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How to be sure services and researches offered by the University are not becoming cases of unfair competition?
I work in Italy on a research group working on the conservation of cultural heritage analyzing artworks. I had some discussion with my lab on what job or project the university shouldn't accept to avoid overlapping with the private market as unfair competition.
For instance, in my field, many papers are written as a case study where artworks are analyzed by the laboratory with conventional techniques and procedures and the results are published. In fact, there are small companies and freelancers that provided the same service and I think this is a case where the university might be guilty of unfair competition because it offers the same service for free. Of course some times there isn't the money to perform the service while the artwork could benefit from this research for their conservation so this practice sometimes could have a positive impact on the society.
I am aware that in this specific case we are not committing any crime but I wanted to reason about the role of the university.
Are there any guidelines, or law related to the role of the university and what is considered unfair competition? Where I can ask for clarification?
This is not restricted to my particular field because I've found the same problems also dealing with other disciplines.

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Why the downvotes? I know might be an uncomfortable question for someone, but any feedback is appreciated...

I didn't downvote, but I guess it's because your question presupposes quite a lot. Asking "How can I be sure that..." assumes that this is something that universities/researchers must attend to legally and/or ethically. Also, "unfair competition" is poorly defined here... sure, it has a legal definition, but what you're describing clearly doesn't fit that definition.

@eykanal thanks for your feedback! how would you define the concept in other terms? I am open to suggestions

EU law prohibits (or at least limits) states from giving businesses an unfair competitive advantage through subsidising them. These rules may come into play when universities offer services that compete with commercial players. This has been the subject of discussion in cases where universities would offer to do contract research for third parties, and would charge only for the the man hours and not for general overhead, allowing them to offer the research much cheaper than competitors.
I think (but I am not a lawyer) that this should not be an issue for the case at hand, since the university is offering the said service for free. I.e. they are not gaining any (direct) commercial benefit from offering the service. If the university were charging money for this service, it might be different.

Offering the service for free would not make any difference: It would be more of an unfair advantage than charging somewhat below the fair price: it's the owner of the heritage good that receives the subsidy here, not the university.

But: there's a difference between a research cooperation (which is not a commercial activity of the university,) and the university providing research services which is considered a commercial activity and subject to the State Aid laws.

I think your assumption that the university and private evaluators "offer the same service" is flawed. A private analysis will be delivered to a client and not to the general public. Being private, it may give some competitive advantage and so has monetary value. The university, on the other hand provides an information "service" to the general public so that all can benefit.
To "forbid" the university from doing some sort of research so that the possible results could be locked up for private rather than general benefit seems to be a pernicious idea.
And, the "service" of the university isn't actually free (as in beer). Resources go in to it that are paid in a variety of ways, sometimes from public monies since the public benefits. But the information it provides is free (as in speech).

But for your question about law, note that laws vary from place to place, and not all laws are wise.

The first part is wrong.  Even if the information was exclusive to the client, it is still not unfair competition.

@AnonymousPhysicist, I didn't claim it was. And I don't understand why you think I did. Private information may have competitive value. Full stop. It isn't unfair. It is just value.

So you are telling me it isn't wrong, it's just off topic?

@AnonymousPhysicist, again, I don't understand. What "it" are you referring to?

You said "I think your assumption that the university and private evaluators "offer the same service" is flawed. A private analysis will be delivered to a client and not to the general public."  The question is about unfair competition, so I inferred that you were trying to make a claim that "private" versus "public" has something to do with unfair competition.  I said that "public" versus "private" status does not matter to unfair competition.

If I did not infer correctly, then I suggest you revise your answer.

@AnonymousPhysicist, You are misreading Buffy's point. Buffy's comment doesn't bother getting into the issue of what would genuinely be unfair competition. The point is that they are fundamentally different services.

@JoshuaZ sure sounds like the comment is off-topic, then.

@AnonymousPhysicist The question is predicated on the assumption that the services are equal. What's off topic about an answer that addresses that?

Thanks, some times we have worked with company that provied to the institutions (e.g. Museum) the data than the istitution used the data. This I think is the right praxis. I know that the service is in fact not free what I am saying is that the goverment founding should be used to do reserach and not providing services that other companies can already provied.

@pipinstallfrisbee "The question is predicated on the assumption that the services are equal."  I do not agree.  The answer is the same either way.

I've to meet the private analysis lab that would restrict publication of the results by their customers. So: the customer (e.g. museum) here is obviously fine with publication of the results. In this situation, both private labs and the university do offer equivalent services. (BTW, in my experience universities also provide services where the customer doesn't agree to publication - though maybe under different conditions).

@Buffy: these laws do not prevent universities from doing research, they only prevent universities from turning unpaid/underpaid student labor or governmentally paid facilities into advantages for particular businesses - to the disadvantage of other businesses. The business who may have gotten an unfair advantage here is the museum - and it's not yet clear whether we have such an advantage or not.

Keep in mind that universities are typically either government-run institutions or non-profit organizations; in either case, their principal purpose is to benefit society in some way, rather than to earn a profit for their owners or shareholders.  I think it's pretty well accepted for such organizations to provide goods and services for free or cheap, for the purposes of creating a social benefit, even if there are commercial businesses that also sell those goods or services.  This is fundamentally different from typical "unfair competition" where a business sells goods at low cost for the purpose of eliminating the competition or getting customers locked in.
You can think of many analogies which most people find totally uncontroversial:

A local government funds a public library, where people can come and read books for free, with the goal of helping educate the population.  Is this unfair competition with local bookstores?
A church opens a soup kitchen which gives away free meals, with the goal of helping the needy.  Is this unfair competition with local restaurants?
The government operates and subsidizes a bus or metro system, funded mostly by taxes, whose fares don't cover the full costs of construction and operation.  The goal is to help people get around, reduce traffic, and promote economic activity.  Is this unfair competition with taxi companies?

Here, your university is providing expert analysis, presumably with the goal of increasing knowledge about art and preserving important cultural artworks.  You aren't doing it to earn a profit.  I don't see any problem.
Of course, this may depend in part on your political and philosophical views about how economies ought to operate, capitalism and socialism and free markets and so forth.  But I think what I've said is pretty mainstream.
If you want to know whether your activities are legal, you should ask your university counsel rather than the Internet.  But I'll be very surprised if there is any problem.

I like your asnwer but: in case of local library the goverment is not giving away books for free this would ruin the bookstores (and this is actually what I am talking about in my question) also the church it's okay because it's a soup but if it's the best meal ever done because you have the best machinery due to government foundings this I don't think is right. Also, the metro is not the same service as a taxi.

"Soup kitchen" is just an informal term - churches often serve full meals that are at least as high-quality as an inexpensive restaurant, say.  I'm sure you can think of many other examples if you try.  A big one might be government-sponsored health care - is it unfair competition with private hospitals?

I think we should make a distinction between primary needs and services.

The primary function of the hospital is to do provide health care but the primary function of the university to provide educational or research services not any service

We actually had quite some political discussions about something similar to your soup kitchen scenario: there was the idea that unemployed should do something for the public good, e.g. gardening public parks for subsidized wages. This was raising concerns that gardening companies would suddenly face what equals the state becoming a huge competitor of theirs, who'd be abusing power (to tell unemployed to do that work) and offer those services at dumping prices. BTW: public here are usually private companies who bid for governmental contracts to service particular lines.

This is not unfair competition.
Unfair competition is an outright crime, such as monopolistic practices, fraud, or libelling the competition.
Giving away a service to a few clients is not one of those things.  Also, you are not giving away the lab's services.  Somebody is paying the lab to provide these services.  You just didn't tell us who is paying.

I assume the legal definition of unfair competition varies by jurisdiction and may not be completely captured in the wikipedia article. But I agree that this isn't a case of it, legally. But the common usage of the term is a bit broader than the law.

Yes, I was talking about the idea rather the crime it self.

@GM That does not change my answer.  We are not lawyers here.

yes exactly, because we are not lawyers I am not judging it in strictly legal terms. I am talking about the idea of unfair competition. In my case, the government is paying so it would be probably similar to state aid to a company: https://ec.europa.eu/competition/state_aid/overview/index_en.html

Giving away free products can potentially be called monopolistic. As for law, it's all about the exceptions and complex cases, not the cases that easily fit our definitions. Imagine if the US postal service (a govt agency which operates for profit, has a protected monopoly in letter delivery, but competes in package delivery with private firms) decided to start delivering packages for free.

@ASimpleAlgorithm True but irrelevant to this situation.


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Can I publish photos or reconstructed drawing of the internal part of a patented instrument?
I am doing a publication using a specific optical instrument protected by different patents. To see how it works I opened it and I have redrawn the arrangement of the optical components. Am I allow to publish my drawing for explaining the physical principle behind the measurements I have performed during my research?
It's not a reverse engineered designed, there are no specific distances between the components or other relevant details for the construction. I am showing an abstraction but more or less the parts and the arrangement is the same as the real one.
The drwaings, are of course mine. I would like to publish on my PhD thesis in Italy, but in general I am interested on any pubblication.

What is your legal jurisdiction? Italy?

Ask your university's legal department. In principle, all below answers apply, but increasingly there is an overreach of companies to try and prevent any type of analysis of their designs, even if in the past this would not be protected. Unless you want to make a point, of course, but your post seems to indicate you are more on the cautious side.

If the device is protected by patents, the filed patents contains all relevant information about its design, its function and its protected claims. Therefore, I think publishing a high-level summary of how it works should not be a problem at all. In fact, you might want to read the relevant patents to verify your understanding of the device!

Well, part could be patented while part was not. However, given you can buy the instrument and take it apart, any proprietary bits are going to be in how it got assembled, not the layout itself. Unless, of course, there was an NDA or other restriction in place about what could be done to the system when purchased.

However much one wants  to read patents, they are often not very readable.

Following up on the answer of HairyBlob, you are also safe from copyright issues (a separate thing) if you are using your own drawings, especially if they are an abstraction of the ideas in the patent.
There is no restriction on public discussion of patents (most places). In fact the patent process requires disclosure. But you can't republish copyright material. And your description suggests you aren't doing that.

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Do grad school admissions care about course load?
Do grad school admissions (particularly for Arts) care about how many classes you've taken per semester during your senior years?
For example, I'm (potentially) finishing my undergraduate studies with a 3-class semester. However, during this time I'll also be volunteering in classrooms for experience (I want to do a BEd before a Master's, the latter is far down the line) and potentially working part-time. I've taken 4 to 5 courses for all my other semesters save for one other, when I was also working and doing job searching for my school's Co-op program.
I'm worried, potentially, that a 3-class load will reflect poorly - even though I did a lot of other things during this time. However, my GPA is very high, above what is considered the competitive average to be accepted.
In your experiences how do grad schools weigh overall GPA vs overall class loads?

Possible duplicate of How do graduate admissions committees view taking a lighter courseload in your final year of undergrad?

@cag51 That question is slightly different.  Maybe we should have a broad question that covers all these situations? See also https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/151908/is-it-perceived-poorly-when-a-student-takes-a-low-course-load-throughout-their-u

"In your experiences how do grad schools weigh overall GPA vs overall
class loads?"

GPA is much more important.
Course load is often not even seen, unless people dig into your transcript to more details such as which courses you took and which ones brought up/down your GPA: In this case if you took only 3 courses/term throughout your undergrad, it might raise eyebrows but you are saying it's only your senior year so it won't likely be a problem.
More important than GPA and Course Load combined, is reference letters and publication/research-experience if you have any. GPA means very little to me because I know that a 70% at Oxford (where I did my PhD) is considered a "1st" which is the highest-level of honour and is only awarded to the best of the best students, yet in Canada (where I did my undergrad degrees) it was common to get 90s or even 100% occasionally. Furthermore even within Canada a 90% at University of Waterloo might mean something different from a 90% at Laurier Unviersity (in the same city), and a 90% in Psychology might mean something different from a 90% in Literature (even at the same university), and a 90% in PSYCH 101 with a leniently grading TA might mean something different from a 90% with a harshly grading TA (even for the same course in the same university in the same country!). Your volunteering and experience-gaining, which you say is the reason why you're taking 3 courses instead of 5, might actually be benefiting you more than you imagine, because if you do well you might get a strong reference letter, which is usually more powerful than a good GPA alone.

They will probably consider your courseload on top of everything else, but if you are only taking fewer courses in your last year and not as a continued pattern then it will probably not be considered relevant.
For example, if a student has a low or mediocre GPA while consistently taking only one or two courses per semester, that will not look good; it may be a concern that that student may have trouble passing all of their classes under the kind of courseload that is necessary to complete a graduate degree in a timely manner. On the other hand a good GPA while taking a very heavy courseload starts to be more impressive.
But again, this kind of thing will only be considered as part of a larger pattern, in relation to concerns about being able to perform well in a graduate program.

Most people are not going to care what course load you took. In my opinion, making graduate admissions decisions on that basis would be inappropriate.
However, I do recommend taking the highest course load you are capable of. This will help you learn more, graduate faster, and start earning money sooner. At many institutions, taking the maximum allowed course load will also save you money.
If you take a low course load for a long time, I would suggest doing something meaningful with the rest of your time, and mentioning all the great stuff you did in your graduate school application.

Well, for the UK this wouldn't be true... - You get no choice in modules at university and if you wanted to add modules to finish sooner, you'd be paying for it directly and not via the students loan company. Also, just taking more modules even if you are capable of doing so will NOT make you necessarily learn more, especially if you start just preparing for exams. Having time not to rush through the subject allows you to better process the contents. Overloading yourself with information is not going to have a positive effect.

@DetlevCM I thought "course load" was an American concept, so I assume the asker is at an American university.  I did say "highest course load you are capable of" not "highest possible load"

This still assumes that people are familiar with the US educational system, which is not a given and might even be incomprehensible to some. (Why on earth does the US use the same name for a school and university? Or do schools issue university degrees? A college is a school, NOT a university...) - As to modules/lectures: There was definitely flexibility in which topics you attended in Europe before the "Bologna reform" in Europe. - And as mentioned in my comment, the UK will let you pay to finish faster (even if it is not necessarily advisable). Making assumptions on an international site....

...is typically not advisable it it may be a good idea to be explicit. Even if it may seem obvious to some (i.e. your US readers).

@DetlevCM I think my answer does address all the situations you have raised.

I was at Harvard University graduate school of arts and sciences.
To be a full-time student a graduate student must take at least 12 credit hours, otherwise they are part time.
In terms of GPA, most undergraduate schools will only accept your unweighted GPA
Admissions is a holistic gesture, and it isn’t a “all or nothing”
decision.
They are wanting to know why you may, someday, establish significantly innovative and pioneering work in your field, and that the work that you have completed, in the past, is…
truly exceptional.

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Is it ethical for a journal to request substantial payment for publishing a paper?
A while ago, I spoke with a colleague of mine who advised me to beware of journals that require you to pay to publish your work, as they may be predatory.  Today, I spoke with my advisor who informed me that even some reputable journals require payment to publish... even upwards of thousands of dollars!  Is this really ethical?  I can understand requiring a nominaly insignificant membership fee of some sort to keep the journal running, but such an exhorbitant amount?  Shouldn't all who have significant work to publish in a field have the ability to diseminate in reputable journals without being super rich?

I am in math, and more and more journals offer an "Open Access" model where you can choose to pay them to publish your paper.  If I have to pay someone to publish my paper, it tells me that there is negative demand for my research and I should be doing something else.

Plain, simple, and clear "NO". Tao and Gowers lost 2/3 of my respect for their pi and sigma. But remember that money is well above ethics on many publishers' list of priorities.

Well someone's got to pay. If it's the reader, then howls go up about Open Access. So that leaves the authors.
The costs of publishing
A high-quality journal needs high-quality editors.  An awful lot of literature still gets printed and distributed around the world and that's expensive. Remember, reading this, we are the ones who are most active online, and so our paper-reading habits are much more likely to be skewed towards predominantly (or even exclusively) online access, so are not fully representative. High-quality journals often also get involved in conference sponsorship, publicity, and so on. The peer-reviews get co-ordinated; there is often some vetting of suitable reviewers; their responses need to be interpreted correctly; special issues get co-ordinated; someone ensures a good balance of articles covering the journal's remit.
So, there's a lot of costs, and someone's got to cover them.  If we want to publish at almost-zero overheads, we write a blog.  A journal is much much more than a blog - and some of the things that make it much more than a blog, cost money.
Not necessarily an efficient market
That's not to say that in certain sectors, there isn't a market failure: some sectors do have suspiciously high profit margins. And market regulators should be looking at removing barriers to entry.  Those barriers certainly aren't insurmountable, as notable new scientific publishers have emerged recently, with new business models: PLOS being an obvious example, founded in 2000 to support Open Access, and becoming a publisher in its own right in 2003; and now a serious player, using the author-pays model.
Author beware
There are also plenty of scammers using the author-pays model. So be careful out there. Talk to colleagues about who's reputable and who's not. Read the journals. And there are lists online of the disreputable publishers. Read more about that on this site at How do you judge the quality of a journal?

"Well someone's got to pay": see, e.g., http://jocg.org/index.php/jocg/pages/view/finances2011

I really don't understand the need for open access fees. Usually open access papers are online only, and the peer review etc. is all done for free by academics - so that leaves a cost of $1000+ to host a single static pdf file on a web page. It's outrageously wasteful, and the entire system could be made obsolete by a single government or university deciding to fund something that's like arXiv.org but with a rigorous peer review system, if only the will was there. That's not to say author-pays isn't better than reader-pays - it's just that they're both kind of stupid in the internet age.

@EnergyNumbers: If the costs to publish JOCG are hidden from the readers, the editors, and even the publishers, in what sense are they "costs"?  (I'm on on the JOCG editorial board.) See also this account of a leading machine learning journal.  Publishing a bare-bones journal just isn't that expensive.

@EnergyNumbers if the bulk of the fees actually go towards the journal editors' salaries then fair enough (although it doesn't stop me from imagining a better system where these tasks are accomplished by the community instead using an online system, perhaps even something a bit like this site) - but I've a strong suspicion that in most cases the editor gets only a small cut. Do you know any cases where data is available on where the money from open access fees actually ends up?

@JeffE because someone pays them, one way or another. They are real costs. Professional editing is a real cost. As are physical servers, typesetting, copy-editing. Yes, maybe some things (e.g. server administration) are done by volunteers, for a tiny number of journals - but that's not scalable. And I don't see where the barriers to entry for new market entrants are. Still, I realise that given the nature of this site and its active contributors, I'm getting downvoted, even though I still consider what I've written to be a useful answer.

@EnergyNumbers: Perhaps this varies by field, but in many fields, almost all of the costs you described are handled by volunteer editors.  Many journals don't provide professional editing, and the typesetting and copy-editing is handled by the author.  The barrier to entry is that journals depend on prestige; people have a strong incentive to continue publishing in the recognized top journals, and not in some up start journal.

@EnergyNumbers but that's not scalable — So lots of people keep saying; I keep waiting for evidence.

I agree with EnergyNumbers here.  Faculty are often attracted to models where no money changes hands but there's a lot of volunteer work, on the grounds that they control their time but not necessarily a budget.  That's understandable, but it's often not the most efficient solution.  (Faculty aren't necessarily good at these things or willing to do them, you don't want to create extra burden on the people who are, and in any case paying a professional is often cheaper than the implicit cost of the volunteer time.)

@AnonymousMathematician: That seems like a possible argument for why journals should spend money on the things EnergyNumbers mentioned, but it doesn't address the fact that right now they generally don't.

Just a point: this is not volunteer work, this is work paid by the institution of the editors, reviewers and authors. But I think that this is a mission of research institutions to pay all the costs related to publications, preferably by running the journals and proceedings publishers (no need for a very costly "man"-in-the-middle).

Having had to read arXiv.org papers, I am surprised anyone still underestimates the value of paid page layout professionals.

I can only speak for my own field (mathematics), but this is the advice I would give to mathematicians: never pay to publish your work in a journal.  There are some math journals that are at the border of reputability that ask authors to pay, but if you read the fine print you see that they are not explicitly requiring you to pay.  So don't pay, and if they publish your paper anyway, tell your friends about what happened.

@Pete : Bravo  !

"Well someone's got to pay. If it's the reader, then howls go up about Open Access. So that leaves the authors." Gibberish! It is always assumed and openly proclaimed that the author will beg their department and NSF for money. The editors can do it themselves as well if their journal is any good. Sorry for the angry tone, but the point remains.

A market in which authors pay to publish and their careers depend on the number of publications they have opens new possibilities for unethical practices, and those are being actively exploited by vanity press "gold open access" journals.  On the other hand, there are very reputable journals like PlosONE that charge authors but maintain highly ethical standards.
Personally, I think open submission is even more important than open access.  For a more thorough criticism of the author-pay model, see these articles from the Notices of the American Mathematical Society.

This is an answer about the cost of publishing science article.
A math paper, where the author gives a pretty good draft (we use LaTeX) still has to manage peer-review (which usually means paying a secretary to contact authors, late referees, and so on) and to typeset articles. I have heard that the overall cost is $50 per page for a cheap journal (and math pages tend to be small since we mostly write with a single column).
It has been computed in the (very interesting) blog SV-POW that subscription earn the publisher more than $5000 on average. But of course, we are cheated a lot with those prices.
PLoS ONE gains money (and reinvest it, since PLoS is non-profit) and charges "only" $1350 per article.
Recently, Cambridge University Press announced the launch of a math journal in gold OA for $750 a paper -- after three years of fee waivers for everyone.
Last, PeerJ claims to be able to publish all the paper one wants for a few hundred dollar, paid once in one's life (plus yearly reviewer duty).
My conclusion: there is a wide range of prices, and a wide range of services a journal can provide, or not.
Concerning the actual question, I would say there is no ethical problem with paying a publisher for the work it does, as soon as the editors are independent from the money flow; but there are some issues with a system where most journals would run such a model.

It does make sense to pay but I think the fees now went through the roof.
for example BMJ charges 2500 british pounds (all article are forced into paying open access) and they still sell printed copies.
Hybrid model of optional payment for open access seems to be dying in favor of all open access and all journals charge an article fee.
(medical field answer)

I don't think it is ethical to ask individuals to pay to publish papers. If anything they should be paid for their contribution to the journal. If anyone should pay it should be the reader...subscription fees etc

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Is it impolite to send the professor a pre-written letter of recommendation for approval?
I know the professors are a busy tribe. I would like to save them some time by writing a letter of recommendation myself and sending them for approval.
Would that be seen as impolite as I am evaluating myself and therefore it is biased? It could be regarded as me trying to cheat.

I think the chances of a professor using your pre-written letter are low, it's not very ethical. You can perhaps list some things you'd like to be mentioned, but they need to write it up themselves, because it should be a reflection of their own judgment.

Do not do this unless the professor requests that you do.  But when you ask for a letter it is OK to include a CV (if you have one) or a list of courses you took, etc.

Similar, recent, question: For LORs being drafted by the recommendee, do the contents need to be different?

In what country?

Be aware that (depending on country) a lot of professors consider the practice of prewritten recommendation letters unethical. Look at the answers here: Is it acceptable to write a reference letter for yourself?

What is the letter required for? conference, PhD, scolarship, workshop, flat rental ...

Related: How do I effectively solicit a strong letter of recommendation from a professor?

I would like to suggest you ask this professor, if they would be willing to write a strong recommendation for you. Then you would know from their response as to their preference. If they are willing to do so, you may ask if they need anything, your transcript, CV… etc. and if they want you to draft one yourself, they will let you know.
That said, I remember at one time in certain Asian countries, it was usual to do exactly as you suggested. But in the United States, I don’t think that’s the norm.
Ideally, you want a faculty who knows you and your work well enough, such that writing a recommendation letter with evidence of support or vouch for your qualification and potential should take very little time.

Professors do not form a homogenous group. So it is hard to tell if the ones you ask to write a letter of recommendation for you will perceive a draft that you send them as impolite. I know some who regularly ask for detailled input for their letters because they think they cannot manage otherwise to write a timely letter. Others strictly do not want any input and would not use any that they might get. Anything between these extremes exists.
I think there would generally be no harm in asking if you can support in any way, and then do as the letter writers suggest. This also saves you from wasting time to prepare drafts that are then just ignored.
As a side note: The letters I have seen that were written by the recommenders themselves were usually much stronger and more convincing. If a professor wants to write a letter based heavily on your input, it might be wise to look for alternative letter writers.

Last sentence is not correct. Many letter-writers need their memories jogged even for very strong letters. I need substantial input from my recommendees no matter how strong the letter.

When asking a person for a letter of recommendation then also ask if you should send them a "draft" for the letter as well. This draft should be in an editable format so that the person can adjust sections he/she doesn't like easily - this is how most people I know do it.

I think there is some danger that a professor might be offended if you offered the letter unasked for. But, you could, offer to provide a draft of a letter, or a set of bullet points, if that would be helpful.
I'd guess most people prefer to write their own letters and some institutions "forbid" candidates to write their own recommendations, though there is no way to prevent it.
But I wouldn't assume that the professor would see it as a positive thing, even if they are busy.

As explained in other answers, this is not a good idea.  However that doesn’t mean you can’t do things to make your letter writers lives easier by giving them well-prepared summaries.  To give one example, for tenure and promotion in my department we send the letter writers an “annotated bibliography” with paragraph about each paper. This kind of concise summary of your work can be very helpful for letter writers, just don’t do it in the form of a recommendation letter.

I believe providing a draft letter is absolutely fine, provided you ask your recommender if they would welcome that, dropping the idea if they do not, and make it perfectly clear that they can edit it or throw it out, as they see fit.
In fact, only YOU really know what your entire application portfolio looks like, and only YOU really know what part of your portfolio you'd like each letter writer to validate, so drafting a letter actually makes sense.
You're not "sending it to them for approval".  They are the letter writers, and they get to do whatever they want to do with your draft.  In case there is any miscommunication in your original question, it is NOT OK to send in the recommendation on their behalf, posing as the recommender.  That's a very serious falsification.

This sounds somewhat unethical to me.  I don't think you can literally just send them the letter and say 'I've done the letter for you, just put your name on it'.
You could instead send them a coherent 2 - 3 page summary of your work (past, present, future) along with your CV which will help to strongly guide them in writing the letter of recommendation.

I would personally never sign such a letter and would look disapprovingly on anyone taking such an initiative.
It is part of my job to agree to write reference letters, and if I commit to do so I do this on my own.  Sure: I will often discuss multiple aspects of my letter with a student, to make sure there is no misunderstanding between their objectives and what I want to highlight.
However, my name and hence my reputation is literally on the line and this is NOT something I let someone else do on my behalf.  Conversely, I would immediately stop trusting recommendations from a colleague should I learn he or she allowed a student to write a LoR on their behalf.

Coming from the culture where students drafting own performance reviews and such is ubiquitous, I would say the student almost never benefits from it: the letter is typically quite a bit weaker than what the professor would write. People are still aware that their reputation is on the line and a LOR misrepresenting the student would taint it - why is it a breach of trust in this case?

You are perfectly free to either edit or toss out the letter provided, you know.

It is alright if the professor ask you to do so, because the professor will read the recommendation letter before signing it. If there is any exaggeration then the professor will amend the letter before sending it to destiny. Otherwise you should not do it. However, there is a positive side of this method, as well, in the sense that the recommendation letter often depends on the specific project (research project or PhD or academia job etc). So depending on the project, the candidate is much associated with the project,  and hence the candidate, often, is in better position to express the letter.

If a professor ask you to do so, it is not alright by definition. It may be alright in your culture, however it is not absolutely right.
Ask yourself: why do you think it is meaningful to receive a reference letter written by the referenced person, while the professor just vouches for it, which means it is not an independent evaluation, even if in principle it could be correct?

@EarlGrey, At first I don't think the term $independent$ is much suitable in this case because the candidate will ask recommendation from his own chosen people. The other think an example: I have applied several conferences/workshops and every time I needed two recommendations each time. There was no cover letter. Few of them were not $exactly$ my research topic and so they asked me to express in my own words why the conference/workshop is necessary to me.

Let us continue this conversation in chat.


text:
How do I write a compelling statement about my interest in diverse domains?
My primary interest is in Data Mining. Secondary interests are Intrusion Detection and Energy Efficient Buildings.
I have done projects in data mining approaches for intrusion detection. I have also done research in data analysis on energy consumption patterns in smart-buildings.
I will be applying for graduate school (MS) shortly. Now, how do I proceed writing my statement? Should I lay more emphasis on Data Mining? Which professors should I mention I want to work with? Ones doing data mining research, or the ones doing network security/sustainable energy research?
My main concern is finding potential advisers. I believe if I can find some before the application, I can find out their requirements and write a statement accordingly. This in-turn might help me get admission in the desired school as well.
My question here is whether I should look for researchers in data mining (which I have applied in my works) or intrusion detection/sustainable energy (the domain where data mining technique was applied)
I understand that chances of me finding advisers that share interest in both data mining and (intrusion detection/sustainable energy) is very less. So which advisers should I target?

You say you're graduate school, but you don't say in what. That will rather dramatically change the answer.

Graduate School, Masters of Science M.S. (Computer Science)

I would like to add my own experience to argue for generality: When I was starting grad school, I was interested in cancer biology, evolution, microbial population dynamics, bioinformatic, functional genomics and synthetic biology. Some of these I had actually worked on; others were topics unfamiliar to a typical biologist which I happened to understand and be interested in.

From my experience, the process of searching for and applying to graduate programs occurs simultaneously with the searching for graduate research labs. Successfully interviewing at one can significantly impact your chances for being accepted to the other.
With that in mind, start your search with a very specific goal in mind, and only after that fails you can branch out. A simple google search shows at least one promising possibility, I'm sure that if you actually spend some time researching positions you'll find a lot more. Once you've run out of leads there then you can start looking at labs specifically focusing on one or the other. In your case specifically, it just so happens that data mining is a very broad and extremely in-demand skill in virtually all fields, so you should have no problem finding positions in almost any field that would benefit from having data mining expertise as well.
For your letter, I would express your interest in data mining (the general skill) first, and then your interest in sustainable energy or whatever (the specific skill); this way, they'll see that you have an informed set of research interests, but are interested in working in other fields as well if your specific subfield interests don't work out.

I have some insight here.
There are some advantages and pitfalls in the advisers you have described and I have experience with both.
Researcher in Data Mining: Here most of your research will be focused in the way you can modify the algorithm to attack the task you have at hand, your adviser will want to see some insight from you on how things are actually working and why are you getting the results you are getting. He will be potentially interested in the application, but he has had so much experience with many different applications, that he will want you to use a generic dataset so you can compare it with other works and prove your approach works better.
You will have insightful conversations about your algorithm, and what can you do to modify it, but any insight from the data itself will probably have to come from you.
Researcher in Area X where Data Mining is going to be used: He will probably not care much about the algorithm you use, as long as it is useful in the particular problem he is working with. He will most likely have a problem for you to work with, and he will expect results, good results. You will have good conversations about the nature of the data, and will learn a lot about the field, but you might feel a bit isolated in the Data Mining part.
The main question is, what do you want to do afterwards, if you want to do a PhD, in which kind of conferences do you want to be? Data Mining Conferences, or that area conferences?
If you are going to the industry, having much expertise in a particular area can be both good or bad, depending on he job you are applying to.
As an example, I did my PhD on Machine Learning applied to Molecular Biology, and even though I had all the theoretical framework to apply it to Natural Language Processing (NLP), most places would not look at me unless I had some NLP experience.

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


text:
How to make my papers accessible to other researchers?
I have published some papers in some conferences, but the problem is that the people in charge put them in bibliographic repositories, such as DBLP, and they take too much time to do that.
I would like to know how I can allow more people access to my publications, so they would be able to review them, use them if they want, maybe bring more ideas or even suggest that I correct something.
Initially, I was putting them in a personal webpage that I have created, but I took them off because I also got some papers accepted by ACM and IEEE and they require a payment to see them. In this last case, if I upload them for free (on my personal webpage) could I be charged with something by these institutions?

Related: Advertising one's publication

You can use the http://academia.edu/ which is directly purported to share research news and articles.

From the context of your question, I assume you are a computer scientist graduate student.  (Computer scientist because you mention DBLP, and graduate student because you're worried about people finding your research quickly.) My answer is specific to computer science, especially the first two points.

Just post your papers on your web page already.   Among other things, posting your own papers will allow Google Scholar to find and index them after only a few days. Despite scary legal language to the contrary, neither ACM nor IEEE (or SIAM, or AMS, or Springer, or Elsevier, or...) has any interest in suing individual researchers for providing copies of their own papers.
Post preprints of your work to the ArXiv and/or your institutional preprint server.  Again, despite scary language to the contrary, granting a license to the ArXiv to publish your papers does not deprive ACM or IEEE (or SIAM, or AMS, or Springer, or Elsevier, or even ACS) the right to later publish peer-reviewed version of your papers later.  Many publishers explicitly allow you to publish post-reviewed but pre-copy-edited preprints on the ArXiv and similar servers.  Posting camera-ready versions is technically illegal, but neither ACM nor IEEE has any interest in suing individual users for such violations.
Post publication announcements on Facebook/Google+/Twitter/your blog.  Yes, this works.  Really.
Give lots of talks.  At a minimum, you should give talks about your results in an appropriate local seminar.  But especially for really strong results, you (or your advisor) should also arrange to have yourself invited to a few other institutions to give a talk.
Send copies of your work directly to a few colleagues.  Just send them email with a link to your web page.  (Don't blindly send papers as attachments; remember that some people read email over the phone and pay by the byte.)  But don't just spam the whole world.  Limit your email to the small handful of influential people that you are sure will be interested — other researchers working on the same problem, people whose results you directly improve or extend, your advisor, and—if you're nearing a point like graduation or tenure where you need letters—a few potential letter-writers.
Take the long view.  It really is not important that see your results RIGHT NOW THIS MINUTE ZOMG NOW NOW NOW !!!!111¡¡¡CXI.  Relax.  Yes, DBLP and other indexing services operate with a delay of several months.  (Although my impression is DBLP has gotten faster, thanks to some outside funding that allowed them to hire more than one human being.)  And yeah, that's frustrating.  But in the long run, those few months of publication delay are not going to make a bit of difference.

+1 for "Just post your papers on your web page already." I have never heard of anyone getting into any trouble for this, nor even of publishers demanding that such papers be taken down.

Posting one one's own page is great, but most likely, will not last forever (because one changes university, because one forget's to pay for one's domain, etc). So, whether possible, posting on arXiv may be of higher importance.

I would argue that this answer is important in a bigger context i.e. web presence of a graduate student in today's world. In my personal experience twitter works best at disseminating published work. There are some interesting studies done in that context namely this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22173204

@Anonymous: As I mentioned below, some very major publishers do not allow this! You must check with the journals to see what is and is not permitted according to their policy.

You need to check with the specific rules of the journals to which you submit to determine what is or is not allowed. For instance, journals published by the American Institute of Physics allow you to publish preprints that are not created by the journal on servers like arXiv without having to pay any fees and without other major limitations. By contrast, American Chemical Society journals do not allow you to post preprints, even on your own homepage. You can link to their site, and after twelve months, the link becomes effectively "free."
But, beyond that, if you want to advertise your work, you will have to do it yourself. You can mention in it in presentations, and cite it in abstracts that you submit to other conferences. You can email colleagues or use social media (sites like academia.edu, LinkedIn or even Facebook to announce your paper. If you have specific colleagues you think would be interested in the paper, you can send it directly to them as well!

This is simply not an issue in computer science.  Scary legal language notwithstanding, no major computer science publisher is interested in going after individual researchers for posting their own work on their personal web pages.

Fair enough, but this isn't flagged as an exclusively CS question, and this question will almost certainly be read by people who aren't CS people.

Actually I was thinking of asking similar question (as OP), since I've seen some publishers pursuing authors while some others not taking action. I'm coming from social science and this answer helps.

You should read the copyright transfer contract that you have signed.
In general, the major publishers tend to be fairly permissive nowadays as regards to online posting.

With ACM conference publications, you can (and should) do all of the following:

Before you submit the paper, post it to arXiv.org.
After your paper has been accepted, post your own version of the paper (with an appropriate copyright notice) on:

your own personal web page, and
your university's open access repository.

Later you can prepare a journal version ("major revision"), and you can do with it whatever you want — for example, submit it to an open access journal, post it online, etc.

With IEEE conference publications, the main idea is similar: you can post your work to arXiv.org before submission and to your own home page and a university-wide open access repository after revision.
However, some details are a bit different. My reading of the policies is that with ACM you cannot update arXiv.org with a revised version, while IEEE requires that you update arXiv.org with the accepted version of the paper.
However, don't take my word, read the copyright transfer form (and additional explanations available on the publishers' web pages).

Thank You for delving on when to post a paper on arXiv viz. before submitting the paper/paper notification!

You should check the conditions of your journal using the SHERPA/RoMEO list. Most journals allow to publish your final draft (designed and typeset by yourself) on your institutes server right after publication and on open-access servers like arXiv.org 12 month after publication. Your institutes open-access server will also be found by e.g. Google Scholar.
Many journals will also send you an authors copy of your article which you can share with colleagues (e.g. via email) but you should not publish that one on the internet.


text:
What is the meaning of “we can't offer to further consider this paper in its current shape”?
Recently one of my paper was rejected after review. The editor didn’t mention about the option of resubmission, just said:

It is challenging for us to envision a straightforward revision process to fully address these concerns, and therefore I am sorry that we can't offer to further consider this paper in its current shape.

I’d like to know whether I can understand this as a possibility of potential resubmission after substantial changes of my paper upon the editor and the reviewers’ request or not.
I have a couple of good experiences with resubmission to the same journals, but at that time, editors always gave a clear option to resubmit my paper. This time, I’m not sure about whether the door to this journal is completely closed or not.

The editor has mentioned that there are substantial concerns about the human relevance of the findings, and whether the data are strong to support the overall conclusions. The reviewers have commented some details regarding these concerns with given some suggestions. The reason that we are considering resubmit the paper after a major surgery is that all the suggestions are available for us to do by performing extra experiments  that will take at least 3 months…

@Trunk I don't think those details are necessary. From an English-comprehension point of view, this is pretty clearly a "we are not interested in this paper, do not resubmit."

@Trunk Thank you!!

Your comment "The editor has mentioned that there are substantial concerns about the human relevance of the findings, and whether the data are strong to sup..." should be added to your question, which you can do via the "edit" mechanism, I think.  Highly relevant, will get you better answers.

@Trunk - That does vastly depend on what field you're researching in... If you're trying to publish a paper to do with human psychology... Human relevance is pretty important... Mathematics, less so

I'm sorry to say but this reads like the most negative reaction of the editor possible. The editor doesn't see how even a substantial revision of the paper would lead to a path to publication. They can't forbid you to resubmit the paper however many times you want but their point of view is that you would need to change it enough to make it essentially a completely new paper to make it worthwhile to resubmit.

It's plausible the journal's internal rules will allow editors/editors in chief to forbid (or at least automatically desk reject) certain papers or authors, but good journals won't consider anything like that unless an author becomes a "problem".

I imagine there is more explanation on what "these concerns" are in the letter.

Calling it the "most negative reaction possible" seems a little exaggerated. It seems to me like they don't want to accept the paper, and the issues that need to be fixed are too complicated and deep-running to be addressed in one or two rounds of reviewing.

I guess it's the "in its current shape" part that is confusing.  I take the editor to mean that although they think there are problems with the paper's fundamentals, at least some of the contents could potentially find a home in a substantially different paper.

This seems just a polite way to say no to me.

@Trunk Not necessarily pompous, it could be a very poor submission. Given the reference to "these concerns" it seems that more specific feedback was also given, but if work is sufficiently poor it may not even deserve a more specific handling

No? More like, No Way!

I read this as "Maybe you could revise this in a way it could be acceptable, but we don't see it happening." In other words, the editor is strongly discouraging you from resubmitting without closing the door entirely. In my opinion, it's poor editing to not just say outright, in cases like this, that resubmissions wouldn't be accepted, rather than dangle a slim hope of eventual acceptance in front of the authors. But my feeling is it's pretty common. Editors who do this think they're being more generous by keeping an open mind, when really they're inviting you to waste your time on a resubmission that they don't want to see.
(The qualification "in its current shape" seems particularly ill-conceived. Of course the editor "can't offer to further consider this paper in its current shape", because this round of consideration is done now. The thing an author wants to know is whether a resubmission would be considered.)

This sounds like "no amount of mere editing will fix this paper: the data is bad in some foundational way that would require additional research to fix."
As such, I think your comment "The reason that we are considering resubmit the paper after a major surgery is that all the suggestions are available for us to do by performing extra experiments that will take at least 3 months…" seems like a good path forward.
You won't be merely editing and resubmitting: you will be doing months of additional work and essentially submitting a new paper based on the new findings. Sure, the new paper might have much of the same wording; but the important foundations will have been changed.
I'd write to the editor to ask whether they would find those additional months of time and investment to be a worthy change, though: their wording is vague. They might have some other, unstated reason to decline you, and they might then give a firmer no, rather than a "maybe if you make those radical changes".

Does the communication from the editor state explicitly the paper is rejected or is this your interpretation of the situation after reading the comments?
I am asking because a student I know concluded their submission had been rejected whereas in fact the editor had nowhere said so.
If the editor does not state that the submission is rejected, a resubmission is possible, but the submission in its current form has limited chances of eventually being accepted without major changes.
I suspect the referees did not recommend publication for qualitative rather than specific reasons, something like “it’s not really that novel” rather than “good idea but this section needs to be expanded”.  It is not impossible to reorganize a manuscript to address such “soft” objections, but definitely not easy.

The OP's first sentence is "Recently one of my paper was rejected after reviewing process."

@JRN is this what the report states or this is the interpretation of the OP after reading the comments  editor?

Perhaps the OP will clarify.

Yes, though the editor didn’t mention the word “reject”, the report status said so.

@user167689 ok then this makes my answer moot.  Just beware of overly pessimistic interpretations of statements from the editor.  If they don't say it's rejected then, however hesitant the report may be, it's not rejected.  If rejected I would have expected something like "Unfortunately for you our decision is to reject your submission in its current form" rather than some "soft" comment like you received.

@Trunk if the status report says reject, I would assume the paper is rejected.  However I thought the OP has inferred from the language of the report that the paper had been rejected.  My point is: unless there's explicit indication somewhere that the paper is rejected, then it is not.  When I read a comment like the one quoted by the OP, it does read to me like "major revisions to resubmit" rather than reject.  Thus is it important to be sure the correspondence does indicate rejection explicitly.


text:
Professional writing tips
I just started my post doc and currently writing a paper but I don't have any professional writing experience. Is there a learning curve or forums that can help with improving writing skills? E.g. I want to rephrase "The review paper published recently talked about the wide range of.." into more professional sentence. How can I get help on this?

You're a post doc but don't have writing experience? Did you not have to write a thesis? Anyway - services such as Grammarly have been really helpful to me for improving sentence structure and general grammar.

I am an MD, do not have a PhD yet so didn't have to do any thesis. Thanks

You basically need to have one or more relatively senior people who can advise you on this now, since your prior experience did not include much of it. A big part of a PhD would have been lots of iterations of critiques of writing papers, back-and-forth between advisor and advisee, which I guess you missed.

at the moment there is an course course which is pretty good https://www.coursera.org/learn/sciwrite in general a good thing is to join a course a get an editor to edit your writing and explain you what are you doing wrong

The review paper published recently talked about the wide range of.." Add a citation to clarify which review paper you mean. Drop recently published (it is vague and the review paper won't be recent when you publish). Be more precise; replace talked about the wide range of with something more direct. Consider replacing the review paper with X, Y & Z, where X,Y,Z are author names. Maybe try https://english.stackexchange.com/

Many universities have a "writing center" or equivalent that will typically be your best starting point, since it has people who are paid to sit down with you in person and help you solve this problem.
If your institution does not have such, there are massive numbers of online scientific writing courses that may help. Personally, I have found Jean-luc Doumont particularly helpful, and especially his "architectural" view of writing. Different people will find different resources fit their personal learning styles best of course.
Next, if at all possible, make sure that you are partnering with mentors or co-authors who are good at writing.
Finally, read!  The best way to understand what works in communication is to be a reader and learn what works for you.


text:
Is it acceptable to ask a professor who is not your supervisor to give you M.S. thesis topic?
I'm currently a M.S. student. My supervisor give me freedom to choose thesis topic. Since it is so hard for me, I decide to ask another professors whom I consider to be their PhD candidates in future. I have written an email to ask them.
Is it a good idea to do so? And is my email appropriate for this purpose?

Dear Professor xxx,
I am a M.S. student at University of xxx-the most prestigious university in xxx- with a major in information technology- multimedia systems. I will graduate on September 2016.
  I had the chance to read your publications and some of your articles. I really enjoyed them, and it gave me many ideas for my future research. Due to my strong interest in your research area and considering the experience I have gained from my relevant courses, I believe I can be a beneficial part of your research group, if I get a chance.
  Since I haven't chosen the topic of my M.S. Thesis, I prefer to ask you to give me some information about the topics you are currently working on, in order to get a higher chance to be your PhD student in future.
  I know you’re very busy so I appreciate any time you can give me.
Thanks very much,
  Sincerely,
  xxx

I am a M.S. student at University of xxx- the most prestigious university in xxx. I have very serious problem with this. You have too much  ego. I tend to downvote this question just because of this sentence. (I haven't done it yet.)

"...and it gave me many ideas for my future research". If you have so many ideas, pick one of those to work with your current supervisor or suggest this as a topic to your "new" supervisor. But since I suspect you do not really have that many ideas and you really need a professor to suggest a topic for you, do not state otherwise.

Could you elaborate on your educational system, please? In arrangements I know, someone can become your supervisor by the very action of giving you a Master thesis topic. Conversely, what is a supervisor/how is there a supervisor when you have not yet chosen a particular topic (which would be supervised by a particular person)?

Field of study is clear but the exact topic is not. I'm focusing on multimedia systems security but it's not a small and limited subject.

Don't know whether doing a masterthesis on a subject increases the chances per se. I've seen people swapping from one lab (AI) to another (Electrical engineering) without much problems. The ability to learn something new is most of the time more useful than knowing an entire subject's library by heart.

And about the email, it makes a rather generic impression: you can send it to any professor. There is not much "personal" in it in the sense that you don't show you have actually read any work of that person. Some of your articles is rather vague: all supervisors have evidently written articles. You can perhaps be more specific.

I do not think it is a good idea to ask this other professor to give you your thesis topic, either asking by email or in person.  If you want to be this professor's PhD student in the future, the best thing you can do is do a good job on your thesis and complete your Masters degree.  Doing your thesis on a topic of his choice does not increase your chances of being his PhD student, and may decrease your chances because you aren't demonstrating independent judgment.
Both Masters and PhD students should do the work to pick their own topic. (Narrowing down my dissertation topic has been a multi-year exercise -- working part-time.)  As a Masters student, you don't have to break new ground or advance the state of the art. But, by picking a topic that is at the state of the art, you demonstrate that you understand, in general, where the state of the art is.
Instead of asking some professor to hand you a topic, you should investigate why picking a topic is hard for you.  Do you lack ideas?  Do you understand what qualifies as a good idea? Do you have trouble selecting from alternative ideas?  Once you've pinpointed the problem, you can ask your adviser or anyone else for help on this aspect of the problem.

Yes it is hard for me and my supervisor gives me too much freedom. My major is information technology and I'm focusing on multimedia systems security which is my own interest. But it looks like an unlimited subject for me! I have read some articles but still can't choose a topic for my thesis after 6 months. :-(

@Hanna:  I don't think students always having to find a topic alone is generally true, or at least the way it turns out. I know plenty of examples of supervisors who essentially provide a topic for their students. Among those again, some will co-author, others just give you a topic - I assume as they have more ideas than they can follow up on. If you struggle to find a topic for an MS, before signing up for a PhD, I would recommend to do some research on which of the above types your potential future PhD adviser is.

I occasionally get emails along these lines, and I am almost never thrilled. The sole exception where I would consider this case is if I know (a) the student personally and think (s)he is good, and/or (b) I know the advisor personally, and (s)he recommended the student this model. In all other cases, my response would be negative.
What you need to be aware of is that a master student who is actually somebody else's student, and who presumably even sits physically remote, is a risk on so many levels. You have no idea how good the person is. You have no idea whether (s)he actually works or is just procrastinating between status updates. You have basically no leverage, so if you assume the student is not working hard or is involved in unethical behavior (e.g., rigging the data), you can do pretty much nothing except pull out of the cooperation. You have no idea whether the person's actual advisor is fine with this, or will start sabotaging the agreement when (s)he figures out that her/his student is actually working with somebody else. It is even unclear what the implications for the student are - maybe her/his university does not even accept a thesis primarily supervised by somebody outside of the institution. And even if all goes well, you are still supervising a student in somebody else's name (i.e., doing the work of somebody else).
All these things considered - would you invest one of your good ideas, or, even worse, your limited time supervising such a student?

The OP has not asked you to supervise them, but to suggest a topic for a Master's thesis.

Insted of

"...and it gave me many ideas for my future research"

how about

"... and it gave me idea X for implementing Y in manner Z. I am considering working on this idea for my master's thesis here at University W with Prof. V. Since this idea comes from your paper, could I please first ask if any of your current students are working on it, and also solicit your opinion on whether this idea sounds promising to you?"

You should make it clear, not so much by saying it explicitly, as by wording your e-mail with this in mind, that you do not expect any sort of commitment from the person to whom you write. This will lead to pretty decent chances for an interesting and useful reply.

It depends on the academic system where you are from. For instance, if you are in a country where there is a strong hierachal system, going to another professor behind the back of your supervisor might sour your relatonship with him/her.
My advice is to consult your current supervisor about your what topic/bias you think might work for you and then let him/her refer you to another supervisor if it is beyond his/her scope. That way you will get advice and guidance from both sides without rufling any feathers. In academia, the politics sometimes plays a very important role in the success of your thesis and you should always take it into consideration.


text:
Etiquette of introducing yourself to a professor
I am writing my master thesis at a university in Germany. I am looking into universities and institutes where I could carry out a PhD. One of the possibilities I have been looking into is a group at an university from Switzerland.
This group’s head will be tomorrow at my university, acting as a second examiner at a thesis defense. I think this is a good opportunity to introduce myself personally and maybe ask about the outlook of doing a PhD at his group.
What is the ettiquete in such situations? I think it is not uncommon to find yourself in an academic event with someone you are interested to work under.

Your best chance is to get one of the other examiners who is local to your university to introduce you. It would be better if this could happen at a social function (dinner, drinks, party for the newly minted PhD, etc), i.e., somewhere you might get a few minutes to actually talk. It would be best if your local acquaintance would pave the way with an email and some chit-chit so that you have a clue whether ProfZ even has a position available.
If you can't get someone who know you both to make an introduction, then you'll just have to walk up and introduce yourself. It would be better to have figured out in advance whether there is a position available or not, but it's getting a bit late for that (try anyway). If you can, you still might send ProfZ an email today introducing yourself and asking if they have a few minutes to talk about possible PhD positions at UniY while they are visiting.