "just assuming the math was done correctly"...

In my view, how the authors obtained the derivation does matter for auditing purposes.  Suppose that the authors of a given paper do write something along the lines of "we used function f in Maple". Suppose further that, years later, it is found that Maple's function f improperly implemented some symbolic algorithm. If the TeX files were in arXiv and their authors had the good taste and the foresight of documenting which functions they used, then it should be relatively easy to discover all papers that used function f and notify their authors that they might want to revise them.

Common mathematic techniques are not special because of who carries them out. If the steps are valid, that's all that matters. It looks like those are all mechanical transformations that by themselves don't make the paper special. It's just usual mathematical drudgery that has to be done correctly, but otherwise is of no importance to the novelty of approach. That Maple or some other CAS actually "did it" doesn't change anything whatsoever. The steps in a proof stand on their own.
Now, the CAS may be implementing some special algorithm for a tricky class of integrals etc., that may be unique, new enough and citeable, but 1) the help pages for the functions used would probably document that if indeed the algorithm was special enough to warrant that, and 2) figuring out that any particular algorithm actually got used requires way more investigation than is warranted in such a paper - CAS systems won't normally tell you what algorithms they used (here: "algorithms" = "citations to where said algorithms got published first"). You'd have to ask a specialist in CAS algorithms to take a look at what was done by the CAS, and whether there's anything there that's cool/interesting enough that a citation would be warranted. Otherwise you may as well be citing dozens of foundational CAS algorithms. So that's not really feasible.
Citing the CAS as a whole is like "citing" someone who checked your computations. You can thank or acknowledge them - sure, but you won't be citing it.
I think that the idea of calling someone out for using a CAS the way others use a calculator is mostly preposterous because it is absolutely unproductive. At the end of the day, nobody gets any value out of it. The reason for citations is to let others learn more about what the paper is built on, and to give due credit. When it comes to using common technical software, credit is usually given in hard currency... and that's all that's needed unless the software is specialized. CAS isn't really. Entirely mechanical, "garden variety" tools like CAS are not exactly a dime a dozen, but how would citing them help, and moreover how would "calling someone out" over it help anyone? It just sours things up. I fully expect that anyone wanting to reproduce or fully grok the results in the paper will have to know enough that knowing how to use a CAS, and which CAS may be sufficient for the task, will be the least of anyone's concerns.
If the paper built some derivation specifically on the "extraneous" aspects of the CAS system, e.g. if its approach integrated some aspects of, say, Mathematica's language and idioms - that'd be different. But here, that wasn't the case. It doesn't look like the paper's discoveries used scripts/programs written in Mathematica/Maple, leveraging the key aspects of the environment. They just did the integrals and such using Maple. Maple itself doesn't matter here it all.

One of the frustrations of academia is that as a reviewer, you often invest large mental and creative effort and time as an anonymous referee to verify and even make understandable important results, for no credit or acknowledgement. The metaphors "panning for gold" and even "pearls before swine" apply.
It's therefore very easy to get frustrated and grumpy at the nth instance of the authors making it unnecessarily hard for you and future readers.
From the discussions in comments on the question and other answers, it sounds like once the frustration has dissipated, a comment in your review along the lines of the following might suffice:

Lemma 3.21 [or whatever] is very technical and hard to follow. I was able to verify the proof using a CAS (Maple), which precisely generated equations [...] through [...], leading me to believe this proof was generated with CAS in the first place. It would be easier for the reader to follow -- and provide a more realistic impression of the specific contribution brought by this paper -- to note a CAS was used, and perhaps cite the specific CAS/version.

Each person's use of that famous Canadian1 mathematics software named after a tree2 requires agreeing to the company's EULA.  While not all provisions of all EULAs are enforceable in all jurisdictions, the text of the EULA does communicate intent and wishes of [REDACTED TREE]Soft3.
In section 8, GENERAL LICENSE RESTRICTIONS:

The  License  of  all  Software  hereunder  is  subject  to  the  express  restrictions  set  forth  below  in  addition  to  the  restrictions
imposed  by  the  applicable  License  Option,  Installation  Type  and  Order  Confirmation.  Without  the  express  written
permission of [REDACTED TREE]Soft, YOU shall not, and shall not permit any Third Party to:

...

(h) use [REDACTED TREE]Soft’s name, trade names, logos, or other trademarks of [REDACTED TREE]Soft, or any of its Affiliates or
Licensors, whether in written, electronic, or other form, without [REDACTED TREE]Soft’s prior written consent;

So under the rules of [REDACTED TREE]Soft's EULA, nobody using their software should ever mention the name of the software (that famous Canadian mathematics software named after a tree, which has a trademarked name) or the company name without prior written consent of [REDACTED TREE]Soft.
While I am not one to determine if that contract term is enforceable where you live, it does make it really clear that [REDACTED TREE]Soft doesn't want you to use their name.  Doing so in a publication would be against their clear request in their EULA, unless you first cleared the use with [REDACTED TREE]Soft itself.
Note that the contents of your workbook:

(a) reproduce, transmit, modify, adapt, translate or create any derivative work of, any part of the Software, in
whole or in part, except for any content developed by users in Maple Worksheets/Documents that are not
part of an electronic book Software product or as otherwise expressly permitted in this Agreement;

are explicitly permitted to be shared without the consent of [REDACTED TREE]Soft.
At a moral level, [REDACTED TREE]Soft clearly does not want its name mentioned.  So users of that famous Canadian mathematics software named after a tree should respect its wishes and not mention its name.
Unless, of course, you have prior written permission.
It is just being polite.

1
2 Not an oak.
3 All uses of [REDACTED TREE]Soft in the quote below are redacted by me, not in the original document.  The tree is also not a beech.

Contractual agreements with third parties don't release authors from their obligations to readers.  If academic standards require that the step in question be explained, the authors would need to say something like "we used a computer algebra system which, for legal reasons, we cannot name".  If the editors don't think this is enough information for readers, then the authors have to either get permission from the vendor, or redo their work in a way that they are allowed to explain in sufficient detail.

This is very funny, but really doesn't address the question in any serious way at all ...

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Is scooping viewed negatively in the research community?
I graduated my undergrad two years ago, and I have since published 4 papers in top computer science conferences and journals. However, all my papers seem to follow a common "scooping" pattern, where I would read an interesting paper, notice some possible improvements/speed ups in the algorithm published, type up the improvement, and submit it. This seems to have worked well for me so far.
I am planning to apply to graduate school, however, an old colleague in my research lab told me some graduate school admission committees might raise an eye brow at my research, since they all seem to "scoop" other researchers work, and not come up with new/original research directions.
My question is, how truthful is this? I feel what I have done should be considered original research, and not "scooping", as the original authors did not allude in the slightest (either in the paper or on online mediums like arxiv/twitter) that they were pursuing this problem further.

Apart from the issue with the word "scooping" (see Morgan Rodger's answer), you also might be under-selling your own contribution. Unless your improvements came from really marginal implementation details (like using a different version of some underlying software library), you probably have added something of value to the earlier algorithm, and should focus in your self-presentation on that something.

"If I have seen further, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants" - Isaac Newton

You should change your question to: Is incremental research frown upon by the community?  This is OK if you are a new graduate student.  However, I would look at a researcher more favorably if he/she addresses a novel research question/aim.  This shows he/she is creative, and can think far ahead of the state-of-the-art.  This can also imply that he/she has a new set of tools that do not exist in the community.

I don't know CS - but even four incremental papers of this style are at least above average, if not in the top quarter or higher of grad applicants.

To emphasize the point: this is not scooping.

As @lighthousekeeper, qwr, and morganrodgers point out, this is not scooping, so this needs to be closed as unclear.

"an old colleague in my research lab told me some graduate school admission committees might raise an eye brow at my research," There's only one way to know

Right, this kind of incremental research is great at your current career stage, but in the long run you want to develop your own research program with your own vision and direction.  But you have plenty of time to do that during your PhD and postdoc, it’s not something to worry much about yet.

What you describe isn't "scooping". Scooping is where you publish something that someone else is currently working on before they are able to publish it. Usually this is done without knowing someone else is working on it, and is something that happens to you (you were scooped), and not usually used to describe action of the publishing author (unless they did it intentionally).
The issue with your research is that, if this is your only work, it could be seen to lack novelty; it is only incrementally building on other peoples' results. That would possibly be weighed negatively in grant applications, etc.
In other words, I think that your research could hypothetically be viewed as not especially notable if you were applying for postdoc or faculty positions (I haven't seen it, and you say it was published in top journals, so this isn't necessarily the case). But

I wouldn't call this "scooping" and
I don't think this should be an issue applying for graduate school. Having publications will only be seen as a positive thing, and if they are in top journals that will look very good. No one is expecting an undergraduate to be be publishing novel research as a condition to attend graduate school.

Adding to this answer a bit: The proper word for this is probably "epigonal", and it is definitely not a cause of concern in an undergrad's work. Even the typical PhD thesis is mostly epigonal. It will eventually be a problem if by your PhD, all of your work to date is epigonal and there is no hint of novel methods and ideas.

Hmmm, @darijgrinberg, maybe not epigonal.

@Buffy Merriam Webster's reports epigonal also as synonym of epigonic.

@MassimoOrtolano, in which case the word definitely does not apply. The OP is not an imitator (inferior or otherwise) or a disciple, but an "extender". In some sense Einstein extends Newton.

@Buffy: Ouch, that was a false friend I was completely unaware of! The German "epigonal" is closer to the meaning Massimo found, except I haven't seen it mean "inferior imitation" as much as just "the same idea but performed better" (this is, at least, what the word should mean -- it was the epigones, after all, that got into Thebes).

@darijgrinberg Why not "incremental"? That seems to be the usual descriptor.

@user76284 That is close, although I'd argue that incrementality is a property of the results obtained whereas epigonality is a property of the methods employed.

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Etiquette or rules on criteria for new arXiv submissions on expanded work
In computer science, I'm mindful of arXiv's policy against multiple submissions for the same paper, favoring updates via revisions for corrections or minor changes.
My case is a bit special regarding an expansion of my work: a year ago, I posted a 14-page paper on arXiv about a technique for a specific problem in my subfield, titled "Improving bla bla in Problem name." Since then, I've broadened the application of this technique to 12 additional problems, leading to a major rewrite and expansion of the paper to 61 pages, now with a focus on the technique's wider applicability and retitled "Using Technique A to solve bla bla-type Problems."
This leaves me with options: revise the original submission on arXiv, withdraw the paper and resubmit, or treat it as a new, distinct submission. What's the correct approach according to arXiv's etiquette/rules? Ideally, I want the paper to reach the feed of researchers in my community, and I'm not sure if simply revising the paper would do that.

Why not formal publication instead of a preprint?

@Buffy I'm submitting the paper for publications, but it takes some time, and I'd like to just share my results (as is common in my subfield) since many people are working on these problems and doing minor improvements too.

@Buffy, of course, unless the true issue is getting some credit for passing some gate-keeping, the actual work will become truly published vastly faster on arXiv rather than via "journals"...

IMHO, such a major expansion of a paper should be a new preprint. But I do not think there are some clear cut rules about this.

Is the original preprint submitted for publication? Has it been cited by other authors already in preprint form? Please add this information to the question; it might be useful to give you the best answer.

I'm not in computer science, but what I tend to see in cases where the new document is substantially different from the previous one (which yours clearly is) is indeed a new preprint. This is especially recommended if people have relied upon and cited the earlier version. It is common and helpful to use the comment field to describe the relation to the older document, for example that is an expanded version, that it supersedes the prior version, etc. Withdrawing the prior preprint should only be done for appropriate reasons, and arXiv is clear on that wanting to post a new version does not qualify, so you certainly shouldn't do that.


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Will publishing two papers in a short succession on the same topic raise eyebrows?
I work in Theoretical CS for context.
There is this problem A I've been working on for the past year and wrote and submitted a paper X 3 months ago on a new bound we proved for A. I just recently (literally 2 days ago) got the first round of feedback on the paper and it is extremely good. The reviewers mostly want minor changes and recommended acceptance.
However, in the last 3 month (since I submitted X), I continued working on the problem and broke that upper bound again (just a few weeks ago). I wrote another paper Y that uses a lot of the ideas from paper X, but of course with 1 major key new idea that broke the previous improved upper bound.
I am worried that if I submit Y, the reviewers will think that I got two ideas, and instead of just directly submitting the better Y directly, I decided to "break" things up into two papers instead.
Would this raise any eyebrows or am I overthinking this?

Some people might think that and "salami publishing" can be a problem. But your options are limited. It would probably be a mistake to delay the submission of the second paper, lest someone else pick up on the idea. It would probably be a mistake to incorporate the new ideas into the first paper as it will require a new round of review with an uncertain outcome.
If an editor asks, just reassure them that the new ideas came as a result of completing the first paper. That is completely natural.
If the first paper stands on its own, as seems likely, then you really don't have a problem. Of course, the reviewers of the second might not agree that it is a sufficient advance over the first to warrant publication, but that is true in any case. Carry on.


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What are examples of experiments or studies where pre-registration would not be feasible?
The incoming editor of Psychological Science mentions in an interview that pre-registration isn't feasible for all submissions to the journal:

In instances in which preregistration is feasible... we will continue to encourage authors to take these steps. Yet we must be fully cognizant that in some areas of the broad discipline of psychological science, these actions may not be possible or may be ill-advised.

What are examples or types of experiments or studies (in psychology or elsewhere) where pre-registration wouldn't be possible or would be ill-advised?

Examples are areas where a study takes advantage of a sudden, unexpected event. For example, there have been studies about human memory related to unexpected tragedies. There was an idea that lots of Americans remembered exactly where they were when they found out that President Kennedy was shot. After the Challenger disaster, a study was done where they asked people where they were when they found out, and then asked them different amounts of time later (e.g. a year, 5 years and then ten years out), and they found that despite people being very certain of their memories, many people had recollections which changed drastically in the intervening time. Similar studies were done later for the Columbia disaster and 9/11. See summary [here], and 10 year followup to 9/11 [here]. These would  be extremely hard to preregister without substantial ethical problems; I suspect that most journals and the public would frown on psychologists deliberately causing large-scale national catastrophes in order to preregister their studies.
The World Trade Center attack also provides also an example from another field: Right after 9/11 airplanes were grounded throughout the US. Multiple studies used this as an opportunity to study the impact of airplanes on the atmosphere. See here.
Editorial remark: The set of studies where preregistration is not feasible is a very tiny fraction of all studies, and the fact that such studies do exist should not in general be taken as an argument against broad requirements for preregistration.

While one of course can't register a study for a future disaster on a specific date, it would seem to me possible either to register a study for a not-yet-specified disaster and date (giving a specification for what kind of disasters would qualify) or at least to register at the start of the study, before significant (or ideally, any) investigative work has been done. Do you have any thoughts on this?

@CurtJ.Sampson That certainly seems plausible, but I'm not an expert. Obvious issues would be that any disaster that meets the criteria might be too rare for this to be practical. As for the second suggestion of partial preregistration, that seems plausible, but my impression is that this class of study requires extremely fast reaction time already for both logistics and IRB reasons, so even some form of partial preregistration at the start would pose a potentially significant additional burden.

As a complete aside, there is a quite good episode of Malcolm Gladwell's "Revisionist History" about these memory studies.


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Is pasting an excerpt from Wikipedia in a paper without reference plagiarism?
Assume you are reviewing a paper and discover that some general definitions therein have been copied from Wikipedia without mentioning the source. Should it be considered plagiarism or can it be considered legit because Wikipedia is freely available and anonymous?
Surely this behaviour shows poor effort in literature research because if something is on Wikipedia it surely is also in some more authoritative document. However, generic definitions of centuries old concepts should now be copyrightless and Wikipedia is as good as any textbook or giving one in your own words.

Even Wikipedia articles have references at the end, so yes they should cite

When you say "some general definitions" are you talking about well known field-specific definitions? generic definitions of centuries old concepts typically don't need to be referenced if they're the sort of thing that would be in every [field] textbook. If someone rattles off the definition of ,say, the speed of light or something that generic then they , typically if being reasonable, don't need to track down whatever textbook they were taught it from as kids. If it's very generic then that definition might be written everywhere including wiki's.

Yes, that was my point. Say the definition of eigenvector. There probably exist a hundred slightly different definitions and I could produce many slightly different ones myself. But, in principle, a definition copied word by word is a quotation and, as pointed out, Wikipedia requires citing.

If the concepts are centuries old then a research paper should not need to define them - they should be understood by the target audience without need for explanation.

What do you mean by "Wikipedia is anonymous?"

"Wikipedia is as good as any textbook" - yeah, so would you not consider it plagiarism to copy an excerpt from a textbook either?

"if something is on Wikipedia it surely is also on some more authoritative document" -- in fact, it's worth noting that Wikipedia's policies explicitly state that content on Wikipedia must exist in some other more authoritative document (see WP:V).  If they don't, remove them from Wikipedia.

@Jules In theory, yes. In practice, there's a lot of references missing.

These kind of debates remind me to appreciate the fact that mathematicians don't care one bit about copyright or citations more involved than bibliography.

Is there anything worse than really really bad plagiarism?

@Bergi I think you misunderstood. I am talking about copying from Wikipedia, not from a textbook (see the title and the body of the question). The last sentence reads: "Wikipedia is as good as any textbook", nothing to do with copying, just a statement about quality.

Copyright for a written work expires some years after the author's death; the length of time under copyright law varies from country to country. Wikipedia and other sites use a variety of licencing models which allow the material to be copied and the conditions that apply to the use of the material.
But regardless of whether something is still copyrighted or not, open source or not, freely available or not, if it is quoted, cited, copied or otherwise repeated in a text, if the source is not cited then yes, it is plagiarism.
When something passes into "common knowledge" then it can be written without having to find a quotable source. But there are also specific situations where something that might normally be considered "common knowledge" needs to be referenced to a source, such as student work where values, definitions, etc., are expected to be researched for accuracy and should also therefore include a reference.
There may also be the case where the value/definition is used in a way that is outside the norm, e.g. a definition that is unusual in the mainstream but is used in a specific way for a specific context, or a value that is based on some work that extends the precision beyond what is considered to be the norm.
The criteria remains, that if someone else wrote it and you copy it then not crediting the original author/source is plagiarism - academic theft.

if someone rattles off " generic definitions of centuries old concepts" like say the definition of what a cell wall is or the definition of the speed of light or something similarly universally known within the field it's typically considered unreasonable to call it plagiarism.
I just worry that someone will go into automatic bot-like "ah-ha! plagiarism!" mode reading this and some poor students somewhere in the world will get unreasonably accused of plagiarism.

I agree with Murphy.  It depends on what is being defined, and whether Wikipedia really has a unique or special version of the definition.

If someone does a copy-paste from anywhere then they should cite the source. If it is a generic definition of a well-known concept in a field then they should not need to copy it from somewhere, but if they don't know it well enough to write it themself and thus they copy it from some source, they need to attribute that source.

@Mick What if I look it up today, then tomorrow I want to write it down?

@Mark You should cite your source. Citations aren't just about avoiding committing plagiarism. It is more helpful to readers if you provide complete citations, rather than leaving them to wonder where you're getting the content, and where to go to read more. Bear in mind that 'readers' includes you, the writer.

@MaxBarraclough I can't imagine a scenario where I'd follow a citation for the first 12 digits of pi, yet I couldn't write them down from memory.

I would also add that, even if the information has passed into common knowledge, if you copy-paste the text word-for-word, you still need to cite AND QUOTE the text.  You can only state common knowledge without citation if you state it in your own words.

@Mark What about 16? 256? 2^10? When would you start feeling interested in following up?

@Mark Numbers are not judged by the same standard as words. One cannot paraphrase a number, and it's understood one will often have to look up even common knowledge numbers since humans aren't very good at remembering them.  A single concept can be expressed in many different ways with words, however.

@jakebeal That's kind of my point though - there are exceptions to "if someone does a copy-paste from anywhere then they should cite the source."

@jakebeal, one can absolutely paraphrase a number.  Instead of 10, I might write, for example, 7+3.  These are two different ways of writing the same number.

@Scott You may be technically correct, but I would strongly disagree with respect to the practical context of  clear written communication.

@jakebeal, I think that the fact that a single concept can be expressed many different ways with words actually makes particular configurations of them LESS special.  The fact that it is somehow considered a moral imperative to either rearrange or cite your arbitrary words describing an idea that you may or may not have even originated is ridiculous.  Your words describing Pi aren't deserving of any manner of recognition.  It's the CONCEPT of Pi that is special.  That's just my 2c though.  :)

@Mick If I were to, from my own understanding, give the definition of the speed of light there's good odds of it matching, word for word, one of the definitions from a schoolbook I've had over the years. I can't tell you which one. No idea. Perhaps it'll end up being a paraphrase mish-mash of a dozen books definitions. perhaps not. But some people don't think when they have a bot like turnitin to auto-check for them, just just see a chain of more than 5 words... and some poor students somewhere in the world will get unreasonably accused of plagiarism.

@Murphy again, something like the speed of light / definition thereof would now be considered common knowledge and, except in the case of student submissions where part of the exercise may well be to still cite sources, and indeed running text otherwise through Turnitin may raise plagiarism flags. But blind obedience to Turnitin results without checking the actual text is just laziness.

@Mick Unfortunately the world is full of lazy people.... and some diligent people who see strong statements like "everything must be cited" and thing "the rule's the rule" but lack the normal level of common sense and don't see the implied "but use your common sense and good judgement" bit implicitly appended to almost all rules. Hence my initial comment.

Yes, that is plagiarism. But even beyond that, it's not true that

Wikipedia is freely available and anonymous

Instead, as you will find on the bottom of every Wikipedia article,

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply.

That license specifically requires (as by its short summary)

Attribution—You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work.)

Wikipedia has a very lenient understanding of proper attribution – normally, attribution according to the CC licenses is the extreme opposite of anonymous! Traditionally, a CC license would require listing every single contributor to the document used. The revision history of a Wikipedia article (I'll use ‘Eigenvalues and eigenvectors’ as example) is public, and statistics suggest that most of the edits are not anonymous (IPs), but at least pseudonymous (users with named accounts) and several of the main authors have account names that suggest those are their real names. We are permitted to give attribution to “the Wikipedia contributors“ (which is at least somewhat anonymous) instead of that list, but an appropriate mention is still required, such as

Wikipedia contributors. Eigenvalues and eigenvectors. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. August 3, 2018, 15:11 UTC. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Eigenvalues_and_eigenvectors&oldid=853269180. Accessed August 8, 2018.

(In addition, that license means that if someone makes use of a text under this license, for example, using some definition on Wikipedia in their paper, they would have to publish their document under a compatible license!)

You might add that the complete edit history of a Wikipedia article is documented in full, and many authors aren't anonymous (e.g. I wasn't anonymous until my employer objected to my name being associated with my Wikipedia edits).

I have tried to add it. If you find a better way to phrase it, please edit my aswer.

Yes, it's plagiarism. Being freely available and anonymous doesn't mean you can copy from it liberally, because it's still written by someone other than yourself.
Note that Wikipedia has its own "cite this page" link (example), indicating it also thinks it should be cited if you take information from it.

Makes sense too, couldn't mark it as right solution because someone else was first.

When you have more than one acceptable answer, you should accept the one you feel is best, not necessarily the first.

@MarcoStamazza You can change which answer you accept, if you want to. It’s usually a good idea to wait a while before accepting one, in case a better answer comes along.

My general litmus test is thus:  Is the definition as-is riddled in textbooks everywhere? Therefore I see no reason to, since it is "common knowledge".  If that definition is relatively new and only available in, say, one or two journal articles or some obscure textbook that is the sole authority on a subject (and possibly the wikipedia page), then one references the journal article, if only so that others know where to go learn more about the subject.
Sometimes I discover that I learn a thing from Wikipedia about that definition. But, since Wikipedia disallows original research, that thing is generally reasonably deducible from the definition with a minimum of logic.  And, anyhow, you can't copyright ideas.  Since the thing is not original research, I generally do not cite the idea.  However, since there exist those who would complain about mere phrasing, I reword whatever it is for their sake.

Seems dangerous. Do you mean to imply you would copy a definition from a text book without attribution, even though it is explicitly copyrighted? Do text book authors have fewer rights somehow? Their publishers would disagree, of course. You  should read the license that Wikipedia puts on all articles. It is quite open, but does require attribution. Sloppy scholarship will only hurt you, actually.

My point is that the textbook author almost surely did not devise the definition, and did not bother citing anyone.  Therefore, any "copying" that I am guilty of they are as well.  Of course, I'm coming from a math/science sort of perspective.  This may be different in, for instance, philosophy, where half of the debate is over the definitions of various terms.

In other words, textbook authors have no rights to works that they themselves did not originate.  They also cannot copyright them.

Fine. It's your reputation, not mine. My degrees are in math, by the way.

I will note, however, that copyright is for words, etc, not ideas. But citation should go beyond copyright.

Copyright is for words, but it is not the case that all words are copyrightable.  Indeed, the concept of merger suggests that things like mathematical definitions are not copyrightable.

And I agree with you about citation going beyond copyright.  In the sense that, even if I use words close to the definition of a derivative from a textbook from last year, any citation given should not reference the textbook, it should reference Leibniz or Newton.  The precise wording of the definition is absolutely not the thing deserving of citation.

I take back my statement about textbook authors not citing their authorities.  I picked a cal book off of google search [1] and it had no fewer than 16 references to `Leibniz'.

It isn't necessarily plagiarism: The authors may have written both their manuscript and the Wikipedia article.
The authors may have avoided self-plagiarism in their manuscript by writing it first, the self-plagiarism issue on Wikipedia still remains (I'm unsure what Wikipedia's policy is).

Discussion about copyright, preprints and self-plagiarism moved to chat. If you post any further comments along that line, please make specific suggestions how this answer can be improved. Otherwise take it to chat.


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Self-plagiarism and citation when working on 2 papers simultaneously
Say you're working on two papers A and B simultaneously, and the content and topic of the papers partially overlap such that normally you would be required to cite paper A in paper B. But since both papers are being written simultaneously how do prevent self-plagiarism?
Should you cite paper B in paper A and vice versa, even though neither is published yet?

Possible duplication with:
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/81063/what-to-do-when-you-have-two-manuscripts-under-review-where-one-cites-the-other
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12342/self-plagiarism-in-phd-thesis

Even more extreme than what you described, there are cases where (in agreement with the publisher) a single work is split over two papers submitted on the same day to different journals (same publisher) citing each other: http://lhcbproject.web.cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/LHCbProjectPublic/LHCb-PAPER-2016-019.html http://lhcbproject.web.cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/LHCbProjectPublic/LHCb-PAPER-2016-018.html
I guess it boils down to "are unpublished papers citable" to which (in my experience) the answer is "preprints are citable".

Yes. And if you don't want to make them publicly available, directly give the other preprints to the reviewers. Journals typically will request you do this in my experience.

Yes, I would cite paper A in paper B, and I would cite paper B in paper A. Initially the citation would be something like “in submission” with a URL for the referees. As both papers work through the pipeline, that citation would evolve into either a refereed publication venue if possible, or a preprint server if not, to ensure that future readers can follow the link.
On the other hand, I would also write both papers from scratch, without sharing text between them, because (in my experience) that leads to better-written papers. So self-plagiarism isn’t an issue.

With respect to accurate accountability: you are required to cite anything taken verbatim from another source, regardless of where, when, or if published. If we're not talking about importing exact language and you're referring instead to ideas you've included that are also present or explored in your other publication, it works as follows:
Your paper that is published first is free from obligation. Take whatever you want from your other paper's drafts and set it into print.
Your paper that is published second must cite properly any elements that were originally published elsewhere.
These two guidelines hold true down to the nanosecond. If both publishers produce on the same night, you still need only worry about accountability for the second one. But, since that's really a ridiculous pain in the ass, why not just cite everything (using a label for "pending" in your references)? Life would be easier that way.

It depends on whether these are the same type of paper. If they have different focal points but share certain informative paragraphs introducing a certain matter, it makes sense that they would be similar. If these are opinion papers with overlapping ideas, that could count as a form of parallel submission, though I doubt this is the case.
This is really a matter of personal consideration. I know theoretical biologists who repeat certain paragraphs in almost every paper they write, with some variation. So long as it isn't blatant verbatim copying, its only a question of whether this copying reduces the significance of one of the papers in the eyes of the journal. If it doesn't then I wouldn't worry about it, especially if the information is necessary to provide background in both papers.


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Do I have to cite my own paper?
I wrote a paper in which I mentioned all citations for definitions that are not mine, and did not cite my previous paper's definition or my supervisor's previous papers as both of us are authors.
My supervisor got really angry on me for this. Did I deserve it?

Do I understand correctly that you showed the manuscript without those citations to your supervisir before submitting it to a journal, so that you had the opportunity to add the citations before submission?

One more reason to cite your previous work, is to make it easier to read. When you use some definition, it's very handy how was the definition created.

I properly understood the value of citiations when I got from nearly zero AI knowledge, to understanding GPT-2, by following citations backwards. If you are referring to work that was done earlier, please cite it so readers can find it!

Interested readers will want to read those papers to understand the background.

Yes, you do need to cite your own past work. Not doing so is considered to be self-plagiarism. While ethically self-plagiarism might not be as bad as plagiarizing someone’s else work, it is still not okay.
Self-plagiarism misleads the reader as it presents previously published work as new and original. Academic readers expect that all uncited material is either common knowledge or a novel idea. By not citing your previous work, you are undermining the integrity of academia.
Next, self-plagiarism is bad because publishers (including academic ones) sometimes have a copyright on your previously published work. While you are still an author you are no longer allowed to use the previous work willy-nilly. However, this also depends on what copyright agreement you have and nature of the self-plagiarism (e.g. paraphrasing old work would not violate it).
Lastly there is no reason not to cite yourself. Self-citations still improve your citation count. You should not do it unnecessarily, because overly self-citing is also frown upon, e.g., even when the previous work is not much relevant. However, when there is a legitimate reason to self-cite, there is no reason not to do it.

self-plagiarism bad because publishers […] have a copyright on your previously published work – This paragraph is misleading about the reach of copyright. Copyright only applies if you reproduce something verbatim or close to verbatim – which should you rarely ever do in most disciplines anyway. For example, I could remove all my citations from all my publications without committing a single breach of copyright. (Mind that for verbatim quotes, citations can help copyright-wise.) Also, most modern copyright agreements are not wholesale transfers of copyright anymore.

@Wrzlprmft thanks for the comment I tried to clarify my answer

Self plagiarism is repeated publication of the same material.  It's still plagiarism even if the previous publication is cited.

Publishers being assigned copyright in an academic paper is rare (depending a bit on field I guess). I don’t think I’ve assigned copyright for over a decade.

@AnonymousPhysicist but if the prior work is cited, wouldn't it be clear to readers that the author is not trying to pass this as something new? Would it be self-plagiarism if I put my paper on two websites (e.g., arXiv and my personal website)? And which good journal wouldn't reject publishing the same idea even if it's cited?

@AnonymousPhysicist but my understanding is OP is talking about single definition. I don’t know how it works in your field, but in my field if you came up with some definition in previous paper (maybe theoretical paper) and then you write second paper (maybe empirically testing the previous theory with some coauthors) then you are supposed to cite the definition in your theoretical paper and nobody considers that plagiarism then. However, if you do not cite it, reader of the new (empirical) paper might think that the definition is also novel and then it would be case of self plagiarism

Of course trying to pass (essentially) the same paper to two separate journals would be self plagiarism no matter whether first is cited or not

"Next, self-plagiarism is bad because publishers (including academic ones) have a copyright on your previously published work."
Not always. If you publish open-access it is common that you (the author) retain the copyright. Instead, you only grant a (non-revokable) license to the publisher to reproduce it.

@justhalf In academia, putting things on your personal website is not considered publication, so it is not self plagiarism.

@1muflon1 Sure, you can restate a definition with a citation to the source.  A definition isn't really the "material" part of a publication.

@1muflon1 In the current version I still think the third paragraph (about copyright) is misleading. Personally, I'd suggest removing it entirely, and I think the answer would be better off for it.

@Wrzlprmft Your comment that copyright only applies if you reproduce something close to verbatim is usually true in academic writing because facts cannot be protected by copyright. However please note that it is considerably more nuanced in any work where facts do not predominate (which can include certain types of academic analysis). When something is at stake, it is generally wise to consult with an intellectual property attorney. Nothing I say on stackechange should ever be interpreted as legal advice.

It appears that you mistakenly assume that citations are only about avoiding plagiarism.
However, the main purpose of citations is to document the provenance of ideas, evidence, etc.
If done properly, this automatically wards you against any accusation of plagiarism, but that is only a side effect.
In most papers, you can leave out a considerable portion of citations without introducing any plagiarism (it would still not be a good idea though).
If you treat citations as documenting provenance, it is clear that it shouldn’t matter who authored the work you cite: Ideally, you cite your own work if and only if you would also cite it if authored by somebody else.
Typically, authors tend to overdo self-citations, but you can also underdo them.
Usually this is just bad citing, but at worst it can also be regarded as self-plagiarism, i.e., selling your own old work as new work.

Your choice to cite a paper should not depend on who wrote the paper.  It does not matter if you wrote it, your supervisor wrote it, or a nazi wrote it. Cite all sources you use.  Where feasible, cite other relevant sources.
Do not cite your own work if it's not relevant.
I cannot think of any situation where it would be appropriate to be angry about citations.

This is the best answer


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what are the best tips on how to market yourself for both academia and industry
I have a phd in computer science and I am applying for academic jobs. However, my specialization within CS is currently getting so much attention from the industry. I don't want to waste opportunities for collaborations and consultations with industry.
so what are the best tips to market yourself for both academia and industry? having a personal website? what to include in it ? and are there specific academic platforms that I need to be on to reach industry?

After you get an academic position, you can get in touch with people from the research branch of the companies that interest you. Doing it before you get a job may not get you as much attention.
You can do this kind of networking at conferences (both academic or more engineering related ones, such as Strata, QCon, StrangeLoop, Grace Hopper, ...).
You can also write directly to a research scientist in the company, mentioning that you work on problems X and Y and you think they are interesting for the company and would love to talk more, and you are also willing to give a talk. People at companies like it (source: I'm a research scientist at a company).
A young CS academic who wants to be visible must have an up-to-date website with all their publications, CV, links to github or other software repositories, a news section with list of upcoming talks/travels, and so on. Thus, get a website and keep it up to date. Exactly as you do with your CV.
You may want to be on Twitter and tweet about your work, and be part of the conversation. Please have a mostly-work-related-only handle.
By the way, if you get an academic position, think about postponing the start date to spend some months at a company. Doing this can have a beneficial effect both in the short and in the long term (networking, source of problems, source of funding, ...).

I like your answer. // Do you want to say anything about the rest of OP's question?  having a personal website? what to include in it ? and are there specific academic platforms that I need to be on to reach industry?

Apparently he does

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


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What are the options for a drop out turned professional to return to academia?
I dropped out of an e-commerce program fourteen years ago (yes, it was a short-lived idea for a program). I entered the work force, but kept self-educating ever since. Around seven years ago I began a career in software development. My self-education continued, I have a great CS foundation under me, am now a respected consultant and, recently, a speaker.
I’ve long had a desire to return to formal education, but dread the thought of taking a lot of elementary classes. It feels like a waste of time and money to get a BS when I have equivalent experience (probably better considering my experiences with recent CS grads) just so that I can pursue a MSc. I do have an area of research that I’m interested in pursuing.
What are the options for a middle-aged professional looking to pursue his/her master’s? Is it possible to directly pursue one in the US? It seems possible in Australia, but from what I can tell, US schools require an undergraduate degree in order to be accepted into a master’s program. If it’s not possible, how can a BS be accelerated as much as possible? I’m certain I can test out of most courses, including a number that are outside of my field.

I looked for a tag along the lines of "adult-learning" or "professional", but did not see one. If a member of the community finds either of those appropriate, please add it.

Some related questions you might be interested in looking over: 1) Getting a Masters in computer science but I am without any undergraduate degree; 2) Is it possible to obtain a Master's degree without Bachelor's degree?; 3) How to start an academic career after 5-6 years in industry, without an undergraduate degree?

All interesting and some good information @MadJack. Thank you. None seem to quite have an answer for me though.

Look into Excelsior College.

@BobBrown can you elaborate please? I have an assumption about what you're trying to say, but I don't like to assume.

@RubberDuck - Wikipedia has a helpful description.  Take a look.

I think it depends highly on what you want to do and what your background is. Perhaps you can elaborate a little. For example " My self education continued, I have a great CS foundation under me, am now a respected consultant and, recently, a speaker." - what do you mean by a CS foundation, that you're able to and enjoy proving the soundness of a logic and decidability of problems? Or that you're a great software-engineer? Next, what do you want to pursue, theoretical CS, AI, software-engineering? I think this all matters for which programs will accept you.

Added the tag "adult-learning" upon your request. Good point though.

@ThomasKing by CS Foundation I mean “Yes.” I am able and enjoy the theory, the “science” and am a great engineer/architect. I’ve worked on everything from LoB CRUD to real time systems to big data. I do have an interest in AI, but if we get right down to brass tacks, I want to teach software engineering someday. Academia is slowly coming around to industry’s need of more SE. My hope is that by time I’m ready to teach, Academia has generally recognized this need.

I was in a similar situation about a decade ago. I just went ahead and got the BS degree. I was a systems admin for about 10 years prior. Here are my thoughts:
Of all the classes I only learned useful stuff from about 4 of them. Data structures, algorithms, signal processing (ironically in a brain device class where the equipment was garbage), and operating systems. Everything else was a complete waste of time including all the calculus' (more than 2 years worth of calc+ math)  and general ed.
Id say that if you already know algorithms and data structures real well along with memory management and signal processing then there is no point to either a BS or MS degree. You will learn nothing. But if you have not seen those subjects before, it might be worth it though I suppose, now that I fleshed out the entire thing for you, you could just get a few books (lol). By the way, I teach CS now at both undergrad and masters level even though I dont have a masters. That said...
I actually started a MS degree once and all I got was the same education but more specific to certain fields like signal processing sound waves for voice recognition. I learned nothing in that course but it did require a huge amount of my time which I didnt want to waste on such a trivial thing that I can figure out without instruction. I just dropped the program after that. If you want to go into education however, you really should get a masters which is the only reason I am currently considering doing an online program. But if youre already in the real world, id say time is better spent making a product.

I don’t expect to get much from the classes themselves honestly. I’m just trying to set myself up to be in a good place to teach later in my career. Do you mind me asking how it is that you’re teaching w/out a Masters? I was under the impression it was basically a requirement to teach.

Private universities do not have to follow federal rules (unless they want funding) and even public universities dont require a masters for everything. Plus, there are many loopholes to the rules. Basically, I am their well kept secret thanks to some creative contracting. The reason they keep me is because among all the professors, I am actually one of the few with a lot of real world experience and so I have a much better rapport with students. Its easy for me to explain complex things (like data structures and algorithms) in a way that most people understand them. This means money for them.

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


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“Awaiting EE Decision” in Manuscript Central – what does it mean?
I submitted my paper to a journal twelve days ago. In Manuscript Central, there were some changes of the paper’s status during the first two days, and as far as I can remember, these were Awaiting ADM Processing and Awaiting technical editor selection. At the third day, I saw Awaiting EE Decision which is still there.
From some previous posts I assume that such decision status is normally shown for a paper that is already reviewed by peers. Given that, it’s been only twelve days since my submission and the paper has not been sent out for peer-review yet, what could be the possible implications of the status? Just a bit curious and worried as well.

The "EE" abbreviation should stand for "Executive Editor".

OK I must also point out before you read the rest of the answer that the Editorial decision has not come yet and this is likely the Editorial decision after minor processing (sorting, subject headings, keyword checks(maybe/maybe not)) and a Technical editor shortlisting it for further review when the editor decides on how to proceed (EE decision)
This is now Obviously the Editorial Decision. He can send it for review if it is a blind peer to peer review journal or reject it outright. Thus the EE decision would be completed by the editor or designated person after going through the paper and deciding if he has to send it to a reviewer, if he has reviewers for the subject matter, if he can return directly to the author for modifications/rewrites or if he wants to accept it for publication(unlikely without a blind peer to peer review.


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“Volume” vs. “issue” for a new journal
Our school is publishing an academic journal soon. It will be printed annually.  How do we label it – should we use the term volume or issue?  What is the difference?

Aren't there enough journals in your field already?

As a side note: Before you go through the trouble of actually printing a journal, you should ask yourself whether anybody cares about printed journals in your field anymore.

@CapeCode Wrzlprmft What's with the rush to judgement? The pros and cons of starting a new journal are not part of the question.

@Wrzlprmft I'm guessing it's a school-internal journal, rather than one intended for broad dissemination. For example, I know of several universities which have "undergraduate research" journals, where undergrads can get experience publishing articles for their undergraduate research projects, without having to compete for space and against the expectations for "standard" journals. -- M.N.M Manzano, you may wish to clarify this point in your question.

@user2390246: I am not arguing against starting a new journal, but only against starting a new printed journal.

Thanks for the comments. Yes, it is a school based journal, and one based in the Philippines.

Normally journals come in volumes, which may then be divided into issues, so volume 12 might cover all papers for a calendar year but actually be published quarterly as four separate issues: 12(1), 12(2), 12(3), 12(4). Some journals just publish volumes without subdividing, and if you're only printing annually I think it makes sense to do that.


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Are interdisciplinary STEM PhDs qualified to become professors?
Are interdisciplinary STEM PhDs qualified to become professors? Or are they viewed more as “in-betweeners” and better suited for industry work. For example, someone who has a broad (but not deep) math background and only relevant (but neither deep nor broad) domain knowledge in, say, biology or physics, to write their papers?  In other words, such a PhD candidate will be trained neither as a traditional mathematician nor as a biologist or physicist, etc.
Then what typically happens after their PhD?  Do they not have deep enough knowledge to join academia as professors in any department?

Yes, interdisciplinary Ph.D.'s are qualified to end up in academia.  In fact, I think hiring interdisciplinary faculty is a quite a popular idea with university administrations, and so my feeling is that there has been a bit of a burst of interdisciplinary positions created.  If you do really excellent interdisciplinary research, I think you should have a very good chance of getting an academic job.
I think you do correctly note some disadvantages that come along with it: hiring and tenure decisions tend to be made within departments, and interdisciplinary work can sometimes look not especially deep from the perspective of either of the disciplines, or simply be difficult to see the importance of if you don't see both perspectives.  But if people really do come to see the connection, then it will be highly valued.

yes I agree, but I think that these possitions are not on top tier institutions.

@SSimon: What makes you think that? There are several interdisciplinary professors at top-tier institutions. There are entire top-tier institutions devoted to interdisciplinary research. Just take your favourite top-tier institution and a popular interdisciplinary field (say, biophysics) and there is a high chance that they already have professors for this field.

@Wrzlprmft you think biophysics is INTERDISCIPLINARY???? wtf, what is the definition of interdisciplinary in your opinion?

@SSimon: what is the definition of interdisciplinary in your opinion? – Anything that considerably involves two or more major disciplines (such as mathematics, biology, physics, chemistry, linguistics, …), which is quite in line with dictionary definitions. What is yours? (Also, this is no reason to shout.)

@Wrzlprmft definition you provided is too shallow and reductionist, it doesn't represent reality and current trend on interdisciplinary departments.

studies that use methods and insights of several established disciplines or traditional fields of study.

@SSimon: And how is your definition effectively different from mine?

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

So which is it?  This appears to give me the impression that there aren't PhDs at least named Interdisciplinary because the degree is named something else.

I've head an opinion that interdisciplinary work is harmful for the career. However consider a committee that looks at IF and that your second field is larger (and thus has larger IFs!).
I would say, it all depends on the current case and there are no universal answers.

"harmful for the career" depends on what you want to accomplish in your career. If your goal is to get tenure in a math dept., then you should consider whether your work is perceived as valuable within that dept. If your goal is to add to human knowledge or influence practice, and you feel you can do that more effectively by being cross-disciplinary, then just make sure you understand the implications.

Your example just described a great many mathematical biologists - many of whom have successful academic careers.
Whether this is possible or not is largely a function of departments, and how they feel about interdisciplinary research. For example, if the department is very hostile to the notion, and wants deep subject matter specialists, an interdisciplinary candidate will always lose to a specialist.
On the other hand, I recently sat on a search committee that was expressly looking for interdisciplinary candidates who would have a "home" department, but would be expected to contribute heavily to another department as well. People who hadn't made an interdisciplinary approach to their work were not considered particularly competitive in that search. My own position, additionally, is expressly interdisciplinary.
So the answer is "It depends, it can be hard, but it's certainly possible."

To speak to the question raised in the comments of if top universities have interdisciplinary professors, I graduated from the University of Chicago which has many professors with multiple/cross-disciplinary appointments.
In fact, we have entire programs that are interdisciplinary, such as the undergraduate Computational and Applied Mathematics (mathematics, computer science, and statistics) and the graduate Committee on Social Thought (philosophy, politics, and sociology). There are professors who are specifically appointed to these programs / departments.
We also have professors with postings in multiple departments. We have at least four professors who have appointments in both mathematics and computer science. A number of our computational linguists have linguistics/CS appointments. Our philosophy faculty have overlap with our Divinity school. I believe we have a professor who does quantum mechanics research who is appointed to both chemistry and physics. These professors hold such titles seperate my. For example: Alan Turing, PhD. Professor of Mathematics. Professor of Computer Science.
Yes there can be reservations about the depth of knowledge of people with interdisciplinary degrees, but if you're interested in doing interdisciplinary work then an interdisciplinary degree is a great thing to have.

I have been on a hiring committee in an interdisciplinary department. Our graduates absolutely get hired for assistant professor jobs, and we absolutely hire those with interdisciplinary PhDs for our positions.
What might be harder is to get a job in one of the traditional disciplines. However, we do have faculty who are trained in those disciplines and hold joint appointments in more traditional disciplines. To me this strongly suggests that being affiliated with an interdisciplinary dept./unit has not precluded appreciation for their work in more traditional disciplines.
Like everything it depends on your field, the market, your specific work, etc.


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How can one when not affiliated to an institution get access to very common piece of equipment for a subject?
I am working on my next geology research project, after recent publication, that has no affiliation to a research institute (e.g. I am conducting research in my spare time). I am now thinking how I might be able to access a petrographic microscope and a point counter, two commonly available pieces of equipment found in any geology department at a university.
I would like to get try and get access to the resources free of charge offering acknowledgement space on what I hope to be published work. If it is possible to gain access with a small payment it would be interesting to hear.
I believe there are two ways of approaching this:

Approach a researcher directly about the project and propose it as work to be associated with that researcher perhaps through coauthorship
Approach a university about the project and propose acknowledgement of the university in the paper

Coming from a point of ignorance about gaining access to university resources can anyone advise how should one go about this?
I am working in the UK and most convenient places for me to get to institutions is in London or the South East of England.

Would you have a problem with being affiliated to an institute or university?

Possibly a grant that you can use to rent time in the relevant lab and with the relevant equipment?

@Mark no not at all - but I'm full-time employed and am doing part-time research for the love of it rather than for any tuition or qualification. I haven't asked but would an institution accept affiliation on that kind of status?

@zibadawatimmy how would one go about applying for a grant of that nature?

@spk578 I don't know, but I guess it's worth trying. Especially since you seem to have some success. If there is a researcher that would collaborate with you, I wouldn't see why you shouldn't become affiliated. Unless there are some university rules that I'm not aware of (not that I ever looked into it...)

@Mark thanks for the comment and I shall have a look at universities in the area and as the answer below indicates write to one of the researchers with the research project...

Find someone in the institution (your approach 1), write to them, and ask.  You'll need a brief description of your experiment so the recipient knows what they're agreeing to.  If this is common equipment in your field and you're not proposing to take over the lab for hours every week, just ask.  The worst they can do is to say no.


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What is appropriate number of keywords for conference paper?
What is appropriate or reasonable number of keywords in a conference paper (in computer network/security topics)?

Honestly, I don't know if there is much reason other than history and tradition to continue to put keywords on conference papers.  Most people will find your paper via search engines, rather than by searching for keywords in some specialized interface, and search engine technology is good enough these days that keywords are not usually particularly necessary for improving the chance of your paper being found.
The places where I know that keywords still actually matter, at least marginally, are:

Putting in a keyword can be a good way to include a term that isn't otherwise explicitly stated in the paper (and thus might not show up on search engines).
Some reviewing systems use an author's history of keywords to help figure out which papers they are likely to be a good reviewer for in the future.

So, given all of this, how many keywords should you choose?  My own inclinations are as follows:

When required to use the ACM classification system: two, because it's a pain to look up something appropriate in their ontology, but I feel like I'm shirking too obviously if I try to get away with only one.
When I get to pick my own keywords: 3-6, plucked from the air over the course of a few minutes by free association.

I don't know if there is much reason other than history and tradition — I think the most common reason is that the publisher will refuse publish the paper until you add them.

@JeffE Sure, but why else does the publisher still care?

Shouldn't the title need to cover all the keywords?

@Ooker: "A flexible extensible plugin/addin-ready modular architecture/system design/structural concept for managing/administering user/customer account/profile data in the field of transportation/traffic/passenger transport/public and individual transport/railways/buses/cars/automobiles/planes/trams/streetcars/boats/ships/ferries/taxis/cabs"?

@O.R.Mapper good point

@jakebeal Why should I care why the publisher cares? As far as authors are concerned, papers need keywords because that's what it says on the tablets the the publisher dragged down from Mt. Sinai.

Search engines try to extract keywords from your text, and learn from user interaction. It's good to give the search engine a starting point when it finds a new paper.

There is indeed a small but significant correlation between the selection of keywords and citation count: https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/97207/139963

From my experience in CS, I would put about four or five keywords. I would sort them from more specific to more general. But what you should actually do is to check other papers in the conference/journals where you will submit to know what other people have been doing in that specific community because it can vary depending on the community, the publisher, etc.


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How to gauge the prestige of an individual researcher when selecting a PhD advisor
Is there a process one could follow when assessing the prestige of a specific supervisor when evaluating PhD programs? I ask because in the academic world, the professor almost trumps the school. I am not sure if that statement holds for industry. How can one assess if the PI's reputation is large enough to offset the fact that conferring institution is not in the top 5 or ten schools for that discipline. I am aiming for of an entrepreneur/industry trajectory and in an ideal world this would not matter. I want to believe that as long as you stellar work experience, the sky is the limit. I just have in the back of my mind in a hypothetical situation where you are trying to pitch and idea for VC funding having that pedigree may be helpful.

Some highly prestigious people can be lousy advisors. In the end, it is the quality of the work as published in reputable media that will matter. Well, if you go in industry, some may only know names, probably mostly of institutions, depending on how specialized in your field they are.

"a hypothetical situation where you are trying to pitch and idea for VC funding having that pedigree may be helpful" This sounds like a hypothetical situation indeed. In my limited knowledge of the startup world, what school you went to or who you studied with is equally irrelevant to investors. Actually, your PhD will mostly be irrelevant to them.

In my opinion, the prestige of a potential supervisor in the industry (vs strictly academic) can be (rapidly) assessed by first checking his academic curriculum vitae for:

The committees he is part of. As an academic working with the industry, he should be involved with one or several government / industries related committees with a focus on state of the art application of the knowledge in that industry (procedures to do x,y,z) common best practices (for that field), budgeting and assigning funds, defining road-maps for the next 5, 10 years etc. I know some academics working closely with the transport industry (or government related agencies) - and in addition to the usual academic implication, they are also working actively with those instances, often have a student doing a project with those instances as well.
His publications : he should write or be co-author on papers/books that are recognized in his field. Often large efforts with large groups of academics. His methods/work should be found or referred in some textbooks. He should have international collaborations. Patents ?
Editor : is he on any editorial boards for relevant journals ?

If he is an early career academic, is he that person who is always everywhere, always organizing something, always at conferences and meeting with half a dozen presentation - this could give a hint that this person is dynamic and his career may be promising.
This information should be easy to find. If it is hard to find, this may be a flag. I would personally have a good confidence joining a researcher with at some degree meet those characteristics, even if he is not a tenure at a top university.

If you go into academia, the school where you get your PhD and the prestige of your specific advisor are about equally important.  (Neither is as important as what research you actually do while completing your degree.)  If you are not going into academia, then then the prestige of the school is more important.  People who have PhD degreed but have been working in industry for while are probably not going to know your advisor's particular standing in the field; venture capitalists certainly will not be able to parse your advisor's standing.  What these people can recognize is the prestige of the university (although not necessarily the department) where you studied.


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How does one ensure their knowledge of a field is complete when doing a literature review
I am a new grad student who is both excited and scared as I embark on this transformational journey. One concern that I have is establishing a current snap shot of my field and identifying boundaries that are ripe for further exploration. This seems like an impossible task given the number of journals out there and rapid pace at which new material becomes available.
I have been reading some posts on this board and it sounds like literature review is only one phase as a graduate student and then you move on. Given that you are on a time constraint one has to move from a reading focus to a doing focus eventually. My concern is I am moving forward with only half the story.
My field is life sciences, specifically gene therapy.

You may want to specify your field too, although I suspect the answer will  be mostly the same even for the science/math that are the bulk of this SE and us humanity folk.

Also see: How can I do a literature review efficiently?

This seems like an impossible task.

You're right, it is impossible.  One can really never hope to gain a "complete" knowledge of a field, or even a subfield.  You just have to do the best you can, in the time you have, to identify the most significant basic work related to your area of interest, and work that specifically addresses the questions you are studying.
Part of your advisor's job is to help with this; they should have a broader knowledge of the field, and be able to help direct your literature search and point out any glaring gaps.  But despite your combined best efforts, there will almost certainly end up being significant work that you overlook, or whose relevance you don't recognize.  That is just part of doing research.  Someday you'll learn about it and wish you had known it earlier, but all you can do is move on from there.

Thanks for your answer. During my masters there were a couple of times where I met with my supervisor bearing the news: "I just found out about  which discusses X, exactly what I spent the last few months figuring out!!" I would be very upset with myself that I didn't see  sooner. My supervisor would always just chuckle and point out how my work is actually significantly different from , and how it was valuable that I found out X on my own.

It is impossible to capture everything in any field of academic literature, but the good news is that you don't need to. To proceed, you need to have a clear view of your purpose for conducting a literature review (other than, "I have to, as a grad student"):

For your own learning about the relevant knowledge in your field
To help you narrow down to a concrete dissertation topic
To publish a summary that is helpful for other researchers

On one hand, these are three distinct goals that require somewhat different strategies. On the other hand, since they are all related, it is possible to combine these three goals and achieve them all with one general strategy.
I recommend that you target your dissertation topic, and to do it in such a way that you gain relevant knowledge in your field and can publish a summary of your review that is useful to other researchers. You could proceed in this general way:

Begin with a good idea of what topics interest you (you must like your dissertation topic!) and also interest your doctoral supervisor (your supervisor must also like your dissertation topic!). (If you don't have a supervisor, then make it a priority to get one right away, or else you can easily add a few years to the length of your doctoral program.)
Conduct literature searches on one definite topic of interest. You must target a concrete topic. It is when you try to find "everything" that it gets overwhelming and impossible. Your goal in searching is to find the seminal research (that is, the research that is most highly cited) and the most interesting unanswered questions. They must be interesting to you for the sake of your intellectual engagement, and they must be unanswered so that you have the opportunity to make a real contribution. (That said, your supervisor should help you later on to add one more requirement: feasibility. It must be practical for you to answer the question within the timeline and resources of a doctoral dissertation--your supervisor can help you assess that.)
When you have a concrete topic from these literature searches, do related searches for literature that is related to your topic and might have some bearing on it (treatments of the same topic in other disciplines, potentially relevant methodological approaches applied to different topics, etc.)

Hopefully, with a general outline like that, you should be able to advance. Again, the result would be a concrete dissertation topic, you will have learnt relevant knowledge along the way, and your publication of your findings should be helpful to other researchers.
Also, note that my outline was sufficiently general that it should be applicable to almost any academic discipline.


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Can I note unofficial classes I plan to take on my CV for graduate admissions?
I'm writing CV for a grad school; Fall semester in 2017.
I will work as TA and take several fundamental courses from unofficial school which are related to the areas that I will study in the grad school. This event will begin in Jan. for three months.
And I'm wondering that where I could note this upcoming event.
Could you give me some advice?

What is an "unofficial school" in this context?

it is like a boot camp(academy) for learning advanced skills

I don't know what a boot camp for learning advanced skills is, exactly, but maybe it's more relevant in your field/location than mine.  Couldn't you just list it on your CV under education?

In general, I'd warn against listing things you plan to do (but have not done) on your curriculum vitæ.
Should you list courses you've taken completed outside of formal educational environments (e.g. in MOOCs like Coursera, etc)? Sure! Especially if you think it helps address other shortcomings or holes on your application.
Just make sure that these these courses (as well as everything else) is listed in a way that is makes it accurately conveys the nature of the achievement. For example, if you completed a course on edX, list the course, list the fact that it was on edX, indicate whether you completed it, and consider providing any scores on final exams if applicable, etc.


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What should I do if I have specialized in a useless research area?
I am a PhD student in computer science, and chose to specialize in a research area that was interesting to me personally, but not interesting to most tech companies.  I am approaching graduation and I am not sure where to find a job.  What do I do now?

Have you tried applying? A PhD in Computer Science is a serious accomplishment. Many tech companies would be glad to have you (even if they have nothing to do with the research you did).

People with just bachelor's degrees generally find jobs in CS with no serious problems; you are no worse than them, to say the least. Do not be discouraged, but at the same time, do not be "snobby" and think that certain positions are beneath you. Just apply widely, and I am sure that you'll find a job. Good luck!

Can you provide the actual sub-field? I highly doubt that you won't find any job in any sub-field of computer science. It might not be "every company needs a developer" but it won't be "no one needs a quantum computer."

CS PhD students can specialize in research areas that are interesting to most tech companies? (Ha ha only serious.)

The specialised research area of your PhD topic probably has a wider range of related fields which are relevant to prospective employers.  I suggest identify those fields and use them to build your own resume, and also to identify prospective employers.  Search those terms in job sites and identify employers that way.
Unless committed to specifically continue research in a focused line of investigation, then in most cases, I believe that job seekers in your position are really looking for work which utilises the broader skills that they have generated through their post-graduate degree.  Try to take a step back to think of the skills you have gained.
The more generalised skills such as general subject knowledge, investigation, research community networking and research are more likely to be of value to your prospective employer than your expertise in your own specific topic.

In most cases, people don't specifically use their PhD after graduation (unless they go on to work for a university or government research department). Most people don't even directly use their Bachelor degree. So your problem isn't the end of the world.
The first year of work usually consists of your workplace showing you how they do things, and you learning their methods and procedures, their ways of dealing with clients, and solving problems that university didn't prepare you for.
So sell yourself as someone who works well with people, is willing to continue learning, and is humble enough to work under others without assuming you know everything just because you have a PhD.
Also, don't expect to skip the lower paid positions straight to the top due to your education; the Bachelor degree graduate who has been at the company for 4 years while you studied your PhD has probably picked up a lot of company knowledge and is more useful than you will be in your first month. You'll likely get a bit of a wage boost over a bachelor graduate, but not straight to the top. Set your expectations appropriately and workplaces will be more willing to give you a shot.

"In most cases, people don't specifically use their PhD after graduation" - do you have evidence to support this claim? I'd be interested in seeing it. Is this true for computer science, which is the OP's field?

@ff524 I don't have evidence at hand, but I am convinced that this statement is true for CS and for graduates that go to industry. I work in a very applied field (Software Engineering), and I can think of exactly one colleague who went to industry and is applying what he learned specifically in his PhD  in his company. Everybody else is doing jobs that any strong graduate from a different subdiscipline of CS could have also gotten into.

@xLeitix I think you and I are interpreting "use your PhD" differently (given the proximity to the statement about undergrad degrees, which are not so specialized, I was interpreting "your PhD" to include not just the specific research topic). Hopefully Sir Adelaide can come back and [edit] this post to clarify this.

@ff524: I do not have data for CS, but mathematics is close to large parts of CS. If you did a Ph.D. in pure mathematics, you have virtually no chance of applying your research in industry, but your job prospects are pretty good. Two friends of me became actuarians after doing a Ph.D. in logic and representation theory, respectively.